1.1.2015
On the wall in my aunt and uncle's farm house near Atmore, Alabama . . . a constant place in my life.
"It was not that the family was making a machine that they could use; the family was the machine. The family and the clearing and the crops and the stock and the tools were part of the same thing. The family and the place were the same thing and could not be separated one from the other. One could not understand the family without knowing about the land and their work on it and plans for it, and one could not know the land with any real understanding without knowing this family of people. They were dusty with the land; the grit of the land was in them. Their work, which was done together, was the chief meaning of their family lives."
-The Land Breakers by John Ehle