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 lead and there was never a contract.

There was no lawyer drafting a contract.

Just a handshake.

It was a handshake and a promise and then my dad would get a call from Eric saying,

I'm in Helio 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 lead 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 goal of getting the lead, you know, out of the ground was the most important

thing in taking into account safety and, you know, all these other things 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, you know, I don't have an answer

to this question, but my father was not a church-going person.

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