Farmstead

My nostalgic noggin automatically associates the term “farmstead” with The Farm, our first home in New York State’s legendary North Country back in the early to mid 1970s, and Rosslyn, our home on the Adirondack Coast since 2006.

A farmstead generally refers to buildings (and adjoining land) comprising a farm. Traditionally, referring to a “farmstead” (rather than a “farm” or “homestead“) suggested an agricultural holding with ample acreage, 100+ acres according to some sources. Within the farming community the designation still retains this historical implication, but more contemporary usage often includes smaller properties such as The Farm in Cossayuna, New York and our much loved Rosslyn.

Given my poetic proclivity, excerpting Madison Julius Cawein’s appropriately titled poem better captures the farmstead mystique than any attempt I might make at encyclopedic precision.

Ah, the droning of the bee;
In his dusty pantaloons
Tumbling in the fleurs-de-lis;
In the drowsy afternoons
Dreaming in the pink sweet-pea.

Ah, the moaning wildwood-dove!
With its throat of amethyst
Rippled like a shining cove
Which a wind to pearl hath kissed,
Moaning, moaning of its love.

And the insects' gossip thin
From the summer hotness hid
In lone, leafy deeps of green;
Then at eve the katydid
With its hard, unvaried din.

Often from the whispering hills,
Borne from out the golden dusk,
Gold with gold of daffodils,
Thrilled into the garden's musk
The wild wail of whippoorwills.

— Madison Julius Cawein, "The Farmstead" (Source: internetPoem.com)

This poem is so evocative that it ceases to describe its subject, and it becomes the subject. The atmosphere is summoned into existence by Cawein’s words. Can you feel and smell and hear it?!

Another excerpt, this one from James Hearst’s similarly well titled poem, feels especially poignant to me because of how well it maps my memory of The Farm that so enduringly imprinted my own childhood.

The farmstead lies in the angle
of pine and spruce trees set to break
the rush of winter winds, a few
young apple trees lean north
so buds won’t wake too soon
if a March thaw stirs their roots.
The house from its knoll squares
with the compass points above
the feedyard flanked by an open barn...

— James Hearst, "The Farmstead" (Source: The James Hearst Digital Archive)

Well done!