Dr. Rocky has written two other major books about farming in the Upper Midwest and contributed significantly to a book compiled by the agricultural History Society on the first 200 years of agriculture in America. This most recent book beyond the furrow documents the transitions that have occurred in farming in our region during the past Century. It includes accounts of some successful farmers in the Upper Midwest whose Innovations have contributed to those changes in agriculture Bill simmering began the interview by asking jockey why these particular Farmers succeeded when I started working on this book and 1968 at when I really started doing some formal research and that I was thinking that technology was going to be the key to the whole thing. But the other more I work in it the deeper, I got involved the more I realize the technology was only part of the whole thing and I came up all the way. I do not use the phrase any place in the book came up with a nice little pet phrase that I like to use a lot.At the keys to successful agriculture is what I I called the five M's and the reverse an order in the reverse order of the five ends. Another word from the least importance to the most important is mechanization money management motivation and mother and mother of course meaning the wife of the farmer are the farmer's mother whatever one it doesn't make any difference is it made out of other woman you married me because I found that the key to so much of this like it is in the past is the fact that this is a highly motivated husband and wife team and this is why I'm making this tape. And in fact, I laid in the print out in a couple places in the book and I suspect and I put it in the face in the preface specifically that I am convinced that a hundred years down the line. We will still be a family-oriented. I agriculture in America, but the Farms will be far different than we can come. See you today just as our phone.Today are far different than they were a hundred years ago. You have a number of pictures in here that show the difference between the Homesteader & The Farmer Dove today. And I think that perhaps has the the most romantic thing that we have been in this area is to see that kind of oil change. If the farmer used to live a very Grim life used to be very lonely solitary life almost a subsistence kind of way of life is now it's quite a big business. It was a very effective as they had the life of drudgery. I think I'm motivated by this now and another book which I have basically finished already bailed which will probably be out in the years don't you know, this all takes time but I am I take down the line if I keep on writing and I've had enough of them planned so I'll be busy that I may write a book someday on did homesteading ever pay and a right now if I look at it than the assessments 11 labeled make I'm not sure that homesteading ever did pay in the terms of return on capital investment. And in return terms of good labor to the family because you blew in the key. It was a life of drudgery farming. I'm old enough that I have lived much of this transition because I'm I used to milk cows by hand of I used to reduce to have to help pull the weeds and a we did a lot of hating still pretty much by hand. Of course. We need to share with slings things like this but find different than we do it today. The physical labor has really changed a great extent and Agriculture and I think that many people who have such strong and I know both of you are well aware that because you're studying Tom's of Rural America constantly that we have such a strong Nostalgia about it, but I can't find anybody who really wants to go back to it. Mechanization has you say is one of the ingredients that you found in all your successful Farmers. I wonder if you could shortly Trace that and project a little bit about what we can look for in the future in terms of accusation Farm give you a real word Ms. And a couple of students at Concordia who are trying to come up with a painting for me for my checkbook jacket. And of course this one here with them by Phil Thompson, and of course, we're talking historically so it's easy to paint because you can talk about the big Ford tractor even talk about the fortune tracker. You can talk about the four wheel drive tractor, but what's my next book talking about? My MacBook is going to be futuristic Xbox basically read it song about tomorrow. So I gave these art students once I don't have I don't have any imagination on these lines now and I expect I want you to come up. Something that you can't even conceive of today. This is what I had. This is what I think about agriculture down the line. I made the statement of John. You heard me the last time I made the statement that 95% of the people living on land today. I'm sure I'd even consume at conceiving the revolution that were in and Agriculture and it's not stopping these farmers are knocking at the doors of the employment manufacturers and say come up with something bigger and better and I have many pictures and hear a farmer inventions because you deserve the farmers who made the inventions not the engineers and this is what has made us so fantastically successful in the American scene. Where do we go? I I can't even see him. I'll give you an idea just to show you I said now if you're going to paint something that we know today like a corn stock. I don't want that cornstock with one ear of corn on at the end. But we're already beating sound that have to I don't want that cornstock to have five years of going on it and I don't want a cab sucking on a cow. I want three Cavs sucking on a car. It's got to be something far out because Would 50 years ago. Would anybody have dared to say here's were going to be in 1976? There is very little I've done so much reading about what was written in the 1920s. And then if you go back to the to the 1870s a hundred years ago, what were some of the things about agriculture today? Let's go back to relatively recent I can stop at that because I don't have to go back to better than that in 1945. One of the officials in the United States Department of Agriculture said, we have come to the point where we no longer can get rid of the remaining horses on the farm. Because the jobs that are still to be done have to be done by horses. And so then what happens at a Vevo who was a farmer and I are you here. We've actually had two children here I can party a car and I wanted people interviewed. I was laying awake nights trying to think of some way to get rid of the job of cleaning out his turkey Barns and he conceived along with a couple blacksmith in Rothesay the Keller Brothers that little thing that is becoming honest to Skid Steer Are the Bobcat that gets you in inside of any little building at it come into this little Studio here in and back out the door cuz you got them outside the mechanical scoop shovel. And so we've eliminated that only the horse we've eliminated the scoop shovel and today if you have a horse on the farm, it's because you are nostalgic you like the horse or because you like to have a horse to ride the thing that I think that's so interesting about this. I have got a chapter in here on four-wheel drive tractors and your brothers were interviewed on this. Along with some of the other inventors of four-wheel drive and they made quotes to me and I said unbelievable. What is a what do you mean unbelievable in 1958? When is Tigers were building a four-wheel-drive why it wouldn't work where exactly the same things that people had said in the 1850s when the steam engine came out. They had to change their thinking it a position at all. And then and then an agate actually site-specific quotations that they made in 1850 against the steam engine ever make the same against the four wheel drive 1958 one century later some characteristics that are common with these inventors chapters are on the app chapter sign of a very specifically what they did what they wanted and basically this and that is the first of all these people were very definitely a not afraid of Not afraid of risk it all that they were they they just there there's this one thing we understand and we have a high level of our people who are very risk aversion. They just simply will not take a risk and and I'm named person after person who has told me as much these people aren't afraid one of our key and Vetters I talked about in the book. He'd hear much as admitted in his in his biography of fire for admitted admitted it and then his Banker who I talk to him admitted that this man had been virtually less than solvent on three occasions in his life and never Stop & Go on to become very one of the really successful big names and people get in the book. They'll recognize what I'm talking about and end this is basically had to cuz I've said this in the book about this particular individual they aren't stopping and the other thing is they are always prepared. for the worst and they don't they don't expect I one of the man who just recently died and I feel badly about it because he I know he was just a living for this book to come out and he was 76 at the time. I interviewed him and I said to him I said have you ever had any failures? And he said yes young man can be no success without failure and that really is a little bit of it sounds simple, but it's really a lot of wisdom because these men every one of them have gone through that point at once or twice in your life because of their Innovation, sometimes they bite off and Innovation. That is a real boo, boo. And it said some back. Cancel boy. They got to come back. So they're Q course again is having faith or having a banker's got faith in them so they can come through because they have to use this and generally they were viewed skeptically when they came out with their new hobbies. And another thing that you bring up another plane, which done is ask about this consists of interesting to when I was interviewing these people one of the questions I asked them is like farming and they were positive about this and you know how much negativism there is about timing and these people but if this is the best living in the world make they see how could I made a million any easier or how can I made a good living and traveled around the world and Anna and have it done it with as much fun as I have no funds he farming was fun to them and it was not the drudgery that determines come up here earlier, but then I ask the next question. Do you like funny? Yes, then the next question was in the same sequence. Does your community like you? And what did I enable you find? I found man who are quite and families wives and children were quite intensely disliked. Why does it bother me for a long time? Because a person is bothering me because I find a lot of my neighbors shy away from me. And I and I don't know if it's because they don't like college professors or don't like the people who are outspoken or what the problem is, but I I run to the pub and then later on they don't like successful people. They don't like people who have dared to be Innovative and have risen above the cloud and what what I found out is that these people the more successful you were the farther I let you win to find your peers. And these people had lots of friends but not right in their little community. Their Vision was farther than that too. And this is what I run into the same type of thing. You think there's something about representing changes while these people represent change the rest of the people in the community. Yeah. I got something in the book The Last of this is Kylie. What is it that made these people basically dislike. All right. One is basically the community was jealous of them and they forget that maybe they started at the same level or lower because many of these people absolutely had nothing the Silver Spoon was a long long way from them and they started the way down here next thing is and this is really the damaging thing about it is and that is at these people we're bringing about the saying that most people hated change. They couldn't stand it and these people are innovating constantly seeking change and the rest of the people couldn't accept this and a community that I grew up in there were some big farmers and there was always a feeling I think that those people got big And became successful because other people failed as well are they bought the land from people who had to be foreclosed about to land during the Depression or something like that? Is there this element is well. Well, I think I'd like to go back and caught a name that bed rang a bell with all of us here bad if you guys not in the book, but it's something down the line for another book that I'm doing and that is a John Link Link was 96 when I interviewed him and he's the father of the governor of North Dakota and one of the things I asked mr. Link and end of the year so mad at 96 and then mad at 96 is got wisdom if he's been doing any thinking is life doll Missing Link. I obviously had and I asked mr. Link. What was one of the keys to your success and he said the failure of my neighbors. And of course the problem is there submitter length was locked into 160 acre. Homestead by law and there was no way that I'm a man could make a living on a hundred and sixty acres in Western North Dakota and each time one of his neighbors walk away. Now remember they walked away they gave up and he absorbed if somebody else is coming in a hundred sixty Acres. He would have failed the same way but the links had the determination the stick-to-itiveness or whatever you want to call that they stayed there and ask their neighbors failed they added onto their land and they eventually got to the point I'm saying economy of scale where they had a unit where the family could make a living then these people came back to the Midwest, Iowa to Dakota's Montana Manitoba any place like this. They came back to 10 years later and this man has suddenly become quite successful and they been away working in a war plan or something like that. You lucky so-and-so They were lucky they had to determination. They stay there and that the day you don't have the chance to free land today have competitive Land by like to make a statement of Economics here. This comes from man of match my wisdom and I suspect I'll ever having this is Liberty Hyde Bailey who wrote land is always too high price for the average farmer. But as soon as the good farmer figures out how to make land pay at that price. It automatically jumps to its next Plateau because the demand for land is greater than the available Supply and that was written I think before 1920 and I think that is a truism that is so absolute because I have heard it in in and I'm out of frequent for a beer halls, but I could say that I've heard it come out of beer Halls a gas station Corners Country grocery stores where they going to say, you can't afford to buy land at these prices now that that is something that's his old is America as old as farming you can't fight aboard afford to buy land at these prices, but the good farmer always doesn't make it pay What am I saying? The key is management. And that's how I got to head and he does it so, well, I can take you out the Farms out of here that these people look like they're never working. They have ways of doing a new nose. I'm invited mention him to they have ways of doing it. They manage they they they take the pensions of farming the money tensions the management pension the labor attention and they take it in stride and enjoy what you're doing and a good managers and their place is show it and a bank account short Dr. Hiram jockey author agricultural historian and professor of history at Concordia College in Moorhead in a conversation about his most recent book titled Beyond The Fur Elise and keys to successful farming in the 20th century for real simmering. I'm John HD.