The Land Remembered

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Special to United Methodist Insight | Feb. 18, 2025

In the scriptures the “land remembered” refers to the Promised Land, the land God pledged to give to Abraham and his descendants, now modern day Palestine and Israel as mentioned in Leviticus 26:42 where it says, “I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”

This kind of mystical connection to the land has persisted down through the ages with farmers all over the world.

In his 1975 memoir, "The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People,” Wisconsin native Ben Logan wrote, “Once you have lived on the land, been a partner with its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave. The living land remembers, touching you in unguarded moments, saying, 'I am here. You are a part of me.'"

Like Ben Logan, Jerry Pierce, a Montana resident for over 40 years, is part of the great diaspora of Wisconsin-grown farm kids whose early years on the land shaped their lives.  

Pierce, now of Gildford, Montana, saw my column about leaving my family farm and sent me his family’s story. He tells about the farm life of his childhood, and how his family has found a way to cope with the loss of the land. This includes his unique sense of humor and a special memorial plaque in the neighborhood where the family farmed for generations.

The family farm where Pierce grew up near Onalaska, Wisconsin, in the 1950s has been “completely developed into new homes. The land at the front of the farm, close to where the farm buildings stood, is a retention pond that collects the runoff from the new housing area. Surrounding the pond is Pierce Memorial Park, dedicated to the farm families that once lived there.” 

Jerry Pierce wrote, “We lived in the La Crosse area on some of the steepest farm ground in Wisconsin. My ancestors and my siblings all had one leg shorter than the other due to riding on hay wagons while loading bales. Although not on the farm any longer, our children exhibit the same genetic traits from the past.

"Those, indeed, were good times. Fresh-cut alfalfa or ground feed and molasses used to tickle the nose so much you swear you could indulge yourself in eating it with the cows. Don’t even get me started on haylage and high-moisture corn.

“Dad and Mom farmed and raised seven kids east of Onalaska, up in Green's Coulee. My Grandpa and Great-Grandpa owned the whole coulee at one time, and then sold off pieces to each of their sons as they got married. Two of them farmed it until they retired, and the others sold theirs off and took up other occupations after the war.

"My dad, Don, and his brother, Charles, farmed a partnership until 1969, and then each of them took over their own place and farmed until they retired in the late '90s. They started out with 10 cows apiece, and a team of horses that Grandpa gave them, and then built up from there. The last team of horses left around 1957, and that was the last year we thrashed oats, too.

"We ended up with around 40 head of Holsteins and some beef. We had some pigs early on, but that changed when they went to bulk Grade A milk. That happened in 1958, and the barn cleaner was installed as a requirement for that kind of production. The pigs left at that time and the only other critters allowed were Ma's chickens. She used to run about 200 every other year, and usually got 50-75 roosters for broilers along with 200 or so hens. She sold her eggs to the IGA store in town to offset the grocery bill.

“We rented some neighboring ground to supplement the feed, as the 180 acres was not all tillable, too steep in places to get up on with equipment. When we got the new combine, a Massey Harris Clipper 50, we thought we had died and gone to heaven. It was a whopping 5-foot header and held 25 bushels. One pass in the field and there was straw and no bundles. Of course, the corn binder and shredder were gone and had been replaced by the one row pull-type New Idea corn picker.

“We still had to shovel the corn into the corn crib by hand, so it wasn’t all automated. The silo filler disappeared around that time, too, along with handling all the corn bundles. Dad got a one-row corn chopper that also had a hay head for it. They hand-built a set of wagons with a false front end that was pulled to the rear with a roller cable powered by electricity to unload the wagons. These were eventually replaced with self-unloading wagons in the '70s.

“There really wasn’t much change from the '70s on up to the end, when it came to newer equipment.  Dad was as frugal as they came.  Borrowing money for things was not his favorite thing.  He took exceptionally good care of all his equipment. When he sold the cows, Dad turned to Farmall tractor restoration.

“Today, our home place has been overtaken by huge single-family homes. The Onalaska area expanded and consumed the cows and land. Dad and Mom could see the handwriting on the mailbox and thought it would be better to sell before something happened, so the kids didn’t have to worry about it. It was a hard thing to see that happen, but farming in the middle of a town was not feasible either. The neighbors also sold out as well.

“All that is left of the home place is the family memorial park. It’s a nice place to visit, but it only holds memories for my family and friends who remember how it used to be. Someday there will be just the little park. Nobody will know what went before it, unless they read the little plaque stating who we were. We will slip into ancient history.”

Pierce added,” It helps a lot when you have siblings to reminisce with. At times we get to laughing so hard that, at our age, the urinary tract relaxes a little too much, and we start to embarrass each other.”

Jerry Pierce served in the U.S. Army and then the Montana Air National Guard for a total of 26 years, retiring as a Senior Master Sergeant in 2006. His deployments included tours to South Korea, Panama, Curaçao, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Qatar. Pierce and his wife, Jean, own Prairie Custom Woodcrafters LLC just north of Gildford, Montana. They specialize in furniture, sign and cabinet design and building. They have been working on a new way of wood drying, a process using a vacuum tube, which cuts the drying time of fresh lumber down to a few days as compared to years for air drying.

John Sumwalt is a retired pastor and the author of “Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives”