When a business has been in the one family for many generations it becomes increasingly difficult for the subsequent generations to sell it as the following poem by the little-known poet Samuel Hill demonstrates.

SELLING THE PLACE
Samuel Hill

The job ahead is daunting
As I survey the family plot
Several thousand fertile acres
That round here is quite a lot

The prospect is quite depressing
I am pressed hard to chuck the lot
Family farms are slowly dying
Here, I’m supposed to stop the rot

This is not a tale of murder
Or of corruption, graft or theft
But of changing circumstances
That the global world has wrest

For our farm and home for generations
The battle seems lost not won
My Dad he never saw it
Thank God he’s since passed on.

The urban sprawl has caught us
With its walls of creeping bricks
Which desecrate the landscape
It really is the pits

I was born here like my parents
And their grandparent’s parent’s too
Five bloody generations
And now it’s up to me to sue

For a sale I hate to think of
That I’ve no doubt that I will rue
But the tide of progress floods us
And there is nothing I can do

I recall my family history
How they built this farm to thrive
Five score and fifty years ago
Great Great Granddad brought alive..

A countryside grand and lonely
No roads and peopled rare
But now we are surrounded
And it’s is more than we can wear.

For its global economics
Our feeble leaders say
that change like this is needed
Or the country will lose its way.

Change is history’s constant
And it’s essential as a nation
That I.T. and email help us
To keep pace with innovation

Bugger them I’d like to tell them
But I’d waste my breath I know
Their all sitting bloody pretty
With their steady income flow

Paid by people like my family and
Other farmers just like us
They are totally bloody useless
But I really must not cuss

So please God forgive me
If I continue hard to row
Against the tide of global waters
One more crop I think I’ll grow.

One Response to “Samuel Hill on “Selling the Place””

1. ADI SATRIA PANGESTU says:

   July 13, 2019 at 4:08 pm

   Awesome!, this is an interesting post, when do you write like this again?