Homesteading and making skills skipped a generation or two in my family, but my great grandmothers from both my father’s side and my mother’s side were makers and homesteaders. As a young child, I remember loving their homes the most–and their food and their hugs. My great grandmother on my mother’s side was a brilliant pie maker–and a quilter. I remember, even at the young age of seven, looking at the pile of quilts in her closet with awe. They were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. She also canned the food my great grandfather grew in the garden. She would make me leave the kitchen when the pressure cooker was going. I think she scared me enough of the pressure cooker that I am still hesitant to can anything I can’t put up in a water bath. My great grandmother on my father’s side was of Cherokee descent and was a full-on homesteader throughout my childhood. She kept chickens and made the most magnificent strawberry and blackberry jam. When I was at her house, I didn’t want to eat my dinner. I just wanted “bread and jam please.” I would still live on bread and jam if I could.
But that’s my story. I want to hear yours. For our 2022 Summer Solstice edition of Farmer-ish, I want you to think about your past, the generations that made you. Maybe you farm the same land; maybe you learned important skills from your parents and grandparents; maybe you are like me and had to re-learn everything because there was a skip in traditions, but maybe you were inspired anyway.
As always, be sure to follow our general submission guidelines, but as you think about pitches and submissions for our Summer Solstice issue, please consider the following: We are still looking for great poetry but get a lot of poetry submissions; we love submissions from first-time authors, though we love our professional writers too; we could really use some good summer maker ideas. We are also very interested in educational essays related to summer gardening or food preservation. Of course, we would love some beautiful essays that really speak to the theme of “generations” in some way. And please feel free to interpret that theme more broadly than I have here.
Payment: For the Summer Solstice 2022 issues, we are once again able to pay our writers a $25 honorarium.
Deadline: The deadline for pitches for our Summer Solstice 2022 issue is May 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions is June 14, 2022. Be sure to put your text in the body of an email to farmerish.journal@gmail.com. Please put your working title and “Summer 2022” in your subject line.
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