Memories of farming

I am potentially one of the last generation of Canadians who can claim to come from a traditional farming family. I can remember Easters and summers spent on my uncle's Saskatchewan wheat farm, with chickens and cows and horses, with a huge vegetable garden and mangy cats who caught the mice that otherwise nested in the hay bales. My uncles road the tractors and stalked the fields day in and day out. They talked about the weather and worried about tornadoes and rain, drought and bugs. They chewed tobacco, talked very little, and with their wrinkled careworn faces, they seemed much older and wiser than my own government engineer father. They seemed larger than the life, yet inextricably tied to it.

Because I lay claim to the idea of having been a half farm kid (the other half being the kind of suburban/rural kid you can only be when you grow up on the outskirts of a small and relatively unimportant Canadian prairie city) , stories of farming and farmers have always touched a chord. My uncles are part of that for me. Which is probably why I want to see the film "The Real Dirt on Farmer John". While it is American made and will no doubt have some of the US patriotic jingoism that goes with that, it is made by a man who grew up in a farming community, on a family farm and watched the changes wrought by weather, politics, economics and globalization. Alternet's overview has piqued my interest. I hope it shows in a theatre near me this summer.