Where I Go: Herding the Goats at Squashville Farm

Goats Live in an Alternate Reality of Soil and Self-Determination

It happens at least once a week: The goats commit jailbreak. They nibble, squirm, and leap their way out of the two-acre space where they are supposed to stay put. Inevitably, they’ll find their way onto the deck, the driveway, the front steps, the screened porch, the bee and butterfly garden out front, and occasionally across property lines into our neighbors’ yards.

I learn of their transgressions when a nose appears near a window or a hoof pushes open the front door, or when I hear their joyous earthy bellows—or when …

Miniature America

Can you decipher it—that faint
creaking rising up from
the farm’s patchwork of yellow
and umber, crops and loam?

Could be the steady pressure and
release of mattress springs.
Could be …

A Eulogy for a Delano Farmworker

For 50 Years, Esteban Nuño Took Great Pride in Helping to Harvest the Food That Fed Our Nation

When they lowered the coffin into the ground, it wasn’t yet 11 a.m., but already the hot sun had forced many mourners to seek refuge. Some stood in the shade …

Searching for Silence in the Midwest

The southern Minnesota farmhouse, my childhood home, hides inelegantly behind a spotty row of evergreens. The trees stand bravely in the wind, the house’s only defense from winter’s bitter gusts. …