Capturing the Farm: Preservation Project Safeguards Family Stories
Farm histories are at risk that once flowed at supper tables and porches at sundown. As hunger for yesteryear grows in the U.S., there is an increasing recognition of loss over time in blood, kin, and clan. Despite the erosion, American farms are flavored by every fiber and frailty known to mankind—and each tale needs protection.
Enter Vance Crowe and a unique preservation project.
“Farm families are particularly unique in possessing oral history,” he contends. “The only way they’re still on the farm is if they defined themselves as a family over generations—nobody farms alone or else the chain ends. When so many others gave up and went to the city, these agriculture families stayed. Those experiences, and the wisdom and heritage within, must be saved.”
Past is Present
Prone to relative seclusion by the nature of rural life and the physical boundaries of turnrows and tree lines, farm culture is often insular—inside looking out. Farm and family histories are an inseparable mix of triumph, loss, faith, passion, pain, diligence, and absurdity, i.e., the core elements of rich drama.
“Even in agriculture, specific knowledge about family history usually goes back no further than the 1920s, and those recollections often only include a vague sense of why their forbearers came to America or Canada,” insists Crowe, former director of Millennial Engagement at Monsanto. “But real details for most of those families have already gotten hazy in transmission. It’s almost like they’re recounting a dream that someone else told them.”
In October 2021, Crowe launched Legacy Interviews — a vehicle to set personal, family, and farm-related histories in stone. Professionally filmed and recorded in Crowe’s St. Louis-based private recording studio, the in-depth interviews, conducted by Crowe, capture the heart of farm life.
“At least 60% of our clients are farmers—individuals and couples,” Crowe says. “We go for half-days and full-days, and delve into family history, childhood, marriage, parenting, farm career success and failure, acquired wisdom, and much more. Most people have never had anyone really listen to their story. They don’t yet understand the power of their own experiences in agriculture.”
“When someone has a chance to explain the things that they’ve done in their lives, there is a release of emotion like they’ve never experienced,” he adds. “Most of the farmers I interview don’t realize the remarkable things they’ve overcome in life and they aren’t aware of the valuable stories they possess. The interviews aren’t like jumping out of plane, but they’re just as exhilarating for many people. The stories pour out for the first time in many instances, and people leave with a sense of euphoria and punctuation.”
Once completed, the video interviews are presented to the guests, with some choosing to have the interviews transcribed in a book format—an autobiography written in a single day. “We give the finished package to the family on a 1,000-year-lifespan M-disc which doesn’t degrade like a DVD in 25 years or a USB in 20 years, and it isn’t subject to any crashes or breakdown in the cloud or Google,” Crowe explains. “We also use one of the last Bible-rebinding companies in the U.S. to print the interviews on archive-grade paper and bind them as a leather book. The M-disc is stored in a hidden compartment cut out of pages glued together at the back of the book.”
Crowe notes a repeat pattern with clients: Adult children, raised in farming households, want to connect grandparents with grandchildren via Legacy Interviews. “The adult children want to honor and give a gift to their mother and father by preserving family history before it’s lost. But in many ways, the gift is for the grandchildren, because they will utilize the stories in their own lives.”
The direct connection between health and human history is undeniable, Crowe says, both in scientific fact and anecdote. “So many studies show that kids who know their family history and heritage are dramatically less likely to suffer anxiety, depression, and drug addiction. It’s not complicated: Far better than their peers, those kids know who they are and where they came from. In the case of so many farm kids, they know their family history and they know the sacrifices their grandparents paid to stay on the land.”
Capturing History
Seven shades of gray color a single piece of barnwood, and seven stories line the front pocket of every farmer. Sometimes the stories die with a whimper—unnoticed until a life passes. The losses are unnecessary and avoidable, Crowe insists.
“We once spent so much time together in extended families at dinner, church, in the field, traveling together into town, and in the home as a unit. We couldn’t escape the stories and we soaked them in. But modern society fractured the extended family into the nuclear family, and sometimes into smaller parts,” Crowe describes. “For most extended families, ‘together’ means a few hours during a holiday meal—at most. That’s part of why farm histories escape, get lost, or are forgotten, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Legacy Interviews is an opportunity for future generations to know their history.”
As cities continue a monochromatic march, Crowe believes the value of farming culture will increase in tandem, along with the importance of agriculture history. “Farm stories contain the most important values to society,” he concludes. “When we record those stories, we are preserving ideas from the past that we’ll need in the future.”
For more from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com 662-592-1106) see:
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
Young Farmer uses YouTube and Video Games to Buy $1.8M Land
While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland
Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
US Farming Loses the King of Combines
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming's Greatest Show on Legs
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
