The Growing Season

In 1950, the total number of people living on a family-owned farm was 15% of the total population in the United States; by 1996, that number had dropped to less than 2%. Agriculture is still big business, but today most of the farms are owned and operated by huge conglomerates. Gloria Kintzle and her family are part of a dwindling breed of Americans, and it's obvious from this video that she wanted to leave a living record of her Iowa farm for future generations. She has produced a gentle, colorful, and very complete document of what life is like on the Kintzle Farm in Prairieburg, Iowa. Children will be entertained as well as educated by pictures of the Kintzle children taking responsibility for the care and feeding of baby animals born on the farm, and they will see the love and affection that an extended family can bring to a home. Urbanites, such as myself, will be amazed at the dusk-to-dawn manual labor that must be done even in a time when machines have replaced most of the back-breaking work. Viewers will hear no talk of subsidies, floods, droughts, or other calamities that have come to symbolize the contemporary farm. Instead, they're given a rosy view of a rapidly disappearing piece of Americana, one that may seem as foreign to people twenty years from now as scenes from colonial days seem to us today. Recommended. Aud: E, I, P. (J. Carlson)