Poem for Tuesday and Frying Pan Farm Park

The Farmer
By W.D. Ehrhart

Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest labor—
all that grows is the slow
intransigent intensity of need.
I have sown my seed on soil
guaranteed by poverty to fail.
But I don’t complain—except
to passersby who ask me why
I work such barren earth.
They would not understand me
if I stooped to lift a rock
and hold it like a child, or laughed,
or told them it is their poverty
I labor to relieve. For them,
I complain. A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Each day I go into the fields.

--------

Monday was a very nice day -- not too warm but partly sunny -- so after lunch and some homework by everyone, we went to Frying Pan Farm Park (which I always have to explain is named for its panhandle, not because anyone cooks the animals!) to see the lambs, kids, piglets, and calves born there this spring. There were lots of baby piggies belonging to two different moms, a Duroc and a Yorkshire cross, and a trio of jumping Suffolk and Dorset lambs, plus there were horses, bunnies, chickens, turkeys, ducks, peacocks, more goats and cows, plus interloper pigeons and geese!

















We went to the Silver Diner since we had a coupon for Paul's upcoming birthday, then we went to both Trader Joe's and World Market, the latter in part because we were looking for avocado lime dressing for Maddy but we couldn't find it in either place. Adam has been on a Jeff Goldblum kick, so since he had never seen it, after Supergirl (which needed WAY less Winn and WAY more Sorbo and Hatcher), we watched Earth Girls Are Easy, which I haven't seen probably since it was new. I know how politically incorrect it is but it's also hilarious and has great music!