It's quite a literal ballad, but some people don't catch that it's told from the point of view of a man whose wife has died. He's lost his wife and a horse in the same storm, has now lost a corn crop, and is prepared for his own death.
The lines "Gonna leave sodbustin' behind / Get these hard times ... out of our minds" has always struck me in a way that 400 pages of Grapes of Wrath could not.