Line #45 Main/DownOnTheFarm


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Ohio_Farm.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:And that, folks, is the entire state of UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}.]]
3
4	->''"In 1912, a tumbleweed lazily blew across the dusty prairies of Oklahoma on a soft summer breeze, an event long remembered as the only thing ever to happen in the state."''
5	-->-- '''''Literature/OurDumbWorld'''''
6
7	Settings on farms in rural regions are the natural home of the CountryCousin, CountryMouse, DeterminedHomesteader, FarmBoy, FarmersDaughter, HalfWittedHillbilly, and anyone with a HayseedName. Stories set here tend to focus on the [[SliceOfLife day-to-day struggles]] and drama of running and operating a farm -- though an [[NothingExcitingEverHappensHere interruption by the extraordinary]] is not out of the question.
8
9	Farm settings are a fixture of TheCityVsTheCountry plot, where the farm's residents are usually CloserToEarth thanks to the [[MiseryBuildsCharacter character-building]] hard work of plowing and harvesting. Due to the fact that farming was a more common occupation in the past, many works treat this setting with a certain amount of rose-tinted glasses nostalgia. In American media, this often overlaps with SettlingTheFrontier, as taming the land through farming is linked with national ideals of UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny and determined individualism.
10
11	[[{{Xenofiction}} Animal stories]], on the other hand, tend to take a less idealized view, and often use the farm setting as an [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything allegory for something else in human society]].
12
13	In old theatrical cartoons with farm settings, the soundtrack may include {{standard snippet}}s of farm-themed songs like "Old [=MacDonald=] Had a Farm". Almost anywhere, expect [[StockSoundEffects stock barnyard animal noises]]-- squealing pigs, clucking chickens, etc.
14
15	May be adjacent to a small QuirkyTown or an EverytownAmerica or involve SmallTownBoredom.
16
17	SisterTrope to CornyNebraska. Compare {{Arcadia}}, which is an idealistic pre-modern countryside setting. Farms in the rural Midwest are also covered by FlyoverCountry, while the rural South is the DeepSouth or SweetHomeAlabama, but every country has their own version of Down On The Farm. In the southern rural areas, there may be a HillbillyMoonshiner operation hidden in the backwoods. May overlap with PastoralScienceFiction.
18	----
19	!!Examples:
20	[[foldercontrol]]
21	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
22	* Hiromu Arakawa's manga series ''Manga/SilverSpoon'' takes place in Hokkaido (considered the "farming" prefecture in Japan), and is about farm life.
23	* ''Manga/{{Softenni}}'' is set in Hokkaido, and Asuna the main protagonist lives on a farm. Her family cow Hanako wandering loose is a RunningGag.
24	[[/folder]]
25
26	[[folder:Comic Strips]]
27	* ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'': The strip's comical, anthropomorphic cows and chickens inhabit stereotypical farms, portrayed as barns full of hay surrounded by big open fields.
28	[[/folder]]
29
30	[[folder:Film -- Animated]]
31	* ''{{WesternAnimation/Barnyard}}'' is a film that explores the lives of farm animals that act much like humans when the humans aren't looking. Otis, a party animal cow, has to learn to accept the responsibility of looking out for others when one night of irresponsibility leads to the death of his father, Ben, at the hands of the evil coyote Dag and his pack.
32	* ''WesternAnimation/CharlottesWeb'': The story takes place on two different farms; the Arable's and Zuckerman's.
33	* ''WesternAnimation/ChickenRun'' takes place on a chicken farm in rural England. As a parody of GreatEscape films with the chickens as the protagonists, it's not too positive of a portrayal, and the villain is a greedy farmer's wife who wants to mechanize the farm and kill all the (formely egg-laying) hens.
34	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Crac}}'': In the forests of Quebec, a woodsman chops a tree into a rocking chair, which is sold to a farmer. The family use the chair over many years, while bucolic, rural Quebec becomes steadily less bucolic and less rural. All of this is seen from the perspective of the chair.
35	* ''WesternAnimation/DayAndNight'': The film opens with a farm rooster crowing at daybreak, then the camera pulls back and [[FakeOutOpening things get weirder]] as we find out that the farm scene is actually contained within the creature Day.
36	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gumby}}'': (From the 1995 film): Most of the film takes place within a book titled, ''Down on the Farm''. After Gumby and Pokey have fixed everything up, Gumby crosses out the "Down" and replaces it with "Up" on his way back to space.
37	* "WesternAnimation/SwoonerCrooner": Porky Pig is the manager of the "Flockheed Eggcraft Factory", a chicken farm.
38	* ''WesternAnimation/Thumbelina1994'': Thumbelina's home is a farm, but her adventure takes her to several places.
39	* "WesternAnimation/TulipsShallGrow": A boy and a girl in the rural flatlands of Holland.
40	[[/folder]]
41
42	[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
43	* ''Film/{{Babe}}'': The Hoggetts' farm is the main setting of the film. It consists of a field of sheep and a barn with a variety of animals.
44	* Most of ''Film/CityGirl'' takes place on the bucolic Tustine wheat farm. The film is a {{Deconstruction}} of the idea of peaceful, pastoral farm life, as Mr. Tustine is a cruel tyrant who abuses his daughter-in-law Kate, and the farmhands leer at her crudely.
45	* ''Film/GodsOwnCountry'' is set on a sheep farm in [[OopNorth Rural Yorkshire]], and the seasonal tasks and worries of caring for the sheep and the farm's finances serve as a backdrop to the main romance story.
46	* In ''Film/NowAndThen'', grown-up author Sam Albertson, after living in New York for years, describes her home town of Shelby, Indiana as a very safe, uneventful place to live, being small and surrounded by rural land.
47	* ''Film/OneNightInOctober'': The story of Marcos, Kate, Britnee, and Charlie takes place on a farm where they're stalked by a killer dressed up as a scarecrow.
48	* ''Film/OurDailyBread'' is about a CityMouse who goes off to work his wife's uncle's farm, because it is TheGreatDepression and he has no better options. He winds up recruiting a real farmer and various tradesmen to work the farm with him, and they eventually establish a socialist commune.
49	* Paige in ''Film/ThePrinceAndMe'' lives on a Wisconsin dairy farm. Where they race tractors despite having no other reason to own them. '''And still milk cows by hand.'''
50	* ''Film/ASimplePlan'' is set in rural Minnesota. Hank is one of the few college graduates in the town. His brother Jacob wants to buy a farm with his share of the money they found, but Hank thinks he is being ridiculous as neither of them knows anything about farming.
51	* ''Film/TheSoutherner'' is about a poor white family in 1920s Texas, working their ass off over a whole year trying to raise a cotton crop on a piece of river land.
52	* ''Film/{{Tevya}}'', as well as the later adaptation of the same source material ''Film/FiddlerOnTheRoof'', is set in an isolated Ukrainian village, full of bigotry and hate.
53	* Dorothy's Kansas farmyard, with its barns and fenced-in chicken yards from ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' is an iconic example. At the time the original book was written, however, this was [[TruthInTelevision fairly accurate]]. And has become permanently affiliated with Kansas ever since, [[NeverLiveItDown whether they like it or not]].
54	[[/folder]]
55
56	[[folder:Literature]]
57	* ''Literature/AnimalFarm'' takes place on a farm where the farm animals take over and push out the human farmers... then things get dark. An allegory for the history of the Soviet Union.
58	* ''Literature/CharlottesWeb'': Like its animated adaptation, the books takes place on a farm and focuses on the relationship between a pig and a spider that share the same barn.
59	* ''Literature/FarmyardTales'': As the series' name would suggest, it takes place on a farm near a village in England and revolves around the day to day exploits of the farmer, Mrs. Boot as well as her two kids, Poppy and Sam.
60	* PlayedForDrama and not at all idealized in ''Literature/TheGrapesOfWrath''. The story begins on an Oklahoma farm, where the Joad family is driven to poverty by to drought-induced crop failures and mechanization (the arrival of tractors). They travel to California's Central Valley, where the family work as farmworkers, and the remainder of the book focuses on the economic and social precariousness of their work.
61	* ''Literature/TheHuffinPuffExpress'': At one point while the express is going along the tracks, we see it pass by a farm. At another point, it passes a farmer plowing in a field.
62	* The first part of ''Literature/MyAntonia'' takes place on a homestead in newly-settled Nebraska, as the narrator's family helps Antonia's family, new immigrants who have never farmed before, adjust to farming in a new land and climate. Later on the family move to town, but at the end Antonia ends up living on a farm of her own.
63	[[/folder]]
64
65	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
66	* "''Series/GreenAcres'', we are there....! Dun nuh, d-dun nuh, dun dun!" The titular Green Acres is a farm, which the show's CityMouse characters struggle to run.
67	* ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'', of course, which took place in a landscape that looked suspiciously like the [[CaliforniaDoubling perpetually sunny fields of California]]. The story focuses on a DeterminedHomesteader and his family as they expand their farm while dealing with frontier issues.
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Music]]
71	* Music/TimMcGraw's "Down on the Farm," which describes how country boys and girls party on Friday nights.
72	* Music/JohnDenver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" about how the singer would rather have his family, farming life and especially his fiddle above anything else.
73	* Music/OdeToBillyJoe is set on a farm, with characters chopping cotton, baling hay, and plowing fields.
74	[[/folder]]
75
76	[[folder:Theater]]
77	* ''Theatre/BeyondTheHorizon'' offers a particularly grim example, as life on the farm is presented as a trap. Robert hates it and is terrible at it, and hates Ruth for making him do it--he elected to give up a life at sea and stay home on the family farm after he and Ruth fell in love. The farm eventually decays into ruin as Robert and Ruth's life descends into hatred and bitterness.
78	* ''Theatre/TheMusicalOfMusicalsTheMusical'' parodies this in its first musical, "Corn!", whose setting is [[Theatre/SouthPacific "Kansas in August."]] Big Willy sings of being so fond of farming that he's now "in love with a wonderful hoe."
79	* ''Theatre/{{Oklahoma}}'': Set on an Oklahoma farm, and deals with a LoveTriangle involving the opposed factions of farmers and herders.
80	[[/folder]]
81
82	[[folder:Video Games]]
83	* ''VideoGame/AllIsDust2015'': The game is set on the Joad Family Farm, and has you play as the third generation farmer, [[PlayerCharacter Thomas Joad]].
84	* ''VideoGame/NordAndBertCouldntMakeHeadOrTailOfIt'': "Buy the Farm" has you on a traditional farm setting, with locales such as a shed and grain silo, and animals such as horses, cats, dogs, and donkeys. The farm has no inhabitants aside from the animals, and your goal is to fix it up, although you can travel to a nearby market once you find a means of transport. During this level, you do {{literal metaphor}}s like pinning the tail on the donkey, looking a gift horse in the mouth, putting the cart before the horse, and putting your nose to the grindstone.
85	* ''VideoGame/ThanksKillingDay'': The main setting of the game is the family farm where everyone was getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving. The silo is on the other side of a corn maze.
86	[[/folder]]
87
88	[[folder:Western Animation]]
89	* ''WesternAnimation/BackAtTheBarnyard'': Continues the lives and human-like antics of farm animals from the movie ''{{WesternAnimation/Barnyard}}''.
90	* ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'': Jon's [[http://garfield.nfshost.com/1988/01/26/ family farm]] is neighbors with US Acres. The US Acres segments take place almost entirely on a livestock farm with pigs and chickens.
91	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gumby}}'': (From the TV series): Gumby lives on a farm and trying to mechanize the farm [[AIIsACrapshoot always introduces problems]].
92	* ''WesternAnimation/NightmareNed'': In "Canadian Bacon" Ned dreams about his pet pig taking him to live with his pig family on a farm in Canada.
93	* ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'': "Brain Acres" has Pinky, the Brain, and a mutant carrot named Maurice move to a farm to grow Brain's genetically enhanced vegetables.
94	* ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep'': The series takes place on a farm located OopNorth in England, focusing around the antics that the sheep and other farm animals get up to when the farmer's back is turned.
95	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Apparently, Homer Simpson grew up on a farm. His family's old farmhouse becomes important in the episodes "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" and "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy"
96	* ''WesternAnimation/UglyAmericans'': For some reason, in "Treegasm", Wichita, Kansas is depicted as a farm.
97	[[/folder]]

Context Main / DownOnTheFarm