The Witness of Combines

by Kent Meyers

When Kent Meyers's father died of a stroke, there was corn to plant, cattle to feed, and a farm to maintain. Here, in a fresh and vibrant voice, Meyers recounts the wake of his father's death when he was sixteen and reflects on families, farms, and rural life in the Midwest.Meyers tells the story of his life on the farm, from the joys of playing in the hayloft as a boy to the steady pattern of chores. He describes the power of winter prairie winds, the excitement of building a fort in the woods, and the self-respect that comes from canning 120 quarts of tomatoes grown on your own land.

Meyers's father is the central figure that these memories revolve around. After his father's death, Meyers fills his shoes out of necessity, practicality, and respect. In doing so, he discovers that his father was a great teacher and that he is no longer a boy but a man. Perhaps the most moving passages in The Witness of Combines are filled with the simultaneous sadness and pride of growing up in response to death. Meyers recalls planting and harvesting the last crop, selling the family farm, and other stirring moments in a testament to his father, the family bond, and the value of hard work.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Essays, Biography, Biography Memoir

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[TK421 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have the current pleasure and privilege to be under the tutelage of Kent Meyers. He is helping me rewrite my book. I'm not surprised if you haven't heard of him...yet, that is. Before long, he will be discussed, openly in the classroom, quietly in the bookstore between patrons wondering who is this man, where did he come from?

If you haven't experienced Kent Meyers, take this opportunity now to find some of his earlier works. His command of language is mind-boggling in its simplicity. He seems to be able to find the exact word to match the exact emotion at the exact moment that emotion is needed.

THE WITNESS OF COMBINES is a collection of essays. More aptly stated, it is a collection of essays that focus on the prairies of the Midwest. Particularly Minnesota and South Dakota. Being a South Dakotan, I find immense pleasure in his words, at how he is able to describe this vast expanse of nothingness, make the reader feel as if they had always lived within this world.

Breakdown of essays:

WITNESS OF COMBINES (5 stars) - When Kent's father dies, Kent and his family are left to handle the harvest season alone. An overwhelming task for the veteran farmer, but an almost impossible task for the unskilled hands of two sons who were recently left fatherless. Instead of wallowing in the agony of losing their father, Kent and his brothers decide to bring in the harvest...but they are not alone. To their surprise, dozens of combines and trucks venture up their driveway, eager to help in any way they can. This will be the last harvest for the Meyers boys, they know this, the workers know this. What ensues is a magical display of neighborliness not often seen today. A truly wonderful piece displaying what really lies at the heart of man.

WINDBREAK (5 stars) - Kent's older brother, Kevin, built a windbreak for their cattle for a FFA project. It wasn't a perfect windbreak, as it should have contained spaces to let the wind travel through, not allow the snow to accumulate...this is the perfect metaphor for Kent's father, Wayne. Wayne was a man with strong convictions; convictions that shaped the way he thought and acted and treated others. Life is messy, wind needs to get through every once in a while or else the debris floating on the wind gathers, and over time this debris causes pain or worry or insecurity. Wayne was the perfect windbreak for his children. He taught them that to be human, one must act humanely, with dignity, integrity, and a even a bit of nobility. Fathers are a needed tool in developing a child, Wayne was a perfect tool for his children.

STRAIGHTENING THE HAMMERMILL (5 stars) - When one of the brother's breaks the needed machinery to feed their cattle, desperation and grief flow forth on a wave of panic. But, and this is not always the case, the answer to the problem before oneself lies not in the way you look at it, but in the way you visualize it. Kent was able to look at the broken machinery in an abstract manner, ultimately fixing the problem. But this essay was not merely about fixing a piece of farm machinery; this essay was about visualizing himself as a father while at the same time visualizing his own father, contrasting the differences between the two of them, and acknowledging their similarities. This essay was also an excellent personal reflection on the power of storytelling--with or without words.

CHICKENS (3 stars) - A unique look at how life can start with affection and turn to cruelty over the course of three months. This essay spotlights the question: How does a child go from loving a creature to being able to slaughter the chicken in so short a time? The answer seemingly is: They are only chickens.

MY MOTHER'S SILENCE (4 stars) - Kent's mother knew how to can a variety of fruits and vegetables. It wasn't that she was doing this arduous task for the nutritional value; she canned because that is how she was able to help life on the farm. But her canning was more than just the act of sustaining a reserve of food; her canning was an art. She knew the value of her work, never boasting, always underwhelming herself in this regard. Meyers takes this notion of silence one step further in this essay as he explores the mental makeup of his mother and her art. This essay shines with respect and love, but not on a doting level; rather, this essay seeks to understand silence by reliving moments from childhood that were never previously looked upon as enjoyable. That is the brilliance of this essay. How is it that when we experience something in childhood, label it as a unsatisfying, we take that same experience in adulthood and view it as remarkable?

THE CONVERSATION OF THE ROSES (3 stars) - This essay is really about how a mother and daughter are able to share thoughts and feelings and conversation as they stroll through grandmother's rose garden. And if you have ever tried to cultivate a rose garden in Minnesota or South Dakota, you know the time and skill and work needed to see those wonderfully fleshy petals come to life. And like the silky petals of the roses, conversation only comes from great cultivation: time and skill and energy.

MY GRANDMOTHER'S BONES (4 stars) - After reading this essay, I was instantly transported to a time when I realized that my grandmother, a woman who was as hardy and tough as a bag full of shiny nails when I was a child, was no longer the same stalwart woman of my youth. This moment crushed me. It also gave me some much needed perspective. And, like Meyers in this essay, that moment has never really left my memory. In fact, it opened a new world for me, a world where I could go to hear stories of a time only mentioned in outdated history books or TCM movies. I will always cherish the fact that my grandmother allowed me to mine her memories, explore secrets of people I thought I knew but really had no knowledge of.

[Mark Hartzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant essays detailing growing up on a small Minnesota farm. While Mr. Meyers and I are roughly the same age, there is a world of difference between growing up on a working farm v. growing up in affluent suburbia. Going to university in far western Illinois after living in Chicagoland was certainly eye opening for me, and i enjoyed how Meyers' recollections dovetail with my experiences with my rural friends. Nicely done.

[Kendra Meyers klemme · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is about my family! I don't have any choice but to love it, but it is also poignant and beautifully written.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up on a small farm and having Grandparents and other relatives with farms made this book a very interesting read for me. Kent captures the farm life and reflects on what you learn from having grown up on one. The ending reminded me of going to Grandma and Grandpa's farm to see what the new owners had done to it. What surprised me was the author is just a year younger than me so we were both on farms at the same time but his was bigger and the only thing sustaining his family that had 9 children.

[Ori Fienberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meyers has created a stunningly beautiful portrait of farm life. I blazed through the whole thing in about 90 minutes. Granted, I read pretty fast, but I think it would be a pleasant, easy read for nearly anyone. It has the same sort of rhythmic appeal as a book like My Side of the Mountain, but with the lyrical complexity and originality of more heavy duty essayists. For precocious 6th graders and up.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that you savor slowly as you read. It is a collection of essays that tell of author, Kent Meyers', life on a farm. He takes the everyday farm life and discusses it with wit and wisdom. I appreciated his outlook on life and other deep issues that relate to us all.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, gorgeous prose in this beautifully written memoir of life on a small family farm. The author's introspective appreciation for the land and nature is what resonated with me the most. I savored every one of Kent Meyer's stories and thought often of Thoreau's own musings at Walden Pond.

[Mammacass1731 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful! Each chapter is another adventure of life on the farm with such respect for the land, the environment and the family. I was inspired to live a more thoughtful life.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of thought-provoking essays on the author's childhood and teen years on a small farm in Minnesota, with relatable themes, including connection to the land, responsibility to the natural world, and the importance of community. I would love to use some of these in my comp classes ... just trying to decide if the non-farm kids could handle the descriptions of killing chickens and such!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a great book of essays, with personal appeal to me as they tell of a boy growing up near where I'm from. Like many essay collections, it might be more fun to read a few at a time in between other reading, but I read it start to finish and ate it up.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of essays creating a memoir of sorts. It makes one yearn for the simpler times of childhood when there were fewer plastic toys/video games and more outdoor play and imagination. He writes of good parenting, strong values, and the poignant aspects of growing up and losing a parent.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brought back strong memories of growing up in rural Minnesota and the culture of pitching in to help tend fields when a neighbor experienced illness or death. His portrayal is very accurate.

[Abigail (Abbe) · Rating 5 out of 5]

most wonderful memoir i have ever read.

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Witness of Combines has been selected as the One Book One Sioux County for 2018. I wanted to get a jump on reading it and I am glad that I did. This was a soul touching collection of essays of growing up on a farm in southern Minnesota and the growing up Kent had to do when his father died suddenly from a stroke.

Most of the time I avoid the memoirs like this because so often they are superficial and/or so detailed that the only way the story made sense is if you had driven that exact model of John Deere tractor. Not so with Meyers' book. Even if you didn't grow up on the farm, or possibly even the midwest, you can still connect to his stories of growing up and trying to make your parents proud sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.

I am normally not a person who cries with books (although it has been known to happen -- Marley and Me, I'm looking at you) and there were multiple times I had tears streaming down my face. The book opens up with him talking about how all the neighbor's came to harvest the family's grain one last season, months after Meyers' father died and the kids planted the crops. I have seen this happen, I've written stories about this phenomenon. Yet, Kent's description brought tears to my eyes because he captured the experience in words so much better than I had as a journalist.

There were other examples that I laughed so hard -- the wind break that didn't allow any wind through it so it collected snow and created a snow bridge to allow the cattle to regularly escape. I have listened to farmers talk about the same exact lesson they learned in windbreak design.

This was a cathartic read for me. My dad died in December of 2017 and Meyers' description of trying to do things, and being just like Dad or handling a situation the way Dad would have, or the realization after completing a task that Dad had always handled and know that he would have been proud of the fact he wouldn't have been able to do it any better than you. His essay about the bird that hit the car on their way to church and he talks about the lesson of doing what is right by an animal hit home. I wrote an essay about the same topic in March, when we weren't able to save one of our goats and how that lesson resonated with me now teaching it to my daughter.

I know I'm going to be reaching for more of his books in the future. He writes in simple declarative sentences with precise words that make images leap from the page. Kent Meyers and The Witness of Combines is a shining example of Midwest authors have to share.

[Dav · Rating 4 out of 5]

.
The Witness of Combines
by Kent Meyer, pub. 1998.

When the author's father died of a stroke, Kent was just sixteen. In this memoir he reflects on families, farms, and rural life in southern Minnesota. Kent Meyers's father is the central figure that these memories revolve around.

From the preface:
This collection of essays was written over several years, as Kent's awareness of what it meant to love a place and lose it grew and changed. As a child he identified with the small farm on which he was raised. After his dad's death the farm passed out of their family’s hands. The essays explore the meaning of that double loss. His father and mother are Wayne and Marguerite. "My mother—though she no doubt has forgotten it—once told me: 'You have to use your talents.' I’ve been trying ever since to do so." - edited

The first essay is titled The Witness of Combines. After his dad's death, Kent's life "continued much as it had before...There was work to do." Not just on the farm, but at school as well. The neighbors came with their trucks and combines, harvesting the corn as a gesture of kindness and respect for his father. Rather than storing it, they sold the crop since this would be their last year of farming.

In the Windbreak, his older brother Kevin built the break which served as a kindness to the cattle. "...on the prairie...stopping wind is a noble enterprise." However, in the blowing snow of winter it buried the break and the cattle could walk right over it, escaping the feedlot.




..



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[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book on someone's recommendation after hearing my complaint that so often, authors don't get farming right in their novels. This one is spot on at least for anyone familiar with farming in the 1970s. So many things resonated with me; Meyers's mother and her 500 plus quarts of canned fruits and vegetables, feeding cattle and all that goes with that, the adventures of kids on a farm, plowing a field, pulling weeds, getting stuck in the snow. But, unlike author Meyers, my dad did not die when I was a teenager. Rather he lived a long life on the farm I grew up on. Meyers describes but does not dwell on what happened when his father passed away. He and his siblings planted the crops and fed out the remainder of the cattle. In the fall, neighbors and their combines appeared in their driveway to help with the harvest hence the book's title. That still happens today; when a farmer has something horrific happen, neighbors step in with what needs to be done. The author and his siblings all pursued lives off the farm. Their mom eventually moved to town and the land was rented out. This is what "happened" in the book but beyond that, the writing and descriptions of the land, the farm and even the work are beautiful. Kent Meyers is a philosopher at heart. Despite being written 25 years ago, I just wanted to reach out and email the author with my thoughts.

[Joe Artz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meyers' prose is lyrical, rich with details of place, time, landscape; of life in all its fecundity. It is also enriched by the people he brings to life -- his family, their friends and neighbors. If you're not acquainted with farming, Meyers will introduce you to everything from hammermills to silage cutters to the proper way to herd cattle in the direction you want them to go.

He tells the story of his youth; of how his father died suddenly of a massive stroke,
leaving his wife, four sons, and three daughters to take over the farm. They succeed because from the time they were six they were doing chores, learning from him how it takes everyone working together to succeed. It's a story of courage, resilience, but above all how their parents' teaching and example prepared them for pursuing their own paths. Published in 1998, it takes place in a time and place when family farms still could make it; still carrying on traditions generations old.

[Julie Kreun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was our book club selection for the month, and it was excellent. The author writes the story as a reflection on his life on the farm, and it explains in detail what his life was like growing up. The first chapter starts by telling the readers his father has died suddenly at an early age, and then sequels through his childhood memories. The author's memory is vivid, and I appreciated his insight on everyday experiences. I encourage you to pick up this book, and mark your calendar to hear the author speak when he comes to Sioux County. Here are the details: One Book One Sioux County will host author Kent Meyers at Northwest Iowa Community College on Thursday, November 8th at 7:00 pm.

[Koren · Rating 4 out of 5]

An introspective look at what it was like growing up on a Minnesota farm. I was interested because the author grew up not too far from me, about an hour drive, so it brought back many memories for me. The auctioning of the farm especially brought back a lot of memories, although the author's father died and mine did not. I thought it was interesting to see a different perspective on things that I see every day and take for granted. The author sees the landscape from a perspective of time and distance and I do not.

[Ásta Melitta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Þessi bók er safn ritgerða um uppvöxt höfundar á bóndabæ í Minnesota. Faðir hans deyr skyndilega þegar Kent er 16 ára og móðir hans og systkinin átta selja bæinn og flytja í burtu. Kaflarnir eru fallega skrifaðir og segja frá ýmsum atburðum á áhrifamikinn hátt. T.d. er frásögnin í fyrsta kaflanum eftirminnileg þegar nágrannarnir mæta með vélarnar sínar til að hjálpa ekkjunni og börnunum að ná inn síðustu uppskerunni. Síðasti kaflinn, þegar Kent kemur aftur til baka á bæinn sem fullorðinn maður, er líka eftirminnilegur.
4,5 stjörnur.

[Beth Wienck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up on a Nebraska farm, even though I was more the "inside" type of farm girl, Kent Meyers' words resonate and connect with me so deeply. Maybe because my parents now spend most of their time away from the farm in their "big city" retirement home or that I had my dad read the first chapter and the tears ran down his cheek or that I myself am coming to grips with the idea that home is not the farm exactly, but where my memories are. I still feel the "soil under my nails".

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether one takes a week to read this collection of essays - as I read the first half of them - or a year to read them -as I did the second half of them - they are beautifully written testaments to the role of parents in forming who we are. Lovely in every respect. I expect I will reread and reread this collection.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, through a collection of essays, guides the reader through the portion of his life surrounding the death of his father and the sale of the family farm. Well written and engaging, this collection paints a picture of the challenges of farming in the 20th century, striking a balance between a rosy picture of farm life and the imperfections of real human beings.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up on a small farm in Illinois. Everyday was chores, and the cows, the bean walking, the hay baling. This book put into eloquent words the work my father loved and that we lived. Enjoyed this one lots.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kent Meyers has written an extraordinary book of essays on growing up on a farm in the Midwest and the lessons he learned from his loving family about nature and the joy and struggles of being human. His ability to express such tender and authentic feelings is remarkable.

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

127: 2024
As a flatlander myself, tho not a farm girl, this was absolutely the best kind of back to your roots nostalgia. Really excellent and totally felt like 'home' to me. So glad this got recommended to me and that I finally made time for it.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an example of beautiful writing. Meyers’ use of evocative language brings characters to life in a way seldom seen. I enjoyed every page, every essay.

[Travis B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book

[Ron Hartman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written. Very descriptive. Probably best read by those who grew up on a farm.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished reading this as I was flying into Minneapolis and over the land he writes about. Beautiful language, beautiful imagery. Makes me miss my farmer brother. Favorite line: "It never happened, but the dream was good."