Tour Ben Logans Seldom Seen Farm

SELDOM SEEN FARM is the setting of iconic local author Ben Logans book The Land Remembers. The Mississippi Valley Conservancy will lead a guided spring hike at the farm on Saturday, May 20. There is a new edition of Logans book with an introduction by environmental historian and Sauk Prairie resident Curt Meine.

Local author Ben Logan died in 2014, but his legacy lives on. He left behind his beloved Seldom Seen Farm, which he wrote about in his acclaimed book, ‘The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People.’ Both farm and book will be celebrated with an event on Saturday, May 20 near Gays Mills. The new edition has an introduction by environmental historian and Sauk Prairie resident Curt Meine.

The Mississippi Valley Conservancy will lead a guided spring hike at Logan’s Seldom Seen Farm, one of the Conservancy’s ‘Seasons in the Coulee Region’ series of outdoor events sponsored by Gundersen Health System. Participants will include people who knew Ben Logan and grew up around the farm, as well as MVC staff who helped Logan create a conservation easement to preserve Seldom Seen as farmland forever.

Hike leaders will conduct an intimate tour of the farm, which is privately owned and normally closed to the public. Its serene ridge top fields offer scenic views of the surrounding Kickapoo River Valley, and its woodlands feature bubbling springs, migratory songbirds and wildflowers. Tour participants will have the chance to ask questions, take photographs, purchase the book, and reflect on Logan’s famous words: “Once you have lived on the land, been a partner with its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave. The living land remembers, touching you in unguarded moments, saying, ‘I am here. You are a part of me.’”

The occasion for the tour is the release of a new ninth edition of Logan’s book (originally published in 1975), which recollects a boyhood in Wisconsin's Driftless region in the 1920s and '30s. Logan grew up on Seldom Seen Farm with his three brothers, father, mother, and hired hand Lyle—“the fifth Logan boy.”

After being in and out of print with several publishers, ‘The Land Remembers’ will now be published by the University of Wisconsin Press. The Logan heirs presented the rights to the book to the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin.

Carpooling to the Seldom Seen tour is recommended, since parking on the farm is limited.

Directions:

From Gays Mills head south on Highway 131 for approximately 3.5 miles. Turn right onto County S for 1.8 miles and turn left onto Zintz Road. Continue for about two miles to the driveway (look for MVC signs) on north side of road.

About MVC

Founded in 1997, Mississippi Valley Conservancy is a nationally accredited regional land trust that has permanently protected more than 18,300 acres of scenic lands in southwestern Wisconsin by working with landowners, businesses and local communities on voluntary conservation projects. The focus of the Conservancy is to conserve the forests, prairies, wetlands, streams and farms that enrich our communities, for the health and wellbeing of current and future generations. For more information: www.mississippivalleyconservancy.org

About UW Press

Founded in 1937, the University of Wisconsin Press is a nonprofit educational publisher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The Press’s mission is to embody and extend the research, education, and outreach mission of the University of Wisconsin through publishing scholarship valued by a worldwide academic and professional community, works that serve the people of Wisconsin and document our region’s heritage, and works that sustain a literate culture and foster an informed and engaged citizenry.

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