With the change from Hunter/Gatherer to the Agricultural Age mankind has had a greater supply of food.
The result was human numbers multiplying rapidly. With the need to roam for food gone, it automatically followed that human hormonal drives increased the population. Numbers must be small when one lives off the land and has a nomadic existence. Hunting sufficient food for a large family is very difficult.
Developing and enlarging the family food plot required backbreaking work. The more hands available, the easier the tasks would be. This truism also drove the increase in human numbers. Having been raised on a dairy farm in the 1950s and 60s, we were taught to hand milk at age 10. Milking 14 cows by hand with three rather than two persons eases the load, and other jobs too can be completed quicker. Farming needs manpower or, if lacking that, the invention of machinery. Over time, tools continued to be invented and improved to ease the labour or to speed up the completion of work.
Recently, I ran into some of the tools used around the farm in an earlier time. In clearing land, it helps if one has saws, spades, tools to move logs, and sharp blades to make planks. These tools came in handy when farmers, recruited mostly from the provinces of Groningen and Friesland in the Netherlands, were contracted to clear the Holland Marsh shrub land to turn it into farmland.
The marsh originally sustained hundreds of small farms but with farm labour becoming more difficult to access (hence our labour programs with Mexico and Jamaica, among others, to bring in summer help), mechanization became a must. In time, the machines grew bigger and bigger and that meant that small farms were bought out and consolidated into larger farms suitable for the larger tractors and combines. Today, most of the marsh produce comes from a few very large, productive farms.
In looking back at the ‘primitive’ tools available at the start of the clearing of the marsh, it is evident that only small farms were possible. The Dutch, who settled Ansnorveldt in the 1930s, were given the option to buy and clear five acres each.
Additionally, these early Dutch pioneers had to build their own homes as they cleared their land. To achieve both goals, good cooperation between the inhabitants was crucial. Mankind often performs its best when the community works together to reach a goal. Gander on 9/11 is a brilliant example.
Farming not only is hard work, but it also entails being exposed to the vagaries of Mother Nature. Hurricane Hazel, in 1954, showed the importance of solid dikes. Without proper maintenance the marsh would flood, as it did. In the 1970s, working on a marsh farm, I was provided with a gun on Friday afternoons after work to shoot the muskrats that undermined the dikes by building their burrows and houses.
In 1985, nature struck again in the form of a tornado that destroyed a lot of farms. The rebuilding program was rapid. One of the impressive things to witness was how fast a barn could go up when a group of Mennonites working as a team was put to the task. A local builder, Harry Hoving, also showed his skill in building 22 barns that summer running two full crews.
We do not normally think about all of this when we justifiably moan about the high price of food (by the way, the greatest costs do not come from the growers, but from the middlemen). When we drive through the Marsh and watch our food being grown, think about what was before and where we are today. Maybe then we can become just a little more thankful that the current crop of farmers is willing to take to risks providing society with their daily needs.
