Driftless: Stories from Iowa
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- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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Once at the center of the U.S. economy, the family farm now drifts at its edges. In Iowa, old-time farmers try to hang on to their way of life, while their young push out to find their futures elsewhere. A complex portrait of a well-loved American landscape, at a time of enormous cultural change.
Citation
Main credits
Frazier, Danny Wilcox (film director)
Frazier, Danny Wilcox (photographer)
Maierson, Eric (film producer)
Other credits
Photography by Danny Wilcox Frazier; cinematography by Taylor Gentry; original music by Ben Schmidt.
Distributor subjects
American Studies, U.S. History, American Midwest, Children & Youth, Farming, Family, Labor Studies, Photography, Sociology, Latino Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Economic Anthropology; Expository; WOKeywords
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The farm has been
00:00:49.417 --> 00:00:51.709
close to my heart all my life.
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To me, a farm is just a good place to be.
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This is the farm that she grew up on.
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We\'ve been here now for 18 years.
00:01:17.917 --> 00:01:22.209
I always felt that someone that\'s raised on a farm,
00:01:22.209 --> 00:01:23.751
they can almost do anything.
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I just feel like it\'s a real good training place for young people.
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Sometimes
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you wish you were older, that way you wouldn\'t have to get
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all the orders and you can give some orders too.
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After I\'m out of school I plan on staying on the farm
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for at least a couple of years
00:02:12.209 --> 00:02:13.834
and then I want to go to college
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and I really do not know
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exactly what I want to do yet,
00:02:17.167 --> 00:02:19.959
but I\'m hoping maybe scientist
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of some sort.
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We always had younger children to help us here on the farm,
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which worked out pretty good.
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We had their income to subsidize, which helped.
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So then as the children
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got older and left home,
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we didn\'t have that income
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anymore.
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Last year was horrible.
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The milk prices were lower than they\'ve almost ever been,
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I think.
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And so when you figure the price of gas,
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food, equipment, repairs
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and all that, you just don\'t make it
00:03:14.876 --> 00:03:16.584
in a year like that.
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I work at another job for Kalona Oil
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for a little over a year now.
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Just for some more income.
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We had a pretty big debt to,
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or we have a pretty big debt to undo.
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Kevin had graduated from high school.
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So he was here to sort of
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take on the farming responsibilities.
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It\'s what I like to do.
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I like working with animals.
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I like operating machinery and
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it is just something I enjoy.
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It\'s five or six in the morning until nine, ten at night.
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And you don\'t really have much time
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to relax and just take it easy.
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It is a lot of responsibility right now that I\'m not sure I want.
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I would hope that out of nine children that one of them
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would have a desire to take the farm on
00:04:20.834 --> 00:04:24.667
and that\'s our goal.
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But I guess it doesn\'t have to be if it doesn\'t work out.
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So.
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It\'s something each generation strives to improve.
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To let a farm go that my grandparents have struggled to build,
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my parents have struggled to build, just, it just don\'t seem right.
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I\'m not ready for it now, but if it would come to the point where
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we\'d either let it go or I would keep going,
00:05:00.626 --> 00:05:03.125
I would probably try to keep it going
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even though I don\'t think I\'m ready for it,
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it\'s just I don\'t know if I want to let it go.
00:05:08.917 --> 00:05:15.584
You know, we, we\'re trying to do what we can to,
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to keep things going here.
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As a parent you want your children to be happy,
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you want them to enjoy what they\'re doing.
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But sometimes that\'s easier said than done.
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I really don\'t know how my feelings would be
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if it wouldn\'t work out.
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It\'s close to my heart.
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It would be difficult.
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But you know,
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life isn\'t all easy.
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You want to take it however it comes.
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Living in my small town it was kind of
00:07:19.417 --> 00:07:21.459
like a tar pit, you know?
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You don\'t really sink into it
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but you\'re not getting out of it.
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In a small town there\'s not much to do.
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You either go boating, fishing, camping.
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There\'s not a whole heck of a lot.
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So what do you do?
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You go to the bar.
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If the bars disappeared,
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I think the town would kinda just fizzle out.
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And I spent every single night up there
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You always have the same crowd.
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That was just the place where everybody was.
00:08:07.420 --> 00:08:10.500
I started becoming the person I never wanted to be,
00:08:10.500 --> 00:08:13.375
and that was that barfly.
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The girl that everybody was like she had so much potential,
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now what\'s happened to her?
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When I had seperated from my ex-husband,
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the stress was so bad.
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I couldn\'t handle it.
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I just mentally wanted to check out.
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There\'s only 3 things you can do in Iowa.
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Drink, do drugs, or have sex.
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In my small town, they would condemn me to hell.
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That\'s not Christian.
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Well you know what? No it\'s not,
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but that\'s what I needed at that time.
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If I didn\'t get out
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I probably would have ended up a major alcoholic.
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I would have ended up the town whore.
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And just drinking myself into a stupor.
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I didn\'t want to be that person.
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A lot of people are afraid of what\'s outside of that small town.
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They don\'t understand that
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there\'s such a bigger world out there.
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A lot of people stay because that\'s where their family is.
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When it comes to moving, they just can\'t do it.
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Everybody needs to figure out where they\'re happy.
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This may be the life you want to live,
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but this is not the life I wanna live.
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I don\'t want to stay here.
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To me, moving from Iowa
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to Denver, was just as easy as
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changing the brand of mascara I use.
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I kind of felt like
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Iowa was hindering all of my hopes and dreams.
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I know now, I knew then,
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and I\'ve known since I was really young,
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I am destined to do great things.
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What they are yet, I don\'t know.
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But it\'s not to sit in town and wait
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for this great opportunity to land in my lap.
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Those things don\'t happen.
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Those are fairy tales that
00:10:22.292 --> 00:10:24.417
people from small towns tell their children
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to keep them close at home.
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You can do everything here in a small town
00:10:28.584 --> 00:10:30.667
that you can do in a big city.
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That is a fat lie. You can\'t.
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Hell yes, I love Iowa.
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What is there not to love about Iowa?
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I love it here.
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Iowa seriously has the nicest people in the entire country.
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Babe, this is where we are going to jump.
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I\'m so fucking scared, you don\'t even know.
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Because that is no good.
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We don\'t want to jump over other rocks.
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Hey, hey, hey, hey listen, just fucking jump off that bitch
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and flip like three times and you\'ll be cool.
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Hell no.
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Just jump off of that fucker.
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Just jump outwards.
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Oh, God.
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There you go, yeah. Holy shit.
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Dude, Zack in my opinion smoking pot\'s
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alright but fucking dude,
00:12:09.584 --> 00:12:10.167
you start fucking
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dropping crank,
00:12:10.959 --> 00:12:11.959
smoking that shit.
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Ok, Chad, listen though.
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Banging that shit dude, no.
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Dude it\'s just not straight.
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You just, no.
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But Chad, listen to this though.
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You stay up for weeks at a fucking time, dude.
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Days, weeks. It\'s not cool, no.
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But you\'re missing the point though.
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You\'re missing the point, dude.
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I think you need to drop some acid and find yourself.
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Exactly.
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Asshole.
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Owwww. That fucking hurt.
00:12:40.500 --> 00:12:42.000
Careful, don\'t cut yourself.
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You want me to chug it and shit?
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Yeah, put it up, up to your mouth first,
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crack it open, slam that bitch.
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I\'ll do it standing.
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Yeah, buddy.
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I am all that is man, that\'s what you say.
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I am all that is man. That\'s what I say.
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Right now, Do it Chad, do it, you got to go
00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:11.292
You gotta go first.
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Fine, fuck it.
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I don\'t think that it mattered that I was there
00:13:39.584 --> 00:13:41.667
so I don\'t know.
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Felt kind of like a waste of my time and I think...
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Like ninety percent of the people there
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I can probably say that
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feel the same way as what I do.
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We spent way too much money and time and effort in to this
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and it\'s not going to matter how long we\'re there.
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We\'re not going to make a difference.
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Everybody who went with me last time who
00:14:03.125 --> 00:14:05.751
I consider a close friend is going again.
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I would feel like a shit bag if I didn\'t go.
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It\'s not for the cause or anything like that.
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These guys feel like they are my brothers.
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So I\'m gonna go with them.
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I know in Iowa every small town
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has had a lot of Hispanics coming into it.
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I think the Midwest was one of the last places
00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:05.459
to become integrated,
00:15:05.459 --> 00:15:08.292
but we\'re integrated now
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and that\'s the way it is.
00:15:10.167 --> 00:15:13.417
The residents of the town have changed.
00:15:13.417 --> 00:15:15.917
At one time this was a small community,
00:15:15.917 --> 00:15:17.751
had probably 100 people.
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They were all white working middle class people.
00:15:19.959 --> 00:15:23.830
Now, it\'s over, I\'d say two-thirds of the town population
00:15:23.830 --> 00:15:24.459
is Hispanic which,
00:15:24.459 --> 00:15:27.959
don\'t get me wrong, a lot of them are really nice people.
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They are tax payers, they work hard,
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they take care of their property,
00:15:32.375 --> 00:15:33.626
and then of course, you
00:15:33.626 --> 00:15:34.876
always have a few bad eggs.
00:15:35.834 --> 00:15:38.375
We\'re starting to get gang problems.
00:15:38.375 --> 00:15:41.626
We also have a drug problem we never used to have.
00:15:41.626 --> 00:15:44.250
And the quality of life has went downhill.
00:15:47.751 --> 00:15:49.542
It was the late eighties
00:15:49.542 --> 00:15:50.876
before we started seeing
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the Hispanic coming into this.
00:15:54.420 --> 00:15:55.959
My father hired a few.
00:15:55.959 --> 00:15:58.167
But my brother and I are the ones that carried it on
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to the extent that we have today.
00:16:03.292 --> 00:16:04.959
We\'re allowed to say we need
00:16:04.959 --> 00:16:07.709
this number of agricultural workers
00:16:07.709 --> 00:16:08.667
on a temporary basis
00:16:08.667 --> 00:16:11.792
and then they\'re given their Visas
00:16:11.792 --> 00:16:14.292
to come in with our names to work
00:16:14.292 --> 00:16:17.209
a specific period of time.
00:16:18.959 --> 00:16:20.417
People think that
00:16:20.417 --> 00:16:24.830
guest worker program might be cheap labor.
00:16:24.830 --> 00:16:27.917
To us it\'s not cheap labor for farm work.
00:16:27.917 --> 00:16:31.250
And the wages are going up year after year.
00:16:33.959 --> 00:16:36.250
If he has 1,200 here next year
00:16:36.250 --> 00:16:38.751
that\'s three times our local population.
00:16:38.751 --> 00:16:40.542
We can\'t handle it.
00:16:40.542 --> 00:16:42.834
We don\'t have a law enforcement,
00:16:42.834 --> 00:16:46.420
we don\'t have the monetary assets to handle it.
00:16:46.420 --> 00:16:49.834
We\'re not minimizing their concerns. We understand it.
00:16:49.834 --> 00:16:51.626
It\'s a lot of people.
00:16:51.626 --> 00:16:54.375
It\'s a lot of transient people in their mind.
00:16:54.375 --> 00:16:55.917
But they\'re really not so transient.
00:16:55.917 --> 00:16:57.334
They come here and they go home.
00:16:57.334 --> 00:17:01.417
It\'s very hard work. You\'re bent over all day long. It\'s hot.
00:17:01.417 --> 00:17:03.500
And the Hispanic workers
00:17:03.500 --> 00:17:05.834
know exactly what needs to be picked
00:17:05.834 --> 00:17:07.751
and it works real well.
00:17:07.751 --> 00:17:10.834
I\'ve known Mr. Bell for a lot of years
00:17:10.834 --> 00:17:13.626
and Mr. Bell is Mr. Bell.
00:17:13.626 --> 00:17:16.417
He\'s in there to make a profit which I don\'t blame him.
00:17:16.417 --> 00:17:18.417
He has to make a living too.
00:17:18.417 --> 00:17:20.830
But he\'s putting an unfunded mandate
00:17:20.830 --> 00:17:21.834
on the community.
00:17:21.834 --> 00:17:24.125
We can\'t afford it.
00:17:24.125 --> 00:17:27.830
It used to be there were so many farms,
00:17:27.830 --> 00:17:30.667
and there were kids on those farms that wanted summer jobs.
00:17:30.667 --> 00:17:33.830
That used to be who did this work.
00:17:33.830 --> 00:17:37.250
And you can\'t find very many farm kids anymore period.
00:17:37.250 --> 00:17:38.834
There are just aren\'t a lot of them.
00:17:38.834 --> 00:17:40.792
The kids around here quit doing that because
00:17:40.792 --> 00:17:44.334
they tried to run them 10, 12, 14 hours a day.
00:17:44.334 --> 00:17:45.500
While I understand the push,
00:17:45.500 --> 00:17:48.125
but we\'re talking teenage kids.
00:17:48.125 --> 00:17:49.709
And you can\'t push them that hard.
00:17:49.709 --> 00:17:52.417
So he brought in the migrants.
00:17:52.417 --> 00:17:54.125
Well he also pays them less than
00:17:54.125 --> 00:17:55.834
what he was having to pay the local kids.
00:17:55.834 --> 00:17:58.250
Because the local kids can go work at a grocery store
00:17:58.250 --> 00:18:00.751
for 6, 8 hours and make the same kind of money
00:18:00.751 --> 00:18:02.751
and not have to work near as hard.
00:18:02.751 --> 00:18:04.917
You always hear that argument.
00:18:04.917 --> 00:18:07.000
If you paid more
00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:09.167
you wouldn\'t have to bring all these people in.
00:18:09.167 --> 00:18:11.417
That\'s not true.
00:18:11.417 --> 00:18:13.667
There just aren\'t the available people
00:18:13.667 --> 00:18:15.375
to do this kind of work.
00:18:15.375 --> 00:18:16.250
We could be paying
00:18:16.250 --> 00:18:17.834
$30 an hour
00:18:17.834 --> 00:18:20.667
and we would not get the people here to do the job
00:18:20.667 --> 00:18:23.830
we need done, because it\'s temporary.
00:18:23.830 --> 00:18:25.375
They can\'t have the job long enough
00:18:25.375 --> 00:18:29.209
to do people that live here much good.
00:18:29.209 --> 00:18:30.250
We\'ll see you guys.
00:18:30.250 --> 00:18:30.876
Take care, Tom.
00:18:30.876 --> 00:18:31.584
Thank you.
00:18:31.584 --> 00:18:34.334
We advertise in all the local papers.
00:18:34.334 --> 00:18:36.876
Got one young man from the area that came
00:18:36.876 --> 00:18:38.209
and applied and I hired him.
00:18:38.209 --> 00:18:40.417
But there\'s very, very few that come
00:18:40.417 --> 00:18:42.250
and want to put those hours in.
00:18:46.250 --> 00:18:48.250
All the people that we brought in over the years,
00:18:48.250 --> 00:18:50.292
I don\'t think there is over one or two or three that
00:18:50.292 --> 00:18:52.751
we have actually not brought back because they didn\'t work.
00:18:52.751 --> 00:18:54.292
They\'re good people.
00:18:54.292 --> 00:18:57.876
And I enjoy working with hard-working people.
00:18:57.876 --> 00:19:01.167
They worked the dog dirt out of the, their temporary help.
00:19:01.167 --> 00:19:04.167
And they sleep in that migrant camp over there.
00:19:04.167 --> 00:19:07.420
It would probably be 100 degrees at 10:00 at night.
00:19:07.420 --> 00:19:09.584
I mean, it\'s terrible.
00:19:13.584 --> 00:19:16.167
We feel a responsibility to them.
00:19:16.167 --> 00:19:18.667
We couldn\'t get our jobs done without them.
00:19:21.834 --> 00:19:25.542
We appreciate what they do for us.
00:19:25.542 --> 00:19:28.667
We hope it\'s good for them, they\'re good for us.
00:19:28.667 --> 00:19:31.626
Some people feel that if you say no about anything,
00:19:31.626 --> 00:19:32.959
that makes you a racist.
00:19:32.959 --> 00:19:35.792
Well, I\'m sorry, that isn\'t true.
00:19:35.792 --> 00:19:37.375
If you can\'t have an opinion then you might
00:19:37.375 --> 00:19:39.209
might as well be in Soviet Russia.
00:19:39.209 --> 00:19:42.167
I feel that the people in this community
00:19:42.167 --> 00:19:43.792
have a right to have their say in what
00:19:43.792 --> 00:19:45.917
becomes of their community.
00:19:45.917 --> 00:19:50.500
If somebody else doesn\'t like it, too bad.
00:20:27.542 --> 00:20:31.334
I used to butcher with my dad.
00:20:31.334 --> 00:20:34.000
I\'d go with him when I was real small.
00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.584
Might have started just to get a nickel or dime
00:20:36.584 --> 00:20:38.334
to run over to the grocery store
00:20:38.334 --> 00:20:40.830
and get me a little bit of candy.
00:20:40.830 --> 00:20:46.542
I did that until I was drafted in 1968.
00:20:46.542 --> 00:20:51.459
Then in 1989, my dad died and
00:20:51.459 --> 00:20:53.375
then a few months later my mom died
00:20:53.375 --> 00:20:55.209
and I just thought if I
00:20:55.209 --> 00:21:00.417
butchered it would be a lot like
00:21:00.417 --> 00:21:04.125
when my dad was still alive,
00:21:04.125 --> 00:21:05.876
so here I am.
00:21:05.876 --> 00:21:10.000
I\'ve been butchering for 50 years.
00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:12.834
Got a few more years then I can retire
00:21:12.834 --> 00:21:16.417
and get all this behind me.
00:21:23.334 --> 00:21:25.375
This place hasn\'t changed a bit.
00:21:25.375 --> 00:21:27.792
It looked just like this when
00:21:27.792 --> 00:21:30.417
I butchered here 30 years ago.
00:21:39.626 --> 00:21:44.420
Just about every little town had their own butcher shop.
00:21:44.420 --> 00:21:45.876
The state had so many laws,
00:21:45.876 --> 00:21:46.792
the little places couldn\'t
00:21:46.792 --> 00:21:48.417
afford to keep up with them so they
00:21:48.417 --> 00:21:49.751
started dropping out.
00:21:51.584 --> 00:21:56.542
And where all the people went, I don\'t know.
00:22:00.584 --> 00:22:04.167
I make $20 a head for beef,
00:22:04.167 --> 00:22:07.917
$11 a head for a hog.
00:22:07.917 --> 00:22:10.417
Seems like nobody is making any money,
00:22:10.417 --> 00:22:13.584
but you go buy a $12 T-bone,
00:22:13.584 --> 00:22:17.459
somebody is making money somewhere.
00:22:17.459 --> 00:22:22.751
You can\'t depend on a certain number of head in a week.
00:22:22.751 --> 00:22:24.459
I might make 80 bucks one week
00:22:24.459 --> 00:22:28.334
and 500 the next.
00:22:28.334 --> 00:22:30.792
The costs keep going up but
00:22:30.792 --> 00:22:33.834
your wages always stay the same.
00:22:40.209 --> 00:22:43.420
Two Twenty.
00:22:43.420 --> 00:22:46.459
Probably not making much more than my dad did
00:22:46.459 --> 00:22:48.167
when he was butchering.
00:22:49.917 --> 00:22:52.000
I don\'t think I\'d care to see
00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:54.209
the kids follow in my steps.
00:22:56.709 --> 00:22:59.417
My son don\'t want no part of it,
00:22:59.417 --> 00:23:01.125
and I don\'t blame him.
00:23:01.125 --> 00:23:03.830
Get something that you want to do
00:23:03.830 --> 00:23:07.334
and not something that you have to do.
00:23:07.334 --> 00:23:11.417
It\'s hard.
00:23:11.417 --> 00:23:17.584
Makes an old man out of you fast.
00:23:28.584 --> 00:23:31.250
Sometimes it kind of gets to me.
00:23:31.250 --> 00:23:36.792
Sometimes I wonder if I have the right to kill an animal.
00:23:36.792 --> 00:23:42.542
Somebody\'s gotta butcher these livestock for the farmers.
00:23:42.542 --> 00:23:46.626
Somebody\'s always going to have to be doing that.
00:23:46.626 --> 00:23:49.334
I try and kill them as humanely as I can
00:23:49.334 --> 00:23:50.584
with one shot but
00:23:50.584 --> 00:23:54.830
sometimes it doesn\'t always happen.
00:24:21.834 --> 00:24:25.709
I wouldn\'t have a problem finding another job
00:24:25.709 --> 00:24:28.000
but I\'ve done this so long,
00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:31.500
just kind of hard to quit.
00:25:22.125 --> 00:25:25.792
Low\'s to mid 40s northeast to the lower 60s in the southwest
00:25:25.792 --> 00:25:26.584
for Saturday,
00:25:26.584 --> 00:25:29.125
partly cloudy lows 25 to 35.
00:25:29.125 --> 00:25:31.751
Highs around 40 north to mid-fifties south.
00:25:31.751 --> 00:25:35.250
And for Sunday partly cloudy, lows 25 to 35, highs in the mid...
00:25:35.250 --> 00:25:38.959
We were married in \'63.
00:25:38.959 --> 00:25:42.292
I was kind of slow about getting married.
00:25:42.292 --> 00:25:44.250
I was 35.
00:25:44.250 --> 00:25:47.250
And I figured the good Lord was
00:25:47.250 --> 00:25:50.167
the one that introduced us to each other.
00:25:54.292 --> 00:25:56.584
On the 4th of July
00:25:56.584 --> 00:26:00.420
my wife and I used to back the car in up
00:26:00.420 --> 00:26:02.250
in the front yard.
00:26:02.250 --> 00:26:03.334
We could see
00:26:03.334 --> 00:26:07.334
the fireworks.
00:26:07.334 --> 00:26:12.751
Cedar Rapids, Marion, Anamosa.
00:26:12.751 --> 00:26:15.667
It was a challenge to be looking at
00:26:15.667 --> 00:26:19.417
the right place at the right time.
00:26:19.417 --> 00:26:24.584
We spent our life together.
00:26:24.584 --> 00:26:27.792
We were one, a pair, I can say.
00:26:30.709 --> 00:26:34.334
If I told her I was going to go out and do chores,
00:26:34.334 --> 00:26:39.125
she would say, \"Oh and leave me here alone?\"
00:26:39.125 --> 00:26:41.167
But if I would say, \"I\'m going to go out and
00:26:41.167 --> 00:26:44.420
turn on the water I\'ll be right back,
00:26:44.420 --> 00:26:48.292
I\'d get away with it.
00:26:48.292 --> 00:26:53.830
There just isn\'t anything here on the farm anymore.
00:26:53.830 --> 00:26:57.459
You\'d be far better off to have a profession in town
00:26:57.459 --> 00:26:59.626
that paid a respectable wage.
00:26:59.626 --> 00:27:03.334
I\'m still farming today
00:27:03.334 --> 00:27:06.125
to have enough income to exist.
00:27:06.125 --> 00:27:10.000
When the few of us
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:13.250
that were family farmers are gone,
00:27:13.250 --> 00:27:19.292
that\'s going to be it.
00:27:19.292 --> 00:27:22.334
Everything is corporate now.
00:27:22.334 --> 00:27:27.500
The chemical companies are in control.
00:27:27.500 --> 00:27:31.959
We don\'t think of the soil having living elements.
00:27:31.959 --> 00:27:35.125
But when they put insecticide
00:27:35.125 --> 00:27:37.459
on the soil it kills everything off.
00:27:37.459 --> 00:27:41.334
The amino acids that have been genetically altered
00:27:41.334 --> 00:27:44.751
out of our food is the reason I say that we\'re
00:27:44.751 --> 00:27:48.584
starving to death on a full stomach.
00:27:48.584 --> 00:27:51.000
We have plenty of food.
00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:54.830
But the nutritional value is just not there.
00:27:57.420 --> 00:28:03.000
Alzheimer\'s, it\'s a nutritional problem.
00:28:07.375 --> 00:28:10.250
She had memory loss
00:28:10.250 --> 00:28:14.751
for several years before they told us it was Alzheimer\'s.
00:28:14.751 --> 00:28:20.584
I think of it as an ailment, not a disease.
00:28:20.584 --> 00:28:26.459
And it is a real cruel ailment.
00:28:26.459 --> 00:28:29.792
There isn\'t anything they can heal
00:28:29.792 --> 00:28:33.751
once the damage has been done.
00:28:33.751 --> 00:28:37.000
She wanted to be at home.
00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:40.709
So I took care of her at home.
00:28:40.709 --> 00:28:47.167
And I\'d do it again.