Up from the Ground: Blogging the Farm and Farming the Blog By C2010 Jen Humphrey Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. Committee members: Joseph Harrington Chairperson Giselle Anatol Chris McKitterick Date defended: April 20, 2010 The thesis committee for Jen Humphrey certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Up from the Ground: Blogging the Farm and Farming the Blog By C2010 Jen Humphrey Committee members: Joseph Harrington Chairperson ii Table of Contents Table of Contents About .......................................................................................................................................................... iv March 2010 ................................................................................................................................................ 6 February 2010 ....................................................................................................................................... 53 January 2010 ......................................................................................................................................... 69 December 2009 ..................................................................................................................................... 95 November 2009 .................................................................................................................................. 118 October 2009 ....................................................................................................................................... 134 September 2009 ................................................................................................................................. 153 August 2009 ......................................................................................................................................... 167 July 2009 ............................................................................................................................................... 184 June 2009 .............................................................................................................................................. 187 May 2009 ............................................................................................................................................... 193 iii About Most web logs, or blogs, have an ―about‖ tab or section to give the reader a brief synopsis of the writer‘s intentions. For example, this is the about that I wrote when I created Up from the Ground (http://upfromtheground.wordpress.com/) in May 2009: Up From the Ground is where I explore life as a wannabe Kansas farmer (vegetables, livestock and home canning included). Competing with this much romanticized return-to-the-land agrarian life is my interest in technology and especially its effect on communication. The two are far from mutually exclusive. Up From the Ground also is a place for experimentation for my thesis in creative writing at the University of Kansas. Over time, it may become the thesis itself! The about section helps the reader navigate a form that flows backwards through time. In the blog form, the most recent information is immediately visible on screen, and older posts are archived beneath. The reader may be disoriented by the subjects, people and places in the top-most post that are known to the author. Likely these were introduced weeks or months before, but for the new reader are unfamiliar. In the context of this thesis, the about also explains structure. The reader will not find an introduction to blogging in this text but will notice that several posts in the March heading address the reasons underlying the choice of a blog form for creative writing. Posts are organized into ―chapters‖ that correspond with the months of posts. The volume of writing varies from one month to the next, from March 2010 backwards to May 2009. iv The blog‘s entries have been reproduced to be as close to the original blog as possible. They have not been edited or condensed except for copyright consideration; they appear as they did at the time they were written. Comments that followed each post also are included. Links may break over time, but as of this writing they are active and will provide the reader with additional information. To provide additional context, and gesture more generally to the functionality of the home page, below are two screen shots of the homepage as it existed in April 2010. I have listed above them links to blog‘s categories of writing; the reader may also want to explore them directly from the blog. Categories: blogging (45) communication (8) family (8) farm life (61) food (17) random observations (14) the business of farming (7) work (4) writing (14) v 1 2 Further, in an effort to provide additional context, I include here the Cast of Characters from the home page: The cast of characters for this blog are those related most to posts. I use character in the most broad sense – objects and places can deserve that title as much as people. Jess. Words that I might choose in this paragraph to describe Jess will fail to capture who she is; she will be better served by the blog posts of the next several months. We met our freshman year of college. A year or so later there followed a period of flirtations through the mail and hundreds of miles of separation, a subject much romanticized by old friends. She is a master of the kitchen, has learned how to drive and till the garden with a tractor, and cares deeply about the future of the farm. She is practical about daydreams. She holds herself to perfection but doesn‘t stay beat up long when she fails to achieve something just shy of that level. And she‘s been my partner for 16 years. The farm, more formally known as Red Tractor Farm. Jess and I moved to the farm in May 2008, when we bought the family farmhouse and three acres from her parents. Its name hails from the cherry-red antique Farmall tractors John restored during his retirement. Physically, our little parcel of farm is enveloped by 80 acres of pasture and row crop lands and bordered by a blacktop road. The road ferries people like me on morning and evening 3 work commutes, recreation seekers to two area lakes, biking enthusiasts who brave the cars, and farmers who bring everyone to a near stop as they putter by on tractors and combines. The farm is situated in a Kansas river valley such that if I were to stand in the garden all day, I could watch the entire arc of the sun, from its rise over the tree-covered ridge in the east to scalloped lower back of the opposite ridge in the west. Emotionally, the farm is a sense of place that keeps me grounded. It includes the history of four previous generations that have farmed there, and the stories that connect all of them and now us to its barn, houses, fields, pastures and surrounding neighbors. It is the place where we are building our small sustainable vegetable and goat farm business, so it is also bears the weight and the airy light of future plans. John. John is as much a character in his absence as he was in life. Though the farm had been in his wife‘s family, he was the one to create a labyrinth of hand-welded gates, fences and chutes for the goats. He knew how to take apart machines and rebuild them bolt by belt. He was also particular, sometimes downright gruff, about how we were to work alongside him. He imposed rules about tools, how to use them, where to put them back and in what condition. He died unexpectedly in December 2008, leaving a gaping hole in the knowledge of how to run and manage the farm. Jess often says he is everywhere, because we are surrounded by his work – leftover farm implements we have no idea how to use, entire refrigerators of old paint and chemicals, weeds creeping into the driveway that he would spray (but we 4 will not), and the little fixes and solutions he had for various challenges at the farm. He was known as Big John, and one of the things that impressed me about him was that over the course of my relationship with Jess, he gradually changed to accept it, and even went so far as to introduce us together at community gatherings. He became bigger. The menagerie. This word, which can mean a collection of wild animals put on display, is a favorite that I use in an inverse manner to describe the animals in our midst; they are a tame group, and they are an attractive tourism destination to friends and family. At present, we have 9 adult nanny goats that we will breed in the fall, four bucklings that live apart from the nannies in the barnyard, a 5-month-old steer, two tame barn cats and a handsome Great Pyrenees, Scoop, who guards them all. In the house are the geriatric members of the group, our housedog, Millie, and our indoor cat, Pesto. These animals bind us to a routine, and most days I don‘t notice it as an obligation. The daily feedings and head-counts are a way of punctuating morning and night and let us know that we are needed at the farm for animals‘ survival. Me. My name is Jen Humphrey. What I do in my waking hours has more often than not defined me the most, so I‘ll offer that I hold a full-time communications job at a local university and squeeze in full-time farm work and social play time everywhere I can around it. That could mean that I‘m an overachiever, except that I periodically fail to— what‘s that phrase from childhood?