By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

UPPER SANDUSKY, Ohio — In his latest book, The Last of the Husbandmen, author Gene Logsdon depicts the time from the Great Depression, when farmers tilled the fields with plow horses, to the corporate farms and government subsidy programs of the present.
The novel, set in the fictitious village of Gowler, Ohio, shows the complex changes in farming as a livelihood and a way of life. In the book, two friends – one rich by local standards, and the other of more modest means – grow to manhood in a lifelong contest of will and character.
Ben Bump is the son of immigrant parents, while his boyhood friend Emmett Gowler is from the village founder’s affluent family. Logsdon explores different agricultural methods and philosophies that highlight the benefits of Ben’s frugal organic approach over Emmett’s greedy agribusiness.
Logsdon had several messages he wanted to express in the book. One was to make farmers look like real people, he said.
“Farmers are written about mostly in farm magazines and sometimes in the news,” Logsdon said. “In either case, a human being does not usually emerge.”
It is the nature of the news to make oppositions; big farmers versus small farmers; organic versus chemicals, Logsdon said.
“The normal person, including farmers themselves, doesn’t realize that it is not that cut-and-dried,” Logsdon said. “I wanted to show that big farmers and small farmers were often friends. Maybe grudging friends, but they’re neighbors and they get along.
“Some very large farmers around here know that I’m critical of large-scale farms, but we get along pretty good.”
Another thing important to Logsdon was giving women equal attention as farmers. One of the main characters in the book, Ben’s sister, Nan, is a farmer.
“There is still a tendency in farm reporting to pretend that it is a male-dominated occupation when in my experience, that is not so, historically,” he said.
History was also a motivation to write the novel. The fictional village of Gowler was based on the real village of Harpster, Ohio, which had an interesting history.
“Maybe the truth is that all villages have a very interesting history,” Logsdon said. “Harpster in the 1800s, early 1900s, Victorian times – this little village, which is just a spot in the road today, was a very thriving and very wealthy village. It had lots of very wealthy people in it.”
Emmett Gowler’s great-grandfather, who is mentioned in the novel, is based on Dave Harpster, who was like “the wool king of the world at one time, in Harpster,” Logsdon said.
“The main character, Ben, is based partly on me but a whole lot more on two other farmers that I know as close friends of mine,” he said. “Put the combination of the three of us into Ben Bump, then Ben Bump becomes his own person.”
The character of Emmett is based on a friend of Logsdon’s who passed away just before the book was published.
“Emmett ends up admiring Ben Bump a little bit. The real Emmett ended up admiring me a little bit,” Logsdon said. “We had terrible arguments, but we were always friends.
“I suppose he was my main reason for writing a book where the big commercial farmer and the smaller farmer – not necessarily organic, but small – aren’t always enemies. We just get that from what we read.”