The Farm :: Descriptive Farms Essays Papers

The Farm Flat Rock Farm was a hardscrabble anachronism in the 1950s. The dirt roads of Kansas, in those days, were littered with similar testimonies; relics of another time, passed down by the pioneers who carved them from the prairie. That it survived at all was a testament to the resourcefulness and tenacity of those that had scratched a subsistence from it during the dust bowl and great depression. Once the fulfillment of life-long dreams, farms like this one were being rendered obsolete by the emerging consumer society of post-war America. To the uninitiated there was nothing unique or extraordinary about this particular farm, except perhaps for the telltale signs of its certain obsolescence. The harness hanging from the tack room wall, the idle team of aging horses milling in the corral, the bucket at the cistern pump and the absence of electric lines all betrayed the homestead's lack of modernization and its inevitable future. Like thousands of others, it would be bought out and combined with a larger, more modern operation when death or bankruptcy hastened its demise. The passing of such a small and unremarkable homestead on the Kansas prairie would not be noticed nor long remembered -- yet it is. To a small boy growing up in the inner city, there was no place more wondrous or exciting to visit than that small farmstead somewhere northeast of Emporia. It was a vibrant place, alive with the sights and sounds of nature and bustling with important work that mattered. Work whose value and purpose was easily recognized by a child. Work connected to the land and animals in some grand collaboration with the universe. There were people there too who were glad when you came to visit. Patient people who cared, and who took the time to listen as well as teach. People who understood the value of a small child's efforts to help with the important work of the farm and encouraged those efforts. There always seemed to be a humming in the background that permeated everything there. A current, perhaps, that ran through it all and kept the people, land, and animals in sync with some universal pattern. I couldn't actually hear it, but if I sat very still on the rocks by the well pump, on a warm spring afternoon, and closed my eyes, I could feel it. The warmth of the rock beneath me, the sun reaching out to touch my skin, the breeze on my cheek -- all were connected -- as I was, with the sounds of the insects and animals around me.