THE VANISHING AMERICAN

By Derry Brownfield
November 27, 2010

NewsWithViews.com

When I was growing up on the farm, there were very few farm families that didn’t have a few chickens, a few hogs, a few cows and maybe some sheep, ducks or geese. We grew most of our vegetables and all the feed for our livestock and poultry. The typical farmer was completely self sufficient. The chickens and eggs paid for the food items that were not grown at home: flour – bananas – coffee – sugar – salt. The hogs and cattle made the farm mortgage payments and paid for other farm expenses and living expenses. In the late 1940s, the Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities began teaching the younger generation of “agriculturalistsâ€