robmgrig - 5/24/2019 23:37
Mark (EC,IN) - 5/24/2019 20:58
The different farms all seemed to go down a different path. The Griggs farm in Tennesse was the one I could relate to the most, other than the cotton their operation was the closest to what I do. I can't remember what his screen name was, but I know Matt(?) was on here a while back talking about the show. I wonder if he might have any more comments after watching the whole thing.
Feel free to ask any questions.
The folks in Utah I found interesting, but I felt the show should have stuck with the turkeys a little more.....unless I missed it, I don't know if they got a contract for another year.
I agree. When they have an operation like that but a majority of their time on the show was dedicated to the mini farm? Ugh
The dairy farm in New Hampshire that started the bottling plant ..... I'd love to sit down and have a few beers with those boys! They had me laughing out loud several times.
Those guys are really cool. Along with the folks from Utah. We talk quite a bit on Facebook. We hope to eventually be able to go visit with those farms.
The Alaskan farm I probably found the most interesting for the simple fact I have never seen anything like that....also the scenery was unreal. That restaurant that the girl flew the food up too in the last episode was unreal ...... I told the wife I'd be afraid to eat there for fear the building would fall off the mountain (glacier?) I also would like to see the menu prices for a place like that.
Definitely was interesting even though it’s about as far removed from “mainstream” farming as you can get. Their first episode was rough but got steadily better IMO. I was amazed at the size of the vegetables that 24 hrs of sunlight can make.
The Boyd farm ....... I don't know where to begin. From the start where the kid was shooting ether in the tractor exhaust, then about ran over himself jump stating it ....... to dad dancing on the scale when he completed a bean harvest, that if it made 25 bpa, I would be surprised. It also would be a cold day in hell before I let someone take a picture in the grain tank if I couldn't set a combine to clean up the bean sample more than that. And then ................ go buy a neighboring 900 acres! There were just too many things wrong with this segment, I found it unbelievable.
IMO a very poor choice to showcase. In defense of the production company, they’re a bunch of city folk from LA who are about as far remover from our profession as possible. So when they were casting in 2017, they had no clue between a good farmer and bad farmer. But he was black and he does speak well on TV. However they quickly learned what a mistake he was and I think that was a reason his part in the show was really minimized. I did have a huge problem in the finale where he’s shown preaching in church for the sole reason to convince his son to farm. That was real low IMO.
And I imagine it’s pretty hard to set a combine properly when you’re harvesting more pigweed than soybeans...
Does anyone know if there is going to be another one next year or not.... and if there is, will it be the same farmers?
History has not let the production company know if they want a season 2 or not yet. IMO it’s looking really doubtful. Ratings were disappointing ranging anywhere from 15th to 71st on Thursday night cable. However we were going up against the NFL Draft, the release of the new Avengers movie and NBA Playoffs. But History has been real funny about this show the whole time. It took them forever to green light it and they put no effort into promoting it. They actually announced it only 2.5 weeks before it premiered. They showed the exact same commercial for it throughout. They have been completely secretive about any of their plans for it. A camera crew was actually on our farm for 5 days a month ago. They filmed enough to make the first episode of Season 2. But who knows if it’ll ever air.
We would love to do a second season. We really enjoyed being able to showcase the profession we’re so passionate about. The amount of positive feedback we got, especially from those not involved in agriculture, was overwhelming. So many people told us they learned SO much from watching the show. Which was one of our biggest goals with it.
I know a lot on AgTalk really didn’t care much for it because they felt it was overdramatized. And that’s fine. But I know in regards to our farm, they really didn’t amp up the drama very much at all. At least not near as much as they could have. They played up about the disagreement between my wife and I about the land. And the time she went off in the tractor
(supposedly about me and the land
) she was really going off on the camera guy who pissed her off. But there was so much more that happened to us last year that they just didn’t have the time to show. Like when we picked cotton 26 hrs straight on the last episode, I had to take my belt off at 3AM to hold a piece of the height sensor on the cotton picker together just so we could finish!
““The American Farm"
