Poetry Farm

From 2006-2008, Wave Books partnered with a 12-acre (uncertified) organic fruit & vegetable farm two miles north of Orfordville, Wisconsin. The farm was open to poets willing to work for four good hours a day in exchange for room, board, and a new environment in which to write. There were no workshops, no formal or official feedback on poems, no academic credit, and no money exchanged. The purpose of these residencies was to provide time and a unique place to write in a fair degree of solitude.

Throughout the summer and fall, continuous work included weeding with hoes, watering plants and trees with buckets of water, grubbing fruit trees (a hard task with hoes and shovels), picking destructive insects off plants and killing them, staking and tying new fruit trees, painting stakes for trees, harvesting fruits and vegetables, working farmers' markets, weeding, weeding, weeding. There were sometimes small building projects, such setting up or fixing the hoop house, green house, or chicken coop.