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Ben Logan wrote in his iconic story of his family’s Seldom Seen farm near Gays Mills how his father would let the land speak to him of when it was time to plant.
His father would walk into the fields “feeling the soil, testing it for moisture and warmth, smelling it,” Logan wrote in “The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and its People.” His father’s relationship to the land — his desire to preserve and protect it and his respect for its productivity — surely shaped Ben Logan’s own love for the land, which spoke to him as well saying, “I am here. You are part of me.”
More than 30 years after he wrote those words, Logan turned to the Mississippi Valley Conservancy to add to his cultural contribution to Wisconsin by donating an easement on Seldom Seen farm that will ensure that it remains in agricultural production.
That gift to the people of the state comes at a time when the need to preserve agricultural land is getting much-needed attention.
The state Legislature is considering adopting an update to the state’s farmland preservation program with a Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easement program that would compensate farmers who voluntarily agree to give up permanently their right to develop their land for non-agricultural purposes. The loss of Wisconsin agricultural lands in recent years has been estimated to be as high as 30,000 acres a year.
The state’s agriculture secretary, Rod Nilsestuen, will likely refer to the proposal when he comes to Seldom Seen Farm Saturday at 10 a.m. to honor Logan for his contributions, both in literature and farmland conservation.
Logan’s book is said to be a favorite of Nilsestuen’s and quotes from the book have often found their way into his speeches, according to a news release from the secretary’s office. “For Rod, the book offers more than a shared memory of a farm background but an emphasis on the land and our connections to it and the need to preserve it.”
I interviewed Logan in 1976 when I was editor of the Lodi Enterprise. Ben was in town to visit his brother, Larry, and sister-in-law, Vivian, who was our typesetter at the Enterprise. It was the year after “The Land Remembers” was published. He was 55 years old at the time. Here’s what he told me then about the land in a story I wrote for the July 29 issue:
He was concerned that technology might be separating people from the land. And he worried about corporate control of land. One day, he said, “We will have to do things to save the land that will endanger immediate profit.”
Logan said, “I think time is running out on us. The land is very forgiving, but it has its limits. ... If we begin to think of the land as a living organism, you immediately have to apply ethics to it.”
All these years later, Logan has demonstrated his land ethic with an example for the rest of the state to follow — respect for and preservation of agricultural lands.
(After the ceremony, MVC officials will give guided tours of the farm. The public is invited. See
mississippivalleyconservancy.org for more information.)
Dave Skoloda, former editor and co-owner of the Onalaska Community Life and Holmen Courier and an adjunct professor of journalism at Winona State University, can be reached at dskoloda@earthlink.net.
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