The Witness of Combines is written with simple, poetic dignity and a savvy for the land that can only come from having been raised up in it with eyes wide open.

Meyers tells stories with precision and joy. He understands how the rhythms of the land bind farmers, give them hope and purpose.

His memories of childhood remind one of the writing of E. B. White, another practical man who wrote many essays about the economies of daily life. In The Witness of Combines we observe Meyers as he discards chaff from wheat yet also learns to live side by side with others.

Meyers writes with a sober reverence and respect for his subjects and for language. Deeply felt, strikingly perceptive, and stunningly written, The Witness of Combines resonates with the wisdom and insight of a work no less than a lifetime in the making.

Meyers is an author whose storytelling skills will captivate all readers as he recollects farming and rural life in Minnesota.

Meyers’ language is always compelling, rising as it does from the pulpit, from books and folk, and from the land itself. The Witness of Combines is indeed a requiem, but it is also a gift-to readers who have lost their sense of place or who have never had the good luck to have one. And it is a warning, as Meyers sees support withdrawn-by financial institutions that insist on profit at the expense of the environment, by communities who have lost their respect for their culture and land, and especially by the churches that must, in Meyers’ words, ‘move beyond the simple tragedy of environmental and communial degradation, the tragedy that not only mere individual lives, but all life, life itself, may be harmed by our existence.

A joy to read.

This is an unforgettable book, a memoir of dignity, beauty and life. In its intimacy and in its telling it is superbly vivid and elegant.

Perceptive and lyrical, The Witness of Combines neatly illustrates the dual nature of his formidable talent. Meyers writes with a clarity and lyricism that’s at times stunning. His beautifully crafted memoir is a book no less than a lifetime in the making.

Wind, weeds, and worries are the lot of the small farmer, and this memoir of a Minnesota childhood doesn’t glamorize the details. These essays pay tribute to his parents’ diligence, honesty, and selflessness. They also affirm the compensation of farm life-neighborhood solidarity in the face of calamity, children, and parents getting to know one another as they work side by side, and the intimate connection to the physical world. He writes tenderly of the fleeting beauty of baby chicks, wryly of getting stuck in a snowdrift or of hurrying to sweep flies off the porch just before the company arrived. Browsers should find healthy pickings in this little garden.

The Witness of Combines is without doubt the best farm memoir I’ve read since Ben Logan’s ‘The Land Remembers’ blew everyone away back in the early 1970s.

These lyrical pages could be variously described as memoir, regional history, short story, essay, or prose poetry. They are all of those things. And this collection of 23 chapters has an overall impact that is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The Witness of Combines is something far more than personal reminiscence, more than a nostalgic look at a way of life that is passing into history.

His dedication to the land, the family farming life, and commitment to chronicling it all is what makes The Witness of Combines a worthy book.

This is a book I highly recommend. It is a book about one family, about rural Minnesota, and a parable about life anywhere at the same time.