Ariel Delgado Dixon is the author of Sourland, out June 23rd from Random House. Below, she discusses why she set her new novel on a weed farm.
The best and worst day I ever had was spent haying. I was a new farmhand, and it was the last searingly dry summer day suitable for harvesting hay, which required tossing fifty-pound square bales up onto a moving flatbed, then unloading them again, bale by bale, into the barn.
There were three of us in long sleeves, pink-faced, scratchy with chaff. I almost threw up. But the shame of being the broken link in the chain is powerful, and somehow I kept going, surprising myself when I came back the next day for more.
Farming is like that: pained, jubilant, cooperative. When I wrote Sourland
English (US)