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Several years ago Jim VanDerPol sensed the natural fit writing had with farming.
“I can honestly say,” he will say, “that some of my columns were half written while I was busy doing physical farm work.”
Anyone who has spent time cultivating, riding a horse, or any number of other farm activities can relate to VanDerPol’s comment. However, he was the one who took those thoughts from the mind to paper, first as a long running series of columns in area weekly newspapers, including this one, and eventually to regional agricultural magazines.
And, now, finally into book form.
Just before Christmas his book, “Conversations with the Land,” came off the presses. It is a collection of short essays revolving around a diversified farm life and his thoughts of a better future for agriculture, and in so doing he hardly shies away from his progressive politics.
Yes, the writing is his, but this was more than an individual book. Family — as it should on a “family” farm — played a significant role in its publication. He credits his wife, LeeAnn, for the sacrifices she made to work off the farm for so many years while they became established as a direct marketer of range-raised pork, beef and chickens that now supports two families — he and LeeAnn, as well as his son, Josh, and Cindy and their children.
As much as he credits LeeAnn, he also said the book wouldn’t have been possible without Josh and Cindy “taking up the slack” when he was writing.
His daughter, artist Carye Mahoney, did the line drawings for the book, and his son-in-law, Curtis Doschner, designed the cover and book layout. Daughter Katie Doschner is helping publicize the book.
As are the Minnesota Sustainable Farming Association, Graze and Farmer magazines, CURE and the Land Stewardship Project (LSP). “It helps,” he quipped, “to have a sister (Terry) working with them.”
Technically, “Conversations” is a self-published effort with an original printing of 500 copies. Family members hope to hit the winter farm events to peddle copies, and several organizations have asked VanDerPol to do readings.
Indeed, he cut his teeth on the first reading from the book on Friday at the LSP offices in Montevideo. Fortunately all the family was here for the holidays and were there to support Jim and meet the public.
VanDerPol said he was encouraged by many of his readers and editors to publish a book “that I started writing 15 or 20 years ago.”
When teased about the “economy” of the essays in the book, editors who have worked with the notoriously long columns would have enjoyed VanDerPol’s response that “my columns are actually getting longer rather than shorter.”
Going against the grain, though, is a matter of personal pride more so than a deterrent. It was a path fueled by anger and economic reality. Row crop farming what he calls a “wet” farm provided much frustration, and when facing a decision of either expansion or the proverbial auction, VanDerPol made what at the time was an about-face and moved toward perennial crops in the form of pasture production.
It was slow going at first, but he said the writing gave him “another eye” and a sense of encouragement.
Sheep and sows, then into cattle grazing. He claims he was influenced as much by the thinking of Alan Savory on the production economics as he was by essayist Wendell Berry on philosophical thought and penmanship.
“This was a time of big change for us, with Josh and Cindy joining us on the farm,” he recalled. It was a personal and economic challenge to support two families on 320 acres of pastureland, which they did by moving toward direct marketing. Now the family moves 25 head of pigs through the direct market chain per week to high-end groceries, food co-ops and customers in the Twin Cities, as well as to a local clientele the local Cenex and at their on-farm store.
“I was born in the late 1940s into an agricultural community that was failing,” he writes in his forward, “and the knowledge of how to farm, as well as a passion for the occupation, was being lost each time a farm failed. I saw that I was becoming alone, isolated and an outlier in my home country.”
And, he became angry — not so much in a corrosive and destructive manner — but more in what VanDerPol calls a “wholesome, character building and an very effective agent for change.”
He added that giving up was never an option as the family learned to adapt and change. VanDerPol admits that his writing helped drive both the anger and the change. “The writing,” he said, “has had an important impact on our farming. It had the effect of supplying another eye on the enterprise.”
Now, as he peddles the books around the area, and has hopes such marketing giants Amazon and Barnes & Noble can provide significant help, he claims he is far from done. He has at least two more books in the works, including a practical “how to” on low cost pork production. The second is another book of essays.
“I’m thinking this will be much different than ‘Conversations,’ with three or four major long essays, more in the vein of Berry. I’ve had some false starts because I find I have trouble with writing long narrative.”
What you won’t find in his writing, though, is objectivity, for he has even less regard for than he does long narrative and bad government.
VanDerPol has a sharp wit and can spin political subjectivity like a sharp-tipped top on a marble table. His “mop” of white hair and the weathering of the prairie winds encouraged a friend to once tease him during a political tirade of “taking on the look of Mark Twain.”
He stopped and smiled. “I’ve maintained a hope that someday someone will invite me to do a Twain reading, and I know just the one I’d do. It’s where they were transporting a casket of a dead man across the Kansas plains in a boxcar when someone places a chunk of cheese on the casket. The hobos are going crazy with the stench and debating about what to do with the casket, with respect to the dearly departed. And it turns out the stink was from the cheese!”
As he retold the Twain story, you could almost envision the two tassel-haired progressives going at it, alternately preaching and spitting political tirades, spinning stories and laughing at will.
Readers will find a little of all of that in the 164 pages of essays inside the cover featuring wind-whipped prairie blue stem and a bright blue sky.
“I’m pretty happy with it. Thrilled, actually,” he said of the book. “We’ll see what happens now.”
Several years ago Jim VanDerPol sensed the natural fit writing had with farming.
“I can honestly say,” he will say, “that some of my columns were half written while I was busy doing physical farm work.”
Anyone who has spent time cultivating, riding a horse, or any number of other farm activities can relate to VanDerPol’s comment. However, he was the one who took those thoughts from the mind to paper, first as a long running series of columns in area weekly newspapers, including this one, and eventually to regional agricultural magazines.
And, now, finally into book form.
Just before Christmas his book, “Conversations with the Land,” came off the presses. It is a collection of short essays revolving around a diversified farm life and his thoughts of a better future for agriculture, and in so doing he hardly shies away from his progressive politics.
Yes, the writing is his, but this was more than an individual book. Family — as it should on a “family” farm — played a significant role in its publication. He credits his wife, LeeAnn, for the sacrifices she made to work off the farm for so many years while they became established as a direct marketer of range-raised pork, beef and chickens that now supports two families — he and LeeAnn, as well as his son, Josh, and Cindy and their children.
As much as he credits LeeAnn, he also said the book wouldn’t have been possible without Josh and Cindy “taking up the slack” when he was writing.
His daughter, artist Carye Mahoney, did the line drawings for the book, and his son-in-law, Curtis Doschner, designed the cover and book layout. Daughter Katie Doschner is helping publicize the book.
As are the Minnesota Sustainable Farming Association, Graze and Farmer magazines, CURE and the Land Stewardship Project (LSP). “It helps,” he quipped, “to have a sister (Terry) working with them.”
Technically, “Conversations” is a self-published effort with an original printing of 500 copies. Family members hope to hit the winter farm events to peddle copies, and several organizations have asked VanDerPol to do readings.
Indeed, he cut his teeth on the first reading from the book on Friday at the LSP offices in Montevideo. Fortunately all the family was here for the holidays and were there to support Jim and meet the public.
VanDerPol said he was encouraged by many of his readers and editors to publish a book “that I started writing 15 or 20 years ago.”
When teased about the “economy” of the essays in the book, editors who have worked with the notoriously long columns would have enjoyed VanDerPol’s response that “my columns are actually getting longer rather than shorter.”
Going against the grain, though, is a matter of personal pride more so than a deterrent. It was a path fueled by anger and economic reality. Row crop farming what he calls a “wet” farm provided much frustration, and when facing a decision of either expansion or the proverbial auction, VanDerPol made what at the time was an about-face and moved toward perennial crops in the form of pasture production.
It was slow going at first, but he said the writing gave him “another eye” and a sense of encouragement.
Sheep and sows, then into cattle grazing. He claims he was influenced as much by the thinking of Alan Savory on the production economics as he was by essayist Wendell Berry on philosophical thought and penmanship.
“This was a time of big change for us, with Josh and Cindy joining us on the farm,” he recalled. It was a personal and economic challenge to support two families on 320 acres of pastureland, which they did by moving toward direct marketing. Now the family moves 25 head of pigs through the direct market chain per week to high-end groceries, food co-ops and customers in the Twin Cities, as well as to a local clientele the local Cenex and at their on-farm store.
“I was born in the late 1940s into an agricultural community that was failing,” he writes in his forward, “and the knowledge of how to farm, as well as a passion for the occupation, was being lost each time a farm failed. I saw that I was becoming alone, isolated and an outlier in my home country.”
And, he became angry — not so much in a corrosive and destructive manner — but more in what VanDerPol calls a “wholesome, character building and an very effective agent for change.”
He added that giving up was never an option as the family learned to adapt and change. VanDerPol admits that his writing helped drive both the anger and the change. “The writing,” he said, “has had an important impact on our farming. It had the effect of supplying another eye on the enterprise.”
Now, as he peddles the books around the area, and has hopes such marketing giants Amazon and Barnes & Noble can provide significant help, he claims he is far from done. He has at least two more books in the works, including a practical “how to” on low cost pork production. The second is another book of essays.
“I’m thinking this will be much different than ‘Conversations,’ with three or four major long essays, more in the vein of Berry. I’ve had some false starts because I find I have trouble with writing long narrative.”
What you won’t find in his writing, though, is objectivity, for he has even less regard for than he does long narrative and bad government.
VanDerPol has a sharp wit and can spin political subjectivity like a sharp-tipped top on a marble table. His “mop” of white hair and the weathering of the prairie winds encouraged a friend to once tease him during a political tirade of “taking on the look of Mark Twain.”
He stopped and smiled. “I’ve maintained a hope that someday someone will invite me to do a Twain reading, and I know just the one I’d do. It’s where they were transporting a casket of a dead man across the Kansas plains in a boxcar when someone places a chunk of cheese on the casket. The hobos are going crazy with the stench and debating about what to do with the casket, with respect to the dearly departed. And it turns out the stink was from the cheese!”
As he retold the Twain story, you could almost envision the two tassel-haired progressives going at it, alternately preaching and spitting political tirades, spinning stories and laughing at will.
Readers will find a little of all of that in the 164 pages of essays inside the cover featuring wind-whipped prairie blue stem and a bright blue sky.
“I’m pretty happy with it. Thrilled, actually,” he said of the book. “We’ll see what happens now.”
