'Nothing is cost-effective here'

"The week in August you come home,

adult, professional, aloof,

we roast and carve the fatted calf

-- in our case home-grown pig, the chine

garlicked and crisped, the applesauce

hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wind.

Nothing is cost-effective here.

The peas, the beets, the lettuces

hand-sown are raised to stand apart.''

-- From "Family Reunion,'' by Maxine Kumin (1925-2014)

From 1976 until her death  she and her husband lived on a farm in Warner, N.H., where they bred Arabian and quarter horses. She was the U.S. poet laureate in 1981-82.

Main Street in Warner, N.H. about 1908.