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DISCOVERY '68 TV SHOW 1960s LIFE ON A FAMILY FARM IN MIDWESTERN ILLINOIS XD30722 (1968)

1968 · Short film · 22 min

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Synopsis

This episode of Discovery '68, an ABC-produced TV show for children, focuses on a family farm in the American midwest. The host is Bill Owen. The show opens in Villa Grove in Central Eastern Illinois. Flatlands. A young boy feeds chickens. Cows outside a white barn. Opening credits (0:30–0:53). Pan across rural road / landscape (0:54–1:02). Cow and calf in field. Rows of low crops (1:06). Feeding a cow from a bucket (1:10). Five cows grazing (1:27–1:37). Farming family at the breakfast table (1:38). Mother serves fried eggs to tomboy. Family introductions: father, two sons, two daughters, youngest boy (1:58–2:29). Sons emerge, with farm dog, for chores. Small boy holds old laying hen with white feet. Boy feed hen by hand from chicken feeder. Demonstration of chicken diet: hoe oats, corn, supplement, rocks, grit, oyster shell. A waterer is shown. Zoom on white chicken feet (4:06). Teenage sons hoe soil in vegetable field (4:19) while father provides a tour: potato patch, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumber, sweet potato, muskmelon (look like cantaloupe). They pick and halve a muskmelon, camera zoom on halves (4:59). A cucumber on the vine (5:02–5:30). Host picks tomato in tomato patch, inspects bright red tomato by hand (zoomed) (5:45). Farmer pinches a cabbage head; farmer picks cabbage with handknife (6:30), shows small cabbage heads. Move to potato field (6:48), zoom on digging up hill of potatoes with pitchfork under dead potato vines. Farmer demonstrates cutting eyes of potato…

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Details

Running time
22 minutes
Collection
Ephemeral Films

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