Uncle Sam's Vistas 5/24/85

The farms are folding.

Harry came by today.
Usually he is dropping off his car for us to work on.
Today Harry just came by to visit

And it didn’t matter what I said,
What was on his mind came out.
The farms are folding.

He said, maybe we’ll come out of this holding our asses
And I nodded and shook my head.
He named three farms that were foreclosed
And another, selling off the herd tomorrow
And then he rambled on about cow pastures and vistas:

The cows keep down the brush.
Where the cows roam the hills, there are vistas
Open country and views.

The doctor who bought up Downy’s fields a few years back,
Behind Harry’s back forty, his view is almost gone, now.
He planted locust trees and the cows are gone
The brush is grown up and he can’t see much anymore.
I tell Harry that over in Connecticut it is the same.
Harry shakes his head when we talk of Connecticut.
Landed gentry, he says, and we servant folk are being priced out,
Pushed out to the fringes.

We are built on the land, not the other way.
It is we who are built on the land.
We tend and follow the cows that pasture the land
Not the other way.

I wanted to give Harry soybeans
But his mind was on foreclosures
And herds being sold off.