When I was in middle school, my parents started a new endeavor on the farm. We’d always raised corn and soybeans (and hogs, cattle and chickens), but now Dad started growing seed beans. In other words, he grew the seeds that farmers would plant next year. This meant the grain that was harvested had to…
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Flute, Fermentation, and Farms (Photo Friday)
It’s been a busy week–busy enough that I forgot I owed a blog post on Wednesday–so I’ll share some photos from the day trip I took yesterday. I drove an hour and a half to the home of my college roommate to rehearse a flute-oboe duet for my recital next week. You know you have…
Read MoreI Miss My Childhood
On nights when the incessant traffic noise mysteriously vanishes and the sound of a dog barking echoes outside my window, I miss my childhood. My heart reaches back toward sight of the full moon rising swollen and orange behind rows of corn and the smell of burning leaves at the end of the driveway, burrowing…
Read MoreScared To Death
I really thought that November had at last settled in, and I was about to take off on novel writing. And then came this weekend. I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say, it involved a stomach virus and everyone in the family. And book signings. And NFP class. And let’s just say…
Read MoreThe Weekend In Gratitude
You know how you take the weekends and you cram them full of stuff, expecting to accomplish a ton, only to end the weekend in frustration because virtually nothing got done? This should have been one of those weekends…but it wasn’t. There was Beauty and the Beast on our friends’ front lawn, with popcorn and a…
Read MoreHome
Not everybody has one–this place called “home.” Not the place where you hang your hat and sleep, not even the place where you create your Christmas traditions and bring your babies home to. I mean the place you grew up, the place where your parents still live and work and sleep within the same walls,…
Read MoreA Harvest Harangue
My dad has had kidney stones for…a while. I’m not sure how long. Being Dad, he didn’t complain about it to us. He got up, he went to the field, he ran the combine, he fixed the combine, he unloaded grain, he fixed the grain auger, from sunup till after dark, trying to get the…
Read MoreThe Work of His Hands
It is fall, and in the mornings now we run in the dark. I am beginning to see pinpoints of sky among the sycamore trees, and that wonderful smell of leaves giving themselves back to the dust from which they came is just starting to make its presence known…only a subtle whiff, as yet, but…
Read MoreField Trip
There is no machine cooler than the combine. I’ve known that since I was a very little girl, and I’m delighted that Alex is now old enough to agree with me. Ever since wheat harvest ended (in mid-July), he has been asking when Grandpa would get the combine out so he could take another ride.…
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Kathleen M. Basi 