A Look at Life in 1923

The most interesting display at a show is often one pairing a tractor, stationary engine or steam engine with an implement. If I had a dime for every time a collector has said to me, “A tractor (or an engine or a steam engine) by itself doesn’t really do anything,” I’d be set for life.

But by the same token, even that display of a tractor and a plow, or an engine providing power to a line shaft, or a steam engine running a threshing machine, tells only part of the farmer’s story. How did equipment fit into the “big picture” of life on the farm decades and decades ago?

To me, the story becomes even more compelling when the focus is on the era before farm mechanization became commonplace. We all know that planting was done in the spring, and summer and fall were marked by both cultivation and harvest of one crop or another, but we rarely think about the myriad chores that filled nearly every day of the year.

That all changes with a series – “Four Seasons on the Farm” – launched in this issue. In four installments starting with spring, historian and author Don McKinley takes us through the relentless toil, challenges and uncertainties facing an Iowa farmer 100 years ago.

I occasionally hear people refer to the 1970s and ’80s as being “a different world” compared to today. Ha! If you want to talk about a different world, drop back to 1923. Maybe you had a telephone; you probably didn’t have a tractor. Cash was in short supply. Work, however, was available in great abundance. And the entirety of that Iowa farmer’s arsenal to tackle it consisted of little more than a pitchfork, scoop shovel, hammer and pliers.

At one time or another, most of us are guilty of romanticizing the past. Don’s imagining of a farmer’s life 100 years ago puts our feet solidly back on the ground. Remarkably, he does so with no firsthand memories of the 1920s. But it is clear that from practically the day he was born, he paid close attention to everything that happened on the southwest Iowa farm that was his home. And we are the luckier for that. Enjoy this look at the past!