A Farmer by Blood: The Life Story of Wade
"There’s all kinds of stories to be told. Ten percent of it’s truth, and the rest of it is whatever."
This is the life story of Wade Ferrell, a farmer in Southwest Virginia. He is part of a community of farmers that is dying out all over the United States, small-scale farmers who live and work on the same land that their families have tended for generations. Wade and his mother still reside on their land, but their survival is thwarted daily by the encroaching presence of agribusiness and by governmental regulations on their farms.
I was drawn to interview Wade because his personal history is very similar to that of my father's family. As Wade invited me into his home and shared some of his life stories with me, I was taken by his struggle to survive as a small-scale farmer in Virginia. I was also overwhelmed by the responsibility of representing to others the stories he had told to me. I hope that in these pages you can experience the fascinating and awe-inspiring stories of Wade, and sense the terrifying but rewarding nature of shaping someone's else's life history into this form.
Excerpts from the First Interview
Excerpts from the Second Interview