Due this week

General Writing. Send in your best work – poems, short stories, essays. (Feel free to do it throughout the year, but this gives you a deadline.)
Deadline: Oct. 10.

To submit to Newspaper Series

  • Log in. (Click "Not a YWP member?" to create an account.)

  • Click "create content" and create an ENTRY
  • Fill out "title," "author name, school & grade" and "prompt" boxes.
  • Paste story into "body."
  • Click "Submit." You are done.
    NOTES: Your account email must be accurate; a "blog" entry must be resubmitted as an ENTRY to be considered.

Farming by Emily Gieselman

emnoodlehead's picture
Submitted by emnoodlehead on April 11, 2007 - 17:56.

Our Farm
Emily Gieselman
Lyman C. Hunt Middle School, Grade 8

The whispers of the past sing sweetly in my ear.
The creaking stairs show me our way, the way that so many walked before me.
The old kitchen is still filled with lady bugs and peanut butter cookies.
Visions of the living room where so many birthdays were spent prance in my memory.
Our family's laughter echo in the hallway, even though we have all left.
Our tire tracks are embedded in the thick Easter mud and our work boots track's still dot the walkway.
Minister hill in autumn still is fresh in my mind even on a harsh Burlington winter's day.
We will forever belong to the farm.
The farm will forever belong to us, no matter who buys it
or who paints the shudders
or who demolishes the horse barn and sugar house.
It is ours.
you can’t take it from us
The farm is ours.

Evocative

Submitted by ggevalt on August 16, 2007 - 15:27.

What I like most about this poem is the voice and the powerful, evocative images. The narrator has power and heart and, by the end, you absolutely know that no one can wrestle the memory or the sense of ownership of the farm. It was evocative because I believe that farmers are like that -- they are intensely proud of what they do and they hang onto their farm life through most anything.
This is a fine piece of writing. I found myself reading and re-reading it the first time I ran into it and now, months later, I still find it fresh and interesting.
Nicely done.

Geoff Gevalt

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