You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. – Henry David Thoreau
I have been working on my stories about farmers and the agricultural industry in Ohio. The farming experiences of the men I spoke to are quite distinct from one other; they included a medium scale corn and soybean producer, a community-supported berry and vegetable farmer, and a chestnut farmer who made a small fortune from the shale oil boom (but who would take chestnuts over oil any day). One common feature of the interviews was the gorgeous bucolic views I was treated to in the course of our conversations. I want to share some pictures of the landscapes, and of the men whose labor livens the land. I attempt to describe them in writing, of course. But my iPhone camera might be more capable of capturing the beauty.
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- Rows of Daniel’s berry and vegetable fields, and his 1940s (still working) tractor in Peninsula, Ohio.
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- Daniel participates in a community supported agriculture program. “In part, the cheap food that we mainly eat is made possible by inexpensive fossil fuels and that we choose to subsidize certain types of farming. Look how many people can be employed in meaningful work if we could somehow find policies that support small-scale farming. Most of us could be involved in what we eat one way or another.”
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- The beautiful home I stayed in on a farm in southern Ohio near Chillicothe
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- Dave, who manages the Swartz farm on a sharecropping basis. “There are so many people that are away from agriculture, don’t even live near the farm. They are more comfortable with just ‘show me the money.’ That is the wave now, don’t want nothing to do with it.”
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- I only drove by it, but I had to capture this beautiful farm in eastern Ohio
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- John, a retired lawyer, and his wife Nancy. “I don’t farm to live, I live to farm,” John told me.
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- Christmas trees grown by John’s son-in-law on his farm
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- Greg reflects: “As I look at the land with a 25 or 100 year perspective, then the mineral extraction becomes a real short term event, even if it seems at the moment you get a lot of money out of it. You can make the same money with chestnuts over a longer period of time.”
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Love the pictures and Emerson reference at the top! We are hoping to begin a small chicken farm just for ourselves next year once we do more research
Thanks Cathy. I quoted Thoreau because he inspired Daniel, the community-supported berry farmer, to leave his career in education and live on the land. The chicken farm sounds like an excellent idea; good luck!