‘We’re Getting so Far Away from the Land’: Disrupting the Traditional Rural Literacy Myth through Ohio Farm Stories

Abstract

The Ohio Farm Stories (OFS) project began with a grant from the Ohio Humanities Council with a goal of collecting and showcasing narratives that focus on family farm life and the ways in which agriculture has and continues to shape lives and local Ohio communities. Integral to these narratives are ideas of how farming practices and values have evolved to meet societal demands in the 21^st century. This article situates OFS research within Royster and Kirsch’s (2012) three-step inquiry framework, layered with a discussion of what is often understood as traditional rural literacy within the context of public memory. Two OFS video montages are included within the article, so that readers might listen ‘deeply, reflexively, and multisensibly’ (20) to the words and images of the project. These words and images evoke questions regarding myth, education, agriculture, and societal change. The article closes with a discussion of how the rhetoric of farming disrupts the rural literacy myth and positions farmers as powerful advocates in shaping the future as well as future understandings of where and how our nation’s food sources are grown and harvested.