OUR BEAUTIFUL FARM IN KANSAS

Our next stop was the farm in Kansas where we both spent so much time while in the community.  Neither of us had been there in many years and we both had wonderful and not so wonderful memories of our times there.  Samoa had arranged through her Dad to get the OK to visit and we were grateful, and very excited to see the Farm.  We stopped to see her "brother" Marlon in Frankfurt, who has become an amazing sculptor using the local limestone.  

Benton Farm

It is a beautiful place, nestled in the flint hills of northeast Kansas.  The overcast weather most of the time we were there fit our bittersweet mood.  We walked all over the farm, remembering.  It was an intense life we lived there, filled with the relationships and doings of the community.  When we all lived there, every place had a name and we knew each one intimately.  

Jessie's house, where she kindly offered to have us stay.  

The cow barn where I milked one or two cows most mornings, took care of our goats and helped deliver  their babies.

The Creek.  We couldn't find the swimming hole where we cooled off on so many hot days - probably the creek bed has been rearranged by spring floods.  

But Samoa remembered this tree.  

The view from Magic Mountain - the farm covers the whole valley below from ridge top to ridge top.

Stargazer Hill

Samoa remembered many times walking to the Stone House which was a short way down one of the back roads.  We drove that way but couldn't see it.  Was it still there and could we find it?  We went to visit Anthony, another "brother" from the Family, whose beautiful home is nearby.  He said it might still be there, but hidden by trees that have grown up over the years.  

Putting together her memories and mine, Samoa and I figured out where the Stone House ought to be and walked out across the hills.  There it was, surrounded by a cedar grove!  You wouldn't know it was there until you went inside the grove.  This house is typical of those built by settlers in the late 1800's.  You can see that they built an outside stone wall, and an inside one, with stone chips in between - thick enough to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer.  Many settlers came to this area then, but a long drought drove them west again.  Only the stones remain.  

 

And only the caretaker couple live on the Farm now.  The life we lived is gone, for better and for worse.  I surely do miss so much of it, though.  I lived here for 12 years altogether.  

As we were driving away, we visited old Bigelow - a small town near the farm which was wiped out to build a flood control dam in the 1950's.   It was April, which is usually when morel mushrooms can be found around the farm.  Anthony told us that there might be some in Bigelow, even though the last few days had been unseasonably cold.  So we stopped and walked in, with not a lot of hope of finding them.  You have to really look because morels are the same color as the dried leaves around them.  And they are magical!

But Samoa found some!!!

Ahhhhhh!

Finding the morels meant to us that the magic of this place lives on, and we can come back to this beautiful land and find it again.