Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (4 page)

Also during the summer, an implement called a
corn chopper
is used to harvest immature corn plants, with which the
silo
is filled. A tall, cylindrical structure made of metal or concrete, the silo is sealed to exclude air once it has been filled with chopped corn. In the absence of oxygen, the corn is converted to
silage,
a succulent, fermented fodder.

Oats are usually harvested with a
combine
(emphasis on first syllable, rhymes with “tom”), a large piece of machinery that is so named because it combines in one machine two processes that had to be done separately in earlier years—cutting and threshing the grain.
Threshing
means separating the grain kernels from the stalk residue, or
straw.
Some farmers leave the straw on the field, to add organic matter to the soil. Others bale it for use as livestock bedding.

A
corn picker
is an implement that strips ears of mature corn from the corn stalk, but leaves the kernels of corn on the cob. This ear corn may then be stored in a
corn crib,
a ventilated storage building. The dry corn stalk residue is often harvested in chopped form for use as livestock bedding. Mature corn and soybeans are also harvested with the use of a combine, which strips the corn kernels from the cob or the beans from the pod. These harvests may be stored on-farm for use as livestock feed, or may be hauled to a commercial
grain elevator
for storage or sale.

Common breeds of cattle in midwestern dairy farming are
Holstein
(large, black and white),
Guernsey
(grayish brown and white), and
Jersey
(small, yellowish brown).
Angus is
a common breed of beef cattle. Among cattle, a
bull
is an adult, uncastrated male; a
steer is
a male that has been castrated before sexual maturity, for beef production. A
cow
is an adult female; a
heifer
is a young cow that has not yet had her first calf. Many farmers use
artificial insemination
for breeding cattle. Semen is collected by a breeding service and frozen for later use, allowing farmers to do selective breeding without direct use of bulls. Breeding over many generations within a single breed produces
purebred
cattle, which may be
registered
with a breed association. Registered purebred dairy cattle have value as breeding stock in addition to their milk production value.

Milk from dairy herds is either
grade A,
for use as fluid milk,
or grade B,
for making cheese, butter, ice cream, and other dairy products. Health and sanitation standards are higher for grade A herds. On grade A farms, bacterial growth is inhibited in various ways, including spreading pulverized limestone
(barn lime)
on the floor of the dairy barn, and by periodically
whitewashing
the barn’s walls and ceiling with an application of lime solution.

On some dairy farms, cows are milked while stanchioned in rows. The
stanchion
is a device that fits loosely around a cow’s neck, restricting her movement in the stall. Behind the row of cows is a
gutter
to collect their excrement. Milking is more automated on some farms; cows walk through a
dairy parlor
for milking, and their milk is piped from the milking machine to a refrigerated
bulk tank
in the milk house. A
milkman
who works for a dairy cooperative or milk processing plant collects milk from bulk tanks on a number of farms. Earlier in this century, cow’s milk was often put through a
cream separator
on the farm—a machine that instantly separated the cream or butterfat portion of whole milk from the nonfat portion. The cream was then put in jars and sold.

Among hogs, a
boar
is an adult, uncastrated male; a
barrow
is a male that has been castrated before sexual maturity, for pork production. A
sow
is an adult female; a
gilt
is a young sow that has not yet had her first litter of pigs. It is common for the hog farmer to have a
farrowing barn
in which sows give birth to and nurse their litters in individual pens.
Feeder pigs
are weaned pigs that eat corn and other feed until they reach market size.

Among draft animals, a
stallion
is an adult, uncastrated male horse. A
mare
is an adult female horse. A
mule
is a hybrid between a female horse (mare) and a male ass (jackass).

Iowa Farm,
by Jeff Kopseng, based on a photo courtesy of Jim Cross

I HAVE VIEWED
this work of inquiry as “research” only in the broadest sense of the word. I have not sought to quantify anything, nor to prove or disprove anything. My aim has been simply to collaborate with gay men in telling about their lives, and to assist the reader in understanding what these men have to say. This chapter describes midwestern farming and farm culture, and offers some generalizations about the experiences and perspectives represented in this collection of life stories. It is not intended as a summary of definitive conclusions, but simply as a background against which to regard the individual narratives.

Midwestern farming has changed greatly during the twentieth century. In the early 1900s, farms were smaller, more numerous, and more diversified in their production. The typical midwestern farm of that era had a variety of livestock and crops, including work horses or mules, dairy and beef cattle, hogs, chickens, corn, hay, wheat, fruits, and garden vegetables. These farms provided most of their own subsistence needs in addition to producing goods for commercial markets.

Technology brought many changes to farming. From the 1920s to the 1950s, work horses and mules were replaced by gasoline-powered tractors. Electrical power became available to the majority of farmers from the mid-1980s through the 1950s. The use of hybrid seed and synthetic fertilizers proliferated during this century, as did the use of chemicals to control weeds and insect pests. These technological changes made greater mechanization possible, meaning that fewer farmers could farm more land more efficiently. Consequently, the number of farms declined and farm size increased as smaller farms were consolidated into fewer, larger operations using larger machinery.

To meet the market demands of an increasingly urbanized population, midwestern farms became more specialized as they became larger. Today, many farms produce only one kind of crop or livestock and even the farms that remain small and diversified have become more specialized. Hogs and beef cattle are of primary importance in midwestern livestock farming, followed by dairy cattle, poultry, and lamb. Crop farming in the Midwest has
come to be dominated by corn and soybeans, thanks to lots of level land, fertile soil, and a warm, moist growing season. Secondary crops are hay, oats, grain sorghum (milo), barley, flaxseed, rapeseed, rye, sugar beets, and wheat. As climate, soil conditions, topography, and market access vary throughout the Midwest, so does the variety of crops grown in any particular area.

The men whose stories are presented here grew up on farms that were extremely varied, reflecting not only regional differences within the Midwest, but also changes in farming during this century. Some of the farms on which they lived were relatively small operations that represented only a portion of the family’s livelihood; one or both parents worked at off-farm jobs as well. Other farms were larger operations that were the family’s sole livelihood. Some farms were family-owned, others were rented. Some farms were specialized, but most had some mixture of animals and crops. On farms that specialized in grains, with little or no livestock, spring and fall tended to be exceptionally busy times, as the crops were planted and harvested. Summer and winter were much less busy. On farms that raised animals as well as the crops to feed them, work demands were more consistent from one time of year to the next. Farm animals, especially dairy cattle, guaranteed the daily grind of chores—feeding, milking, and cleaning.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, midwestern farming was an enterprise that relied heavily on relationships with neighbors and kin. Since then, it has become a highly individualized and mechanized enterprise. Technological changes beyond those related to farming methods have contributed greatly to this change. Automobiles, all-weather roads and high-speed highways, telephone, radio, and television have reduced the cultural insularity of farm communities. In doing so, they have eroded the differences between rural and urban life, contributing to a “suburbanization” of farm life.

A technology-induced decline in the rural population has been a major force in the disintegration of rural communities. The closing of rural and village churches and businesses, the demise of one-room country schools, the consolidation of school districts and the bussing of children to towns and cities all represent the loss of institutions central to community life. And as farming operations have become larger, farmers have spread out over the countryside, impeding neighborly relations.

These kinds of changes were lamented by Martin Scherz, who grew up on a small, diversified livestock and crop farm in southeastern Nebraska.

There’s a center of life that has disappeared, and I’m not sure what anybody can do about it anymore. Bring in some Amish? I tend to be a romantic, I guess. The Amish have a good way of life in many ways, and a lot of people could learn a lot of things from societies like that. I admire them, although I recognize that Amish culture can be oppressive to nonconformists.

Though Martin Scherz’s sentiments about the disintegration of rural communities echo my own, I am struck by the irony of this perspective. As Martin observes with regard to the Amish, an openly gay identity—of the sort that I have embraced in one fashion or another all of my adult life—is essentially incompatible with traditional farm culture, where gender roles tend to be tightly defined and enforced. Thus, it seems that the possibilities of coming out relatively easily and even of living quite openly as a gay man in a farming community have been enhanced as the integrity of rural communities has been diminished.

In “suburbanized” farm communities you are not likely to know your neighbors very well, so you are less likely to be concerned with what they think about you. You probably consider your hand-picked social network of like-minded people to be your community, so the influence of the conformist impulse in your rural neighborhood is lessened. You are probably exposed to, and identify substantially with, the urban culture by way of the mass media, so that the potential insularity and homogeneity of rural life are diminished. You are more likely to see farming as a business than as a way of life, so the social conventions of farming culture lose some of their authority.

The influence of rural community is illustrated by comparing and
contrasting the experiences of Steve Gay and Todd Ruhter. Steve was born in 1959 and grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. Todd, born in 1967, grew up on a Nebraska ranch. Both were raised in German families and in predominantly German communities, both came of age between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, and both went to college. But the ways in which they had accommodated being gay in their daily lives differed greatly. Steve Gay and his lover, Jim, lived just up the road from his parents’ place, on their own farm. Steve talked about his decision to be openly gay in a conservative farming community, despite estrangement from his parents and siblings.

At the time of our interview, Todd Ruhter was getting ready to move from Omaha back to his home ranch, to take care of the cattle for several months while his father recuperated from surgery. Because he had made large financial investments in the ranch and expected to have the chance to take it over when his father retired, Todd expressed great ambivalence about telling his parents that he is gay.