Hayseeds in his Hair : Poems and Prose by George B Smith

There once lived an unusual farmer near Londonderry in Ross County, Ohio.

His name was George B Smith and for many years he mixed farming and poetry.

On the steep slopes of his hillside farm, he tilled his fields of corn and grain.

His neighbors knew him as Neighbor Smith, but at heart he was a poet and philosopher.

He often referred to himself as "the clodhopper poet."For more than 50 years, he lived in the unpretentious little home where he raised his five children, a widowed father and sometimes lonely man. In fact, he lived all his 75 years on his father's (Michael) Smith farm, overlooking the broad sweep of Sunshine Valley, which he himself named.

It's no wonder, he would tell you, that he should grow to love the valley and compose poetry of its beauty and tranquility.

The slight, gray man who dressed in overalls and gesticulated his meanings with calloused hands would stop from his farm duties at the slightest provocation to quote his poetry to a passerby.

Farming was his livelihood, but poetry was his passion.

Farmer Smith looked upon corn fields, the flowered hills of spring, the shallow creeks and saw the same things most do, but he interpreted them differently.

He phrased the scenes of his daily life in melodious language and sang the songs of its beauty.