Agriculture https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us The Empty Room Inside Each of Us Crumb is always right, always the one telling the story, always the one who turns the drab, lonesome plains they call home into a world that’s dramatic and necessary.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28992 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-the-empty-room-inside-each-of-us 606-38-pedersen-preview.jpg 606 - Pedersen - Wilkins City Chickens I never thought // I’d end up like this, domesticated as a pet lamb, / with a mate who worries our hundred-year-old house // needs new everything, shingles to foundation.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28990 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-city-chickens 606-22-estep-preview.jpg 606 - Estep - Luterman Milk Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28993 Sun, 31 May 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-milk 606-30-wild-preview.jpg 606 - Wild - Milk Brother, Electric cow2pie@aol.com He grabs my hand, and static electricity snaps between us, as though he is coursing with energy. He blows his hot breath on my frozen fingertips and tells me it’ll be OK.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28809 Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/brother-electric-crandell-596 596-14-estep-preview.jpg 596 - Estep - Crandell To the Arresting Officer You patted me down roughly, went through my pockets and pulled out three crumpled twenties, some guitar picks, my stepfather’s pocketknife. “You got drugs, son?”

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28680 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/589-to-the-arresting-officer 589-38-welsh-preview.jpg 589 - Welsh - Lyons Guarding the Coop ereleases2@gmail.com I watch for the fox that’s slaughtered / three Rhode Island Reds, the hens / just lumps of bloodied feathers I buried / before my son and daughter woke this morning.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28636 Sat, 30 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/588-guarding-the-coop 588-18-hartman-preview.jpg 588 - Hartman - Kennedy Blind History China is racist. Russia is racist. The US is racist. . . . Africans need to bet on each other. The Black Diaspora and the Global South need to bet on and support each other.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28546 Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/585-blind-history 585-4-mwasi-preview.jpg 585 - Mwasi - Cohen - 1 Sunbeams

Food has powers. It picks us up from our lonely corners and sits us back down, together. It pulls us out of ourselves, to the kitchen, to the table, to the diner down the block. At the same time, it draws us inward. Food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people.

Jessica Fechtor

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28511 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-sunbeams 583 - Hart - Sunbeams - Preview 583 - Hart - Sunbeams To the Bone “To the Bone” is an ongoing photography project documenting daily life and work on a small family farm in the Hudson Valley. Emily, a single mother, manages their small farm with the help of her children. My intention is to explore the strength, dignity and love that keeps them deeply connected as a family, to each other and to their unique way of life on the farm.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28507 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-to-the-bone 583 - Beitler - Beitler - 01 - Preview 583 - Beitler - Beitler - 01 Aubade with Calf So early the mist remains hammocked / between hills. My hand / palms a calf’s muzzle. // We are two beings / drawn together by instinct. By this definition, / I have found the one.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28505 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-aubade-with-calf A Knife at the Throat cow2pie@aol.com We had never heard of a kid who had cancer. We knew of teenagers who’d been killed in farming accidents and at least a few who had been maimed riding ATVs with no helmets, their skulls coming into contact with country roads. But not cancer. It seemed like something that happened to aunts and uncles. Combined with the lack of rain and the impending foreclosure, 1983 was beginning to feel apocalyptic.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28504 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-a-knife-at-the-throat 583 - Gaberman - Crandell - Preview 583 - Gaberman - Crandell A Seat at the Table wyattww@gmail.com The terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not talk about that often enough.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28502 Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/568-a-seat-at-the-table 583 - Egevang - Williams - 01 - Preview 583 - Egevang - Williams - 01 Surrogates jenniferbowenhicks@gmail.com Twin had lived inside a concrete kennel for four of her five years. Wylie, who also lived inside a concrete box, had gone to prison as a teen. He’d cared for Twin since she was a puppy, which meant he had likely opened her kennel to feed her and let her out thousands of times.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28400 Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28400-surrogates 580-18-anzorena-preview.jpg 580-18-anzorena.jpg Noah’s Wife Noah, his swelled head, his ego larger than the ark, his crazy / self-promoting savior mania. Because of him we dropped / everything, sank our fortune in cypress wood, and every / filthy creature we couldn’t trap we had to buy with our last coin.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25218 Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:05:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25218-noah-s-wife Mountain Flowers When I was sixteen, / pickup truck, load of hay, / there was nothing I’d rather see / from the window than women’s underwear / hanging on a backyard clothesline.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22088 Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22088-mountain-flowers His Body Of Work cow2pie@aol.com I loved my father’s body. It worried me, too. . . . I didn’t know what polio was, but it sounded scary, and he had survived it. This helped form my view of him as someone who could survive almost anything. Like Wile E. Coyote, he might get hurt and maimed, but he never, ever gave up.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25083 Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:05:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25083-his-body-of-work Elegy With Adding Machine And Milk One cold November day / after the lambs were sold / and the wheat brought in, / my grandfather settled / himself at his desk / and punched the numbers / into an electromechanical / adding machine, the gears / whirring and cachunking, / a long white ribbon pooling / on the dusty linoleum

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25283 Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25283-elegy-with-adding-machine-and-milk Burning Questions A fire manager making a decision may look like they’re in a position of power, but often they really have only one choice: to suppress the fire. If they don’t, they are opening themselves up to a Russian roulette of consequences depending on how the wind blows, quite literally.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22365 Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22365-burning-questions I Eat My Words Yes, it’s cruel. An unseemly gluttony. / Trapping the ortolan buntings, forcing / them to gorge in the dark, mouthfeel of seeds / their only comfort in that closed, blank space.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22066 Sat, 30 Sep 2023 04:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22066-i-eat-my-words Coffee A family business, a workplace lifeline, a reminder of home

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27202 Fri, 30 Jun 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27202-coffee Some Thoughts On Mercy When we have mercy, deep and abiding change might happen.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25257 Wed, 31 May 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25257-some-thoughts-on-mercy At The Market It’s Sunday at noon, and the open-air / vendors are planted in their usual spots — picklers / pressed against the outer edge while growers / forest the pathways with kale, collard greens, / and patches of lavender.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25320 Tue, 31 Jan 2023 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25320-at-the-market I Feel Sorry For Aliens Lonely nights I walk to the old / elevator that used to hold Montana / grain: beams rusted, train tracks / ripped out, a patchwork of missing / roof panels framing perfect squares / of starlight

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22418 Sat, 31 Dec 2022 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22418-i-feel-sorry-for-aliens In Vino Veritas What if . . . our taste for alcohol has been strengthened and preserved in our gene pool for functional reasons? Then we might look at intoxication not as a side note but as part of the story of what makes us human.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26393 Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26393-in-vino-veritas Sunbeams

Eating puts us in touch with all that we share with the other animals, and all that sets us apart.

Michael Pollan

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22660 Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22660-sunbeams The Carnivore’s Dilemma We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that because we went to Whole Foods and bought the organic product, we’re not participating in suffering and death.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24766 Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24766-the-carnivore-s-dilemma The Valley Between I could feel the losses of my past lurking nearby. Not just animals but other losses, too. They exhaled from the piles like human whispers.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25995 Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25995-the-valley-between Love And Death Among The Molluscs An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life. Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion, and danger.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22850 Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22850-love-and-death-among-the-molluscs Something In The Water The cows were getting sick and wasting away. They were developing tumors. Their teeth were turning black. Calves were stillborn or born with cloudy or deformed eyes.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26046 Mon, 28 Feb 2022 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26046-something-in-the-water Soybeans Soybeans look like a foot of water on the field in April / When you’re ready to plant and can’t get in

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27193 Thu, 25 Nov 2021 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27193-soybeans