dual personalities

Today we celebrate the birthday of John Deere (1804-1886), American blacksmith, inventor and manufacturer, who founded Deere and Company. Deere hailed from Vermont and attended Middlebury College. He moved to Illinois and invented the first commercially successful steel plow in 1837 by fashioning a Scottish steel saw blade into a plow.

(Early John Deere plow, circa 1845, made in Grand Detour, Illinois, displayed at the Henry Ford Museum)

Prior to Deere’s steel plow, most farmers used iron or wooden plows to which the rich Midwestern soil stuck, so they had to be cleaned frequently. The smooth-sided steel plow solved this problem and greatly aided migration into the American Great Plains in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

By 1855, Deere’s factory had sold more than 10,000 such plows. It became known as “The Plow that Broke the Plains” and is commemorated in a historic place marker in Middlebury, Vermont.

Deere & Company ranked No. 84 in the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations.

The John Deere tractor has, of course, become an icon of a certain way of life and has been glorified in many great country songs by the likes of Kenny Chesney, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, and Joe Diffie. But I like this one by Josh Thompson–“Way Out Here”:

(Thompson co-wrote the song with David Lee Murphy and Casey Beathard.)

We won't take a dime if we ain't earned it
When it comes to weight, brother we pull our own
If it's our backwoods way of living you're concerned with
Well you can leave us alone
Cause we're about John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere
Way out here

So let’s toast John Deere tonight and my people Way Out Here.