February Ramble

February Ramble:
The vistas from the edge of the prairie are some times stunning. This looking east photograph does not do the view I had this late afternoon justice. This is a fine enough picture but the view was remarkable even though the colors were not as brilliant as they appear here. There was intensity to the color of the earth and sky that was better stated in subtle hues. I suppose the sensual, the cold wind and the smell of the soil, added to the intensity. To my back the land slopes to the Wabash River Valley that runs across an ancient river valley that ran much deeper that was cover by glaciation. To the north was marsh that ran to the south edge of Lake Michigan before the broad rivers were channelized and ditches dug to drain that swam. There is some very good farm land there. This is where the dense eastern forests met the midwestern prairie. Fingers of prairie divided the forest as the forest yielded to the prairie weather.
The little patch of gravel here use to run up to a farmstead. The power lines remain. A lot of these farmhouses stood on the crests of hills. I suppose it made living a little drier but it exposed the folks who lived there to the relentless wind. Many had a congregation of trees around them to break the winter wind and cool the summer breeze but many stood alone against the wind, a cold way to live when houses were drafty, without the convenience of modern window, doors, insulation, and central heat. The walk to the out house on a brisk winter day was an experience to remember. This field was probably several farmsteads. A farm may have been as small as forty acres, which was a lot of land when the soil was turned while walking behind a plow.
I have friends who are twenty years my senior, who grew up on farms where all the labor was done by them or the horse or mule. They fled the farm for civilization, indoor plumbing and electric lights, the REMC, Rural Electrification and Mechanization Cooperative, made farm life less brutal and a little more comfortable. Farming today is a different life than then. Life on the prairie is well connected to the rest of the world and comfortable: electricity, cars, roads, telephones, refrigerators, air conditioning, cable tv, and the internet.
While life on the prairie has changed the view is still good.