a Good Farmer and Me

Monday, June 29, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)

He's growing corn again in the field by my old house.

Been a few years since it was planted last.

The green rockets, pulsing upwards,

Leafy green contrails lolling behind.

All of this regrowth comforts me.

The crops measure linear time

into large non-confrontational cycles.

Always rebounding,

constantly transforming.

A crop rotation is patience.

With only the present picture available

a Good Farmer must envision the layers yet to come.

Without a bird's eye view from the future,

a Good Farmer must still see the salad,

and know it's worth the wait.

There is no nostalgia for a Good Farmer.

no goodbyes,

all season's greetings.

yet increasingly the memory of the Autumn

of My youth,

is so singular

and only grows further away.

FarmersOnly.com: Growing Crops and Lifelong Relationships

Wednesday, January 28, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)

FarmersOnly.com: Cause City Folks Just Don't Get It

That's a lot of eyebrow plucking for a farmer.

I wish I had thought of both the website and tagline, just so I could have written a satirical tale of farmer on farmer action. Alas, reality beat me to it and now I get to shit all over someone else's grand idea. Six of one, half dozen of another.

The basics. I love farmers. As individuals, as a group, as an idea . . . farmers feed us and make this country better. More farmers, less GMO's. Living in the relative country myself, I have the pleasure of knowing a few handful of farmers in and around New England. I can't recall any of them lamenting about farmer-specific love problems, but I appreciate that there may different issues facing farmers in the more wide open spaces of the Midwest.

What I do know is that farmers, on the whole, are White. According to a recent PBS special, today there are only 18,000 Black farmers -- representing less than 1% of all farmers. Personally, I can understand why, as a Black person, one might find it difficult to see working the land as a viable career choice. At the same time, the love of farming extends beyond the injustice of slavery, and losing a minority voice in American food culture is a net loss for everyone. But I digress.