I'm Warren Smith, and today you'll be listening in on my conversation with Marie Matsuki

Mockett. Her new book is American Harvest, God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland.

It's possible that I over-romanticize this. People sometimes tell me that I do, but I feel like

the relationships that my family built in farm country, these relationships were not purely

transactional. They were real partnerships. And it's funny when I talk about it

with friends from the city. And I hate to frame it like that. I don't know how else to frame it.

But, you know, Eric would show up year after year to cut the weed and there was never a contract.

There was no lawyer drafting a contract. Just a handshake. Yeah, it was just a handshake and a promise.

And then my dad would get a call from Eric saying, I'm in Holyoke and we're finishing

up.

And, you know, I've been talking to the farmers on the ground in Nebraska.

And it looks like the wheat might be ready here first.

I'm going to come and look.

And that was all a matter of trust and just the assumption that this common

coal of getting the wheat you know out of the ground was the most important thing

and taking into account safety and you know all these other things and that

and that he was going to get paid at the end of it so there was no lawyer which

is great because you save money.

You don't have to pay a lawyer's fee. It's a very different way of life. And the other thing that I've

thought about, and I don't have an answer to this question, but my father was not a church-going person.

Eric is. Eric said to my father at the outset that they would not

cut wheat on a Sunday because he and his crew would go to church on Sunday. But this wasn't a

...