One of my favorite but older picture books is Rockwell’s Apples and Pumpkins.

Apples and Pumpkins is about a family’s visit to a farm to pick from the bounty that was growing there. The simple book exemplifies the fact that various people in the USA view farm life differently than I view farms. Some people only visit a farm once or twice–to pick a peck of this or that or to cut down a Christmas tree, but I grew up in the rural South and in cotton-picking country. When I write about farms, I should tell an entirely different story than that from a person who rarely has visited a farm. If you have NEVER gone to a farm, write that story, that is what you know about farms. Our writing is all a matter of perspective.

My debut picture book The Donkey’s Song is told from the perspective of the Donkey who carried Mary to Bethlehem, and my telling of that old, familiar Nativity story is distinguished by that Donkey’s point of view, as I imagined it. When memoir writers are being true to their own experiences, they will be telling their own stories from their own points of view.

On Day 6, the #MemoirFestprompt was to write about school, and I shared the following quote from Diary of a Wimpy Kid:

“I’ll be famous one day, but for now I’m stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons.” – Greg Heffley,”
― Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Greg Heffley is the fictional protagonist of Jeff Kinney’s book Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and in the above words, you hear about Greg’s classmates, from Greg’s point of view. As I read what Greg said about his classmates, however, I couldn’t help but wonder how Greg’s classmates might have spoken about Greg. What would Greg’s teachers say about Greg? Our stories are shaped by our points of view.

#MemoirFest Day 7: Write about a Farm, but write about a farm from your own perspective. Don’t write about Lassie and Timmy’s farm because you saw Lassie on television when you were a child. Don’t write about Aunty Em’s and Dorothy’s farm in Kansas. Write about farms in a way that you have experienced them. If you have never visited a farm, write that.

The farmland around my house started a street behind my house and about 4 houses away from my house, toward the right.

A Map of the Area around Jacki Kellum’s Childhood Home.

During the early part of autumn, a farmer would drive down my street, just as the sun was rising, and he would pick several other kids and I up, for us to ride in the back of his truck to the part of the cotton field where we would pick cotton that day. With my cotton sack tossed over my shoulder, I would trudge through the prickly plants toward the top of the row, where I would begin picking.

Early in the mornings, the cotton stalks were wet, and they glistened like diamonds in the bright glare of the sunlight, and the moisture would dampen my clothes, as I walked through the field. At lunch, I’d eat my bologna sandwich and drink my RC cola in the shade of the cotton wagon. After I had eaten, I would climb up into the wagon, and I would jump up and down in the deep mounds of freshly cut cotton that was usually piled at least 6′ high.  For a moment or two, I would play like the child that I was, but then, I would return to the place where I had been picking, and I would continue to work until the sun began to descend for that day. You see, I know farms in a first-hand way, but most of you did not have the same experience with farms that I had. For today’s prompt, I want you to write about a farm, in the way that you have known it.