The Family Farm

I sat down and gave writing about the farm some serious consideration and wrote this nine part essay.

April 11, 2021

What Can You See When It’s Gone

This morning, I set about to write a blog on the writing of poems inspired by growing up on the farm and instead I ended up writing a poem.

John B. Lee

February 27, 2021

Safety is a superstition; cleanliness a sin

On the farm you ate everything but the squeal on the pig. Washing before dinner meant joining the threshing crew and sloshing your wrists and splashing your face in the galvanized tub then wiping your hands on a common towel,

As you may or may not know, I grew up on a centennial farm that had been in my paternal family for five generations since my great-great grandfather first came to Canada from Ireland in the early years of the nineteenth century. Over the nearly two hundred years since first arriving in Canada he and his descendants built barns and erected a silo on the crest of a hill on the farm, black barns with green roofs, clearly visible from the road that passes the farm at the base of the hill 3/10th of a mile below. Those barns and environs were beautiful to behold, set as they were on the crest of the hill. My father and uncle were the last generation of Lees to work the land. I left the farm when I was 17 to go off to the city to university. When the farm sold after my father’s passing away, the new owners scoured the buildings from the hill, first turning everything to rubble, and then carting it all away. We had sheep and cattle, hogs and chickens, pasture land and cropland. Now the hill is denuded of buildings, and the livestock is gone so the farm is cropped for corn and soybeans, winter wheat and oats. No pasture at all with the fences all gone.

– John B. Lee

The Three Sisters − everything I know about literature I learned on the farm

What Can You See When It’s Gone

Safety is a superstition; cleanliness a sin

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