Witness of Combines

by Kent Meyers

An exciting new writer looks at rural life and coming of age.

When Kent Meyers was sixteen years old, his 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 and reflects on families, farms, and rural life in the Midwest.

Meyers tells the story of growing up on the farm, from the joys of playing...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816631050
• ISBN13: 9780816631056
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Transported me back to childhood

Meyers captures what it's like to be a farmkid--to have a haybarn as your playground and to work side by side with your parents in a way today's kids will never know. (I especially love his reference to the sound that your boots make as you pull them out of the barnyard muck.) He captures a farm family's heartaches and proud moments in simple, true style. I gave this book to my father, a Minnesota farmer, because it spoke volumes about what my parents instilled in me by raising me on a farm and the struggles we faced to make ends meet. He loved it! It's not a book for just former farm kids though. Beautifully written. One of my top ten books.

Good Book

This book reminds me so much of my life growing up in a small town in South Dakota, i didn't live on a farm but worked on one and still work on one during the summers. I thouroghly enjoyed Kent's abliltity to describe certain events, sights and the other 4 sense's. A very good book i sat down and read it in a day no more than 12 hours total reading, it sucked me right in.

An Exceptional First-Hand Account of Farm Life

Anyone wishing to really know what farming was and is about should read this book. Great little stories, wonderful memories to those of us who grew up on a farm, and tear-jerking memories of farm sales. We had three children instead of nine, but many experiences were the same.

Kent could be my brother

A friend of mine recommended this book. I grew up on a farm in central Nebraska. When I finished reading this book, I called my mom and asked her if I had a brother named Kent that she never told me about. I started reading her excerpts from the book and we were both astounded by how closely it matched our own lives on the farm in Nebraska, including the blue-speckled canning pot and pressure cooker sitting on the stove all summer! I found particular delight in the essay on the work of "town kids" vs. "farm kids." I look back at all we did, but it never seemed like work. It was just our life, one I wouldn't trade for anything. Like the author, I've been through my father's death, the sale of the farm, and in the next few weeks my mother will be moving off the farm and into town. Loved this book!

Perfectly captures the disappearing Midwestern farm life.

_A Witness of Combines_ was difficult for me to read. Kent Meyers so perfectly captures what it was like for me to grow up on a north central Iowa farm, that it feels like he was one of the neighbors. The final chapter about returning home is unbearably vivid. I, too, am off the farm because of governmental policies and their effects on farming. If you want to know what it was like, and why we ought to try to preserve it, read this book. If I ever write this well, I shall be well-pleased.