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Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes
Trespassing is composed in equal amounts of short fiction and essays that illustrate the impact of modern factory farms―confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)―on a rural Michigan community. Michigan author Janet Kauffman debunks the myth of the idyllic "clip art" farm of decades past by giving readers a close-up look at mega-meat and mega-milk, the extreme amounts of animal waste and barren countryside CAFOs produce, and the people who live in the midst of this new rural landscape threatened by agricultural sprawl. Trespassing considers the consequences of violating nature's limits, giving readers a vivid impression of the irreversible damage that violation causes to our habitat.
The writings in Trespassing range from ground-level realism to hallucinatory surrealism, from mindful discussion to poetic incantation, from vehicles of outrage to portraits of grief. The rural landscape includes a range of characters, and Kauffman's stories and essays are populated with CAFO owners, immigrant workers, neighbors mired in pollution, greenhouse growers, environmental activists, water monitors, drain commissions, and agency officials. As a resident of rural Michigan and part of a farming family herself, Kauffman approaches the subject matter with a sensitive and informed eye. Her detailed writings take readers into this landscape of modern rural communities to experience the smells, sounds, and sights of a brutally changed world.
Those interested in environmental issues, as well as fellow Michiganders, and fans of creative fiction and nonfiction will appreciate this moving and informative collection.
The writings in Trespassing range from ground-level realism to hallucinatory surrealism, from mindful discussion to poetic incantation, from vehicles of outrage to portraits of grief. The rural landscape includes a range of characters, and Kauffman's stories and essays are populated with CAFO owners, immigrant workers, neighbors mired in pollution, greenhouse growers, environmental activists, water monitors, drain commissions, and agency officials. As a resident of rural Michigan and part of a farming family herself, Kauffman approaches the subject matter with a sensitive and informed eye. Her detailed writings take readers into this landscape of modern rural communities to experience the smells, sounds, and sights of a brutally changed world.
Those interested in environmental issues, as well as fellow Michiganders, and fans of creative fiction and nonfiction will appreciate this moving and informative collection.
176 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2008
20 people want to read
About the author
Janet Kauffman
24 books13 followersJanet Kauffman was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and raised on a tobacco farm. She teaches at Eastern Michigan University.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 28, 2023
I want everyone to read Janet Kauffman. She is one of major writers of rural America -- one of the smartest of our farmers. I think I blurbed this book, and also risked being criticized for writing a short review of it, but I love this dark, only slightly hopeful book:
Confined animal feeding operations. Factory farms. For those of us who don't or no longer live in the country, these are the places we drive by on Sunday jaunts or pass on the freeway: acres and acres of buildings often partially hidden behind a row of trees. We know what they are only when the overwhelming smell of manure drifts in through our air-conditioning systems, and we speed up to get past as quickly as possible. Hundreds of cows or pigs, thousands of chickens, may be in those buildings. We might have a vague sense that we get much of our milk, eggs, and meat because of them, but we don't want to think about CAFOs very much.
Janet Kauffman's new book, Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes, makes literature out of this apparently very unpromising material. Yes, it is a literature of rage and advocacy, built as much on the need to inform and inspire action as it is on aesthetics, but it still has a deep imaginative relationship with the lived world. Kauffman, now retired after several decades of teaching at EMU, grew up on a farm and has continued to farm in Lenawee County since she moved here in the 1970s. In the last decade or so the factory farms have moved into south central Michigan and have begun to dominate rural life. "They say in Michigan you're never more than six miles from a lake or stream," Kauffman writes. "Here, I'm never more than six miles from a manure lagoon."
Because that is the problem. All of those animals produce the same amount of waste as a large town. The manure is not essentially different from human waste, yet it is treated much more casually. Liquefied and sprayed across fields in vast quantities, it leaches into aquifers or runs directly into streams and rivers. It kills the life in the streams and destroys the place — and a way of life that has grown up there.
Kauffman's Trespassing begins with a series of short stories about the people who work for these factory farms, who have to live near them, or who are doing the tough unpaid work of monitoring their effects on the local environment. The second half of the book has beautifully structured personal essays that, among other things, tell us a lot about how water flows through our southern Michigan landscape and about the assaults on these watersheds. It makes for a remarkable combination of genres that has an effect unlike anything else I have read.
Janet Kauffman is not sanguine about the possibilities of healing our blasted rural landscape. In fact, at times she seems to be stretching for the most tenuous connection to hope. But there are moments, exquisite because of their fragility, where she becomes a celebrant of what she fights to defend. Near the end she writes, "Homeland and habitat, every watershed is worth protecting. Worth celebrating. Water's in our blood, it's our lifeline, and it binds us. To stoneflies and stones, to skunk cabbage and clams, to rotting leaves and cooking cake."
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
Confined animal feeding operations. Factory farms. For those of us who don't or no longer live in the country, these are the places we drive by on Sunday jaunts or pass on the freeway: acres and acres of buildings often partially hidden behind a row of trees. We know what they are only when the overwhelming smell of manure drifts in through our air-conditioning systems, and we speed up to get past as quickly as possible. Hundreds of cows or pigs, thousands of chickens, may be in those buildings. We might have a vague sense that we get much of our milk, eggs, and meat because of them, but we don't want to think about CAFOs very much.
Janet Kauffman's new book, Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes, makes literature out of this apparently very unpromising material. Yes, it is a literature of rage and advocacy, built as much on the need to inform and inspire action as it is on aesthetics, but it still has a deep imaginative relationship with the lived world. Kauffman, now retired after several decades of teaching at EMU, grew up on a farm and has continued to farm in Lenawee County since she moved here in the 1970s. In the last decade or so the factory farms have moved into south central Michigan and have begun to dominate rural life. "They say in Michigan you're never more than six miles from a lake or stream," Kauffman writes. "Here, I'm never more than six miles from a manure lagoon."
Because that is the problem. All of those animals produce the same amount of waste as a large town. The manure is not essentially different from human waste, yet it is treated much more casually. Liquefied and sprayed across fields in vast quantities, it leaches into aquifers or runs directly into streams and rivers. It kills the life in the streams and destroys the place — and a way of life that has grown up there.
Kauffman's Trespassing begins with a series of short stories about the people who work for these factory farms, who have to live near them, or who are doing the tough unpaid work of monitoring their effects on the local environment. The second half of the book has beautifully structured personal essays that, among other things, tell us a lot about how water flows through our southern Michigan landscape and about the assaults on these watersheds. It makes for a remarkable combination of genres that has an effect unlike anything else I have read.
Janet Kauffman is not sanguine about the possibilities of healing our blasted rural landscape. In fact, at times she seems to be stretching for the most tenuous connection to hope. But there are moments, exquisite because of their fragility, where she becomes a celebrant of what she fights to defend. Near the end she writes, "Homeland and habitat, every watershed is worth protecting. Worth celebrating. Water's in our blood, it's our lifeline, and it binds us. To stoneflies and stones, to skunk cabbage and clams, to rotting leaves and cooking cake."
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
November 9, 2009
At first I was so drawn to this, and wanted to love it, but just couldn't. The first half of the book's short stories; the second's essays, all "about" the environment, small farms, and our relationship with the landscape.
Stylistically, I can't complain about the writing--the language, especially in the fiction, is lovely--it's just that after about the first half, they seemed to all run together.
I was glad to get to the essays, but grew increasingly "eh" about each one. This might be partly because (mostly because of Pollan, I suppose) I already kinda knew the basics. Actually, I think that at this point most folks who are paying any attention whatsoever to the world are at least somewhat aware of the sad state of farming in America, and the distinction between big AgBiz farms and the "clip art" fantasy small farms. One section of the essay, "The Fantasy of the Clip Art Farm," raised my hackles a bit as she strikes me as blaming big AgBiz farmers (not Regan or politicians, not the fast food industry, not consumers). She writes: "You'd think farmers were all Jesus, with the loaves and fishes! Not human beings with self-aggrandizing wishes." I take issue with this sort of attitude--clearly, CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) are problematic, and the problems of them are complex. Ok, factory farmers receive huge subsudies and the little guys don't. And they should, and that sucks. But this boiled down "blame the farmers who receive the subsudies" approach strikes me as misguided and unproductive.
The essay, "Buried Water," contains a surprisingly fascinating section about the history of "water as a big, flashy business" in the late 1800's (mineral water farmed, bottled and sold as tonics). A couple of times I doubted the organization of the essay section, and this was one case--the essay about water, which contains mentions of "tiles," comes before an essay that explains what a water tiling system is. I'd have it the other way, though that might just be the Strunk & White in me.
Stylistically, I can't complain about the writing--the language, especially in the fiction, is lovely--it's just that after about the first half, they seemed to all run together.
I was glad to get to the essays, but grew increasingly "eh" about each one. This might be partly because (mostly because of Pollan, I suppose) I already kinda knew the basics. Actually, I think that at this point most folks who are paying any attention whatsoever to the world are at least somewhat aware of the sad state of farming in America, and the distinction between big AgBiz farms and the "clip art" fantasy small farms. One section of the essay, "The Fantasy of the Clip Art Farm," raised my hackles a bit as she strikes me as blaming big AgBiz farmers (not Regan or politicians, not the fast food industry, not consumers). She writes: "You'd think farmers were all Jesus, with the loaves and fishes! Not human beings with self-aggrandizing wishes." I take issue with this sort of attitude--clearly, CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) are problematic, and the problems of them are complex. Ok, factory farmers receive huge subsudies and the little guys don't. And they should, and that sucks. But this boiled down "blame the farmers who receive the subsudies" approach strikes me as misguided and unproductive.
The essay, "Buried Water," contains a surprisingly fascinating section about the history of "water as a big, flashy business" in the late 1800's (mineral water farmed, bottled and sold as tonics). A couple of times I doubted the organization of the essay section, and this was one case--the essay about water, which contains mentions of "tiles," comes before an essay that explains what a water tiling system is. I'd have it the other way, though that might just be the Strunk & White in me.
March 15, 2011
Janet Kauffman's Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes combines short stories (Dirt Stories) and nonfiction essays (Field Notes) to illustrate the impact of confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, as well as other environmental issues, on rural Michigan communities. Janet Kauffman is a resident of rural Michigan, and in fact, has lived her whole life on farms. As a result of this, she approaches the environmental issues she writes about as an informed participant.
While the CAFOs produced great quantities of meat and diary products, they have some very real negative effects on the environment that are far reaching. While many people don't live in the country near a CAFO, you may very well live down stream from one. These issues actually should concern not just those living in Michigan, but everyone.
This fight concerns Kaufman personally. She lives daily with the effects of a CAFO. In the article "Farmer Turned Activist Fights Manure-Spreading Faults" http://www.organicconsumers.org/artic...
we read that: "The farms are home to 20,000 cows and produce as much waste as a city of 200,000 people. Waste from the barns where the animals live -- a stew that includes antibiotics, blood from births and cleaning solvents -- is washed into lagoons, where it sits until it can be pumped into trucks and spread on fields. When too much manure is applied to fields, it forms puddles that run off into streams."
If you've ever been in the area where a lagoon from a large farm operation is located, you know how awful the stench can be.
Janet Kauffman hit several hot buttons from some of my past personal crusades in several different areas of the country.
At one time, while living in a rural community still full of small family farms where cows did graze in fields, I personally experienced a community fighting against allowing a huge hog operation to start up in the area - and it was a fight. As Janet Kauffman would well know, the owners who wanted to start the hog operation weren't "farmers." They came from out of state. They didn't live on or even near their operations. They already had operations stinking up rural landscapes in a nearby state that was causing environmental problems. They also had some well paid lawyers on their side.
During that time we also were attending county commissioner meetings trying to keep a huge cell phone tower from being erected right by us. The representative from the company that wanted to erect the cell phone tower was from Boston. He had a condescending attitude toward those of us opposing the tower, not realizing that most of the neighbors were well educated. (It was a pity we never had a say about the new guy who moved out there the summer before we moved away and put in a high-watt night light, ruining the night sky.)
I've experienced a city (small town outside of the city) engineer (not trained) deciding a road needed to be straighten which resulted in the removal of two beautiful maple trees in our front yard. And, why, no, their actions did nothing noticeable that improved the road or the drainage; all it accomplished was the removal of several healthy trees and a whole bank of irises.
Finally, I have a real hang-up about watering grass. I especially refused to plant large areas of grass and water it when living in the high desert, where rain and water are not plentiful and people fight over water rights. I always found it absurd that many HOAs required a high percentage of grass in the landscaping. When we landscaped our front yard, our plans made it clear we were using xeroscaping.
I Highly Recommended Janet Kauffman's Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
While the CAFOs produced great quantities of meat and diary products, they have some very real negative effects on the environment that are far reaching. While many people don't live in the country near a CAFO, you may very well live down stream from one. These issues actually should concern not just those living in Michigan, but everyone.
This fight concerns Kaufman personally. She lives daily with the effects of a CAFO. In the article "Farmer Turned Activist Fights Manure-Spreading Faults" http://www.organicconsumers.org/artic...
we read that: "The farms are home to 20,000 cows and produce as much waste as a city of 200,000 people. Waste from the barns where the animals live -- a stew that includes antibiotics, blood from births and cleaning solvents -- is washed into lagoons, where it sits until it can be pumped into trucks and spread on fields. When too much manure is applied to fields, it forms puddles that run off into streams."
If you've ever been in the area where a lagoon from a large farm operation is located, you know how awful the stench can be.
Janet Kauffman hit several hot buttons from some of my past personal crusades in several different areas of the country.
At one time, while living in a rural community still full of small family farms where cows did graze in fields, I personally experienced a community fighting against allowing a huge hog operation to start up in the area - and it was a fight. As Janet Kauffman would well know, the owners who wanted to start the hog operation weren't "farmers." They came from out of state. They didn't live on or even near their operations. They already had operations stinking up rural landscapes in a nearby state that was causing environmental problems. They also had some well paid lawyers on their side.
During that time we also were attending county commissioner meetings trying to keep a huge cell phone tower from being erected right by us. The representative from the company that wanted to erect the cell phone tower was from Boston. He had a condescending attitude toward those of us opposing the tower, not realizing that most of the neighbors were well educated. (It was a pity we never had a say about the new guy who moved out there the summer before we moved away and put in a high-watt night light, ruining the night sky.)
I've experienced a city (small town outside of the city) engineer (not trained) deciding a road needed to be straighten which resulted in the removal of two beautiful maple trees in our front yard. And, why, no, their actions did nothing noticeable that improved the road or the drainage; all it accomplished was the removal of several healthy trees and a whole bank of irises.
Finally, I have a real hang-up about watering grass. I especially refused to plant large areas of grass and water it when living in the high desert, where rain and water are not plentiful and people fight over water rights. I always found it absurd that many HOAs required a high percentage of grass in the landscaping. When we landscaped our front yard, our plans made it clear we were using xeroscaping.
I Highly Recommended Janet Kauffman's Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
May 22, 2010
I preferred the stories over the essays in this unusual volume, but that preference reflects my bias as a reader, I'm sure. I deeply admire three aspects of this book: Kauffman's original style as a writer, her immersion in landscape, and her fervent (and often good-humored) willingness to make writing an act that means something. Good for her! I am a longtime fan of books like Obscene Gestures for Women (which I consider a classic). Trespassing breaks all kinds of conventions, and I admire it for that.
August 28, 2009
After meeting Kauffman in person, she's really not as extreme as her writings can sometimes be. Either way, it's clear she is passionate about the environment, without being too exclusive of first-time environmental readers. She isn't a frightening activist using scare-tactics, but an author (at times a poet) experimenting with varied and unique approaches to delivering her life's pursuit through her writing. Worthwhile read, regardless of your stance on the environment.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews