What is Farm Life?

In September 2004, the Chippewa Valley Museum in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, opened a 5,000-square-foot exhibit about farm families and communities, with major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

This gallery exhibit, Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors, is a story of profound change for farm families and rural communities. As visitors travel to the various parts of the exhibit -- the farmhouse, the fields, the barn, and various local gathering spots -- they explore how the political, economic, and cultural roots of our area influence families today on and off the farm.

The project resulted in three exhibits (the gallery exhibit, a 2,000-s.f. traveling exhibit, and a 20-panel wall-hung exhibit), the renovation of an exhibit gallery at the Otter Tail County Historical Society in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, workshops, and programs for the public.

Why tell this story to the public?

The twentieth century was a century of change for farm families and their neighbors. In 1900, 42 percent of the American population worked in agriculture. At the end of the century, about 1.8 percent were involved in farm production. In Wisconsin, almost 100,000 people worked in farm production in 2001. This was 3 percent of the state’s population, which beat the national average, but still the number had dropped by half since 1981.

Even in Wisconsin’s deeply rural Chippewa Valley, most people are at least two generations removed from farm life. Nationally the economic viability of the family farm has been weakened by the growth of corporate agriculture -- although, in the Chippewa Valley at least, most large farms aren’t faceless multi-nationals. They’ve often developed from combinations of smaller operations, parents and children, or neighbors. Those families, and others on single-family farms, have retained their connection to farming -- and even particular farms and rural neighborhoods -- sometimes through many generations. In 2004, farm life still compelled one family to stay while a score of others departed.

Is it important to the rest of us?

There are reasons to think so. First, as the saying goes, “If you eat, you’re involved in farming.” In the worst case, if farming were finally taken offshore for the sake of profitability, our food would be subject to the same jeopardy as our crude oil. Less fundamentally, but still importantly, the journey of the individual farmer rides in tandem with the journey of the American citizen, the farm family with the American family.

Why share this story with other museums?

Every state in the union can tell a story about farming. By the beginning of the 1980s, the State of Alaska had sold or leased about 84,000 acres of land for grain farming. In 1998, Arizona ranked 8th among cotton producing states in cotton lint and cottonseed production. In 2002, Hawaii produced $22 million in milk and other dairy products.

CVM believes that the many particular stories of farming throughout America share political, economic, and cultural themes. We also believe that a museum's investigation of these themes takes great time and resources.

In a larger sense, we believe that if museums can share the intellectual content that they have discovered, all museums will be better for it. The NEH agreed with this, and so it supported an effort to share the framework of the Farm Life story, so other museums can improve their interpretation of agricultural history. If the idea catches on, perhaps museums will share the themes and content they have so carefully investigated and developed on other subjects, from clothing to ethnicity, from toys to immigration.

What is this workbook?

This workbook invites museums with an interest in exhibiting agricultural and rural history from the perspectives of the new rural history* to begin well into the process. It outlines options for creating the range of resources used to develop the gallery exhibits at CVM and the Otter Tail County Historical Society. It will demonstrates how a big idea can fit in a small space as well as a large one and encourages users to tell their story with a variety of interpretive techniques. Each use will produce a different floorplan but a similar invitation for visitors to consider, from the perspective of their own region, how rural communities and farm families have faced a century of challenges.

* What is the "new rural history"? In the late 1970s and 1980s scholars, dissatisfied with the traditional (or "old") emphasis on production, distribution, technology, and policy, increasingly turned their attentions to social and cultural themes -- among them farm communities, women's lives and roles, the immigrant experience, and rural culture -- which emphasized family and community relationships.

How does the workbook work?

Use the menu at top to navigate the Workbook. Within the sections, you'll find other menus and pop-ups.

You can read it online, print out the pages (which might be especially handy when you get to the "content" section), photocopy it, pass it around. On later pages, you'll find leading questions asking you to think about your own farm life story. Just think about it, digest it, and see if you get inspired. As we say elsewhere, the specifics are from our story, but we believe the broad ideas can inform everyone's farm and rural interpretation.

Some people might find that a great portion of the material here is germaine to their story. Others may just want to pick and choose a few ideas. Have an appetizer. Or, order the whole meal. If you have more questions, email us (see below) or call us at (715) 834-7871.

We ask only this ...

We want to make this workbook a true working document. Our test site -- the Otter Tail County Historical Society Museum in Fergus Falls, Minn (read about their Workbook adventures here) -- was kind enough to share the story of how they used our content. If you would, please do the same.

Tell us how you used the things you found here. We'll add your adventures to this site. Then the next museum can see what you did, and the next museum can do the same, and the next, and the next.

If you want to email your results: info@cvmuseum.com. Put Farm Life Workbook in the subject line.

If you want to send a packet or CD:

Chippewa Valley Museum
PO Box 1204
Eau Claire, WI 54702

And please, invite us for a visit!