Butterfingers and Bullshit
Farming Between Hollywood's Lies and Instagram's Filters
Dennis Quaid sold me a bag of bullshit about farming, and I’m still mad about it.
It started with "At Any Price"—Quaid’s laughably tragic attempt at playing a seed dealer, landing about as close to reality as a drunkard spraying into a headwind.
Watching it feels like agricultural self-flagellation, a painful reminder of how outsiders see us versus the messy, grease-stained reality we live every day.
Picture this: A hotshot seed salesman covering seven Illinois counties, rolling up in a W. Bush-era Chevy Impala like he’s hawking life insurance door-to-door instead of peddling corn genetics.
A man spraying his fields with the dead-eyed focus of a mannequin, oblivious to the fact that his sprayer isn’t spraying and his boom is dragging through the soybeans like he’s giving them a mechanical buzzcut.
He’s either the worst operator east of the Mississippi or some kind of ag-sales cult leader, rolling up to seed deals with an Igloo cooler stuffed with Butterfingers like he’s handing out communion wafers.
You want to talk about farming?
Let’s talk about how the stink clings to you after 16 hours in a tractor or how your mind folds reality in on itself after weeks of harvest isolation. It’s frostbitten fingers fumbling with bolts while a wind that cuts to the bone howls across an empty field.
The quiet, soul-crushing drive home? Nobody’s filming that for a farm-to-table documentary.
Hollywood’s seed baron wouldn’t last a week out here.
Maybe next time, he’ll roll up with a Yeti full of Capri Suns to really lock in the faithful.
No way this guy’s the seed leader in seven counties.
I’ve known some sketchy seed slingers in my day—the kind who’d sell you Roundup Ready beans with a “Save the Bees” bumper sticker slapped on their truck—but even they knew better than to show up to a farmer’s yard in a sedan.
That's like showing up to a gunfight with a potato peeler.
The thing is, Hollywood can't even get the basic shit right...
Reminds me of last weekend in Watertown, wedged into the stands, watching my 19-year-old grind through the NAHL meat market.
The guy beside me, reeking of Michelob Ultra and regret, keeps rubbernecking my notebook like it’s tomorrow’s corn futures. By the third intermission, his curiosity vibrates harder than a snowmobile snagged on barbed wire.
Finally leans over—I swear this is true as frostbite—and asks if I'm some kind of scout.
"No, man," I tell him, flipping a page. "I'm a farmer."
The silence between us grows like cover crop in a wet September. He's probably wondering what kind of farmer spends Saturday nights taking notes at a junior hockey game instead of doing whatever he imagines farmers do in winter.
Maybe he’s picturing me out in a field somewhere, evaluating defensive positioning with the same focus I’d use to spot soybean aphids.
It’s also possible he’s too drunk to remember his question.
That's the thing about farming these days—everyone's got their notion of what it should look like.
Hollywood wants Dennis Quaid in a plaid shirt, handing out Butterfingers.
Corporate ag wants aerial footage and golden sunsets.
Instagram wants aesthetic lighting and grow towers.
Meanwhile, real farmers are twisted sideways in cabs, keeping half-million-dollar equipment from self-destructing while juggling loans, family, and 27 phone calls before noon—each demanding a piece of you.
But it’s not the physical labor that breaks you anymore.
It’s the mental gymnastics.
Here's the thing that really chaps my ass: Corporate ag sees this nonsense and nods along, happy to let Hollywood paint us as either psychopaths or simpletons while they splash drone footage of picturesque farms and perfect fields across their websites.
No in-between.
You're either a murderous seed baron ready to kill for market share, or you're Farmer Joe in overalls, one "gosh darn it" away from being a living stereotype.
Meanwhile, people rant about monocropping, but seriously—who even does this?
Every farmer I know rotates crops. Easy, Adam… story for another time.
Like somehow, Monsanto's genetic tinkering is responsible for my hometown’s inability to field a football team anymore or why the only growth industry in rural America is cooking meth.
They're all missing the human element—the flesh, blood, and bone-deep exhaustion from watching your community dissolve like morning frost under a corporate sun.
You see it in most ag marketing. It’s all golden sunsets and multi-generational success stories, carefully edited to hide the ghost towns and meth shacks that tell the real story.
Their idea of agricultural diversity? A rainbow of tractor models—all from the same brand.
Then flip over to Hollywood, where every farmer is one bad corn future away from a full-blown meltdown, just a scene shy of helping their sociopathic son bury a rival in the back forty to secure seed supremacy.
Dennis Quaid in a Chevy Impala? That’s like casting McConaughey as a coal miner—rub some grease on him and call it authenticity.
These portrayals only highlight how untethered they are from reality.
The truth? It’s in the spaces between.
Real farming stories reek of diesel and broken dreams. They taste like shitty tequila and swallowed pride. They echo with the sound of auction gavels and young men wearing their dead grandfathers’ work shirts—the closest they’ll ever get to working the family land.
And here’s what cements that arena-food aftertaste in your mouth.
While Hollywood spins its fantasy and social media polishes its fiction, I’m in the metal bleachers, nursing a shoulder wrecked from forty years of looking back, watching my kid chase his future on South Dakota ice and scribbling notes on the slow death of small towns between whistles.
The guy who thought I was a scout is slumped against the plexiglass, a string of drool frozen to the surface, propped up by a heap of empty Mich Ultra cans.
Meanwhile, I wonder if Dennis Quaid ever sat in a cold rink on a Saturday night, wrestling with how to tell stories that taste more Midwest than Coast.
During intermission, I’m sitting at one of those school cafeteria-style plastic tables—bright and cheerful, like Instagram’s version of farming—eating a hot dog from God knows where. It’s funny how we’ve turned food into a photo op, more concerned with perfect angles than the story behind the meal.
Phone eats first.
While Hollywood spins its fantasy, a new crop of ag influencers polishes its fiction.
I nearly choke when I scroll past one of her posts: Miss “House of Green.” You’ve seen her type—the ag influencers turning farming into a lifestyle brand, where dirt looks like an accessory and every harvest feels curated for the grid.
She’s out there, smiling in front of grow towers, preaching about “free USDA money” like it’s just waiting for anyone with a camera and a Canva subscription.
Her version of farming fits neatly between filters and hashtags.
Ours leaves hydraulic fluid stains on tax returns.
And while she preaches her gospel of event centers and easy money, real farmers sit across from loan officers explaining why last year’s crop didn’t make it—or didn’t fail quite enough to trigger a crop insurance check.
If Dennis Quaid is Hollywood’s seed baron, Miss House of Green is Instagram’s ag czar.
Together, they’ve turned farming into a stage show, leaving the rest of us to wonder what happened to the real story.
“Join the Movement,” her page declares, as if perfectly lit grow towers and curated captions could spark a revolution.
But what movement?
Turning farming into a lifestyle brand?
Selling the idea that agriculture is just vibes, filters, and free money?
What she’s hawking isn’t farming; it’s agricultural cosplay dressed in curated Instagram moments. Her filters don’t show the foreclosure notices or the empty chairs at the coffee shop where farmers used to gather.
Listen, I’m not trying to gatekeep farming.
But when someone builds a brand on hobby-farming fantasies while real farmers watch their communities disappear, and their dreams get sold off, piece by piece, there’s a problem.
Starting a farm isn’t just vibes and aesthetics—it’s blood, sweat, and sleepless nights.
No blueprint or seven-day Substack course can teach that.
Maybe I am jealous.
Not of the orange checkmark or the subscriber count but of the luxury of treating agriculture like a set design for your personal brand story.
Must be nice to “farm” without the weight of generations riding on every decision, without watching your neighbors’ equipment get hauled away, without carrying the cost of those empty Main Streets in your bones.
But here’s what gets me—it’s not about one person’s farm fantasy. It’s about how we’ve let sanitized versions of farming become the story people want to believe while rural America’s truth bleeds out.
You want to see my “event space”? It’s an 8x12 box in the back of a farm shop. The only event happening there is me trying to figure out how to pay for this month’s health insurance. That's the reality they don't post about.
Welcome to real farming—no ring lights required.
(Though I’ll admit to some hypocrisy—I just ordered ring lights after seeing myself on Raw Milk Mama’s podcast looking like Jim Morrison in his boozing years. Judge for yourself at Nourishing Liberty Podcast link).
So here I sit, in the liminal space between years, watching my subscriber count tick up like acres in a BTO's portfolio, wondering if we’re finally ready to tell the raw, unfiltered truth about America’s forgotten counties.
Because while Dennis Quaid polishes his seed empire and corporate ag perfects its drone footage, real farmers are out here fighting for the soul of rural America—one auction, one empty storefront, one lost generation at a time.
That’s the story somebody needs to tell.
Not everyone’s gonna get it.
Too dark, they say—too doom and gloom.
They’d rather have mechanics, names, blueprints. But I’m not writing the farm bill.
The truth is, I’m caught between worlds—watching people play farmer on my phone while sitting in a climate-controlled cab that would’ve had my grandpa laughing his ass off. He didn’t have GPS or auto-steer. Just a sharp eye, steady hands, and a tractor seat so unforgiving it left a permanent impression.
Some days, I’ll geek out over precision planting tech with the same passion I curse the system choking small towns and wannabe farmers.
Want to really confuse people?
Try explaining how you can hate what Big Ag has done while still marveling at a combine slicing through eighty-bushel wheat under a sky bruised with storm clouds.
Yesterday, I drove past a small-town Subway coming back from Watertown.
For sale.
Its green-and-yellow sign stood like a lonely monument, almost apologetic under the winter sky.
Another casualty in a war most people don’t even know exists.
Not that we’re missing much—just one more fake slice of America wrapped in plastic and passed off as the real thing.
One less piece of fake shit in a world already drowning in it.
That’s the messy, human story Hollywood won’t tell.
While Quaid hawks Butterfingers and Instagram farmers curate their filters, real agriculture leaves its marks in hydraulic fluid stains, worn-out boots, and calloused minds.
But the truth?
Like wild oats, once it takes root, it’s a bitch to get rid of. 🌱
Got a story about Hollywood botching farming or your town fading while Instagram influencers play dress-up?
Share this with someone who gets it.
Because modern agriculture’s raw truth isn’t going to tell itself.
Brilliant piece. With some small alterations could be over here in UK. Heck, reading your posts make me realise UK and US farmers have more in common than I had realised.
That's almost exactly how I feel about all the homestead Instas out there. Behind every Homestead Instagram is a spouse bringing home the bacon and the health insurance. I suppose I'm just jealous.