On Dec 4, 2012, at 6:02 PM, Valerie . . .  wrote to Atina Diffley: Hi Atina, Firstly I LOVE your book! My husband and a group of his friends get together about once a month and smoke cigars. Last summer one evening it was at our house and they smoked on the back deck…

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Chapter: What To Hold Onto Maize is racing barefoot up the old horse path from Louise’s field. Something tiny and green is flinging from an ice cream bucket swinging wildly at his side. He sings up to me stocking corn at the roadside stand, “I picked the cucumbers.” He must be pretending with new growth…

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Scott Carlson, senior reporter of the Chronicle of Higher Education, has written a very personal and powerful book review of Turn Here Sweet Corn that frames the way each of us is connected to the story. Scott grew up living adjacent to the original Diffley farm He roamed and played on the land and worked for…

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Subscribe to Atina’s Blog During a recent interview, I was asked why I choose to write Turn Here Sweet Corn as a personal story. I explained that I wanted the reader to feel the characters’ experience. The intellect is involved with understanding the issues, but the heart needs to be engaged for behavior to change.…

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An “Organic Relationship Plan” Starts With Ourselves. I am preparing an all day workshop for Land Stewardship Project called Quality of Life Workshop: Systems and Communication Tools for a Healthy Farm Partnership. This workshop was inspired by common themes that have challenged many of my clients as well as my own experiences running Gardens of…

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farm (färm). n. 1. A tract of land devoted to agricultural purposes. No. The land is not the farm. That is so clear. How could a major dictionary have got it so wrong? The land was here long before the farm and long before the people or the business. The land is completely its own.…

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And one more piece of the community fabric in Dakota County, MN. has just been torn. The bi-monthly Fahey consignment auction (I often called it the “buy-monthly” as it was a main source of equipment and tools for Gardens of Eagan for thirty+ years) has discontinued it’s on-site, in-person portion of the auction and is…

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