The old red barn on the farm where I grew up
As long as it stands, the old red barn will be the anchor on our Minnesota family farm. My recent visit was the first time I had returned since my father died more than two years ago. Now the land has been split into two parts, owned by my youngest and oldest brothers. The old square farmhouse with peeling white paint has been torn down and in its place is a beautiful new home with lots of windows looking out on the land, spiffy modern appliances, and even air conditioning.
I am not a sentimental person, so I had no qualms about seeing the new house, and I looked forward with eager anticipation to the changes and improvements that my brother and his wife made to my old childhood stomping grounds. I was not disappointed. At first I was just a tiny bit disoriented because the new house — while sited in the same spot as our old one — has a larger footprint and extends farther to the west. It took me a minute to figure out where the old smokehouse had stood, to identify the stump of what had been the tree with the tire swing, and to recognize the trees still standing next to the garage. (The old garage has also been replaced by a new, larger one.) Other trees have grown even taller than my memory of them. But once I was reoriented, everything felt familiar and comfortable and welcoming. I realized that, for me, the farm was not the physical buildings, but rather the land, the landscape and its seasonal changes, family ties and memories, and the rhythm of daily farm life. Those things endure and I love them just as much now. My visit was a homecoming.
Old barn and new garage
“The eye for beauty is the eye for love.”
— Paul Gruchow, Journal of a Prairie Year
Once again I was struck by the beauty of my childhood home ground.
Fields and woods
“The landscape seemed increasingly to be a succession of lines — the line of hills, the line of trees, the line of reeds, the line of cattails, the line of water . . .”
— Paul Gruchow, Journal of a Prairie Year
One view to the east
One view to the south, with woods and wildflower patch
“Our language does not distinguish green from green. It is one of the ways in which we have declared ourselves to be apart from nature. In nature, there is nothing so impoverished of distinction as simply the color green. There are greens as there are grains of sand, an infinitude of shades and gradations of shades, of intensities and brilliancies. Even one green is not the same green. There is the green of dawn, of high noon, of dusk. There is the green of young life, of maturity, of old age. There is the green of new rain and of long drought. There is the green of vigor, the green of sickness, the green of death. One could devote one’s life to a study of the distinctions in the color green and not yet have learned all there is to know. There is a language in it, a poetry, a music. We have not stopped long enough to hear it.”
— Paul Gruchow, Journal of a Prairie Year
Farm fresh eggs
My brother and his wife are bringing new life to the farm with animals — chickens, dogs, barn cats, pigs, and they rent the pasture to another farmer for grazing cows. While the scale is more of a hobby farm, the animal husbandry and stewardship of the land is as hands on as the farming of years past. Butchering six chickens brought back old memories. I learned that a farm skill like butchering chickens is like riding a bike — you never forget how to do it! Farm-to-table meals are not the rare thing they are in the city!
My brother raises Buff Orpington chickens for meat, and the few hens lay eggs
Watercolor sketch of chickens
Butchering chickens using a chicken plucker to remove the larger feathers.
Chicken on the spit
Cow in the rented pasture. The red ear tags help to repel flies.
Pigs raised for pork
My sister-in-law titled this watercolor sketch “Bacon 2017”
In my Dad’s final years, as he grew frailer, he resisted change. Many things were falling into decrepitude, but changes were deferred for as long as possible so that my father could be in familiar surroundings. Now that he is gone, it is rejuvenating to see my brother’s and his wife’s efforts to remake the farm into a dream home for their own lives. It seems only right to me that they move the farm into modern times. Time to create new memories in this deeply rooted place!
Watercolor sketch of one of the old oak trees on the farm
Watercolor sketch of zinnias in the front garden bed
Thoreau Thursdays (43): Tasting the Fruits of Your Labors
February 9, 2012
“It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
In Washington we have an abundance of blackberries rather than huckleberries.
“The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchasers of them.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
How poor Thoreau would find me, a city dweller, who procures virtually all of my food from supermarket shelves. And while our neighborhood farmers’ markets give us access to locally grown food, we simply buy it with our coins. How rarely do we plant, nurture, harvest and preserve our own food. According to Thoreau, we are missing out on the true flavor of food when we do not grow or pick it with our own hands.
Having grown up on a farm, I still hold a deep appreciation for the hard work that goes into bringing food to the table. I’ve butchered chickens, so I understand the life that was once vibrant in my packaged chicken quarters. I’ve milked a cow by hand, so I remember the source of my glass of milk. I’ve made my own blackberry jam from hand-picked berries, so I can appreciate the work behind a jar received as a gift.
Snapshot of me milking our family's cow in 1972, forty years ago!
Much is lost when we forego laboring with our own hands, for the value of the work is not just the finished product, but also the feelings of artistry, productivity, and self-worth built along the way. And it is true that we savor the end product more when we’ve created it ourselves.
One of my colleagues gives our library staff jars of her homemade blackberry jam each Christmas, and each spoonful bursts with the tastes of summer and Shirley’s shared joy in nature’s abundance. Everything that is in a jar of Shirley’s jam is what Thoreau is alluding to in this week’s quote.
Shirley's jam on breakfast scones
Homemade jam from hand-picked blackberries
Sweet goodness
“The advantage of riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir. When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. But not only health, but education is in the work.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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