Moderne Frau

My German professor calls me “Eine moderne Frau” during certain class activities. In fact, he just called me that in our last class. According to our limited vocabulary, I’m the epitome of a modern woman. We had been learning how to express our favorite activities. He’d ask “Kochen Sie?” to individuals in the class and they would reply either, “Ja, ich koche gern” (yes, I like to cook) or, “Nein, ich koche nicht gern” (no, I don’t like to cook). It just so happened that most of the girls in my class love to cook elaborate healthy dishes like soy-glazed salmon and sautéed vegetables with quinoa. So, it was a very stark contrast when I replied that no, I didn’t like to cook. At all. “Ah, eine moderne Frau!” exclaimed my professor.

William looks simultaneously shocked & terrified that I was attempting pancakes.

Having moved on to more complex expressions, this past class we learned more verbs to convey our abilities, talents, and obligations. I’m asked “Frau Kletscher, können Sie stricken?” Can I knit? My Grandma Doris, my dad’s mom once taught me….but can I knit now? I reply, “Nein, ich kann nicht stricken” and then I add “ich bin schlecht”. So no, I can’t knit, I’m bad at it. Once again my professor proclaims me “eine moderne Frau.”

Am I a modern woman because my personal preferences don’t align with certain gender stereotypes? Or is it simply because I haven’t needed the skills that are traditionally attributed to women? I’m thinking the answer is a combination of both.

Alice Splettstoeszer on the family's country kitchen.

On one level, looking back into the lives of my ancestors has brought me closer to them. On another, I see just how different my life is from theirs, which can be an interesting distancing experience. I grew up in a fairly large suburb. My parents’ graduating classes were smaller than any one of my class sizes and their entire town population could have attended my high school, with a capacity of 2500, in the same year. We buy everything from the grocery store, except for maybe fresh fruit from the citrus trees in our yard. Though there are small fields of alfalfa and cotton on the Native American reservation less than 10 minutes from my house, I never grew up or worked on a farm. Most of my grandparents had grown up on farms before they moved into the center of the towns they raised their families in. But I grew up in Scottsdale nearly 50 years later. I don’t need to know how to knit or cook and have had to learn other things like computer skills.

Funny article immortalized in the Splettsctoeszer Family Cookbook.

Throughout my project, I’ve tried picturing myself living alongside my ancestors. As noted, it’s an often distancing experience. It’s hard to imagine my lifestyle on a farm: I stay out late attending or working events, then sleep in on the weekend. I cook only out of necessity and prepare simple dishes like pasta, couscous, and sandwiches—then immediately pop my dishes into the dishwasher—or else I order late night takeout with friends.  I do like to live in a clean apartment but when I’m cleaning, I’m usually also procrastinating about schoolwork. I love to do laundry…but these days, who wouldn’t when all you have to do is start the machines and later fold your fresh, warm clothes?

Visiting our family friends' farm.
Stan Ehrke showing us a baby chick.

At the Ehrke's farm.
William & Dad feeding a horse.

I’ve also never really done well with livestock. I love animals but from afar, unless there are dogs around. I’ll always remember when our family friend practically forced me to ride the small, smelly pony at our harvest festival in elementary school. I’ve become more accepting of horses since then, riding on scenic trails in the desert or on a day trip to a hidden waterfall in the Dominican Republic. But I would never own one, or any other kind of common farm animal. I know from experience that I simply couldn’t. In second grade, my school went to Dugan’s Dairy Farm, a milk provider for Shamrock Farms. I don’t have fond memories of the place, and the pictures in my class scrapbook prove it.

Things started out well.
We're shown the tubes of the milking machines.

I clearly can't take the smell of the cows behind my friend, Palmer, & I.

My face of disgust after being coerced to try milking a cow. 

I do have a friend who is interested in agriculture. She wants to own a farm one day in—you guessed it—Minnesota. She loves raising animals and even had a club devoted to raising cattle for competitions during her undergraduate years, when she also majored in agricultural studies. I think there is something modern in that, in using her formal education and global travels to live as a farmer or rancher in today’s world. I wonder what my professor would think of my friend. While I take his “moderne Frau” label lightly and I’m certain he means well, I still feel it is an interesting, almost old-fashioned, reflection of his views; especially in a college classroom in Los Angeles in 2014. I have grown up in a generation where I have the time and means to pursue skills like knitting, cooking, gardening, etc. at my leisure. My life doesn’t depend on them. That is what modern means to me; having choices and the freedom to pick the lifestyle I desire. 

A Bit of Earth

Mary in the garden.
Image courtesy of mickiemuellerart

“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”

In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled.

“Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“To plant seeds in–to make things grow–to see them come alive,” Mary faltered.

He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.

“Do you–care about gardens so much,” he said slowly.

“I didn’t know about them in India,” said Mary. “I was always ill and tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.”

Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.

“A bit of earth,” he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.

“You can have as much earth as you want,” he said. “You remind me of some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want," with something like a smile, “take it, child, and make it come alive.”

--From The Secret Garden, Chapter XII, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mary, Dickon, & Colin.
Image courtesy of studentfashionblog

At our old house in Arizona, my sister and I would sometimes play in the entryway courtyard. It was the most random place—a small square of plant life off to the side of the eight-foot walkway to our front door. To get to it, someone would have to enter the wrought iron gate from outside or from inside through the front door. Now that I think about it, it was our own little “secret” green space. 

But what I wanted, what I was enamored of ever since my Dad read the book to me, was a garden like Mary's in The Secret Garden, sprawling, behind a high wall where I could retreat or share in adventures with friends like Dickon and Colin. 

Living in Arizona, though, I was surrounded by the varying browns and reds of the desert, the sand and rocks, sturdy but thin and rough trees with tiny short leaves and of course, a multitude of cactus species.  I mean, it lacks so much true “greenery” that when my family visited Orlando, Florida while my sister and I were in late elementary school, my sister exclaimed “It’s so green here!” as we descended into our landing pattern. The old people seated around us thought she was hilarious. Then I moved to Los Angeles for undergraduate school and there was even less green. I look out my apartment window to the Astroturf in the courtyard below. If I’m on the rooftop, the only unpaved land I see with palm trees and short grasses and weeds are along the sidewalks or the 110 underpass. Of course, just across the street lies the most greenery around: on USC’s campus, with the major exception of properties that lie in the Exposition Park corridor on the other side of campus.

I think this continual lack of greenery drove me to make sure my college apartments always had living color in them. My penchant for weekly Starbucks couldn’t compete with the cheer brought by a bimonthly purchase of a cheap grocery store bouquet. With the right amount of water mixtures and stem trimmings, I managed to keep the bouquets looking beautiful for a couple weeks at a time. When hardier blossoms, like roses, were in the mix, I would sometimes hang them upside down like an old apothecary might to dry them out and later use them in a longer lasting display.

In preparation for college life, one of my roommates, Katherine, bought a plant from Ikea. She thought it was fake her entire freshman year. It was a hardy tropical succulent—named Melvin—but all the same, it needed some TLC by our sophomore year. Somehow I became its guardian. Once we made our final move junior year to the place we live now, we invested in a lavender plant, another succulent, and the small cactus sampler my roommate had inherited from a fellow intern over the summer. That was a surprising challenge. The cacti sampler was one of those souvenir dishes you can buy at a grocery store. They are everywhere in Arizona. It was dying and I discovered the soil was covered in a layer of gravel hot glued together. The “soil” underneath was dusty and full of Styrofoam pieces from who knows where. But with a little trial and error and determination, I saved the sampler but eventually created a monster. While all the cacti thrived under the extra attention, one did more than the others. It was like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Over the next month, it became stronger while the others shriveled up and died, one by one. Each time I carefully removed a dead one and righted the rest of the sampler, I imagined the cactus yelling, “Feed me Seymour!” One morning, I found the cactus collapsed, snapped right at its base. I had stopped watering it about a month prior when I thought it was reserving too much water in itself after sucking the life from the others. It was over indulged; too fat and heavy for its shallow dish and thus its own good. I imagine it died of happiness.  

The cacti sampler was a strange phase and although the lavender quickly died due to lack of proper light, the new succulent (officially belonging to another roommate, Keiko) flourished alongside Melvin, the tropical plant. When Keiko moved out this past semester, she took her nearly one foot tall succulent with her. Melvin, is still thriving and more lush than ever. But my pride and joy lies in the red glazed terracotta pot on the window ledge.

Wall-E, the tiny lemon tree.

One of the ways I occupied myself while I lived in L.A. over the summer, without my roommates around to distract me, was to attempt to grow a plant from a seed. I did it on a whim one night while making pasta, and soaked the seeds from the lemon I was zesting in a mug of water. A day later, I prepared the seeds according to a nursery website in a small jam jar with leftover soil from the dead lavender plant’s tin bucket that I am so glad I kept. I covered it with plastic wrap to create a miniature green house effect and waited. To my surprise and extreme delight hardly a week later, one of the seeds had sprouted and was just poking up through the soil. I was so proud of myself!

I transplanted the growing sprout from the jam jar to a small vase and nursed it all summer and even ventured to the closest Home Depot to pick up more potting soil and a larger container, one meant for plants this time. I went back and forth between the sky blue and burnished red glazed pots, settling on the latter. I found the process of raising the plant from its humble beginnings to be extremely exciting--I still do! My lemon tree has even been christened Wall-E, for the Disney/Pixar robot by my roommate, Selby. To her, my lemon tree represents the hope of the tiny plant in that movie which serendipitously sprouted in a world dominated by trash.

Wall-E and the plant.
Courtesy of Disney Blogs

Can a green thumb and predilection for nature run in the family? I think it must--not only do I come from a family of farmers, but also a long line of people who tend smaller vegetable garden patches and flower beds. I will always remember late autumns at our house in Rochester, Minnesota, when my parents, especially my Dad, would be working hard to cover the flower beds with Styrofoam buckets to preserve the marigolds and roses throughout the winter. At their old house, my grandparents had several huge plots of flowers and vegetables. I always enjoyed the scent of earthy soil on the air when I would play outside. Even at their townhouse, they continue to grow vegetables in a patch right outside the backdoor, which are always so fresh and delicious.

I have attempted to include the basil plants that are sold downstairs at the Fresh and Easy Express in our windowsill garden. I can usually make them last for a couple of months before they deteriorate from the lack of proper sunlight in our inward-facing apartment. That has been a satisfying project. On Saturday mornings, I love to pluck a few of the basil leaves and add them to an omelet. If I could, I would have my own small garden to tend and have the ability to harvest the fruits of my labor, quite literally. But the ultimate dream is still to surround myself with greenery and flowering plants, perhaps in a sprawling English style garden to laze away my afternoons in.

Document Chronicles: Christian & Henriette Jaekel, Part Two

As I discussed in my previous Document Chronicles post, the young Jaekel family immigrated to America from their small manorial villages in West Prussia. They arrived in the United States on August 1, 1863. Many relatives traveled with Christian and Henriette Jaekel and their two children including Henriette’s parents, uncle and his family, and brother and his family. The Boettcher research team could not determine which port city these immigrants entered the U.S. from or how they traversed the land to reach Minnesota. However, the main points for Germans in this period were New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans. This ocean journey usually took four to six weeks unless the immigrants travelled by steamship, which cut the entire trip in half. Oftentimes, immigrants then worked their way up the Mississippi River by steamboats. We believe the families then came up the Minnesota River to Carver, Minnesota, where the other leg of their journey began through the forest to reach Waconia.

A bit about the Waconia Township, as researched by the Boettchers:

The first settlers called this lake Clear Water Lake, which remains its official name today. The Sioux Indians used the name “Meyday Wa Koni Ya”, meaning “Lake of the Spring." The Dakot aSiux spelling later became “Waconia” which translates “out of water comes life." Most of the land that bordered the lake was claimed by 1858. Settlers soon realized the value of the lake and also were drawn by the beauty of the lake.

I already consider the Jaekels and other pioneers some kind of hopeless romantics. They journeyed so far to come to a new land and language to find what was called for a long time "The Great American Desert." The Great Plains were sculpted by glaciers, giving the land its characteristic rolling hills and innumerable lakes. Once covered in a shallow sea, the prairie was made up of layers of sediments that later allowed certain crops to thrive. However, while government propaganda spread the word of the gratifying pioneers, they neglected to mention the droughts, tornadoes, fierce blizzards and subzero temperatures, among other things, that these same pioneers had been experiencing. But still the new waves of immigrant pioneers were determined and hopeful that they could make a happy life here.

Carver County Minnesota. The Waconia Township is highlighted in yellow. Carver, MN is highlighted pink right along the Minnesota River.

By the time the Jaekels arrived, Minnesota was celebrating its fifth year as a state. But much of its land was yet unclaimed. Farther out from the lakes lay the treeless prairie, like the southern area just outside the township where the Jaekels’ land lay. Though it had its share of flaws, the Waconia area and surrounding Carver County was, indeed, in a valuable position with great farming potential. Carver, Minnesota, the major town on the Minnesota River was only 13 miles from Waconia.  From there, steamboats that travelled up and down the river, connecting with the Mississippi could easily get building materials, household goods, equipment, etc. to the nearby towns. The rivers and lakes provided plenty of fish and the prairie grasslands were full of wild game to supplement what farming put on the table.

The Patent-Deeds in the Jaekel Family Booklet supply an interesting story about the history and possession of Carver County lands. The experience of reading and decoding them has ultimately been a simultaneous refresher and giver of life to all the American history I have ever learned. Who would have ever thought that territory prairie would pass through several very different hands to become farmland typical of Middle America?

In return for his service in the Mexican-American War, the U.S. government under Abraham Lincoln deeded a Private Matias De Lion of the Captain Lakewood Company of the New Mexico Volunteers land in Minnesota. Privates serving for one year or more received 160 acres of land if they applied for reimbursement through the War Bounty-Land Warrants. The government had been giving away territory lands instead of cash rewards since the end of The Revolutionary War. Land Warrant Acts granted around 60 million acres to veterans or their heirs between 1847 and 1855, when the government stopped the program. Most veterans eventually decided not to patent the land warranted to them. Many even sold their warrants to third parties. Private De Lion seems to have either surrendered his patent back to the General Land Office or allowed a transfer to a Michael Beck. There is no indication, so far as can be read, that Beck was a veteran or veteran’s heir who also would have been deeded acreage through the War Bounty-Land Warrants Act.

Patent Deed enacting the transfer to Michael Beck

The transfer from Michael Beck to Christian Jaekel.

However, Beck did decide to sell his parcel of land. Christian and Henriette Jaekel purchased the land for a grand sum of $1,100 dollars. While public land at that time was selling for $1.25 an acre, the Jaekels averaged at approximately $7 an acre. Oftentimes, veterans sold their bounty-land to agents for very little money since they were unaware of the true value. It is unclear whether Michael Beck knew the value of his land or was trying to take advantage of the newly immigrated Germans. Either way, the Jaekels followed through their purchase. The “north west quarter of Section 34 of Township 116 of Range 25” was now theirs. The Jaekels now did not need to worry about proving their mettle under the Homestead Act of 1862, wherein a homesteader settles and farms 160 acres of land for five years in order to earn that land for free. Like my parents, I have always lived under the motto of ‘better to be safe than sorry’. Perhaps that is an inherited sensibility that has lasted throughout the generations.

The Jaekels 160 acres in the Waconia Township.

These hardy pioneer farmers cleared and settled the land only to face two seasons of drought as well as a summer of grasshoppers all within the first five years on their homestead. But German-American farmers were known for their fierce determination and survival instincts. The Jaekels worked wholeheartedly to make this country their new home for their growing family. I think Christian and Henriette’s purchase proved a worthy investment. The Boettchers found the following information in the Farm Census of 1870: “21 acres of improved land and 140 acres of woods. The cash value of the farm was $2,000. The value of the implements and machinery was $150. The value of the livestock was $325, consisting of 2 horses, 2 milk cows, 5 other cattle, 5 sheep, 2 swine, and the value of animals slaughtered was $150. The harvest consisted of Spring Wheat—170 bushels; Indian Corn—50 bushels; Oats—100 bushels; Barley—70 bushels; Wool—10; Butter – 100 pounds; Hay – 7 or 8 tons. The estimated value of farm produce was $500.”

Deed transfer between father and son.

The Jaekel land in 1898, now owned by Hermann.

Hermann, their second son and first American-born, purchased the land from his parents for $2,000. The land was officially transferred on June 16, 1890. Christian and Henriette continued to live on the land with their son and later, grandchildren. Though the land is no longer among the Jaekel descendants, it is still farmed in Waconia today. I just think that the story of the connection between the land and my family is incredibly amazing. There is so much history there. Yet, it is still existing and progressing under the watchful eyes and calloused hands of farmers, all started by the hopeless romanticism and hard work of my ancestors.

Map of Waconia today, still surrounded by operating farmland.
Courtesy of Carver County.

Document Chronicles: Christian & Henriette Jaekel

I am fortunate to have an incredibly supportive network of relatives, who, upon hearing of my project, have been forwarding memories and whatever familial documents they have in their possession. One such resource is a genealogical booklet of the Christian and Henriette Jaekel Family, which was sent by my grandparents, Larry and Joyce. They are the great grandparents of my grandfather. A team of relatives, the Boettchers, compiled the booklet in 1993 and was able to find many significant historical documents to complement the family tree. I have been absolutely amazed by the document copies. It is one thing to imagine your ancestors emigrating and starting anew in another country but it is certainly another when you can see tangible evidence of their life-changing decision.

My Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, Christian Jaekel, was born in Wentsie, Kries Behrendt Provinz and Koenigreich Preusen, Germany on December 23, 1825. Germany then was not a unified country, but rather a group of independent states, like the Kingdom of Prussia, that were part of a larger area usually referred to as ‘the Germanies’ even during the Holy Roman Empire. According to Meyers Gazetteer of the German Empire from 1912, Wentsie was a noble’s estate of 49 persons in West Prussia. It was 3.5 km from the Berent Railroad Station. I have discovered an old map from 1855 that depicts the Behhrendt Province near the main port of Danzig. 

Behrent is just west of Danzig, which is on the coast of the bay of yellow-outlined West Prussia.
Image courtesy of Reinhold Berg Antique Maps.

Christian’s wife, Henriette Kowalke was born in Old Paleschken, West Prussia, Germany on June 12, 1833. Old Paleschken is now known as the small village of Nowe Polaszki, Poland. Its current population is around 460. This is not much of a change since the 521-person population listed in the 1912 Gazeteer. Another Prussian genealogical researcher discovered Alt Paleschken’s village dates back to 1289 during the Northern Crusades against the pagan Prussians. Teutonic Knights later purchased the land in 1359 but by 1456 the village was royal property.

Alt-Paleschken is to the right of Neu-Paleschken in the upper left corner.
Other similarly small manorial villages can be seen.
Image courtesy of Bill Remus.

View of Nowe Polaszki, Poland today (Point A).
Image courtesy of Google Maps.

Though they lived in different villages, both the Jaekels and the Kowalkes would have been peasant farmers with little to no land of their own and even less to pass on to their descendants. It is easy to understand how Christian and Henreitte Jaekel might have felt at the prospect of new unclaimed territories in America. The Jaekels left no evidence as to why exactly they emigrated, but being free to work their own land would be my guess. Other Germans were known to have immigrated to America due to the potato famine in Germany, draft evasion in the Germanic/Russian territories and religious oppression. Once they had decided to make the journey, the Jaekels would have sold off their possessions to pay for passage as well as to downsize their portable property. Then, they would have needed the requisite “Permit to Emigrate” and passports, which were sometimes combined documents. Personal recommendations from local church officials went far in obtaining these permits. So far as we know, neither a passport nor a permit survives.

However, we do have copies of Christian’s, his son’s (Gustave), and his brother-in-law’s (August Kowalke) Certificates of Renunciation of Citizenship to Germany. The forms clearly state that “it is my bona fide intention to become a Citizen of the United States, and to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity which I in any wise owe…to the Emperor of Germany, Emperor Wilhelm I of whom I have heretofore been a subject.” Gustave’s certificate is below as it is the clearest copy from 1993. Signing and submitting this kind of document must have been an incredible moment for immigrants; it was the final official step from their homeland and embrace of their new life.

Gustave Jaekel's Certificate of Renunciation 1886

Several years later, the Jaekels and the Kowalkes would have been eligible to file their Certificates of Naturalization, a legal affirmation of their new American citizenship. August Kowalke’s (Henriette Jaekel’s brother) copy is dated 1868, just five years after their presumed arrival. Christian Jaekel's is not included in the ancestry booklet. But his son's is. According to the 1790 Naturalization Act, the wife and children of a naturalized citizen are automatically considered naturalized. So, I can only conclude that since Christian's is missing--as is Henriette's--and that his son still went to swear before the Chaska Court over thirty years later in 1897, Christian and Henriette Jaekel never followed through their promise of becoming legal status U.S. citizens. This is definitely an interesting plot-twist, if true.

By 1868, the Jaekels and Kowalkes had been farming on their new homesteads for five years, the requisite time for their land to officially be their own property. Though the certificates would have meant their new legal American nationality, I can only wonder if this paper would have truly felt like an equally large step as the renunciation. Working for five years on American land that I had paid for would certainly have made me feel more American already. Perhaps the reason Christian and Henriette never filed (if our research is correct) is because they did not need to prove they had become Americans. They had cleared and toiled unsettled land for five years. Would a paper have brought them any further validation? Obviously official legal status is extremely important to the foundation of a new settled life, as Gustave and his uncle felt. But I ask myself if this might be where my inherited indifference for any kind of certificate of participation or certain award stems from? While my friends pined over small blue ribbons at Field Day and what have you, I have always been content knowing I had done the best I could and did not feel the need for any kind of recognition. Then again, I have always been very shy and probably never wanted any extra attention. Whatever the case, I happily imagine a large traditional German feast in honor of August Kowalke's (and later Gustave Jaekel's) authenticated naturalization as well as the new life these families had started in Minnesota.

 

August Kowalke's Certificate of Naturalization 1868.

Watch for Part Two of my Document Chronicles series, which covers the Jaekel’s homestead in early Waconia, Carver County, Minnesota.

Review: The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Klinkenborg’s The Rural Life approaches memoir through his collection of seasonal journal entries. These entries reflect the passage of time and seasonal changes brought to his farm over several years. In his opening, Klinkenborg describes how the writer in him pressured him to keep a journal but the farmer in him desired a more pragmatic approach. He not only wanted to capture the essence of rural life and how it felt, but what plantings had been done or how many animals he had at any one time. Journaling in the style he does fulfills his desire to record the everyday pleasures or practical notes of living on a farm.

“It’s no longer the writer in me that wants to keep a journal. It’s the farmer—or rather the son and nephew and grandson of farmers.”

When reflection on the land does spur personal memories, Klinkenborg’s interruptions in exposition to describe his mother’s voice or the age of the universe flow within the entries as if he was meant to speak of them all along. The beauty of his writing is simple and genuine, almost intimate as Klinkenborg shares the minutest details he notes of his land and the life that occupies it. But there is more to the book than a “herd all ones days” as he puts it.

“In America, we’ve learned to locate the meaning of rural life in the past, thereby dismissing it.”

The Rural Life brings the small-town farm back into the present. Klinkenborg makes no official claims against the progression of the modern era. Instead, he reminds the rest of the world of this somewhat hidden life of rural farmers by celebrating the farming tradition he has upheld. It is easy to forget the quiet yet extremely productive day on a farm when you live in the middle of a metropolitan city.  For the duration of the book, the reader is brought face-to-face, sense-to-sense if you will, with the earthy link between a farmer and his land not as he is in the past but in the same present as the reader.

“A conscientious journal keeper is really the natural historian of his own life.”

I thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience. Having spent much of my childhood visiting family in rural Minnesota, the summer and winter months felt as though they had been plucked from my own memory. From the first page I found a strong sense of kinship to Klinkenborg and his nostalgia as well as his relationship to the land. The progression into the other months enveloped me in the spring and fall on his farm with such effortless yet reverential descriptions of the landscape. I could clearly see what Klinkenborg was seeing when he was writing without him ever becoming too poetic or metaphorical. Nothing felt forced in his writing, even when he sporadically brought up his personal memories. Reading was more akin to sitting next to Klinkenborg and hearing him speak over a warm mug of coffee. His writing is a new model of how I am trying to approach my own accounts of rural land and memories. I want to reach that kind of level of naturalness that he achieves.

“A journal always conceals vastly more than it reveals. It’s a poor substitute for memory, and memory is what I would like to nourish.”

Klinkenborg’s writing is delightful to read, especially when he connects the scenes outside his door to his family memories. There is warmth to his descriptions indicating his genuine appreciation for what nature gives his farm. Anyone interested in a location-focused memoir will find The Rural Life enjoyable. But anyone with firsthand experience of northern rural life on or near farmland will feel right at home in Klinkenborg’s accounts.