Farmington Veteran’s poem earns win in VA’s National Creative Arts Festival

“I was ecstatic,” said Dr. Ryan Johnston of the honor. “The first thing I did was text the lady who was born on the farm because she really liked the poem because it’s about her family and the farm she grew up on.”

With his first-place poem, Johnston has been invited to take part in the 2024 National Veterans Creative Arts Festival in Denver, in May. 

The poem, titled “The Old Family Farm,” is part of a history book about Farmington’s historic Harrington farm, which Johnston wrote and called a labor of love.

“Everybody in town has a memory of that barn,” Johnston said, reflecting on the old wooden structure and the farm it stood on, which had been a part of the daily fabric of life for everyone growing up in the area. 

“The farm is right across the street from the high school, and everybody that went to school in this town remembers that barn because it had cows up until 2019,” Johnston continued. “Everybody’s been affected by that farm in one way or another.”

“It stood where it is at the edge of the town, for many a year before we came around,” the poem opens. “There’s a creek and a hill with a big open field, the milk cows are happy, there’s plenty of yield. The farmhouse is more than a century old, but the barn goes back even further I’m told. It was the picture of living when living was fine, the old family farm in the best of its time.”

Johnston’s poem paints a picture of the farm in its heyday, before development slowly engulfed the land.

“They took his front pasture and made it a school, and a new civic center with a big indoor pool,” the poem continues. “Then the hospital needed someplace to build, so he sold them that hill with the big open field.”

Along the way, the poem recalls the Harrington children growing up and the passing of their mother and father, him in the hospital built on his farm.

“The farmhouse caught fire and burned to the ground, but the barn stood watching over the town. It was a picture of living when living was fine, the old family farm almost gone for all time,” it continues.

“The whole thing is a true story,” Johnston said of the poem. 

In 2022, he said, Johnston saw the writing on the wall and realized the barn would be torn down, which sparked the idea for his book. So, he approached the hospital administrator about photographing the barn for a local history book and was granted permission, and he soon became friends with the demolition supervisor.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t have ever put myself as the person to take this on,” he said. “But it didn’t seem like anybody else was going to do it, and I didn’t want the barn to get torn down before somebody got a chance to take photos and document the history of it, so I volunteered to do it, and it became my baby.”

Every day after work, he would take photos of whatever work had been done, watching it come down piece by piece. It was an emotional time for Johnston, but that emotion was turned into something good.

“I’m also a musician, so when I’m dealing with a lot of emotion, writing it down in a song is the best way to deal with it. The poem I wrote is basically a song without music,” he said.

And while “The Old Family Farm” is an emotional journey for anyone who knows about the farm, it also foretells a happy rebirth of sorts.

“It’s going to be put back into use on a dairy farm,” Johnston said of the barn, which was dismantled and relocated instead of destroyed. “I totally appreciate that because the hospital could have just as easily dug a hole and pushed it over in it and been done with it.”

And, he said, the hospital will have a display in a new building dedicated to what once was the Harrington farm. 

“The farm is all gone and the barn’s coming down, but it’s going back up just outside of town,” the last verse of the poem reads. “It’s the picture of living when living was fine, the old family farm thrust back into its prime!”

For more information about the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival, contact John J. Pershing VA Medical Center’s Center for Development and Civic Engagement at 573-778-4276, or for details about other programs and services at the facility, call 573-686-4151 or visit VA Poplar Bluff Health Care | Veterans Affairs.