Pitchfork Ranch, By The Same Family For More Than A Century

Through the period of 1865-1900, America’s agriculture underwent a series of changes .Changes that were a product of influential role that technology, government policy and economic conditions played. To extend on this idea, changes included the increase on exported goods, do the availability of products as well as the improved traveling system of rail roads. In the primate stages of these developing changes, farmers were able to benefit from the product, yet as time passed by, dissatisfaction grew within them. They no longer benefited from the changes (economy went bad), and therefore they no longer supported railroads. Moreover they were discontented with the approach that the government had taken towards the situation.

Year by year the farmers who lived on soil, whose returns were diminished by unrotated crops were offered the virgin soil of the frontier at nominal prices. Their growing families demanded more lands, and these were dear. The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive culture.

Despite the flushed predictions of prosperity that had lured new settlers to the plains, the reality was more difficult. The farmers claimed that they did not have enough land, money, and transportation (Doc C). The farmers went into in a never ending cycle if they did not have a good harvest. As Booker Washington explains the farmers had no money so they had to borrow money from the banks which charged 12 to 30 percent interest. The interest the farmers were hit with was nearly impossible to repay so they had to mortgage everything and if the mortgage wasn’t paid the land was foreclosure which led the yeomen to become tenant farmers (Doc B). With periods of drought growing good crops was hard. Leading Economic Sectors shows how the farmers predicament of not being able to make a very

The mustangs run with a spirit that makes them legendary here in the west. On a bitter cold morning, dozens of wild horses descend off the mountains of eastern Oregon, galloping miles across the rangeland. Stallions and mares, guiding their young. It is an incredible sight, but also one that infuriates many hard working Americans. Horse’s hoof prints in cattle grazing lands, drinking the water supply dry. Farmers are losing their grazing rights before their cattle even step foot on the property. There is another animal taking over the land. Wild horses.

Ben Tillman was born August 11, 1847 in Trenton, South Carolina to Sophia Hancock and Benjamin Ryan Tillman. Ben thought of himself as a “dirt farmer”, but was actually purely flourishing. He owned a 2,200-acre farm with a total of 30 workers. Just like his fellow farmer “buddies”, Tillman came close to losing everything in the 1880s. Before Ben Tillman came along to “save the day” many farmers were saddened due to the decline of income, high railroad shipping charges, and high interest rates

Describe the origins, purposes, and practices of the "long drive" and the "open range" cattle industry. What ended this brief but colorful boom? What was the long-run nature of the cattle business?

First published in 1977, Robert Day’s The Last Cattle Drive was an instant bestseller and Book of the Month Club selection. Currently, the novel is a Western classic. This rough and boisterous novel of a cattle drive by two older cowboys, seeking to relive a bygone era and prove themselves superior to the trucking industry, backed by Opal, the wife of Spangler, and a green horn school teacher in the modern age of the planes, trains, and trucks revived the genre of the cowboy. Moreover, the novel added its own special twists of relationships between the characters and the people along the way which captured the imagination of its audience, especially the author of this paper. The novel is full of relatable rural small

The new technology used in American agriculture made it overall more productive and widespread while creating mixed results for the farmers. The advancement in machines like reapers, threshers, and mowers to harvest grains produced contrasting outcomes. An obvious benefit was some of the ease brought to the farmers. The human labor involved in harvesting grain by hand with a scythe or by a simple, one horse-powered machine was far greater than harvesting with a big, multi-horse powered machine. The devices made work simpler, faster, and more efficient for the farmers by relying on animal energy and technology (Document D). With promises of larger crops with less exertion, the new machines became very desirable to farmers in order to stay in competition with their peers; however, buying these machines also pushed many of them into unfortunate financial situations. Not only was the actual

Cattle has a reliable significance by being the personification of the Native American people. Although white ranchers rejected the animals, Josiah has his faith and intuition that his cattle would be unique, not the ordinary which have lost touch with their lands. He demonstrates the animals as “any living thing” (Silko, 74), which illustrates that the cattle would lose their origins if they “separate from the land for too long” (Silko, 74). Silko highlights the dissimilarity of treatment of animals by the whites from the Laguna method of hunting animals since the Laguna people expresses their respects and appreciations for the prey through rituals and ceremonies. When the Herefords owned by the white ranchers are about to fall to death because of thirst, the spotted cattle can find water on their own. In other words, they are self-sufficient and close to the lands

Using primarily interview and observation methods, Seth Holmes gives us a detailed description of the hierarchies that exist and come into play on the farm. He interviews a large range of individuals, from top corporate leaders, to the poor immigrant pickers. By including direct quotes from people he meets as well as experiences of his own, Holmes is able to give the reader a grasp on the challenges, powers, and misconceptions that characterize each level of the hierarchy. He starts at the top with an interview with the top executives at the

Growing up on a small family wheat farm in southwestern Oklahoma, I have experienced the harsh conditions of farming firsthand. The job that used to employ the largest amount of people in the United States has lost the support and the respect of the American people. The Jeffersonian Ideal of a nation of farmers has been tossed aside to be replaced by a nation of white-collar workers. The family farm is under attack and it is not being protected. The family farm can help the United States economically by creating jobs in a time when many cannot afford the food in the stores. The family farm can help prevent the degradation of the environment by creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the people producing the food and nature. The family farm is the answer to many of the tough questions facing the United States today, but these small farms are going bankrupt all too often. The government’s policy on farming is the largest factor in what farms succeed, but simple economics, large corporations, and society as a whole influence the decline in family farms; small changes in these areas will help break up the huge corporate farms, keeping the small family farm afloat.

In this essay I aim to describe how life was like on a ranch during

2; The revolution started when Mr. Jones was too drunk to feed the animals or to milk the cows; due to Old Major's preaching about the animals being better at running the farm than the humans, the animals revolted. In the animal’s eyes, Jones was also cruel, as he would kill the animals after they had outlived their usefulness. His farmhands follow their employer's example, as they are equally negligent. The farm is not run to the proper degree of the animals liking. They see that they should receive the rewards they deserve, and

This article follows the life of David Fisher, who decided to follow his dreams, reconnect with nature and make a living while doing it, by opening a farm. It describes the story of how he opened the Natural Roots Farm in Western Massachusetts. Furthermore, it explains how David met his wife, Anna Maclay, how they had two children, Leora and Gabriel, and how they have a picturesque, rustic, and paradisiacal life on their farm. The article also shows David’s backstory, about how he used to spend his summers at a isolated, austere summer camp which was a pleasant escape from the busy concrete jungle of New York, and because of this at his earliest opportunity he left his modern life

The farm sat squarely in Audrain County. A little spit of untamed land. A tan square dotted with gray forest. To the west, there were farms and ranchland. To the east a ways was a corporate feed lot. Hereford and Angus cattle would be shipped in from ranches across the state and fattened up in preparation for slaughter. The nearest sliver of civilization was twelve