Haymakers: A Chronicle of Five Farm Families

Contents

The H A Y M A K E R S Prologue 3 2Hope and a Future” 19 A Torker’sSqourn inMinnesota 49 Farming E ’ o rever 77 Traditionand Change 109 Blue Silos on the Prairie 139 Epilogue 17s Acknowledgments 183 Notes 187 Index 209 vii viii What is a farm but a chapter in the bible almost? Pull out the weeds, water the plants; blight, rain, insects, sun,-it is mere holy emblem from its first process to the last. R A L P H W A L D O E M E K S O N .Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, 18% ix x The H A Y M A K E R S 1 Mowing There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myselt Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of soundAnd that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (Paleorchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. R O B E R T F R O S T 2 ...