 That first summer, they were just a handful, boys and girls from high school and college, volunteers, pioneers, pioneers in a movement which is now nationwide and government-sponsored. But that year, they were only a small group of 500 youngsters who gave up their vacations to work on farms in Vermont. They worked harder than any of them had ever worked before. And then, when the harvest was in, on their way back to town and school, they all got together. This was the moment. By the enterprising spirit with which he has served on the American land, by the determination with which he has performed hard and unaccustomed tasks, by his aid to increase production of the nation's crops in the first year of the war, Nick Shaw has, in the summer of 1942, proved himself a worthy member of the Volunteer Land Court. Yes, that's me, Nick Shaw. I want to tell you my story so you'll see what it's like to go from the city to the farm where you're greener than the grass you cut. It's one of those slow trains that stop at every wood pile. There were a whole bunch of fellows and girls on the same train. I gathered they were all going to work on farms. So other fellows had the same idea, I thought. I'd just seen an ad in some small town newspaper and answered it. Everything seemed to me the only way I could get my lick in and show my brother Tom. The dropping bombs on Hitler wasn't the only thing the Shaw family could do to win the war. The farmer was supposed to pick me up. That man near the wagon was the only one I saw and he didn't look very inviting. Pretty grim as a matter of fact. Could you be Dick Shaw? He asked a big chap that got off the train. Now I knew he was my farmer. I never felt so alone in all my life. I'm Dick Shaw, I said, and he only said I thought I'd get a bigger one. It wasn't what you'd call a warm reception, but I sure got warm even those feed bags around. They weighed a hundred pounds a piece and he expected me to toss them up as if they were basketballs or something. I got the sneaking suspicion that we'd never be buddies. I tried to get a word out of him, but no go. I kept telling myself that it didn't make any difference even if I was five inches shorter than he'd expected me to be. I'd show him. Oh, I finally got him to talk all right, twice. When I said, you've got a nice pig, he thought a while and said, she's a sow. And then I said something about how beautiful the country was. I don't know what he said, but it wasn't much. At any rate, at that point I gave up trying to make conversation. And this was my first day as a farmer. The farmer never got a bit chumier. He just expected me to know my way around by instinct, I guess, because he never bothered to show me. And if he did, and I didn't get it right the first time, he looked as if he thought I had the IQ of a low-grade idiot. Once he let me try to milk a cow. I don't know why, but ever since I was a kid, I wanted to milk. Someone had told me it's like playing scales on the piano. Old Sauerpus never said a word. But after that once, I was permanently reduced to holding the lantern for him while he worked. And was I sore? And the manure? Oh, it was important, and I knew what you did with it. But I definitely didn't know there was so much of it. And it was such hard work. And all the time, I not only had to learn how to do all these things I'd never done, but I had to buck the boss and keep him from throwing me off his place. I'm not licked yet. I kept telling myself, I'll get the hang of it. Give me time. I've only been at it three days. Just give me a chance. Old Sauerpus was much nicer to the horses and the calves than he ever was to me. I was so worked up about the whole business, I just didn't have any appetite. I decided I was going to show them. I was going to show them that I could milk, that all I needed was a little practice and I'd be as good as the next guy. Dinner didn't taste so good anyway. I had to wait till the 645 pulled in and that's a long wait when you felt like I did. I was honestly hip with this farm idea. Some bust I turned out to be, and his mother going to have herself a good laugh. Helping the war effort, I told her. You got fired in less than a week, she'll tell me. The station agent was saying something about the land core. The land core. Hold this bag for me. I kept thinking, after all, I'm willing and not dumb. If you set your mind on it, you can learn anything. I knew working on a farm was as important to winning the war as working in a factory or flying planes. Old Sauerpus hadn't given me a chance. Maybe this was it. Maybe here they'd help me learn how you do things on a farm. I heard the old man say he needed someone bad. And I kept my fingers crossed hoping he meant me. It was worth trying. If it didn't work out, I could still get that train back to the city. Larry was very nice and friendly, even though he didn't know me from Adam. You go ahead and try, he told me. Mr. Perry, he said, just need someone. Ask him. And the first thing I heard was that the milking machine had broken down. I'd never seen a milking machine before in my life. The old man didn't have much time for me. The cows were waiting. I wanted to tell him all the reasons why I had to work on a farm. Mr. Perry was so busy he wouldn't listen to me. The only thing he said was, if you're any good, sit down and go to work. OK, then I'd show them. This time it had to work. Say, I practically couldn't look at milk. I'd milk three cows, alone, all by myself. And I couldn't eat. I was tired, and I didn't feel yet that I belonged. It's like that at first. First I remembered that I finally knew how to milk, that I could do it. It had made me feel good. But then I started to worry about Farmer Perry. Maybe he'd expect me to do all kinds of things. And then in a week he'd tell me to go home to mother. It wasn't only mother, but boys in the team who said I was just playing nuts to go. And Tom, who always said the kid's getting too big for his breaches. I had no idea how strange it is to grip a plow for the first time. A wonderful feeling it gives you. You've got to be steady on your feet and you've got to have foresight to see the next burrow ahead and try to cut it clean. Uncle Perry turned out to be a prince, master of his little kingdom and the land he loved. He understood boys and knew you couldn't learn to run a plow on the sidewalks of the city. So he taught us, me and Barbara, how to plow. She had a feeling for farm work, picked it up right away. I realized it wasn't just me and Barbara doing this work for the first time, but hundreds of us from towns and cities, where you think of a farmer as merely the chap who grows the food you eat. Friends of boys and girls, not just in Vermont, but in every state of the Union, harvesting for the first time, days when the fields could be left alone, we'd cut wood and then the logs must be stacked. A quart of wood is eight feet long, four feet high and four feet wide. Uncle Perry told us. Good farmers, he said, stack it neatly like bricks so the wet moisture can't get through. We tried to show him we were good farmers. Then you light a fire with one of the logs from one of the trees you felled yourself. Somehow it burns differently. And the water at heat feels lots better. And that card from Jack saying he wanted me to come and play golf with him, chasing a ball when there's a war to be won and a man's work to do. Next year, I thought I'll make Jack come up here with me. Instead of answering him, I decided to send him some snapshots. They weren't very good and I couldn't make up my mind which to send because I took most of them myself. We had an awful lot of fun. First, me working. Well, maybe working isn't quite the name for it. And then Barbara. She's beautiful, isn't she? This was the cow that made history. She's the first one I ever milked. This is my first boss. I don't know why I ever wasted a film on him. This was taking at Thompson's Corners at the Barn Dance. That's me over there and back. This is the time we went to the county fair. The fair's over there to the right. Then we had some amateur tumbling. Some of the boys were real good too. This is the 4-H club orchestra. And this. Uncle Perry took of us one Sunday after church. By the end of August, the Perry kitchen was home for me. And boy, does farming build up your appetite. How different from that first evening. How friendly to sit with the Perrys and Barbara after a hard day's work. And this land was now mine, just as I was part of it. Mother wrote that I ought to have a couple of weeks off before going back to school to rest up, she said. She didn't know we'd had a frost the night before, that we had to get our corn in the next day or lose the summer's work. When I got to the store one morning, there was a phone call from her. She didn't realize that if I left, it meant that Uncle Perry and Ma and Barbara would have to do the whole job alone. Because every farm needed hands and neighbors had to do their own work, just didn't have time to pitch in and help. She didn't know that I felt I couldn't just go off like that and leave my corn, which I'd plowed and sowed and weeded, for someone else to harvest. Now have a vacation when I go back to school, I told her. I haven't got time to take a vacation now. Frost hadn't been heavy and just nipped the corn. But a couple of more nights with a heavier frost, that would be too bad. We had to cut our corn by hand. The corn cutter was broken and we couldn't get new parts. The steel is going into guns and there just aren't enough replacements for farm machinery. The short side is hard on your fingers and wrists. You've got to cut in a straight position and you get an awful crick in your back. And it's got to be finished. No time to waste. Heavier frosts are coming and they could ruin our rich golden corn. We worked against time early and late for this. Uncle Perry and Ma and Barbara and me. Then Barbara fed the corn into the chopper where all the leaves and kernels are ground to a wet mash. Blown into the silo stored for cattle feed during the winter. I was up in the silo where the wet mash settles on you like a lukewarm blizzard. Gets into your hair, your eyes, and up your nose. You can't see and you can't breathe and it just keeps coming down on you as if it'll never stop. Yes, it's hard work, some of it, but it's worthwhile. Makes you feel good to know you can do your share. And of course it's not all work. And it's not the work you remember. It's the joy of living on the land. I'll be back there again. Back at work as one of the thousands of fellas and girls who signed up with the Victory Farm volunteers all over the country. I'll be back because I know now what America really means. The beginning of Uncle Sam's long road to victory needs the Navy, needs the Marine Corps, needs the Air Corps, needs the tank, needs the U.S. Croc Corps. Join the Victory Farm volunteer. Join now. See your school principal or ask your county agent.