“Dandelion Roots Run Deep”
is a true story of three generations of tenacious Midwestern women, one in Illinois and two in Michigan. It is written by the Michigan women: Merry, and her mother, Merrill.
Merry is the third generation, and her mother, Merrill, fought for organic agriculture and Michigan's environment from 1967 - 2009. Merrill developed Alzheimer's before finishing the book, so Merry took her story to fruition.
Esther, Merrill's mother, ran a small farm almost single handedly with three children during wartime America in Elgin, Illinois.
The dandelion roots are a metaphor for the roots connecting these three generations of women who "nevertheless persisted".
The story traces Esther's life as a farm wife, Merrill's marriage, and the harrowing cross-country trip she took with her husband, John, before they launched their ultimate mission: starting an organic farm in 1980 in Michigan, facing huge obstacles.
Merrill Clark went on to become a charter member of the National Organic Standards Board and she describes some of her early experiences on the board.
The story includes the dramatic difficulties of running a family organic farm in the 80s, as well as what happened to the farm more recently.
“Dandelion Roots Run Deep”
is a true story of three generations of tenacious Midwestern women, one in Illinois and two in Michigan. It is written by the Michigan women: Merry, and her mother, Merrill.
Merry is the third generation, and her mother, Merrill, fought for organic agriculture and Michigan's environment from 1967 - 2009. Merrill developed Alzheimer's before finishing the book, so Merry took her story to fruition.
Esther, Merrill's mother, ran a small farm almost single handedly with three children during wartime America in Elgin, Illinois.
The dandelion roots are a metaphor for the roots connecting these three generations of women who "nevertheless persisted".
The story traces Esther's life as a farm wife, Merrill's marriage, and the harrowing cross-country trip she took with her husband, John, before they launched their ultimate mission: starting an organic farm in 1980 in Michigan, facing huge obstacles.
Merrill Clark went on to become a charter member of the National Organic Standards Board and she describes some of her early experiences on the board.
The story includes the dramatic difficulties of running a family organic farm in the 80s, as well as what happened to the farm more recently.
The bus passed by a crooked old farmhouse on Silver Glen Road, on the way to St. Charles High School. And there was almost always a little old woman in a fuzzy headscarf sweeping the front porch of that house. I doubted that the woman had done any of what I wanted to do with my life when I was sixteen. I planned on going to college, maybe major in dance, join a sorority, meet college boys, be a journalist, and more. But I just made up who that lady was: just an old woman living in the country, gardening, walking the fencerows, photographing flowers, maybe writing a boring book too. She seemed rather like my mother, an Illinois farm wife, replete with shovels, wheelbarrows, a couple of steers behind the barn, and a dairy cow for her milk. Yes, the woman with the broom did remind me of my mother. I think I wanted to be her, in that yard with the colored leaves.
I looked at her that day, and now I don’t know why I am still thinking of her, some fifty years later. Now I am the old woman with the broom on my own front porch, with the school bus rumbling by. No faces are glued to the windows, taking in the brilliance of the fall colors. Their eyes are transfixed on their gadgets. Real life—the cascading leaves, the colors glowing, real nature right outside their windows—appeared to be of no interest to them.
They were bored with anything past the edge of their hand-held screens. What can an old lady living in the country tell them about anything on their laptops? Yes, I am now that woman with the baggy jeans and the old shirt flung over her shoulders, with a ruddy glow to her cheeks from the bite of the fall air. My bus in 1946 was cold, and my breath fogged up the window. I had only a ragged three-ring notebook, some textbooks, and a sack lunch with me. No gadgets.
That old woman’s house was near the edge of large farms all around her. I was glad that at least her land did not run adjacent to a sprawling new subdivision, like every other farm in those days. Perhaps she would not have liked watching a nearby farmer turn over his last furrow as bulldozers arrived to carve room for fifty-five new homes out of the back forty, with advertising on the highway:
Autumn Hollow: Homes That Mellow Your Heart SELECT YOURS TODAY!
My bus took another turn at the bottom of Silver Glen Road at Route 31, which wound itself along the Fox River into St. Charles. Connie, my bus friend, started rummaging through her homework, and the bus seemed unusually slow, dawdling at each stop for the kids that were nowhere near the pick-up area.
The old woman’s place, a raw, rank, simple dwelling, would have seemed totally out of place amid a rolling subdivision. Her own home might have been bought up, causing her to move, leaving the shiny new suburb empty of people interested in protecting the countryside and the ancient oaks and maples. No. People just wanted their “Autumn Hollow” from the hollowed-out woods.
As I write today, as an old lady, I can still see her checking the branches of her trees, staring at the sky, maybe wondering about rain. I can see her vibrant flowers around the porch, her busy bird feeders, her rows and rows of sunflowers, cabbage, green peppers, pumpkins, and purple cone- flowers. I see her clothesline, with drooping sheets flapping in the breeze, dancing in the wind of early autumn. No car was in the driveway, but she did not seem captive to her house. When she was about her home, she seemed to be living a fullness that transcended the news of the day, the new movie in town, and the business at the Lady’s Club. Her work was where she was, and she seemed to rejoice in it. She had an air of independence, of freedom. She was at one with her place on Earth and her chores that sustained her. I never wondered where her husband was. Maybe she didn’t have one.
So now, as I push the broom on my own porch today, as a school bus goes by, and I move on to rake some leaves of my own, I wonder: Am I captive to my place? Are my “important” things to do—move the hostas, fill the bird feeders, pick the tomatoes, hike to the pond, and even write a book—of interest to anyone but me? I suppose we all ask this question at some point: Does anyone care what I do?
Well, my mother cared about all of it. She was the one who got me into it in the first place.
Back to the bus: Connie, next to me, slammed her book shut, and I jumped and dropped a couple books. We prepared to move our lives from bus to classroom. Why did I get so deep into things about that woman in the fuzzy headscarf?
When we returned home on the bus that same day, there she was again, on all fours, staring at the ground near her garden. Okay, lady, that’s enough! Go inside, relax a minute, watch the news, and call your kids, wherever they are.
All plowing of the lower soil is performed by the earthworms.
I had read that in Miss Brady’s high school botany class that day, and I was reading the botany book on the bus on the way home. Worms? Plowing the soil? My textbook read: Through the deciduous forests of the temper- ate zone, as well as in many grasslands, the plowing of the soil is indeed performed by earthworms. Massive amounts of super-glacial mold has passed and will pass again, every few years, through the bodies of worms. Connie hopped off the bus. “See you tomorrow,” she said and waved goodbye. I was not much of a seat companion to her that day. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t want to get into the worm story anyway. Again, I read, The worms plug up their worm tunnels with leaves; someone once counted 227 withered leaves of all sorts that had been pulled into a worm tunnel. A test was performed to see how worms draw in the leaves, even huge rho- dodendron leaves. Out of ninety of those large leaves, sixty-six of them had been pulled in by earthworms, by the stalk!
Many consider the earthworm of no value or even as an enemy of their fields and yards. Sort of like the dandelion. Even my dictionary described the worm as “wretched person” or “creepy.” As it turns out, the earthworm has more foresight and fortitude than most humans.
The bus turned down MacDonald Road on the last two miles that remained of the trip home, and I saw a “professional” farmer busy driving the massive combine chopping through the tight rows of dry corn on a forty-four-acre patch. Just two miles further out from St. Charles was our twenty-four-acre Larchill Farm.
Those acres consisted of fields, gardens, a chicken house, a barn, a creek, a homestead, huge honey locusts, a thicket of lilacs, and at least two odd-shaped Scotch pines. There was no better place to grow up. We had moved there from downtown St. Charles in 1945. None of us were ever quite sure why Mother and Dad decided to vacate and head out into the sticks. I would have attended early school at Evan Shelby Elementary School in town, but instead we all filled the desks at the one-room schoolhouse called Delancey School.
Dandelion Roots Run Deep tells the story of three generations of women who live as pioneers. In particular, it tells the story of Merrill and Merry Clark. Merrill grew up as a sensitive child who watched her mother farm chickens and noticed both the struggle of living close to the land and the social pressures around her. Merill later married John Clark,a frugal scientist and pioneer. As a woman and teacher, she fought for sustainability while encouraging her daughter, Merry. Merry brought the value of joy, life, and happiness to country living.
This is a beautifully written book about the deep connections human beings have to land and to each other. Merry in particular explores what it means to be a human being living in a capitalist world, the struggles and beliefs we absorb, and the harm created by industrial farming and a lack of social connection. Coming from a space of deep connection to land, Merry still believed the city would offer her more, until she became sick.
As a reader, this is a book that spoke to my heart, sharing the need to return to conscious awareness about our earth without either sentimental nostalgia for a life that never was or a shaming of humanity for the beliefs we have inherited. It brings a deep insight into why pesticides are dangerous and explains the barriers to organic farming and the lack of support organic farmers have access to when banks believe that loans depend on output rather than quality or environmental safety. The struggles women face when trying to pioneer new farming methods were evident and show that often people who work closely with the land are given the least.
For readers who are questioning social norms, wonder what’s in their food, would like to make a difference, or who have a desire to live a connected or healthier life, this is a marvellous read that gently challenges readers into new awareness whilst sharing the story of remarkable women who fought and continue to fight for what they believe in. They are an incredible inspiration.