You.

Hello, and welcome to the bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today my guest is T.D.

Motley, author of the Art of farming Sketches of a life in the country.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure.

An honor to be here with you.

I'm excited to talk about this because it's an interesting book.

I don't know that it's like anything else I've gotten to read for the show.

So I want to start just by asking you to introduce the book to us.

I'd love to do that.

The Art of farming is, my first work of fiction.

And, so I'm really excited about that, that I got to invent this town, this country, this farm, all the characters.

And, my intention is that the, the, animal characters in the book are as interesting as the human characters in the book.

And then on the fringes of the farm, we have wildlife characters who watch the farm, almost kind of like their own zoo.

So they're like, so they see all these domesticated animals and humans going about their all of the important things in their lives.

Right.

And in the, in the perimeter, our cow cities and wolves and, you know, fox and and watching all of these shenanigans go on.

The main antagonist in my book, is a miniature Sicilian donkey named Saul Solomon.

And he lives his entire day trying to think of ways to outwit this kind retired art teacher, farmer caretaker of his.

And so he's the most of the most of the trouble he will provoke.

You know, and it has, it has, typical, Plains states conflict like tornado.

There's tornado, there's grass fire, all of these things that are, yeah, that happen.

And, so the little neighboring town, that I invented is called Elysia.

Because the founding, settlers, had Athenian aspirations that they wanted.

They're going to be the new Athens.

I guess that's what they were thinking back in the mid-19th century.

So I make reference to, Texas county courthouses.

Alicia has its own version, kind of a miniature version of big fancy ones, like.

And walks Apache and that.

And the setting is roughly, Barnes County, of course, is not a real county, but it is in the book, and Barnes County is situated, I would say roughly, if you imagine the country between, say, Archer and Sherman, with, you know, Cleveland on the South or something.

Sure.

And so, right off the Red River.

And so the things that happen with the gardens and the animals, the weather, that's kind of the region to think about right there just south of the Red River.

So not like coastal kinds of weather in that.

So the cover is, painting of mine.

Untitled.

Cornfield at sunset.

And then each of the chapters begins with, so I'm a little quick.

Each of the chapters begins with an ink drawing.

Here's Saul, the miniature donkey, and you can see the expression on his face.

And then and I loved what the publisher did with, they chose, fonts from the 40s, for example.

And I love the font that's used here.

The, the cursive, font.

And I'll be honest with you, I had it.

Lauren, Steffy is the publisher.

And, when Lauren called me one day, said, Tom, we've finished the cover.

You know, he's a he's got a team that does a cover, a team that, you know, all of this.

This is my first work of fiction.

So forgive me if I say that the obvious during this talk, but, he said, he said, I want to talk with you about the font for the cover because I, I don't know that you're going to like it.

And I was already typing an email to them saying, okay, first of all, this, this book is, is not like a hoedown.

You know, it's not like, you know, a Sadie Hawkins dance, kind of, what was the show on television that everybody watched?

The, the country western show, anyway that come to mind at the moment?

And, so I said, yeah, I'm not sure about this.

And so we talked about it and, and he was very helpful and I finally, I love this cover and I love the fonts because originally, when I was first thinking about it, you know, it was this is kind of what he said that the team came up with was, you know, like, I was thinking of something more sedate, something more sophisticated, maybe.

And he said, you know, it's like they decided, well, we don't want it to look like, you know, the sketches of an it already.

And lady of her garden, you know, from the 19th century, something like that.

So I think this they were right.

I think this is much more appealing.

It's kind of a this is more true to the nature of some of the humorous, and serious things that happen with within the book.

But, so the animals, most of the animals have either biblical or classical names.

So Saul is the wise donkey.

I have a blind lamb that I that I cherish in the in the book, his name is Homer, after the poet.

And so and the there's a, there's a Pyrenees cross that, guards the sheep along with, Saul, with the donkey and his.

He's Caesar is his name.

And so there's the team that that guard the sheep.

And, so the.

Sam Bartlet named after the pear.

Sam Bartlet, his sidekick is Annie, who is a food writer.

And, she actually lives in town.

They're long time sidekicks.

And, so she spends much of her time traveling, writing about the rice country and South Texas and, so for her, Bartlet farm is a sanctuary that she goes and, and, relaxes and loves working with the animals and all that.

The animals include, heritage, breed chickens, damaged cows, which have the highest butterfat of any cow.

So the Devonshire cream is where the comes from.

The sheep or tuna?

Sheep, first imported by Thomas Jefferson to America from Tunisia.

And they're the they look like Sunday school drawings of sheep because they all have great big fat tails on them.

And that's what Homer is.

Homer is a delightful little fellow who, I don't want to give away too much about it.

No.

Yeah.

So, and the setting is, there is a little nearby town of Alicia with a little town square.

A bakery, etc., which, I hope you enjoy reading about.

So the, the, the idea is that the this, retired art teacher who continues to make paintings, he is living in the landscape that he paints and that he plants and, he loves the land.

He is, at at the age of 12, he was, yet again cleaning out the chicken coop for his grandmother and swore that when he grew up, he was going to live in the city and listen to jazz.

And so that's that's kind of what he did for his teaching career.

And now he's he has retired, bought 30 acres of land.

He has gone back into the bosom of his family, who are all farmers and are so happy that, he has in their mind gone back to the farm.

They don't understand organic gardening.

That doesn't make any sense.

And that just seems really over the top to them.

But that's no different from, basically during his, teaching and painting career, you know, his, his family were, kind of of the mind that if, if you're looking at a painting and there's not a cow in the picture, then it's not worth looking at, you know.

So it's that's sort of how he, how he grew up, you know, a little culture clash there.

Yes.

Right.

Just a bit.

I did want to ask, too, about the the format of the book.

I think the, the subtitle of calling it sketches is such a perfect way to, to title this book because it's not just like a story.

You sit down, you start, you go through it.

It is kind of little vignettes.

Yes.

Which I think it kind of adds a little interest to the story.

Why did you choose to format it that way?

Well, I had there there is order.

Oh, yes.

I don't mean to imply there's no, no, no, but I really appreciate very much what you're saying because I wanted to have it be like a daily experience and so the two things there, I have a dear friend of mine, Sharon Hudgins, a famous food writer in McKinney.

She for many years, along with my wife Rebecca, were really after me to write this book.

And and she was a has been always a great coach and, just advising me on different things in that.

And so really the idea of doing, a separated title like this was really her idea.

And she and sketches of the life of the country, because she's seen my drawings, have seen me read my articles and stuff for many years.

And then the other thing is the the structure of the book is like one of my all time favorite books, and I think the best book that's been written about Texas agriculture.

It was called hold Autumn in Your Hand by George Sessions Perry.

Won the 1949 Book Prize in America and basically what he does, it's a it's the life of this family of sharecroppers that starts in, in the fall, and then you pray that you're going to make it through to be able to buy shoes for the kids in the next fall.

And so, and it just made perfect sense to be.

So if there's organization to it, it follows the seasons as well.

The sequel, the sequel is going to be.

So basically, you think of it as a year and a month because you return to the to that month.

So I'm a big fan of hers.

And and then for the main character, I have to tell you that the thing that that one of the things that kept me from writing this for so long was the fact that I'm still teaching full time and that that can interfere not because of the students, but because of the administrators.

They just they come up with endless work.

But, my, I was really, worried about I always envied great, writers like Thomas Pynchon and Umberto Eco and who just seemed to, dialog just flows, you know, William Humphreys, I mean, they just it just flows, you know, and I, I, I never felt confident about that.

And, I wanted to do it, but I just didn't feel I was okay with everything else.

All the exposition and description, all of, I taught art criticism, so I'm pretty good at that.

But, I'm a big fan of Walter Mosley, who's the great, private eye detective.

His his his detective.

Is easy Rawlins, Ezekiel Rawlins and, made a movie out of one of his, novels, called devil in a Blue Dress.

Denzel Washington played the The Easy Rawlins in the in the movie, so it's hard to read Easy Rawlins without seeing Denzel in the role.

But anyway, so what what happened was, because I've read all of those novels, I love the character.

And it dawned on me one day when I was thinking about how to do this for Sam.

How could I get how could I get Sam to live in a real daily world that the reader gets to read him?

You know, this morning I did this in the afternoon.

Something else happened.

How can I get that to happen as a real character, living in the moment, who also is introspective about his love of the land, his love, his own kids, to project to the future like, oh, we're going to have to do this in the next several months or whatever.

And it dawned on me one day, it's easy, Rawlins.

That's exactly what Easy Rawlins does.

And his character, is in first person and is talking about himself and everything else.

So that's where I got the idea of how to form that, that persona of, Sam Martin.

Well, and if I may compliment you, too, I want to say I've had a few, maybe 2 or 3 guests on the show who are artists who then write books, not always fiction, but one thing I've noticed with the pattern of three so far has been the way that you write.

Descriptions are.

I love a good desk.

I like to be able to picture something in my head.

So the way you especially and I have noticed with the other artist writers too, is that you're able to really craft an image that I can connect to, and then that helps me place myself in the story.

So I was going to ask, do you think that that's your artist kind of, maybe criticism or your background really coming into play?

That I think it comes from my passion for seeing.

And I've been I've been drawing since I was three.

And I know in the first grade at elementary in Beaumont because my dad was a roughneck in the oil fields in Beaumont.

He was the only one who ran away from the farm.

In the first grade, my first grade teacher called my mother in school one day, and we lived way out in the middle of a rice paddy that was, was a field supervisor for Magnolia Petroleum.

And, so we my mother came to school and I.

And it was just me in the room.

I was on the far end of the room.

Mother was with the teacher who had a big 18 by 24 Manila paper drawing of mine, and I only I drew one subject as a child.

It was a barnyard.

It was all these different characters in there, right here.

And so.

So my mother was like, she talked with the teacher for a long time.

That teacher's talking about, and I can see what they were talking about.

And but I was a kid, you know, I was six years old for I know and, so I remember we got in the pickup to drive home and the pickup was a magnolia petroleum pickup that my dad had.

Big, beautiful, emblem on the side of the magnolia blossom.

I love that that logo.

And my mother never said a word all the way home.

It was like, I'm going.

Well, I you know, I know what.

Years later, I figured out she just said mom was a real quiet person.

And, the thing that she was most happy about was that I was not in trouble.

So.

So the so my point is, I have been forming pictures.

I've been trying to make pictures both through the paintings and drawings that I do and in the writing I've done of the world that I see.

And, the and I'm attracted to phrases like, Homer's phrase about dawn and spring, you know, the rosy tipped fingers of the goddess, you know, as the sun rises.

I mean, I think that the, and I think also, something that really helped me develop my skills of description were in doing critiques, for students, critique in a, you know, drawing or a painting room.

That is the most wonderful, growth experience for all freshmen and sophomores and mainly what I taught and, and, and they learned that, what they're breaking down, what they're talking about in each other's artwork are things that help them get better.

And making those they're not about, ethereal things on the outside, but, you know, it's not about.

Okay, I've asked you to do a set up with three objects, so it's really, you know, human's inhumanity to humans is really not okay for this.

We don't really need to talk.

Let's talk about how you did the charcoal.

So I think I think artist.

I hadn't thought of that, but they probably are pretty good at describing what they're seeing because that means so much to us.

I mean, I have, I've been very blessed in my life to do a lot of, research and traveling on somebody else's nickel, Fulbright and any age and sabbaticals in that.

And, one of the things and much of my art has been about shorelines because my, I'm fascinated with where the earth meets the sea.

And, and of course, I'm most interested in when I've traveled and I've lived in Holland and Italy and Greece and, I really the first thing I do is try to get out of the city, and I want to get out into the countryside that borders, like Beaumont, Texas, Nederland, you know, the, the, the shore is very important to me.

And I love how the tide changes and how, how the, the, the, the sort of geographical earth that each of us lives on is very much shaped by what the water is doing to it, on the, on the edges.

So I love those intersections.

I love those places and and in relationships to I love how, when you, you're, you're working with somebody like the but one of the teams is helping Sam at the farm, and something comes up where Sam has an opportunity to see the nobility of a kid helping him, who, just out of their own fruition, does something amazing.

You know, where you like, wow.

Where did that come?

You know, that's very young.

Warrior there, you know, I'm.

I like those kind of surprises of intersections.

You, one of my favorite poets, my two favorite poets are Gerard Manley Hopkins and Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet who a good friend of mine is good friends with him.

So I got to know Seamus Heaney, which was quite a there's a wordsmith.

So I love wordsmith.

So those two wordsmiths and, probably my favorite, poem by Hopkins.

And I've made pictures, paintings about him is The Wind Over, which is an English version of our Little Falcons.

It's a raptor.

And in the wind over, the poem describe this beautiful creature that flies high up, gets to the top of it's.

Gets to the apex of its flight route, tucks its feathers in, and then dive bombs, whatever the prey is down below.

Well, as a younger man reading it, I thought about what a beautiful thing of.

I kept seeing it like this as an older person and a person who I got to teach on a Fulbright exchange to Derbyshire, and, Derbyshire, England is two thirds of the county is National Trust.

So it's where all the Brits go to do their rambles, their hikes.

And then.

So I was on the edge of a bluff.

In the just below the lake country and the peaks.

It's called doing a hike.

And I was out on the edge of this bluff and it was just and and I knew there were lots of raptors around.

And suddenly, up the side of this cliff, here comes this beautiful bird.

This this falcon.

And I'm standing like this, waiting for him.

And he comes right up here, looks at me, tucks his wings and falls, and I realize then that's what Hopkins was looking at.

Hopkins was really standing on a precipice when he wrote that poem.

And so that, so those are the kinds of writers that I'm attracted to.

Yes, that I love.

I can read page after page of description.

Well, I also want to add a speaking of wordsmith, you had a blurb on the back of your book from someone.

I'll see you and I. I wanted you to tell that story.

Yes.

This is, You're talking about the Michael Martin Murphys.

Yes.

Quote I love this, Micheal Martin Murphy says, Molly's book about farming on a small scale turns the challenges of growing clean food into heroic adventure.

This book communicates the pure joy of participation in the natural, mystical progression of human interaction with the Earth.

It's the ballad of the Green Man set to a waltz across Texas.

I love that.

That's great.

And, Michael knows that much of my artwork in the year I was in England and following was devoted to the Green Man, the image of the Green Man, the that male fertility symbol in England and France and Germany.

So, I have a short story to tell you about Michael.

Years ago, many years ago, there was an actual coffeehouse in Dallas called the Rubaiyat.

And I always had to explain, explain to my students that a coffeehouse is not a coffee shop.

Okay, a coffee house.

He had poetry readings and folk singers, lots of smoking and lots of coffee and espresso and, so, and, rest in peace.

Ron Shipman, the owner, just passed away about four months ago.

And so Mike and I've been in communication about that because, at the old Rubaiyat, which was a small little shotgun brick building on McKinney Street in Dallas, I got to meet Odetta and Bud Travis and all of these fabulous folk singers because of Ron as the Michael, because I was the 18 year old resident artist at the Rubaiyat, I did all of the the menus, the posters, my paintings were hanging on the wall, my 18 year old paintings hanging on the wall.

I did the fine for the Rubaiyat in like Persian lettering and stuff, you know?

And Michael was the 18 year old folk singer resident folk singer at the Rubaiyat.

And so we've known each other since we were 18 years old.

He was a music major at North Texas.

I was an advertising art major at North Texas.

And so we've been able to, that rarely see each other, but we've been able gotten to stay in touch all these years.

And then when, Becca and I were doing the organic herbs and produce, we did, several, farm table events and that sort of thing where Michael would be like the featured star.

And so we were able to keep touch that way.

So he's really he's followed.

He knows about my love of the green man.

He knows about the garden.

He's sampled.

You know, our produce and all of that.

So, I was really honored.

He was delighted to do that.

And it really meant a lot to me.

In fact, when the when the, when everything was done and, the blurb and all of that was done back, and I was sitting watching something, at night and Michael was in his bus on his way to some concert.

I think he was going down to New Braunfels.

Anyway, he called us from the bus and he said, Tom, the book's coming out soon.

I said, yes, it's done.

Thank you so much for the blurb, etc.

he says, well, are you sitting on the couch?

And I said, yes, we are.

And he said, well, I want to sing a little song.

So on the bus, Michael Murphy pulls out his guitar and he serenaded us with the most beautiful ballad, a new one, a new one.

And I said, Michael, I've not heard that.

That is, he said, I'm glad you like that.

He's just sitting there on the bus singing to us and I said, gosh, man the lyrics, sir.

He said, well, I thought you would like that.

He said, that's from my new album, that it's based on the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe.

Oh, lovely.

So we heard at first, that's amazing.

Cool.

What a treat.

What a wonderful treat it was.

Yeah, well, unfortunately we are running low on time here.

I'm sorry, I know it's it's it's fascinating hearing how the art and the stories connect, and I'm very much enjoying it, but we do have to cut short.

So for our final minute, what are you people to take away from your book?

The ultimately the book.

My paintings.

I have a show coming up at my gallery, Jay Peeler Hell and Fine Art in Fort Worth.

December 14th, we're going to have a show.

And the paintings in that show and the paintings that I've been doing for a number of years and this book are really about stewardship, stewardship of the land, stewardship of the animals in our care and the stewardship of each other.

Because, and that is something that I've tried to convey in, in the book is the, the importance of, helping each other, caring for each other.

And stewardship goes beyond just, taking care of a of a piece of land in the book.

It's really, a broader, universal appeal that I would like for people to, take away.

That we are supposed to be thoughtful stewards of the earth, the animals on this earth, the waters on this earth and of each other.

That's what I like.

Remember?

That's a wonderful sentiment, I hope.

Well, I have to end it there, because that's just a beautiful it's a beautiful thing for me so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming and for writing this beautiful book.

When you when you get the second one going, you'll have to come back and we'll talk about that.

I'd love to.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

That is all the time we've got for today.

The book again, is the Art of farming.

Thanks for joining us and I will see you again soon.