Connemara Farm

Visited the Carl Sandburg farm up in Flat Rock this weekend. I’d say that the Sandburg farm is the closest I’ve ever come to finding a perfect place to live. A big house but not ostentatious, comfortably mismatched furniture (currently in storage while a restoration project proceeds), tall wide windows, on a hilltop with terrific views, pleasantly and slightly overgrown natural landscaping (no manicured gardens or topiary or putting-green lawns, thank you), lots of open spaces. Probably the most striking thing about the house itself is that every wall in the place has bookshelves — a Sandburg renovation. At one point, the house contained 17,000 volumes.

View from Lillian's bedroom

The place is called “Connemara” after the name given it by its second owner, an Irish textile tycoon named Ellison Smyth. Smyth had acquired the 246 acres, house and outbuildings (including slave quarters) from Christopher Memminger, Secretary of the Confederate Treasury. Lilian Sandburg found the property while looking for a place to raise goats and a quiet spot where her husband could write and commune with nature. 

Some other old goats

Apparently the goats liked it just fine; the herd eventually grew to 250 animals and Connemara Farm Goat Milk was stocked on many North Carolina store shelves. Lilian made a name for herself in goat breeding and the farm was often visited by other farmers seeking to learn her methods. Descendants of the original herd still live at Connemara — the world’s most pampered tribe of goats.

The Sandburgs moved to the hills of Western Carolina in 1945. Carl was 67 years old. Over the following 22 years he went on to produce one-third of his total literary output. He was a socialist (at least for a time, in his 30s) and a defender of civil rights, becoming the first white man to win the NAACP’s Silver Plaque Award. In addition to poetry, he wrote the definitive work on Lincoln (in six volumes), an anthology of American folk music and a couple of children’s books. Sandburg won three Pulitzers, a Grammy (!), and the Robert Frost Medal. He appears to be the only poet ever to address a joint session of Congress.

In every room . . .

Of course, he was so much more than a paragraph describes, or even a full biography. His early days — he left school in the 8th grade, worked, bummed around, tried on this job and that — he did go back to college although he never earned a degree (but, 17,000 books) — his enlistment during the Spanish-American war — all of that served his ultimate accomplishment: Poet of the people. He got into the skin of servants and porters and bricklayers and steel men and secretaries. He understood the American Dream and the people it served and the people it failed. 

There have not been many men like him — maybe Twain, Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, a handful of others. Pete Seeger. Can’t think of any who are still alive today. I have a hunch that the great American folk artists/writers/poets of the 21st century are going to be women. But that's a topic for a different day (and probably for someone else).