The Midland Agrarian: June 2012

Friday, June 1, 2012

A Fond Farewell to the Midland Agrarian

Dear Friends,
I know about 50-100 of you stop by here each time after I post. This is the final post on the Midland Agrarian blog. After 4 and a half years of sporadic posting (including putting her up on blocks twice), on any and all topics, I have decided to restrict my modest writing efforts to one subject: Kerry and Dexter Cattle.I hope you will consider following me at my new weblog www.kerrycattle.blogspot.com.

I am about the age where I am both looking backward and forward, and giving serious thought to the matter of vocation. When a small herd of the rarest dairy cattle in the world fall into your lap, it causes one to think. I hope I have about two decades of useful farming life left in me. I am going to use that time to try to build, improve and stabilize the Kerry cattle, and help my friends at Pasture Maid Creamery in telling the world about western Pennsylvania's finest cheese. I am committed to something new with my blogging hobby: I am going to try six day a week blogging at the new site. I hope you will follow me. There will be posts on all things Kerry and Dexter related, and my progress in the aforementioned twin goals.

Midland Agrarian will remain as an archive as long as Google allows, the stillborn Agrarian Urbanist will be removed tomorrow.

In closing, I want to thank Linda J, Backyard Farmyard, Herrick Kimball, Scott Terry, Back to Basics Living, Rick Saenz, (and others I am sure I have forgotten) for reading, writing, and their long support of the agrarian cause.

Respectfully,

Richard Grossman
Craighill Herd of Kerry and Dexter Cattle

Why the Midland Agrarian?

Cultural geographers and students of dialect call the great area of the Ohio valley, upper South and lower Midwest the "midlands of the US". The midland dialect around here includes words such as "redding" for cleaning up our rooms, the "Crick" where we get fish or swim, "youns" for plural "you" and "warshing" for the laundry. Cultural artifacts from the midlands include forebay barns.

Western Pennsylvania was also once a part of the "middle ground" between the Great Lakes and the main portion of the Ohio Valley.

I chose the name "midland" agrarian to distinguish between the many fine southern agrarian writers (Like Wendell Berry), and the truly northern agrarian writers, like Russell Kirk and Eric Sloane. This was not an attempt to place myself in their company, but to recognize the unique aspects of my home country, which I love.