S2 Packet 1

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contents SUMMARY 7 MAUDE GILL'S FARM 10 CHERRY PIE 12 FARMING PEOPLE ARE INFERIOR 18 OUR MEMBERSHIP 26 DOLLY, DOODLING & DATA 28 BUTTERED TOAST 38

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Summer wheat

A typical afternoon view at the farm in early June 2013.

A golden, almost ready to harvest, summer wheat field.

Photo by Larry Thompson, then owner of Long Vue Farms & father of Lorilee Rager. Sent via text message.

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Summary

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

Live the life you have imagined."

—Henry David Thoreau

In summary, it is important to note that the first days of the usual rocky re-entry into the atmosphere of home and work from residency in Vermont certainly did not disappoint. My heart seemed to ache a bit more this time when I landed because I missed the students and faculty terribly. My second residency was full of so much unexpected love, familiar faces, supportive smiles, growing friendships, and a week full of happiness away from reality. The fantasy land of VCFA, where you don’t even have to worry about your meals, is better than any place I’ve visited on earth in my forty years. Because of this feeling, it was harder to step off the plane no matter how nice the upgraded first-class seat felt on the ride home. As time heals all wounds, I am sitting comfortably at my desk, a month later, thinking joyfully of all the happiness that next April will bring again, when I can return to residency.

For now, let’s live in the present and dive into what I’ve been doing so far this month. My exploration of more writing and voice is going well. I’ve crafted some fresh writing about daily moments as they collide with memories from my childhood. I’m listening to a Dolly Parton podcast, and have read many wonderful new books by authors like Wendell Berry, J. D. Vance, Brene Brown, Anne Lamott, Alice McDermott, and Natalia Illyin. In my research to better understand an author’s voice, I am better understanding each individual's unique dialogue and character development in their books.

I’m loving the reading and research so much for many reasons. It has helped to spend my afternoons reading and calm my stress and anxiety of the everyday design life balance. Grad school reading has become a great calming escape from running my design firm, stressing over hiring a new employee, payroll, taxes and not to mention making sure the kids are fed and to their practices each afternoon. It has been

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a large focus to read and mindfully listen to my own thoughts this month as I deeply feel connections to these writers and their stories.

When I read it feels like a hypnotic healing daily therapy routine for me that I’ve greatly enjoyed.

While thinking about my own writer’s voice, and creating my own sense of place, I have been tinkering with what I shall make from a design and creative standpoint. I am gathering data on my family farm and doing family interviews on the history of the farmhouse.

This journey has me in a tug of war with my heart over to keep going down this personal path, and I’ll say it has my head spinning a bit. The synchronicities are strong within every book I read, podcast I hear and interview I do with family. So, I’m continuing to write my daily morning pages in an effort to track all of what my mind is absorbing.

I am eager and excited, like a child in kindergarten show and tell, to share a little bit of it all in this packet. You see as a child I talked very much. I was eager to always share a story, tell a funny joke, as well as ask you dozens of questions, only to interrupt with more questions, retaining very little because my mind would wander to the next idea, and the next. I wanted to jump in and tell another story about myself that related to yours, so badly that I might have been paddled a few times or sat with my nose in a circle on the chalkboard. So forgive me as I interrupt my own self in the next few pages and thank you for being a part of the story.

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Taylor's Cabin

Named for Taylor Mitchell who lived there (est. 1940s).

He was known as the yard boy and helped around the home to milk the cow, hook up the horse and buggy, and gather eggs. In 1976 it became our childhood playhouse.

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I N T E R V I E W : L I N D A T H O M P S O N // M A U D E G I L L' S F A R M 10

In the mid-1830s, Rob Young from Virginia, settled in Logan County, Ky., near Keysburg. In 1836, Rob and his wife, Ann Hill, had a son, Charles Thaddeus (Thad). Thad Young and his wife, Martha Muir, had two sons, Rob H. in 1863 and William Thad in 1864. Rob H. married Willie Herndon in 1885.

Rob’s father, Thad, built the original single-story version of this house, an Eastlake-style Victorian cottage, and gave it to the couple as a wedding gift.

Rob H. Young and his wife, Willie, had two sons, Herndon and Ross, and one daughter, Maude. With the growth of their family, Rob and Willie added the second story to the house in the summer of 1902. At that time they changed the exterior of the house to the Queen Anne style and wrapped the porch from front to back similar to the way that you see it today.

Later, Maude married Milton Gill, and moved a short distance away with him. Her father and older brother, Herndon, had died by 1939. So Maude and Milton moved back in the home to care for her mother and younger brother, Ross until those two passed. Maude died in 1974 with no children.

The house sat vacant until 1976 when we bought the farm. We added a modern kitchen & bathrooms that year, as the home had none. We did a more extensive remodel in 2005-2006 which brought the home to its current state. The front two-story portion of the home and front walkway are the originals with only minor changes, such as modern plumbing and bathrooms. The front part of the house, porch, sidewalk, well house & gazebo in the front yard are still original today.

The cabin across the driveway was here when the Young family first lived here. It is known as “Taylor’s Cabin,” named for the black gentleman, Taylor Mitchell, who lived there. Taylor was the helper around the house.

He milked the cow, hooked the horse to the buggy, gathered the eggs, etc.

Our family call it the ‘playhouse' and our three little girls have had countless hours of imaginative memories playing there.

The building next to the cabin is the carriage house or 'buggy shed.' In its original state, it had three stable stalls, one each for the milk cow, buggy horse, and saddle horse for Mr. Young. It had a bay for the buggy, a hayloft, and gear room. We regret changing the buggy sheds original appearance and inside features but we converted it for modern use where our children parked their cars. We did build a new garage on the property with the original carriage house architecture to match the house details in 2010, which we use for our modern-day horseless carriages known as cars.

We were fortunate when we moved here in 1976, there were many local residents that were kin to the Young and Gill families. Some grew up and lived and worked here as sharecroppers going back to the late 1880s. They shared history and great stories about our home, the farm, and the Rob Young family members that lived here prior to us. Mrs. Virginia Cheatham worked for us for many years and told us her family lived on this farm back in those days. The history that we know has been shared with us by her and her husband Jab, and our close friends in the community.

1976 Maude died in 1974 with no children. The house sat vacant until 1976 when we bought the farm.We added a modern kitchen & bathrooms that year...The front part of the house, porch, well house, sidewalk & gazebo are still original today.

Long Vue Farms

LINDA THOMPSON My mother

Maude Gill's farm, re-named Long Vue Farms by my father.

Photo from 2015 in early Spring of the Winter wheat and trees beginning to bloom.

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Cherry Pie While I was reading Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry, I was reminded of the life my grandmother often spoke of growing up in our rural community with family and farmhands living together as one.

Helping one another work in each other’s crops, repair farmhouses, and in the mix like the novel, how loved ones came and went with the war. This is just as my grandmother would tell in our interview about her own brothers leaving for the war. In our Kentucky rural community, the homeplace farms were known as names such as “The Austin Place,” and the “Old Cane Farm.” These were the names of original farm owners that had long passed before me and had new folks living there, yet the old farm names stuck with them as a sweet tribute to the past and respect the people that worked the land. It was such a close community that we lived in growing up I didn’t know until I was in high school if anyone was really related by blood. I didn’t know if they really were an uncle or cousin because we all worked, ate and churched together like one big close family.

When I was in about the 5th grade I remember really feeling quite important in my role as the baby of the family and the youngest granddaughter of 11 grandchildren. I often was left with my Grandma Smith for the summers before I was big enough to drive a tractor. She was very busy with her large garden, feeding the farm hands lunch daily, and her many Methodist church bake sales. Not to mention being in charge of bible school snacks, and canning and preserving the garden’s goodies when they did ‘come in’ – even if you were sick of squash they were ‘in’ so we had to eat lots of them, can even more of them, and deliver the extra to neighbors.

These days were some of the grandest of my childhood with my Grandma Smith. She would tell me stories of how she grew up with all 9 children of the Bellar clan. How each one of them had very specific roles and chores. Ivy was in charge of firewood for warmth and cooking and repairing the chicken coops, while Elvis was in charge of hoeing tobacco and bringing in the garden vegetables. Lucille was in charge of washing clothes, and little Louise was so small she would hand grandma, her sister, the vegetables to be cooked up for canning and for supper. That is until the war took away her brothers in 1941 she said, “We all just did the best we could back then to survive.”

Grandma likes to tell it as if she was up in her twenties at the time, but in all reality, she was just 10 years old and stood on a washtub to

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reach the stove. That’s how old I was when I remember first hearing the story, and not even knowing at that age myself how to turn on an oven. At that age, she was in charge of cooking for the whole family.

I remember being amazed at the stories she would tell about the important roles in the family.

She grew up in hard times but didn’t even know she was living hard she went on to explain. They had all the homegrown food they could eat and then some, and with brothers and sisters they certainly had a crew to pitch in on the farm and help one another. Let’s see, she says as she recalls, “there’s me (Betty Sue), Lucille, Ivy, Elvis, Felix, Johnny, Thomas, Ruby Mae, and Louise. We all just helped Mama and Daddy every day until all the work was done.” She went on to tell that they even made sandwiches and sold them to the soldiers who were on the trains in town. She said the trains brought men from all over the country headed to war and sometimes the tracks would be backed up for hours and “them boys were hungry.”

The best part so far of the research and gathering I’ve been doing, as I collect data on our family farm, has by far been gathering memories. One of the photos I’ve found is a rare photo of her with her siblings, parents and a few nephews. My grandma, Betty Sue is pictured front row far left. Sweet sister Lucy is back row center, just on the left of Uncle Felix the sailor. “Lucy was my very best friend,” my grandma always has said. Aunt Lucille was with her every summer I can remember while canning the garden goodness as it came in.

Aunt Lucille was her sidekick for many years putting up pepper relish, green tomato ketchup, pickles, jams and preserves. She was also always along for our many trips we would take with all of the grandkids to Opryland, USA – a big theme park dedicated to the Grand Ole Opry and Country music in Nashville, Tn. We were allowed to skip church on Sunday, which was a big deal for my Church of Christ father to allow and be there right when the park would open. This is where we met the likes of big-time celebrities like Porter Wager, Roy Acuff, and Little Jimmy Dickens. We heard some of the greatest country music and saw red white and blue dressed square dancers in live shows at the park. The day always ended with Lee Greenwood’s God Bless The USA where my Aunt Lucille and Grandma proudly stood in the audience with their hands on their hearts and tears running down their faces. Today it is a wonderful memory because Opryland is gone and a large mall is there now. My grandma is the only living child left of the famous State Fair winning “Largest Family,” the Bellar family so gathering these memories will be special for many.

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1941 Bellar Family

My grandmother, Betty Sue Bellar Smith (pictured front row far left) with all of her siblings, parents and 2 young nephews. Her sister Lucille is back row center just to the left of Uncle Felix, the sailor. Lucy was her lifelong best friend.

Reading Wendell Berry: Life and Work has taken me directly back to my place on earth I know as home. Learning about his life in Kentucky, his education, passion for agriculture, being a Christian, and his love of country has me feeling as if he just might be a distant cousin to the Bellars. He talks of a way of life in 1930 - 1940 that mirrors exactly how my grandmother lived, and how I also lived in 1980. Just as the characters describe looking through old farm places, I am reminded of the plaster walls, the dusty wood floors and old stoves in the farmhouse I grew up in, known as the Maude Gill Farm.

My grandmother, just as it reads in Hannah Coulter “has cooked and canned and butchered together…” with so many of her sisters, neighbors, her children, and grandchildren. The community we lived in really did lean on one another in good and bad times. Also, as the family grew, so did the number of children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Even though it’s hard to remember each and every birthday, Hannah goes on to say in the book “she remembers everything else - the history and weaknesses of every one of them, and she knows exactly what to get every one of them on their birthdays and Christmases.”

My grandma remembers each and everyone’s favorite desserts and disliked foods. So when my birthday comes around she always has a fresh cherry pie with homemade latticed buttered perfectly baked golden crust. Even if I tell her I am on a diet and didn’t need it,

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I still get the call that I need to come by and pick up my pie while it’s still warm.

My sister Michelle gets fresh apple pie from the local Johnson’s Orchards apples, sister Mandy her chess bars. My son Will gets a lemon pound cake, and Luke gets homemade peach ice cream. She just laughs and laughs about how all my husband wants is a skillet of cornbread. “Is that all babe? Are you sure he don’t like sweets? I’ll swannee I ain’t never heard of nobody that don’t like sweets, but I’ll make him a skillet of cornbread if that’s what you’re sure he wants?”

She is just making sure he’s not just pulling her leg and not wanting to trouble her about making something else, as a skillet of cornbread is too easy, she thinks, but no matter what she’s gonna bake you your favorite.

These foods made fresh from the gardens and orchards on the farm are really the way we love and have been loved my whole life.

We didn’t go to the store to shop for gifts, and we certainly didn’t ask for anything when it came to birthdays. We really had all we needed.

Any new clothes were for special occasions like Easter Sunday or a funeral and were even handmade. So our gifts were homemade, hand patted, baked full of goodness and love. No store sold that anywhere I know of.

As I grew up, I no longer could stay at grandmas all day. As I approached 13 years old, I had to go to the field like the men to run tractors. Some days it was pulling a bush hog and some days pulling a planter. We all sat tobacco together, we filled semi-trucks together, and went to grandmas to eat lunch together. So, as I eat my cherry pie every year for my birthday, I’m reminded of so many stories of family and one in particular of picking cherries. The taste of a fresh cherry hand-picked from the very top of the tree in the orchard by grandma’s house is the sweetest you’ve ever let touch your tongue.

One particular memory was from when I had had a long day on the farm when I was about 15. Even though we were done in the field I knew grandma had asked that I stop by on my way home. She asked to help her just before the sun went down because the summer evening became much cooler as the sun set. When I got to grandma’s house she said the cherry’s had come in so we needed to get the pickup and go get all we could reach.

That particular day I had sweat all the way through the back of my white hanes t-shirt and had mud all over my jeans where I had been

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trying to help fix the irrigation with Uncle David Wayne. Drought and leaking irrigation mean lots of mud and mess in case you didn’t know.

But I knew we needed to get the cherries when grandma said as she knows when they are ripe and ready.

“Of course, the very best cherries are all the way up at the top of the trees,” Grandma says. I realize I was enlisted to be the top of the tree cherry picker. Not because I’m tall, but because I lack fear and common sense. Also, because I’m the youngest and it likely won’t hurt me to fall out of the top of a little o’ cherry tree. Since I believe and trust my grandma I easily climb up in the back of the pickup truck.

Next, I set up the ladder at the end of the tailgate and began to climb.

She was right, the cherries were simply divine at the top. I had to try just a few before I began putting them in the dishpan. Dark and juicy every single one. They were bursting with flavor and slid right off the stem as easy as could be. Please note, if you are eating cherries right from the tree to be mindful of the pit. As it can crack a tooth if you’re not careful. Be sure to spit those out if they didn’t come off with the stem.

It was a successful day cherry-picking and we had a few dishpans full, as well as my belly. So grandma called to us all to come down and get settled in the back of the truck so we could head on up to the house. I was talking non-stop and likely didn’t hear the message to sit down and shut up. I decided I’d hop up and sit on the top of the truck cab and hold on while she eased the truck up from the field. When I did that, she got into the cab of the truck and shut the door, catching my fingers just right at the first knuckles.

The pain wasn’t instant, rather as my hand felt ice cold, until my cousins screamed, and she opened the truck door. I fell over, off the top of the truck and onto the grass hitting the ground. Partly laughing, and partly crying, and nauseous, I made sure not to fall into the back of the truck onto the cherries, as I knew I’d be in trouble. I laid there on the grass trying to catch my breath in the cool grass. My fingers were fine and so were the cherries that day, thankfully.

The writer Wendell Berry’s voice is so strongly similar to my family stories that I could read him for days. It has helped me remember wonderful stories, times and life on the farm. It also helped me remember the cherry-picking business can be a dangerous job, but if you survive it the reward of grandma’s fresh-baked pie is absolutely worth it.

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There’s a moment in Berry’s Hannah Coulter where she talks about the children leaving home for college. It’s one of the saddest parts of the novel that just reminds me of my own guilt for leaving the farm.

In the novel, there are stories they tell about the “old days” before electricity, plumbing, etc. It’s interesting how Wendell Berry questions that in telling the stories of the past, of the rural life and upbringing, were they wrong to tell children how hard it was?

I tell stories, and so does my cousin in our interview, of living on sulfur well water that smelled so bad you wanted to puke. Not having central heat and air or more than 5 channels on the tv. Is that bad?

Like my own grandmother said she didn’t know that was hard living at the time. Berry makes you think about if you tell your children how hard farming life is does that mean you are telling them they should not live a life like this out here on the farm? Is this why I left? Or why my children don't want to go out there to visit the farm?

“Am I telling these stories right? Did we tell the stories in such a way that suggested we needed a better life, a better way, a better chance than we had? Are we saying everything should have been different?

Suppose the stories make them think that their parents - farming people are inferior and need to improve themselves by leaving the farm? Does that unmake everything that had been unmade? Where does the thread break and when does the tug begin?” Hannah says in the novel. Did she drive her children away from the farm? Is this what happened to the rural communities and abandoned farmhouses where I grew up I wonder?

The quote “...farming people are inferior and need to improve themselves by leaving the farm?” stopped me in my tracks. This has me wondering how and why farms die? Many of the other research I’m doing actually connects to this question. In Dolly Parton’s America podcast it mentions in explaining her success that southerners migrated away from the south up to Ohio and Indiana and this is how country music spread. Also, in Hillbilly Elegy he talks about Hillbillies moving away from the rural areas and farms because of poor living conditions and moving to Ohio. Also, again in Wendell Berry: Life And Work, it’s mentioned again about how the war took men away from farms just as my grandmother had said about her brothers.

In Wendell Berry: Life And Work Bill Kauffman’s essay, Wendell Berry on War and Peace, “after all, the draftee if he is lucky enough to survive, may come home. But to what does he return? To a land denuded by the great exodus of rural southerners, black and white to

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the industrial cities. More than 15 million Americans, or 12 percent of the civilian population, resided in a different county in March 1945 from the one they resided in on December, 7 1941.” He’s not even counting the more than 12 million who were fighting in the war. He goes on to say about how the “border states were especially hard-hit: as an anti-hillbilly joke of the 1940s went, America lost three states during the war: “Kentucky and Tennessee had gone to Indiana, and Indiana had gone to hell.”

These synchronicities are growing very common among my research of the rural agriculture communities and the falling apart of family farms during World War II. Then in my history, my own family came to purchase some of the farms abandoned and began to rebuild a civil war era estate in 1976. It seems backwards in history for my parents to move away from the city and begin to farm. How they restored a home that was falling in with peacocks living inside, no running water or electricity. My cousin talks about being a young boy and having to help clear 6 inches of peacock feces just to get into the first rooms of the farmhouse. He also dug under the house for days making paths for plumbing and central heat and air. He said it was the most awful labor jobs he could even imagine, especially as a child. He didn’t see any way anyone would ever be able to live there or why on earth they would ever want to.

1897 Young Family Home

An original photo of my homeplace, built as a wedding gift to Rob H. Young by his father Thad Young in 1885.

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It’s deeply imprinted in my childhood how much I did love the farm growing up. It was a lively bustling and busy place with tractors, farmhands, semi-trucks, equipment to fix, tires to replace, and grain bins to fill. I didn’t even think that they should let me go off on the school bus to Kindergarten with so much to do at the farm. I didn’t see any way they could make it with me off at school because I was on the heels of everyone. I spent my days helping hand wrenches, grease guns, and grab extra bolts. I loved laying on the rolling workbenches looking up under a tractor shoulder to shoulder with the farmhands while they repaired equipment.

I recall that morning of my first day of school. It was a cold dark crisp morning with fog beginning to rise just as the sun was coming up. I looked up at the bus driver, Miss Fran, and down the aisle of the brown seats held together mostly with duct tape, and the pistachio green interior and turning back to mom saying “If anyone misses me today you be sure and tell’em I’m in Kindergarten, and will be home this afternoon.” I said it in a manner as a businessman tells his secretary he’ll be in meetings this afternoon if anyone needed him he can’t be reached, yet secretly hoping to be interrupted.

I was so relieved to look over the hill that afternoon and see the farm still there, still standing and trucks still rolling in and out while I was away. You can imagine my utter and complete disappointment when I realized this Kindergarten thing was more than just a one day gig and I had to go back the next day. I really didn’t understand why I had to when the farm was so busy and there was so much to do. I could help, I could really be of some assistance to Mose, Woody and Jab out at the shop instead of sitting in Mrs. Johnson’s old smelly classroom in town. Half of the kids in class were my cousins and we all felt the same.

I was raised to love and care about that farm over and above anything else by my father, and amen’d by my mother until about my junior year of high school. Things seem to change in the sense that dad said I had to go to college. We needed to think about me becoming a teacher of some kind, maybe an Art teacher since I liked it so much, he said. The natural career of many women in our community, if they were not pregnant at 16 and already a farmer’s wife, was to be a school teacher. It was a common thought that it was the best choice as it was the biggest employer in our county, a good state job, had insurance, retirement, you worked with your kids, and what you brought in didn’t matter because the farm really made the money. If you could just even be a teacher's aid and take your kids with you to work, have insurance, the farm will provide the rest.

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My problem was I just didn’t even really like kids, I could barely spell, and sure wanted out of school so badly I just couldn’t see myself doing that. Yet, my father and some other church members seemed to think otherwise. So they planned a trip with a few of the other kids at church to go to a Church of Christ special singing. This singing was in the next county over at a bigger church. They had asked a group from the Church of Christ college to come sing and spread the gospel. These singers were from David Lipscomb University and this, unknown to me, was where my father was intending to send me to school.

As it was not a choice or optional decision I did, later my junior year, apply and get accepted to David Lipscomb. It was an upstanding school with a strict reputation where my older cousin Leanne said many young girls had found husbands, with great excitement. After I attended my first year I realized that was exactly the reason many girls were there and the only reason the boys thought they were there as well. There were plenty of jokes about majors being an “MRS” degree and also plenty of signs hanging everywhere that said, “No PDA allow.” I walked around so confused. I didn’t know what any of these letters meant but certainly wasn’t going to ask.

After a long year of bible classes and chapel I had emergency gallbladder surgery and I moved back home to the farm against my father’s orders. My mother and sister stood up to my father for me, and he let me work on the farm again while I decided what degree I really wanted to pursue. Leaving and coming back did make me realize that I did need to follow my own dreams and my own passions that were not of being a farmer’s wife and elementary art teacher.

Even though I sure didn't want to leave my mother alone to live with my angry always father I did know the rural farming life they lived wasn’t one I wanted to continue. I knew it broke my mother’s heart for me, her last baby, to leave. “I felt them like amputations” Hannah Coulter describes in the Wendell Berry Novel, when each of her children left for college. I now know that’s what it was like for my mother and fear how I will feel when my boys leave.

The place I grew up is still there, but it’s really gone now. The house has a new addition, county water, wifi and new wallpaper. I grew up, my parents divorced, and the memories are fading. So this documenting helps to give it a forever sense of place that we all can cherish.

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Home

Pictured as it stands today, October 2019. Fully restored to it's original state with careful detail to the ginger bread trim, and keeping the original sidewalk bricks and front porch.

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Our Membership “When the tractors came the people began to go. Tractors don’t get tired, you can work at night. Tractors made farmers dependent on big company like never before.” Hannah Coulter says in the novel.

This makes me think of the industrial revolution and how tractors could replace farmhands if you could afford the equipment. Wendell Berry understands it all to well. His own home place in Henry County, Kentucky he restored to “respectability and productivity” in 1976.

This is the same year my family purchased our family farm and began restoring.

Restoring our place, the “Maude Gill Farm” took years, and by doing so it stopped it from running down. The maintenance is forever ongoing I’ve realized as I walked the front porch today seeing places it’s rotting and in need of repair. Now, only my mother lives there and the first farm hands have passed away. The workforce of 1976 solidified when Grandfather and Grannie Thompson moved from town to help.

They brought Woody and Jean Snell to live in a tenant house across the road. Then local neighbors, Jab and Virginia Cheatam walked from their home to the farm each day to work. My cousin Craig eventually moved here from the city at thirteen leaving a troubling life with his mother and abusive father. He was like the son my father, with 3 little girls, never had.

Soon mom’s brother’s David Wayne and Durell Jr. came on over once Grandaddy and Grandma Smith retired from dairy farming. Fulltime loyal helpers later joined that felt like family, Mose and Lawrence I remember best. Mose taught me how to sharpen my pocket knives and called me “Boots” and Lawrence taught me how to run the bush hog and ended every sentence with “...and everything.”

My grandma’s brother Uncle Ivy was a carpenter and always smelled like Ivory soap and sawdust. He fixed up and painted the playhouse and all the barns. He would let me paint when no one was looking and clean me up after I leaned on the fresh paint as I talked his head off.

Grandaddy Thompson was my dad’s father. He was assigned to run all the errands, get parts in town and me the frequent ice cream cone. Others helped, I learned later in life, like my Great Uncle Lee. Living farther away, so he helped financially when times were bad by sending money and buying my sister her first car after the farm went bankrupt in the 80s. Each one of us pitched in all the time to help run the full operation. We did all we could for each other every day.

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In Berry’s, Hannah Coulter it talks about the “membership” of all the people who worked on the farm. How she described the membership with family, friends and neighbors that all came to help it’s exactly how our membership worked. Our membership didn’t just work on the farm, they worked on my heart. Each one of them gave me a sense of belonging, confidence, and comfort that made me feel so much love as a child. It’s memberships like these that I want my boys to know. We were all so happy, caring and helpful to each other. It wasn’t about a man or a woman, black or white, it was about us all working together to grow, harvest and help the farm. We all did it every single day, rain or shine, sickness and health. We worked hard at caring for the land and for each other.

James Thompson

My paternal grandfather standing in his mud room, 1999. He was headed out the door on a parts run for the farm. My Photography II class project was on portraits. So thankful I asked him to pause for a moment.

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DOLLY

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Here’s where I’ve only scratched the surface and am unsure where I’m going. I have begun to look at the farm as a whole and collecting data on how many acres, what’s produced, and where it’s sold. I’ve talked with my grandmother, mother, middle sister (who now owns the farm), cousin Craig, and the farm manager Jason. I’m beginning to gather a few facts and hear early stories of the way the farm was for each of them the first time they remember it.

I’m really just beginning to wrap my head around the history as well as the current information on the farm business operation. I’ve also gathered old photos of family, friends and those that created our membership from years working out there. These are folks that seem like just characters in a story but they are real in my life. I have been looking to find old wallpaper pieces from the house when we originally purchased it so that I might can use pieces for when I’m beginning the making in my designs.

I’ve bought a new iPad, and Apple pencil and am learning to use the program Procreate. I’ve begun doodling some small sketches that have been fun. It’s interesting to see the control and flexibility with these new tools. I am thinking about ways to incorporate this along with my writing. I am wanting it all to come together in some ways.

For example, if I were to make a book with an annual report style of data, mixed with textures of the pieces I’m finding at the farm, and a few essays all combined could be a nice project.

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I am wanting to do some online tutorials for Procreate and learn how to digitally make some of these sketches of memories of the farm merged with the photography as well. I’m wanting to see ways my natural desire to doodle can merge with and display data. I plan to over the next month research the books I have such as Dear Data, Maps of the Imagination, and You Are Here. For now, I’m in a heavy collecting phase and organizing all I’m gathering.

I’ve also purchased an ink pen that was recommended by a grad student for drawing and writing in my daily morning pages. It’s a fantastic tool I’ve really enjoyed using to write with and doodle.

It’s a Horizon Needle Point Knock Ball pen. Using it has made the frustrations of sharpened pencils, keeping the lead refilled, and the dull of sharpies all go away. I’ve begun ending my morning pages each day using this great pen to illustrate one large word. The word I chose to draw captures a theme from what I have written that day.

This exercise is really loose, fast, and fun and brings in a great sense of play for some pretty serious topics that surface in morning pages.

It’s also nice to not be on a laptop typing. I’ve included a few of those doodles and the tool to show you. Showing my true designer geek powers here telling you about getting so much joy from a new pen.

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I’m listening to Dolly Parton’s America and her memoir-style stories in a new Podcast. She has an incredible life story. Her life, love and loss all created into writing music with a theme of joy, hope and gratitude resonates strongly with me and is becoming a theme of my studies. Her kindness, charisma and humor draw all kinds of humans of all ages and like the interviewer, Jad Abumrad says in the first episode that is unexplainable. From people in cowboy boots, to drag, to lesbians and little girls with their families, everyone loves Dolly. The way her music touches so many people across the globe strongly interests me. She’s always impacted my own feelings with her music, stories and similar childhood. So, I began thinking of the influences of my own love of music. I read last semester in The Highly Sensitive Person about how HSPs can feel music deeper. My own family's music played at family reunions, and listening to my cousins playing bluegrass growing up reminds me of Dolly’s stories.

Another reason I love Dolly is that I listened to her while growing up with my Grandma Smith. She loved music and by default, I do too. From my Aunt Lucille’s funeral I’ve found some recordings of our cousin, Johnny Bellar, playing Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art. Hearing this music again has helped me feel like I’m on the right path.

I’ve included some links below if you would like to hear. https://www.johnnybellar.com/audio/amazing-grace.mp3 https://www.johnnybellar.com/audio/how-great-thou-art.mp3 Our family was full of so many talented artists like Uncle Felix the sign painter, and Johnny’s guitar picking but by day they were farmers too. I’m unsure where I’ll use this but it’s fascinating to learn about. I am interested in why music has such a profound effect on our brains?

That connection is something to explore.

Recently online I watched a PBS News Hour story about why music has such a profound effect on the brain. Indre Viskontas was asked, “Why does music give us chills, motivate us to work out and make us feel connected to one another?” Viskontas is an opera singer and a cognitive neuroscientist and talks about how the brain changes with experience or with learning, especially when it comes to music. This my friends has hit my heart like a ton of bricks. So I’d really love to explore more about music, lyrics and songwriting and the power of voice and influence around these things.

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Why does music give us chills, motivate us to work out and make us feel connected to one another?

MUSIC CAN MAKE US BETTER IN TERMS OF HEALING OUR BODIES, IN TERMS OF EXERCISING BETTER. EVEN REWIRING OUR BRAINS AFTER AN INJURY. WE ARE ESSENTIALLY PATTERN RECOGNIZING MACHINES. OUR BRAIN IS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT. SO OFTEN, WE LOVE MUSIC THAT HAS A PREDICTABLE PATTERN, MAYBE THAT WE'VE HEARD BEFORE. INDRE VISKONTAS Opera singer + Neuroscientist

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2013 Solar Panel System

Installed on Long Vue Farms to achieve energy independance, and make a positive environmental impact by avoiding power plant emissions.

Below are data collected on the farms solar panels. Long Vue Farms historical energy usage from 2012 was used to help create this data and size this solar system. Based upon the system size suggested, the expected electricity bill savings over a 25 year period are provided. In addition, the first-year electricity bill savings expected are provided together with a chart of the monthly solar system output (PV production) expected.

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The chart above are assumptions: Post-Solar Electric Rate Schedule for Pennyrile Rural Elec Coop Corp is Pennyrile Rural Elec Coop Corp (Rate Code: GSA 1&2). Annual utility inflation: 5.50% (assumed). Energy Bill Savings are actual, without any tax effects applied.

Source: SMA Solar Technology AG, Company headquarters: 34266 Niestetal, Germany.

Environmental Impact Analysis: This solar system will generate significant environmental benefits. These come primarily from avoided power plant emissions. Above is a summary of environmental benefits your solar system will provide.

Source: SMA Solar Technology AG, Company headquarters: 34266 Niestetal, Germany.

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I N T E R V I E W : M A N D Y B R Y A N T // L O N G V U E F A R M S O W N E R

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How many acres is the farm?

Our family farm, Long Vue Farms is a total of 1400 acres tillable farmland. The homeplace, Maude Gill's original home, is 800 acres.

Other aquired farms over the years spread over 2 counties making Long Vue Farms operate a total of 5700 acres currently. The farm share crops 3300 of these total acres in 4 counties and 2 states along the Southern Kentucky and Middle Tennessee boarders. Long Vue Farms double crops half of that. Double cropping means you raise 2 crops in one year on the same land.

What is the total number of bushels of each crop produced?

In 2019 the total number bushels produced were: 18,500 Bushels of Wheat 534,000 Bushels of Corn 110,000 Bushels of Soybeans Where does Long Vue Farms grain go?

Wheat: Our wheat buyers sell to McDonald's biscuits, Cracker Barrel pancakes, Ghirardelli mixes, and Red Lobster cheddar biscuits. We also raise a small amount for craft distilleries.

Corn: We sell most of our corn to Hopkinsville Elevator Cooperative, which owns an Ethanol Plant. CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a co-product of ethanol and is sold to make dry ice for Russel Stover candy shipping, also if you drink soda in the southeast the CO2 used likely came from "our" grain. It's sold to beverage bottlers, and for hospital CO2.

Our corn is also in Jack Daniels, and dog food brands Diamond and Hills brands. DDGs (dried distillers grain) are a co-product of ethanol production, used for high protein livestock feed. Ours goes to Tyson and Perdue to feed chickens and dairy cattle. Also Cook Foods which raises Zaxby's chickens and Butterball Turkeys.

Soybeans: We haul all beans to a local Cumberland River terminal where they are directly put straight onto barges and mostly sent overseas. 99% of our soybeans are exported around the world. They go directly onto a barge and head out of the country to Mexico, China (when not in a trade war) and Asia. Some go to a crushing facility in Georgia to make soy oil.

What equipment is used for an average Harvest?

2 combines, 1 tractor w/ cart, 6 semi trucks & 2500 Feet of irrigation.

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BUTTERED

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The other night I was texting with a friend confessing my eating of buttered toast for breakfast. I felt the need to confess because I’ve been pretty devout in recent weeks to be extra healthy in all the ways.

It’s been a strict lifestyle of no alcohol, no Xanax and clean eating. I’ve been pretty good at staying up on this wagon until today.

You see, that wagon is really big, heavy and piled up with lots of things. The wagon has some pretty massive weight to be carried or pulled along too. It’s full of work, family, grad school, healthy living, sober living, and don’t get me wrong, it’s full of joy, gratitude and the ever needed humor. However, staying on that wagon is not nearly as easy as one would think.

Daily, we’re all busy. Busy isn’t something to be proud of, and it’s not a specialty to be listed on your resume. It is however a commonly used word by many who don’t seem to have it all together. I am trying each day to control the busy, plan the chaos and be extra efficient and productive. Each day it’s a conscious effort to get all the things done, done right, done well, and done on time. Hour by hour is planned, budgets are set, all while meeting your step count, stand up goals, water ounce intake, and help the kids make more healthy choices, spend less money, feed the dog, and repeat it all over again the next day.

So mid-morning of my extra efficient day when the buttered toast crossed my path I slipped off my wagon. After my 5am workout, morning pages, and a big proposal meeting at the local Chamber, I had a message that my grandma was in town. She was just down the street from my office at Moss’s Country Kitchen having a late breakfast after a doctor’s appointment. This is when I didn’t realize it, but I was about to be on the edge of my wagon. I hadn’t had any breakfast but had my two large cups of coffee, and after my presentation meeting, I was feeling the drain of energy. I knew some quality time with my grandmother would be just the right thing even though it was not on today’s schedule.

I called her back to say I was headed to the diner. She said she would order for me so I wouldn’t have to wait, as she knew I was busy.

Right as I sat down so did a platter of scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, bacon and two pieces of white bread toasted with butter dripping and shining in the reflection of the diners pick up window heat lamps. I took a deep breath and scooted the hashbrowns off the plate and on to my grandma’s.

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She’s a little thing and needs to eat more I told her as I winked at the hovering waitress. Next, a handful of jelly packets were sat down between us. Grandma needed help getting them open. I have to agree with her that those small rectangle little tubs are “hard boogers to get that shiny corner a hold of to peel back” when you want to add jelly to your toast. “Why do they make them things so dern hard?” she asked trying not to feel embarrassed about her old hands not working as well as they used to.

From there I ate my eggs and inhaled another cup of coffee. Next up was the extra greasy bacon, and another cup of joe topped off by the sweet and efficient waitress. She was on us like a preacher with a collection plate. “Ready for a warm up?” she asked after every sip we took out of our classic white diner mugs.

I hadn’t seen my grandma in quite a few weeks as she reminded me. She said I’d been to busy jet setting all over the country. She’s referring to my trip to Vermont for grad school and then to Florida for beach time for the boys fall break. Just before that, I hadn’t been able to make it by her house the day they were putting up pear preserves.

So she needed an update on me and a good reason why I couldn’t be there for the canning and conversation. She said they had a large time with Aunt Lonetta and Aunt Mildred and she had 3 jars for me in her kitchen I needed to come get.

As we got caught up on life, we talked about the weather. She said the upcoming farmer’s almanac predicted a wet, but mild winter, and so did the woolly worms. It came time to open up more jelly for her, and my toast was still just sitting there beside me. My scrambled eggs and bacon hadn’t really filled me up and she was certainly not done talking. The waitress was also eager to keep us in coffee.

So, as I jellied her toast some more, I mindlessly jellied myself some and took a bite. I think my brain was in shock. As the warm melted butter and light crunch of the toast and squish of jelly entered my mouth I was instantly happier. My forehead did tingle from the sugar rush, and grandma never missed a beat talking about the hams she needs to get for Thanksgiving prep as she reminded me to “be sure to get myself one next week when they are on sale at Walmark’s.”

We wrapped up our breakfast, and finally asked the waitress to take the coffee cups away, and bring us the check. The conversation was the best I’d had in weeks I told her, and I was delighted to know her new hearing aids were helping her as I helped her up and out the

door. The diner had a handwritten sign on the door that they were hiring for 2 chefs and 1 waitress. I told her we should apply and she laughed loudly, saying “oh gosh, ain’t no way I could babe. I got too much to do cooking for the church and the senior citizens center.” Not to mind you she’ll be 89 in a few weeks, has neuropathy and cannot stand longer than just a few moments without help. However, yes I agreed with her that she surely is too busy to come cook at the diner.

I didn’t log the toast in my weight loss app that night as I sat in bed about to turn out the lights. I wasn’t thinking about how it had been another ‘busy’ day again. I just thought as my friend texted back “Everyone needs the occasional buttered toast.” That I no longer felt bad, or guilty about the confession of calories or the time I took with grandma away from all the busy. Never be too busy to enjoy some occasional buttered toast.

I DIDN'T LOG THE TOAST IN MY WEIGHTLOSS APP THAT NIGHT AS I SAT IN BED... I NO LONGER FELT BAD, OR GUILTY ABOUT THE CONFESSION OF CALORIES, OR THE TIME I TOOK WITH GRANDMA AWAY FROM ALL THE BUSY. B U T T E R E D toast

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“SO, FRIENDS, EVERY DAY DO SOMETHING THAT WON’T COMPUTE … GIVE YOUR APPROVAL TO ALL YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND …

ASK THE QUESTIONS THAT HAVE NO ANSWERS. PUT YOUR FAITH IN TWO INCHES OF HUMUS THAT WILL BUILD UNDER THE TREES EVERY THOUSAND YEARS … LAUGH. BE JOYFUL THOUGH YOU HAVE CONSIDERED ALL THE FACTS …

PRACTICE RESURRECTION.” ― WENDELL BERRY, THE COUNTRY OF MARRIAGE

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B U T T E R E D toast 43

I am eager and excited, like a child in kindergarten show and tell, to share a little bit of it all in this packet. You see as a child I talked very much. I was eager to always share a story, tell a funny joke, as well as ask you dozens of questions, only to interrupt with more questions, retaining very little because my mind would wander to the next idea, and the next. I wanted to jump in and tell another story about myself that related to yours, so badly that I might have been paddled a few times or sat with my nose in a circle on the chalkboard. So forgive me as I interrupt my own self in the next few pages and thank you for being a part of the story.

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