You ask me what it’s like to run a farm.
robert kimm
(One day I’m drivinf along a
mile south of here, and
espy an “abandoned” farm:
“See on: Once the farmer
goes, the farmgoes.
The farmer’s the center
of the farm.”)
It’s a tradition of
farming going back 150 years:
The first ones, tough sort
Hessian immigrants start
ing big farms in Iowa (1870s),
then, once that’s over-
settled, heading out to the
Great Northwest by covered
wagon, peg-leg + two families
of children,
and starting farms again, on
virgin railroad land.
It’s having an American-born
Grandfather who was raised
in a German-speaking household,
never learned English till
1st grade in school, farmed his
whole adult life (1900-1963.)
-- It’s having ten acres of pasture,
gardens, + woods in the 1980s,
+ slaughtering, just like they did
before you -- getting to know
hot entrails real well.
-- It’s knowing the farm-economy
the farm-order.
-- It’s busting holes in the ice in
the water-buckets from Dec. to
March.
-- It’s surviving blizzards on the
ridge, realizing the ranch
house is just a ship, rearing and
heaving in a frothy sea-air-
wind-earth milieu.
