Little farms on the prairie bow to a Wal-Mart era

Some reformers argue public policy could rescue the Plains frontier by shifting more money toward the revitalization of rural communities. "We could spend the same amount of money we spend now on agricultural incentives and public policy and stop the bulldozer" of depopulation, says Chuck Hassebrook of the Center for Rural Affairs, a nonprofit research and advocacy group in Walthill, Neb.

Environmentalists argue the government should stop paying farmers to take cropland temporarily out of production and buy up that land instead, creating huge ecological reserves.

Whatever direction the region decides to take, decision time is approaching for frontier farmers.

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No one is more surprised that Alexander is still farming than Alexander himself. When he graduated from college with an accounting degree, he had a job lined up in Duluth, Minn. He came back home simply to help his father harvest the wheat - and then lingered.

"I realized what we had here and how unique it is," he explains. His great-grandfather, a runaway Mississippi slave and Buffalo soldier, homesteaded here, and passed the land on to his son, who expanded the operation and tilled 600 acres with mules. By the time Alexander and his father ran the operation, it had expanded to some 1,700 acres.

Tractors and combines, chemical fertilizers and herbicides meant that one family could now run a large spread by itself and produce far more grain than farmers two generations ago could have dreamed of. But they also speeded up the seemingly unstoppable march toward megafarms and rural depopulation.

"This whole 20-mile radius was our playground," says Alexander, standing in his driveway and stretching a hand out toward the emptiness that once housed big families and his playmates. "We would ride our bicycles. Then we went through a phase where we rode horses."

For the future, "I see bigger and bigger farms," he says, "and small family farms like what I'm running won't be around."

BOGUE, KAN. - Sometimes, ties to the land run so deep it's nearly impossible to come home. Just ask Angela Bates-Tompkins, who wanted to return from Denver to her roots in Kansas.

Her parents, who had already moved back, preferred to leave their land to all six children, rather than sell. And no one else from Nicodemus, the historic farming settlement, would part with their property. For six years, Mrs. Bates-Tompkins pleaded with a cousin, who finally sold her 25 acres just west of Nicodemus.

Now back, Bates-Tompkins wears many hats. She writes educational materials, performs a living-history program, and last May opened Ernestine's Bar-B-Q here in nearby Bogue. Every weekend, people come from miles around for ribs, potato salad, and baked beans so fine they could almost be the main course. She even uses the locally produced Promised Land Flour for her bread and fried chicken.

Ernestine Van Duvall used to run a restaurant in Nicodemus but moved to the Los Angeles area and started a restaurant and catering service there. That's where Bates-Tompkins learned to cook soul food.

These days, Bates-Tompkins does the cooking while Mrs. Van Duvall plays the piano for customers. The restaurant "is holding its own," Bates-Tompkins says, but she hopes to move it to those 25 acres outside of Nicodemus. "If I could be in 'Demus, that's where I would be. It's home."

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