Hard Scrabble: Observations on a Patch of Land

Rating:
Summary: Back to the land, Texas-style
Review: In 1960, at the age of 40 and after many years wondering the globe, Texas-born writer John Graves bought a worn-out patch of land in the hills south of Fort Worth. It began as something of a retreat and became a life-long attachment. This book, published in 1974, is a humorously thoughtful description of how this new landowner becomes equally owned by the land he has settled on.

Not a long book, it reads at a leisurely pace, as Graves traces the history of the land, once fertile and grass-covered. He tells what he knows of the numerous tribes of Native Americans who once lived on it, including the fierce Comanches. Then he characterizes the first settlers, who knew next to nothing about land stewardship and cared less, exhausting it with poor farming techniques, overgrazing, and a single-crop economy--cotton. We learn of the toll taken in depleted soil, diminished flood control, and the spread of cedar and scrub brush across former prairie. And we learn of the descendants of these early settlers, diminished by reduced circumstances, some of them making a living by cutting down cedar brakes into fence posts.

Having established the history of the land, Graves takes us on a tour of his farm, which he calls Hard Scrabble, describing in turn the fields and streams, the plant and animal life, the weather. Then he describes the long, slow process of reclaiming what he can of his 400 acres, clearing the land, building a house, barn, and other outbuildings, learning stone masonry and carpentry as he goes. In connection with this subject, there is a discourse on the industriousness and workmanship of Mexican laborers, all of them illegal, who help him with building, fencing, and fighting back the growth of unwanted brush and cedar. On the subject of animal husbandry, he tells of raising cattle and goats. And in the investment of himself in all of these he ruminates on how they transform him and root this former world-traveler more firmly into a rural frame of mind.

Of the many things I enjoyed in this book, I especially liked his capturing of the way his country neighbors talk. Their points of view and temperaments are captured in quirky turns of phrase and syntax. An episode involving local fox hunters is a joy to read. Graves is in many ways a Texas version of E. B. White, transplanted from city to country and not only seeing this remote environment with fresh eyes but engaging physically with it, befriending the long-time inhabitants, and discovering a way of life only dimly understood by city-dwellers. Although Graves' writing style is more given to verbal flourishes, his wry humor and literary allusions remind one of White's collection of essays on living in Maine, "One Man's Meat."

I recommend this book to anyone interested in country life, Texas, subsistence farming, and natural history. As companions to "Hard Scrabble," I would recommend books by three other rancher/farmer writers: "Windbreak," by South Dakota writer Linda Hasselstrom, "A Collection of Cowboy Logic" by North Dakota writer Ryan Taylor, and "Sketches From the Ranch" by Montana writer Dan Aadland.