Adam Gnade

Bart,

Good day on the farm. Woke up and rebuilt the barn floor for the lambs. Went around the front of the house and cut a row for green onions, then the storm hit. Man, what a motherfucker of a storm! Came out of nowhere and then the wind was blowing the hell out of the trees and the sky went black. Black! So black the big farm light came on over the sheep pen. By noon it was raining face-on, the whole sky opened up and dumping on us. Drove J off to Weston for her farmhand job in the hills. Country roads were a mess. Drove back in the rain listening to the new Beach House and found a spot by the Missouri River to watch it rise. Flood warnings all week. Campground out by the penitentiary is waistdeep and as I knelt there on the banks and watched the river move I wanted nothing more than to throw myself in and float downstream until I washed up on Huck Finn’s shore. It was all there. All of America rushing by in that brown water. All racing past me and headed who knows where. (I sure as hell don’t know but I have ideas!)

Got back to the house and sat down for six hours of work on the Book. Big edits. Wrote a new chapter that came unexpected and felt right. Been writing by candlelight. (Since May it’s been too hot to breathe so now I leave the lights off in my room and line the window with three short white candles and work in monastic half-light.) It’s feeling good lately. All the story materializing before my eyes, the smells, the sounds; it’s real and it’s exciting and I have it caught in a book. I’m going to push until it’s bigger than anything I ever hoped I’d make. Bigger than me for damn sure. A rugged, sweating, fighting, cussing, fucking, sharp-toothed, gentle-hearted piece of this WORLD.

Took a break midday and set up Rachel with the workings to plant the green onion row. It’s funny teaching someone to farm when you don’t know what you’re doing. First bit of wisdom I gave her was from you: “farming’s all ingenuity, resourcefulness, and improvisation.” And that’s how it goes, doesn’t it? I’m doing all this on no money at all with no real tools and no one to guide me. Just learning and trying to make things work. End times punk rock vegetable feasts and self-reliance to come…

After writing, R and I took the new lambs Bodhi and Billy the Kid out and shepherded them in the fields for a couple hours. Brought the lambs in, gave ‘em some brome, brought our new barn cat Charles Manson in (kitten, eight weeks, not ready for the barn life but he already loves it in there and loves the lambs. Sits on their backs. Rides ‘em. It’s the funniest thing.)

R went in to clean up and I cut a row for beans and a row for leaks, transplanted the leaks I planted a couple months ago, and planted a short row of cucumbers.

And now I’m here and done. To say setting up a DIY farm is like writing a book might be obvious but it’s so true it’s hard to get around. Amending, transplanting, watering, resting, digging… there’s a fast and easy metaphorical connection from one to the other.

So I think this is all finally happening. All my dreams of leaving the city and roping my friends together and growing our own food and working on our projects and making a financially solvent life for ourselves. It’s as good as I imagined and ten times as hard. Hard as a goddamn bear some days. So hard I’m just about ready for the Indians to rise and ride over the ridge and scalp us all. Or maybe we’re the Indians now. Maybe the nickel has flipped. If anything I feel savage and peaceful and strong and quiet. Whatever that makes me I’ll take it.

So there’s a short update of country grammar for you. Soon as you get back to America, we’ll get a jug of wine and a couple pistols and go have some high adventure out here. If anything there’s adventure to be had; it’s just waiting for someone to step up and take it. All this land and all this quiet and all this rolling, bucking, rollicking life. It’s a good way to live. The old country song goes “tell that girl I’m never comin’ back to the city.” And that’s the truth. I like a true thing more than anything and I know you do too, so I sign this one, your friend,

-Adam Gnade