My Ninety Acres
An excerpt from Bromfield's book, Return to Pleasant Valley, on the importance of rural life and sustainable agriculture to our collective future.
By Louis Bromfield
llustration by Wm. Keith Harrison
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Pulitzer prize-winning author LouisBromfield
(1896-1956) wrote eloquently about the importance of rural
life and sustainable agriculture to our collective future.
This charming excerpt from his story, "My Ninety Acres," is
reprinted from Return to Pleasant Valley , a
collection of Bromfield's writings edited by MOTHER EARTH
NEWS contributing editor George DeVault.
—MOTHER
In the first weeks after I came home I never thought about
my father's friend, old Walter Oakes. Indeed I had very
nearly forgotten his existence. And then one day I heard
Wayne, one of the boys on the farm, say something about My
Ninety Acres, and I remembered it all and asked, "is Walter
Oakes still alive?"
"Alive!" said Wayne, "I'll say he's alive. The liveliest
old man in the county. You ought to see that place.
Brother, that's the kind of farm I'd like to own. He raises
as much on it as most fellows raise on five times that much
land."
Wayne, of course, was only 20. He couldn't know how once
people had laughed when Walter Oakes spoke proudly of My
Ninety Acres. Clearly they didn't laugh any more. Clearly
Walter Oakes was the best farmer in all the county, very
likely the best farmer in all the rich Ohio country.
The next Sunday I walked over the hills to My Ninety Acres.
As I came down the long hill above the farm I saw it hadn't
changed much. The house still looked well painted and neat
with its white walls and green shutters, and the barn was a
bright, new, prosperous red.
As I walked down the hill I thought, "This is the most
beautiful farm in America—the most beautiful, rich
farm in the world—My Ninety Acres."
The corn stood waist high and vigorous and green, the oats
thick and strong, the wheat already turning a golden
yellow. In the meadow the bumblebees were working on clover
that rose almost as high as a man's thighs.
I pushed open the little gate and walked into the dooryard
with the neatly mown grass bordered by lilacs and peonies
and day lilies ... I remembered enough to know I should
find old Walter somewhere in the fields. Sunday afternoon
he always spent walking over the place. As a small boy I
had followed him and my father many times.
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