Charles Summers (not above) used a hand plow (similar to the one pictured) for about five years. He eventually ventured into the 21st century and now farms north of Brockville where a tractor has replaced his Percherons. He even has indoor plumbing. He laments the demise of the plow. John Deere will stop making the 3710 moldboard plow.
Charles Summers
Guest Columnist
Salt of the Earth Farm
Fleeing bankruptcy and debtors’ prison in his native Vermont, a 33-year-old blacksmith named John Deere took his last $73 and headed west to the then frontier of Illinois. A year later, in 1837, forging a steel sawmill blade, the disc snapped on the anvil and half of it stuck into the earth of his shop floor. In a “Newton under the apple tree” eureka moment, Deere suddenly realized the potential for a new form of agricultural plow. Replacing the traditional wooden or cast-iron moldboards, Deere developed an implement capable of breaking the fertile, tall grass prairies of the Mid-West. Unlocking the incredible potential of the Corn Belt, Deere’s innovation paved the way for America’s largesse in producing cheap calories: not only is the USA the world’s largest agricultural exporter, they are also the world’s largest people: 40% of Americans are now considered obese.
Fast forward 186 years: John Deere is the world’s largest agricultural equipment company. And not only that, they are an extremely successful example of branding: they are to tractors what Harley Davidson is to motorcycles; Deere has succeeded in embodying agriculture and rural life in the public consciousness. People drape themselves in their logo as a “Country” identifier and act out their latent agricultural impulses on their green and yellow lawn mowers. But it was with little fanfare that Iowan John Deere salesman Sam Paulson announced on Twitter last year, that as of 2023, Deere will cease manufacturing their 3710 moldboard plow.
Without a doubt, Deere makes more money selling toys than they do making plows, and so the business decision is a foregone conclusion. But ask yourself, why isn’t anyone buying a plow anymore?
At 17 years of age, I was desperate to get out of school, and avoid the now defunct fifth year of OAC. I went to our guidance councillor, searching for a program I could take with four years of high school, and noticed on the shelf, a folder from the Ontario Agricultural College. I was rather surprised that such a school existed. I guess I had assumed farming was just a sort of family secret, but when I looked on the cover: Holsteins grazing on a rolling meadow, a very uncanny feeling came over me, and in that moment, I resolved to become a farmer. I have spent the succeeding 23 years bashing my head against the wall pursuing this ridiculous ambition.
Although accepted to the Kemptville campus, I was too restless for any more education, and at 21, I bought 22 acres of raw land on top of the North Mountain, the windbreak that shelters Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley from the Bay of Fundy, making it the productive agricultural enclave it is. Having spent all my money, rather than embarking on what would be described as “agriculture” I had set off on a deranged version of Little House on the Prairie.
I was surprised to be surrounded by people who had grown up in similar circumstances to that which I’d submitted myself: no running water or electricity, and relying on a large garden and dairy animal to feed themselves. The old timers on the Mountain took pity on me and set me up with a draft horse and basic implements.
In hindsight, I consider myself very fortunate to have learned the craft of farming by starting with the same level of equipment that John Deere himself built and repaired. You cannot get from a tractor cab the intimate understanding that comes from walking in the furrow, and there is no experience in my life that can compare with when my dear neighbour set a stick in the ground at the far end of the garden, told me to lift the plow handles a little bit, and chirped my mare.
It was very clear, as I made that very first crooked crown ridge, that I was engaging in something very special. Like making fire, or riding a horse, plowing is this obvious gift from God which allows us to exist. This is why every settled people on earth has a plow – however primitive – and whether it’s pulled by diesel, donkeys, water buffalo or women, they cannot live without it. The plow is emblematic of farming for a reason, and why events like the International Plowing Match still take place. There are no competitions for discing, spraying or baling hay, after all.
Historically, the walking plow was not just the primary form of tillage, but also the farmer’s all-purpose tool: in the same way a dextrous cook can bone a chicken, chop onions, carve steaks and mince herbs with the same large, sharp chef’s knife, the farmer of yore used his plow not only to prepare fields, but to build roads, drain land, scuffle crops, hill and dig potatoes. The plow was the farmer’s right hand and fundamental means by which he manipulated the earth. On the traditional mixed farm, where crops and livestock dovetailed, the plow was of special significance: responsible for the transition of fields from perennial forages to crops, and back again.
So, with what are we replacing the plow? Well, mainly farms with no fences, and herbicides. It’s a brave new world, and although we see more grain hitting the market than ever before, we don’t actually know the long-term consequences of this agricultural paradigm. For all of its efficiency, we just end up with fewer farmers. We also have reached a tipping point of diminishing returns in terms of both health and affordability when it comes to our food.
Eventually, I made it out of the 1830s: I even have a toilet now. The wonders of plumbing aside, learning the ropes of agriculture with archaic equipment has impressed upon me a profound appreciation for the incredible productivity of modern agriculture. Currently, we farm at something like an early 1990s level: my baler has net wrap and I even have a machine that harvests our string beans. John Deere tractors have replaced the Percherons and I rely on reverse osmosis in the sugarhouse. Growing a myriad of vegetable crops, we mainly depend on mechanical cultivation, black plastic and paying Canadians $20 per hour to physically remove the weeds the scufflers miss (it’s painful to watch).
The plow – the most timeless and universal tool in agriculture – is out; increasingly complex formulations of herbicides are in (as their individual components become less effective). There are more “support” roles in agriculture – agronomists, salespeople, technicians, inspectors – with fewer farmers than at any time since Confederation. Not to mention that our leaders are actively trying to tax and regulate agriculture into oblivion – as well as the unpleasant fact that almost everything we do here, can be done cheaper somewhere else. The wildcard should make you smile though, and it is the same as always, people: and there are few more stubborn, resilient or pathologically confident people on earth than the Canadian farmer.
The 1968 Soil Survey of Leeds County records that there were 27,500 acres of oats, a mere 450 acres of grain corn, and not a single acre of soybeans. Small dairies and the moldboard plow were king at that point, and a generation of hard working, well rounded children came off of those farms (the most important crop, after all). Things have changed a lot in fifty years – what is it going to look like in another half century? John Deere will probably be around, but will his plow, I wonder?
Charles Summers owns Salt of the Earth Farm, a direct-to-consumer operation selling vegetables at the roadside, near Lyndhurst, Ontario.
