Poetry

For sure, farming is hard work. No one gets rich doing this stuff. But well worked soil provides more “riches” than good crops: the toil, the cycle and beauty of the seasons, the harmony and occasional battles with nature move the soul. Many poems by Robert Frost are perhaps the best examples of farm-life inspired poetry. The Robert Frost Farm in neighboring Derry is only a 10 minute drive from Mack’s Apples. Frost’s poetry was often borne of the land, field, farm and… apples (see After Apple Picking – R.Frost). It’s probably fair to say that most apple growers relate to his poetry. In that spirit, we want to share some poetry with you, and it just so happens, this farm has a resident poet.

Resident poet John Keating recites poetry during the NH Open Doors event held last November.

John Keating runs crews and many horticultural practices here. He’s seen seasons come and go. He’s reached for the sky while picking or thinning fruit. He’s worked pumpkin fields, and orchard land. In a way, much of the work we do requires a talent for working with the abstract. Pruning a tree, for instance, is as much a work of love, as it is technical. There’s a certain way to do it, and a hundred ways to do it, simultaneously. Hoeing pumpkins? The same. Such field work can be mind-numbingly monotonous, or alternately, meditative. Working in the abstract. Good work, for a poet – and John is as good as he can be with it all. You’ll find John’s poems posted along the trail called “Poet’s Prance” (see Trails), and his self-published book “Verses From Moose Hill”, in the Farm Market.

Poetry is well loved by the Mack family: Jonathan Mack (8th gen.) is an accomplished writer, and poetry professor. Andrew Mack (7th gen.) can recite many poems by heart, especially Frost’s (you can challenge him on that, too).

John’s latest poem refers to “thinning” a summertime practice where one picks off smaller or misshapen fruit so the remaining fruit can size and color for quality. Clusters of apples need to be thinned so that just a few apples remain in the cluster. Hand-thinning must be efficient to be practical, so a worker needs to build speed so a tree can be covered rapidly… speed becomes rhythm… and so on, as you will see.

Thinning I

Discovering I had two arms two hands of furious motion–

I set myself to task, flailing hands sailing across branches,

playing the music of falling apples on soft ground;

I follow the song my thinning creates growing wild with speed

unleashed untamed in the heaven of a summer farm

I leaped up ladders chasing time itself.