FROM GRANGE MEMBER ELISSA

Every day that I spend on the Oliver H. Kelley Farm begins the same way. I shed the trappings of my modern life and slip into the 1860s. I leave my cell phone, car keys, modern clothing, and reliance on electricity to transform into a 19th century farmer, petticoats, bonnet, and all. A short walk down a dirt path is all it takes to escape any signs of modernity. The 1876 farmhouse shields us from the sun, rising in the east, as my fellow farmers and I begin our morning routines.
    As I clean the ashes from the cast iron cookstove, I begin to think through the day’s never ending to-do list. After the fire is lit, the water is warming, and the windows are opened, I often take a moment to sit on the front porch and watch our resident flock of wild turkeys strut through the hay field, feasting on grass and grasshoppers. I wonder if Oliver and Temperance Kelley ever sat on that same front porch and looked out over the same stretch of Mississippi River while a previous generation of turkeys strolled through the same field.
    The land has changed a lot since the first day Kelley and his family set foot upon it. What was once a vast landscape of oak savannah, bordered by tall grass prairie and deciduous woods, is now a patchwork of farmland, businesses, and homes, crisscrossed with roads and power lines. The Kelley Farm is a small pocket of the past in that swiftly changing landscape. When I leave it each day and put my pants (pants on a woman, simply scandalous) and modern life back on, I am struck by some of the similarities between my life and Oliver Kelley’s. We both spend a lot of time thinking about the land and how to use it to feed our community. We think about how to better the lives of those around us, whether its through lobbying for fair prices to transport and process farmer’s crops, in Oliver’s case, or educating the next generation about respect for land, life, and history, which is one of my personal goals. I want help with that goal, just as Oliver Kelley did 150 years ago. He helped to establish the National Grange in order to unite people in the mission of bettering the lives of family, community, and nation.
    The Grange is still working towards those goals today. I am excited to be a part of a new Grange where we can set our own agenda, keeping with the mission of bettering our human community through cooperation, education, and service and emphasizing natural stewardship for the land that provides for us. The National Grange’s motto says it best: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

Elissa Mallory is an historic interpreter at the Oliver Kelley Farm, and a leader in Minnesota's New Grange.