Current Edition
Farm and Food File: Sweeping back 40 years to visit ghosts of the old farm
Originally published in the November 13, 2009, print edition.
— The final Saturday in October swept me three hours south for lunch with my parents and nearly-new grandniece and, later that Halloween afternoon, backwards about 40 years for visits with some ghosts on the farm of my youth.
It began as an afternoon drive from my parents’ home in town to the Bottoms, that black gumbo-and-sand plain mostly on the Illinois side of the Mississippi just south of St. Louis. But a peek-a-boo sun pulled me down the limestone bluffs and into the past.
Like most times, the slow descent raised the haunting voices of the Native Americans, French colonists, British soldiers and American revolutionaries who, over the centuries, laid claim to that land. Upon first seeing it, I reckoned, all must have reveled in their incredible fortune.
This place, I heard them whisper solemnly, is a place of possibilities.
At the base of the bluff I zigged, then zagged through the decaying little village of Modoc. When I was a kid, Modoc had 54 residents and possibilities. It also had two taverns, one general store, a blacksmith shop, a post office, a gas station and the home of the county sheriff (conveniently next door to the tavern he once owned). As such, the little berg fairly hopped.
Few things, and even fewer of its residents, there hop today. One tavern remains because, it seems, Modoc without a tavern would be like Rome with a church.
I followed the bluff south past old neighbors’ farms but soon had to slow to get my bearings. I was on the right road yet many of its landmarks had vanished and the ones that still stood were unrecognizable.
The green house that had anchored the Behnken farm was gone. Another mile brought another missing farmhouse. Then another.
The latter wasn’t just missing a house; it was missing an entire farm — fences, barns, bins, cats, everything. All that remained were gravestones of corn and soybeans and they said nothing.
The slow passage to my home farm — which was sold, what, 10 years ago already? — did bring warm, familiar voices.
Someone unloading a semi-trailer of corn on the home place brought the sound of my father warning me to stay clear of the tractor pto that powered an auger moving corn to the top of the biggest, tallest bin, all 5,000 bushels of it, in the Bottoms.
A moment later I heard our long-time hired man, Jackie, reply “Right smart,” to Uncle Honey’s question of how much corn he and Dad had shelled that day.
“Maybe even a little more,” Jackie added without looking up from rolling a cigarette.
A quarter mile farther down the road left me in front of the farm’s now-sagging dairy barn, a place so filled with memories and voices it was hard to make sense of ’em all. The clearest voice, though, was that of Howard, Jackie’s oldest brother and one of the kindest, most caring people on earth.
“Hey, Allie Boy,” he’d say as I entered the milking parlor nearly every evening during the harvest season, “nobody showed up on time, so I started without ’em.”
No one “showed up” because his parlor partner, Dad, was on the combine and Dad’s replacement, me, was still on the school bus.
I never liked getting stuck in the dairy barn every harvest evening but, truly, I never minded being stuck anytime with Howard.
I drove another mile to the road’s end and then to the top of the massive Mississippi River levee where I stopped for one last look and listen over the land of my upbringing. It’s as empty as it was a century ago, but its beauty and possibilities remain.
Alan Guebert’s “Farm and Food File” is published weekly in more than 75 newspapers in North America. Contact him at agcomm@sbcglobal.net.
- Current Edition
-
-
Residual value — How much is field trash worth?
Maybe we need to think more positively about trash. We’re talking trash as residue left on fields after harvest, or any time as a matter of fact. Does it have value?
-
Back Roads: Quiet on the set; eat!: Ding-Dong Café, Sauk Centre
When the trains pulled up their tracks, many of the businesses along them closed their doors. The Ding-Dong Café, in Sauk Centre, covered its walls in train memorabilia and kept right on serving.
-
Better machinery makes continuous corn work
Equipment industry has responded to the movement toward more conservation tillage.
-
No-till benefits add up with diesel fuel savings
Less field time, virtually zero erosion, improved soil quality and as good or better yields are four solid reasons for considering no-till (including strip till and ridge till) farming.
-
Opinions differ on if, when rolling fields is right
The question keeps surfacing: Is rolling my fields sensible? And, if so, when do I roll?
-
Land Minds: Bumps on the road to liberty
I sense we are becoming a nation of entitlements. And in the process of this slide into socialism, I sense that we can no longer rely upon the “political process” to reverse this uncomfortable transition. “What’s in it for me?” seems to be the new mantra now embraced by many people including our elected officials.
-
Farm and Food File: USDA-DOJ seed competition workshop better work
Holding the “first joint Department of Justice/USDA workshops ever on competition and regulatory issues” in Iowa, the heart of corn and soybean country, just weeks before every seed-buying farmer in America will be pedal-to-the-metal planting this year’s crop is bigger than Daytona, bigger than the All Star game and bigger than the Super Bowl.
-
Cover story: The legacy of Wendelin Grimm and his 'everlasting clover'
Grimm was the farmer who developed winter-hardy alfalfa, which after his death became known as Grimm alfalfa. It helped make Carver County a premier dairy belt, and became the basis of the alfalfa used throughout Minnesota, and across wintry North America.
-
Heatherow Farm still going 160 years, four generations later
They homesteaded 120 acres, not realizing that over 160 years later one of their fourth-generation descendants would own that land.
-
Minnesota Machinery Museum breathes life into past
After using grant funds to make necessary improvements, the Yellow Medicine Agricultural and Transportation Museum opened Aug. 9, 1980, during the Pioneer Power Threshing Show. Under the guidance of Minnesota Historical Society Field Service Coordinator David Nystuen, the six-acre site found new life, and soon the name was changed to the Minnesota Machinery Museum.
- More Current Edition Headlines
-


