Welcome to Megan Memmer's website on Midwest Farming in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a project for English 217/002, Midwestern Literature, at the University of Michigan for winter term 2002. After taking a look in class at numerous novels, poems, and short stories about the Midwestern United States, I became more interested in researching my own family's history and their role as Michigan farmers.
This project is an attempt to research the role of farmers in the Midwest during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using my family as an example of a Midwest farming family, I will discuss Midwest farming in relation to the texts studied in class. Farmers in the United States are having increasing difficulties keeping their farms alive and lucrative; many farms are being sold, turning much of the Midwest farmland into trendy, new subdivisions and strip malls. My father's family, which has resided in the Grass Lake, Michigan community for four generations now, is one of the few remaining families in the community to still have possession of farmland. Although my family no longer farms the land ourselves, it remains a consistent producer of corn, soybeans, and wheat.
If you have questions about this site or would like to contact me, please email me. Enjoy.