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Mondays at Skimmilk Farm

Elizabeth Knies

Since 1975, when Jean Pedrick came up with the idea of having a weekly writing workshop at her summer home in New Hampshire, I have been fortunate enough to be able to attend--and benefit from--the camaraderie, criticism, and encouragement of the group of writers who have gathered there on Mondays for nearly thirty years. Even when I was away teaching and traveling for a decade, I managed to get back for summer visits almost every year. In 1995, I came home to stay.

Jean purchased Skimmilk Farm with her husband, Frank Kefferstan, back in 1958. The brown clapboard façade of the house is like many of the old farmsteads dating from early colonial times in rural New Hampshire. Unpretentious and ample, it sits back a little from the road, as relaxed and easy as a farmwife who's comfortable with her place in the scheme of things.

If the day is fair, we sit outside under the trees, with views of the vegetable garden and horses pastured in the meadow of a neighboring farm. On cool or rainy mornings we gather in the dining room around a long table in front of a wood-burning hearth. If the day is mildly damp, we might gravitate to the comfortable, dilapidated chairs and couches of the screened porch at the back of the house.

Monday mornings from late May through October follow the same pattern. About eight to ten of us convene late morning, bringing new or revised work and a dish to contribute to lunch. Poets predominate, but fiction and non-fiction writers--and sometimes visitors who just want to sit in--are welcome. Someone volunteers to start, and copies get handed around to the group. The author reads without editorializing, then people respond with comments ranging from the philosophical and aesthetic to minutiae caught by the Grammar Police.

The author may chime in at this point with questions, and of course in the end each author decides whether or not to incorporate suggestions. Overall, the atmosphere is supportive and jovial, with each writer receiving the full attention and considerable collective brainpower of the group. It is a powerful experience. I would venture that no one has ever left a session at Skimmilk without gaining something helpful to take away, even when someone dares proclaim it "Perfect!"

After about two or two and a half hours of intense focus on the work of the day, it is time for lunch--an unprogrammed but always successful pot luck affair. Fresh home-grown baby lettuce and herbs, just-picked green beans and peas, and later in the summer, zucchini, tomatoes, and corn on the cob brighten the table. Seasonal fruits appear in cold soups, as well as in desserts.

Since the workshop's beginning, writers have come and gone, but there was always a center that held. Most of us have earned our livings in the diverse ways that writers do. We have celebrated each other's professional and personal milestones and mourned the loss of loved presences (Albert Grokoest, Ellie Nudd, Frank Kefferstan, Esther Buffler, Catherine Young, and Rex McGuinn) when death claimed them. Through it all, the farm and Jean, "head poet and head chef," remained constant. And Mondays sacred.

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