American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland

I approached this book with great anticipation, expecting a very interesting behind-the-scene look at the subculture of wheat harvesting. The book did give me insight into that world. At the same time, "American Harvest", went into great detail about fundamental Christian beliefs, as practiced by many of the people Marie Mutsuki Mockett met or worked with on her journey. It was almost as if Mockett wanted to be more of a Anne Lamott, but somehow fell short of that aspiration. The other troubling aspect of the book was that Mockett was... how should I say this... really annoying. Why was she annoying to the point that I wanted to put down the book? In my opinion, I think it was because she allowed her focus to waver. In other words, she missed the forest for the trees. She would give the reader very interesting insights into the world of wheat harvesting, then go on for pages about religion. To the point, I would say to myself, "What the heck happened to the wheat harvest?!" And what happened to the very interesting characters working on the harvest? Did these people just not let her into their world? And does the fact that we very likely didn't get the full story mean that Mockett was an "unreliable narrator?" For example, why is there very little in the book about her own family? There is virtually no information on her own marriage. And just a little bit about her son. Bottom line, the book just didn't work for me. In addition, if I really wanted an explication of something like the Book of Revelation, I would read someone like Elaine Pagels, not Marie Mutsuki Mockett. Finally, reading between the lines toward the end of the book, Mockett appears to have irritated not must myself, the attentive reader, but the people she was writing about as well. In the end, she irritated people, there was a falling out, and Mockett left the harvest and went home on a short notice. She didn't really finish what she set out to do! Dear potential readers, I am sorry to give this book a mixed review. I tried. I hung in there and read it to the very last page, but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't care one bit about the Book of Revelation, but I do care about the state of farmers and farming in America. Mockett can do better. In fact, I think there is the core of a better book hidden somewhere in between the pages of this one. The problem is, the writer didn't deliver that book. It's still out there, waiting to be written or in the case of this book, re-written.

I grew up on a Nebraska farm and I read this book with a critical eye as I had just recently read, "This Blessed Earth" by Ted Genoways.  I wish that Graywolf Press would have enlisted the help of a fact checker.  I won't go into all the inaccuracies, but Mockett claims to be in a minority by holding onto her share of a farm and not selling, but I'm not sure that's an accurate portrayal of the greater population of people who grew up on the farm and moved away.  She never lived on the farm, so her relationship with the land is different.  My best friend from high school and I both inherited our farms in the past decade (as did most kids in my class) and we either farm remotely or are local, it's not that big of a deal.   An interesting note that I am going to insert here since the author has repeatedly brought up the subject of the size of the farm.  According to land records in Kimball and Weld county, the Mockett farms do NOT total 7,000 acres and if they once did, they have not for quite some time.  I did some checking and to verify, the Mockett  family farms in Kimball and Weld county currently total about 3,600 acres (the author and her mother own about 2,700 of those).  But what is really interesting is that the Wolgemuths, the custom harvesters from Pennsylvania, own nearly 4,000 acres of farm ground in Kimball county! Did they buy this land from the Mocketts?  That would make the Wolgemuths not just customer harvesters -- these are farmers who own a lot of land and I would have been interested to know more about the Wolgemuth farming operation and what they own in Texas, Oklahoma, etc. -- I bet they didn't share that with the author -- that is where the story is!  This farm family has been doing this for decades, not just one summer.  The Wolgemuths have a lot invested in the heartland states, they are not just seasonal workers.  They understand the language of the people, whether political or religious.  Not sure why this important information wasn't disclosed, but for me, knowing what I know now, that dynamic would have changed the way in which I would have read the story.  WOW!If you are getting ready to read this story, keeping these facts in mind will add some perspective. Mockett does clarify that the farm is not just hers and is not 7,000 anymore, but doesn't disclose the reasons why. She has a 1/3 stake in it, but she is a landlord, and her dad was a landlord, too, not a farmer.  It seems like Mockett shares some of these facts so desperately to validate her place that she belongs that she comes off looking like a poser. She talks about her summer and past summers harvesting, but what about the winters?   Unless you have spent decades of Nebraska winters on the farm, you are not allowed to talk about the summers.   Mockett is a beautiful, enviable writer, but I have an ag background and I found her voice, through her observations, insulting and trivial.  She references that she attended a wedding held in a barn. With no additional explanation, one would think that the wedding was held among the farm animals and the couple is saying "I do" amidst the chickens clucking and cows mooing.  And maybe they did.  But most likely, not.  I mention this because this is just one example of how Mockett could have used this platform to talk about how many farm families are becoming more enterprising out of necessity and gutting out old barns and making them into event spaces and it's not that uncommon to have a side hustle.  I don't know why quonset is a proper noun.  Most farm people would refer to that the same way as kleenex.  The thing that made Genoways' book credible and Mockett's not credible was the voice.  Genoways, historically, a Nebraskan, never tried to insert himself into the people.  Mockett is grappling with too much to take on here:  she trying to tell a personal story, but she does not write herself naked and raw; she is trying to talk about food and she is trying to discuss evangelical Christians, the latter two she is simply not enough of an authority based on one summer harvest.

Coming from the Midwest myself, this book was an intriguing introduction to the deep farmland as well as the perceived and real differences between people from different parts of the country.