At the Farm Gate: Farmers Name their Fields
We paused harvest to host our daughter’s sixth birthday party at Norman North, a field along a winding gravel road. The dusty path contains just two houses and a hill you wouldn’t want to attempt in slick conditions.
Whether remote or often seen, the fields we drive past on interstates, highways or rural routes have names. Farmers identify some by numbers, but most have names known only to their keepers.
Thank goodness for Google pins that I can text to navigate new employees to Dump Road, Big Top or Myrtice 33 that adjoins with Don 40 (and which side is which). Likewise, I would need directions to find The Y or Seldom Seen – field names that local farmers shared with me.
Field location, size, the owner or, most commonly, the surname of the previous owner, dictate field names. My family owns Lievens Back Bottom, Beecher North and Haxton Homeplace, but the previous owners’ names still identify the field, a culturally influenced practice and a nod to the past.
The Big and Little Bottoms have everything to do with rivers and nothing with glutes. Doug’s Southeast, Pat’s North and Ostrom South of Lane indicate directions from that landowner’s homestead. Sometimes, round numbers like 40 or 80 in the name represent the acreage, but we do have anomalies like Donna 73. The add-ons of Cemetery and Railroad in the name reference local landmarks except for Sunoco, which alludes to the gas station that once was.
The labels carryover into vehicles, equipment and structures with most names preceded by “the,” such as The Kodiak, The One Ton, Truck Six, The Lower Shed or The New Bin that turns 30 years old this year. We will forever remember Jaws, the 1974 steel-bodied, white and rusty farm car for which the Secretary of State generated a random license plate with “JAW” plus some numbers. Dad put a hitch on that Chevelle, and Mom used it like a truck.
From a record-keeping standpoint, field names are associated with large amounts of data, such as acreage totals, government numbers, insurance identification, satellite images, guidance lines, crop nutrient information and production histories.
The names also preserve stories. In the Big Bottom, my family learned of 9/11. At the Wataga Farm, my husband asked permission for my hand, and during our farm’s harvest at the State Ground, our daughter was born.
Within those field boundaries, we live life and make a living.
About the author: Joanie Stiers farms with her family in West Central Illinois, where they raise corn, soybeans, hay, beef cattle, backyard chickens and farmkids