Composer and graduate student, David Cabrera, created a musical composition around the experience of a farm family in Ohio. His music highlights the stress and joy of farm life, from quiet mornings as the sun rise to the long days harvesting crops before the rain falls. Cabrera shares his process in this video.
The inspiration for David's creation is a story about a fictional Ohio farm family, below. Themes of family, tradition, and love of nature weave throughout the composition punctuated by the stress from uncertainty, extreme weather, farm expenses, and pricing fluctuations that strain a farmer's patience. After harvest, a sense of community as families gather to celebrate. The synesthesia video, created by KX Animator, Nick Biere, highlights the delicate balance between peaceful mornings and long days of work.
Marc and Kady are fourth generation corn farmers. The land Marc and his family have been farming was purchased by his great-grandfather, Amos, in 1918 when he started planting seed corn during the shortage in the state. While farming is a tough job, Marc likes being out in the tractor, working the land that the other men in his family have cultivated for decades.
He likes the quiet mornings, the ruffling of the chickens as they start to emerge from the hen house, walking up the hill with his wife and two kids, throwing a stick for the dog, and swimming in their little pond. The pond, ringed with cattails and reedy grasses, sits just across the driveway from their white farmhouse with a silver tin roof that announces every drop of water during a gentle spring rain. Bees bounce from one flower to another, with legs full of pollen.
When it’s not time to bring the corn in, with the harvester running into the night to get the last stalk of corn before the storms hit, Marc and Kady like to sit on the porch in a rocker to enjoy the sunset. They watch the kids run around with the dog in a patch of grass under the two apple trees planted by his grandfather. Their house is just down the road from the fields that hold the promise of their future in the little green shoots just poking up from the ground.
They love their life on the farm. They know the community will come together when a family needs help, bringing casseroles and baked goods to your home. The neighbors showed up to bring the corn in the year Marc’s grandfather broke his arm. They treasure the comfort of a small town, where friends greet them at the local seed supplier and the cashier at Tractor Supply reminds Kady to pick up more dusting powder for the chickens. And they both smile when they pass the ice cream shop on Bennett Avenue, the first place Kady noticed Marc back in high school.
But some days are long and tiring. There are trucks to repair, leasing payments for the extra land Marc rents, and fertilizer to buy. The last three years of farming have been the hardest for Marc and his father, who still helps Marc during the busy season. Two years ago, unprecedented rains saturated their soil, drowning most of their field in ponds of muddy water, which delayed the late April planting of their corn. Even though they waited until June 15, when most of the fields were starting to dry up, they knew their yield would be lower and their narrow profit margin was getting even smaller.
Every year, Marc and his father walk through their rows of corn throughout the season to scouting their plants for discoloration, which might signal a nutrition issue. And, once the ears come on, Marc looks for ear rots and insect infestations, which affects the quality rating when they go to sell.
Marc started planting soybeans about 7 years back, to add another cash crop to their farm and improve soil quality by not planting corn after corn each season. In 2018, when the hope was that the soybean harvest would save the farm from what was sure to be a dismal corn crop after all the rains, the continued trade war with China threatened to erase what little profit their farm would make this year. Marc’s soybeans from last year still sit in a storage silo at the local grain co-op, but he was out in the planter, sowing soybean seeds again, hoping that his government and China could reach an agreement before the loan payment was due at the bank.
It’s almost harvest time. The end of the season has been dry, which bodes well for his corn to finish drying. There’s a fine line between too wet and too dry for his soybeans. The right amount of moisture means minimal price discounts and yield reductions when he markets his grain at the co-op. The corn looks good this year, but it will come down to the price he gets at the grain elevator. Commodity prices for soybeans are still low and the sluggish economy means less demand for Marc’s corn and soybeans. It’s a roller coaster ride from planting to growing to harvest, with prayers for rain at the right time and heat when the plants need it most.
His son is old enough now to help around the farm, and his daughter just joined a swim team. Kady started a new business growing and selling flowers to the local community, hosting bouquet parties to earn a little extra income to put towards the farm. The kids help her check the flowers and cut stems for her events. There’s a potluck at the Danver’s farm across town on Saturday. Everyone will be there. There will be talk of GPS systems and self-driving tractors, anticipation of the fall festival coming up in a few weeks, and kids jumping off hay bales and cooking hot dogs on the bonfire.
Another year of farming is over, and the hopes of a new season lie in the decaying stalks scattered on their family fields, adding nutrients that will feed the next crop. It’s a tough life on the farm, but Marc and Kady can’t imagine raising their kids anywhere else.
David Cabrera, originally from Bogota, Columbia, graduate student in the School of Music at The Ohio State University. David received his Master of Music Composition from OSU and is now studying for his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition.
David’s musical style is best described as Contemporary 20th/21st or classical/concert music. Some of his musical inspiration includes Bartok, Ravel, and Debussy. After graduation, David intends to support his wife and 8-year-old son by making a living as a composer. You can find more of David’s work here.
Header image by Rachel Nickerson on Unsplash.
