The best I could do is a painting of a farm
Each week Cee of Cee’s Photography challenges bloggers with a fun prompt. This week we’re to share photos with colors that show a harvest or fall in all its glory.
Click here to see more harvest scenes photos, click here.
Above is a bunch of people posing in front of a Hop House, I can’t easily find a definition of Hop House, but found all sorts of other terms like Hoop House and Hip House, which is connected to Hip Hop music. I’m guessing it’s where hop is processed to make beer.
I found some photos of people who worked with hops.
From OSU Special Collections
At the time of writing, OSU’s Special Collections site is undergoing maintenance, hence I can’t get dates as they didn’t include them on Flickr Commons.
OSU Special Collections
![Picking hops [Tasmania]](https://smkelly8.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/picking-hops-aust_c.jpg?w=584)
National Museum of Australia
To see more Sepia Saturday posts inspired by the Hop House, click here.
The Which Way Challenge, that Cee began, has been picked up by the Sonofthebeach69 blogger. The beauty of it is that it’s very free form. You can include images of doors, gates, roads, streets exits, signs, paths, waterways, you name it.
A furrow is a “way”
Painting by Edwin Hopper
Seoul, South Korea
I really miss Miniso and can’t wait for them to open more stores in the US.
I saw Jean Renoir’s The Southerner (1945) described so beautifully on 4 Star Film Fan, that I had to get it. I was curious about how a French director would portray the Old West.
The Southerner begins with Sam Tucker’s old uncle dying in the cotton fields where he’s picking cotton along with Sam, his wife Nona, and Granny. The uncle’s dying words to Sam are that he should get his own land and not work for someone else. This convinces Sam to buy a plot of good land that’s been neglected for years. His boss lays out all the risks inherent in farming on your own and promises Sam, he can always return to work for him. The boss isn’t a villain; he does seem to care about Sam and his family and someone needed to give him a head’s up, because contrary to what I’d learned and seen in films farming is not a sure thing.
Sam packs up his family and belongings on an old jalopy. When they get to the land, they see that the house is a shack that’s one windstorm away from destruction. Sam admits that he should have checked out the house before buying the land, which was when I knew that the outcome for Sam sure wasn’t certain. Sam’s a nice guy and strong. Both he had his wife work hard, but Sam held some romantic notions about farming that gave me pause. He’d forgotten to check on the condition of the well.
The well wasn’t usable so Sam had to beg an ornery neighbor for water. As time goes on, the skinflint neighbor resents Sam more and more. As mean as the neighbor was, he did have a point. Sam and other pioneers should thought out their plans more.
The tensions build as bad luck and naive pelt the Tuckers throughout the film.
Hardworking and always cheerful, Nona is the perfect wife. She soon makes the shack homey and repairs what she can. She keeps the kids clean and happy and usually puts up with Granny’s constant complaints.
Sam’s friend Tim has moved on to the city where he works in a factory and makes a fortune, $7 per day. He offers Sam a job, but Sam envisions the life of a small farmer as his vocation. Often I thought Sam should take his family to the city.
A major threat in these parts is Spring Sickness. Granny’s a Cassandra always harping on about it because several of her children died of it. Caused by poor diet, lacking dairy and produce, Spring Sickness can be lethal. Just as you can’t see a gun on a set in Act One and not have it go off in Act Two, someone was bound to get Spring Sickness because the Tuckers’ diet was mainly fish, coffee and corn mush. Sure enough, Jot, the son who’s about 4, comes down with Spring Sickness and has a massive open sore on his face. The boy is lethargic and may not make it. The kindness of the doctor and a friend of Sam’s helps the Tucker’s obtain milk and veggies. The idea that one can make it on his own in the West is simply not true. It probably ain’t true anywhere. I did think that Renoir would have the boy die. I wasn’t long into the film before I expected disaster and I think sparing us the worse was a shortcoming of The Southerner (both the novel and the film).
Hard times hit repeatedly. Storms beat down the house and the fields, the final one sets the family back to square one.
One of the best lines in the film comes from Tim:
All you farmers is just the same. Gamblers! That’s what you all are, to a man. Year after year you starve yourself to death and hope that some fine day – well, I think you’re loco.
I’d never considered how true this line is. Farmers, especially in the past, were in some cases just as reckless as the people who raced to San Francisco or Australia during the Gold Rushes.
The Southerners is an earnest film that showed me a different side of Western Expansion from what I’m used to. There’s no language that would be a problem for children. There’s a scene with a “lady of easy virtue” in a saloon, but she comes across pretty tame and the banter veils the non-family friendly subject matter.
Japanese farm, Takatori
Ailsa of Where’s My Backpack invites bloggers to post travel photos each week. This time she’s given us “Autumn” for a theme. I’ve gone back to my beloved Japanese hometown for photos of a November afternoon.
To see more autumn photos, click here.
If you want to join the fun, here’s what you should do:
I love the quotations, Ailsa shared this week:
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. – John Muir
Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower. – Albert Camus
Ruined for Life: Phoenix Edition 