Merry Wanderer of the Night:
agriculture

Leif Reads is a monthly feature I work on with Aths of Reading on a Rainy Day. Each month we choose a book that covers an environmental topic and discuss these topics and the book.

I've really enjoyed reading Coop this month because it's fitting in nicely with a long term comic I'm working on about sustainable agriculture. If you haven't noticed I've been thinking a lot about the disconnect that has happened between Americans and their food. While it's great that Michael Perry is able to live on his family's farm and teach his children about how food is grown and made I'm starting to realize that most people have never even set foot on a farm. A couple of weekends ago I went to an organic farm to do some volunteer work through an Iowa City organization called Local Foods Connection. Even though I grew up on a farm and around agriculture this farm was in a completely different league. I was amazed by the variety of produce they grew and the methods they used. The farm I visited started everything in a greenhouse and then moved it to a field.

If you have the ability to visit a farm or do some work with a farmer I would encourage you to do so. Next time you're at a farmer's market talk to the farmers there and find out what methods they use to grow their produce. It saddens me when I hear people talk about how lettuce comes from the bag. They don't realize that the lettuce in their bag was grown in Mexico and shipped to a plant where it was bagged and then shipped to their grocery store. They don't realize that the food they're putting in their mouths has gone through miles and miles of travel to reach them. They have no idea who is on the other side of that lettuce.

Even if you're not into gardening, visiting farms or farmer's markets, you might find it fruitful to grow a little something. I don't have my own yard but we're working on growing some things on our patio. Even if you don't have the option to do that, if you live in an apartment with one window you too can grow something. Jason and I are growing coneflowers, sunflowers, basil, and a few other things on our kitchen counter. It's set by a window and we water it every once in awhile. We planted all of these things just a few weeks ago and as you can see they are growing like crazy. If nothing else it's an exercise in understanding. Children often grow something small as part of their science classes in elementary school, but adults can learn from growing a flower in their kitchen to. It will help you understand that everything starts somewhere, even the book I'm reading came from a tree.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Leif Reads is a monthly feature I work on with Aths of Reading on a Rainy Day. Each month we choose a book that covers an environmental topic and discuss these topics and the book.

This month we're talking about Michael Perry's Coop, the story of his year working on his parents' old farm with his wife, daughter, and baby on the way. The book isn't overtly environmental, but I think it's a little bit more accessible than some of the other books Aths and I have read for this project. And that is of course because Coop is a story with characters and problems--not that the other two books we read were not-- but I'll just say I was able to read Coop for over an hour last night and didn't feel tired at all.

In the first third of the book Perry really seems to outline the differences between his childhood and the present. Similarly to the graphic novel Essex County, Michael Perry's viewpoint works well for all readers because he talks about leaving the farm and coming back. He has lived both lives. Or at least it works well for me since that has in some ways been my own experience in life. The childhood he describes is truly from another time, when children were always expected to do chores at home and not everyone had a TV. Technology was something special and strange. It wasn't a given. I especially liked the passage about an old stove his parents had in their house:

"A neighbor came to help with the lifting, and once the stove was reassembled upstairs, its squat bulk anchored the entire first floor. Mom cleaned it up and rubbed it down with blacking, and although the shiny bits were dimmed and pitted, they did take a polish, and the blue Monarch logo still scrolled beautifully across the white porcelain enameling of the oven door. She rarely baked in the stove, but we often came in from wood-gathering expeditions to the scent of smoked ham and vegetables in a cast iron pan that had percolated on the stovetop all day long, and as we ate, our caps and mittens dried in the warming ovens flanking the central stovepipe and its butterfly damper, which reminded me loosely of the Batman logo. On cold school mornings, we tussled to see how many of us could plant our hindquarters on the warm oven door." (22)

While I think this passage is just nice in general, good images and language, I think it shows how differently people used to think about things like gathering wood, heating a stove, and so on. It was just a normal way of life. But now we have technology to do a lot of these things for us which distances us from our lives. We don't think about where the warmth of our homes comes from or where our food comes from. And while this technology is great, I think it has mentally made us a little complacent.

That seems to be what Coop is really about so far. Stepping back in time with your family and trying to live a different way. I'll be interested to see what else we can pull out of this book to understand the environmental aspects of farming Perry experiences.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

I picked up Memory of Trees for no other reason than the subtitle A Daughter's Story of a Family Farm. I love reading about farms and agriculture, but it's rare that I see a story from the point of view of a daughter. I was especially intrigued because that is what I mostly write about-- Iowa agriculture from a daughter's point of view. Gayla Marty writes about her family's Minnesota farm during the sixties and seventies. She watches as the farms around her become more industrial and watches her own family's farm come to an end. She punctuates the end of each section with a little vignette on a tree from her life. The book is nonfiction, but its really poetry.

"North, east, south, west. North is the pasture behind the barn and the lane along the fence that leads the cows to the woods. East are the railroad tracks and highway. South is town, three miles away. You can see the white towers of the mill across the swamp and fields. West is Gramma's house, which is also Uncle and Auntie's; just beyond it is the woodshed, then the orchard, then the creek flowing under the road into the swamp. In springtime the creek is swollen, the swamp turns into a lake a quarter mile wide" (4).

I love stories about the Midwest but I never see them and I certainly never see them done well. Marty captures the essence of rural Midwest life so well it almost brought me to tears. I've always wanted a book that showed me my life and this was it. The one book that really captured it all for me. I had an extremely intense connection with this book because Marty was able to get the time and place of her story exactly right. By the end of the book I felt like I grew up with her.

Her exploration of place goes beyond the Midwest to farms in Switzerland and Tanzania where she traveled late in high school and early in college. She sees everything through the eyes of a farmer's daughter, and because I shared that bond with her I felt like I saw these places in the most realistic way.

There were a few issues. I thought the book was a little too slow in parts, although overall I thought the pacing was right on and the slowness fit well with the location. Most of my other problems were with Marty's decisions, which have nothing to do with the writing and really nothing to do with her either. It was more about me projecting my own desires onto her life.

This is a book I seem to be recommending to everyone lately even though I have a feeling not everyone will love it. If you're a farmer's daughter though, and you love that about yourself, I really think this is a must read.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.