In a few weeks, the sale will close, and my family’s farm-owning days in Marshall County will come to a quiet end. After 137 years.

A reporter at the State Center Enterprise once referred to the place as one of the nicest farmsteads in the area – my ancestors made sure to save the article – but that was long ago. Each generation found other interests, and none of us ever added land to our modest 80 acres or rebuilt anything. We didn’t possess the farming gene.

Still, the place was worth having. Not just for the corn and soybeans that we sharecropped, but for all of the small moments that have never gone away.

When I stand on what’s left of the barn – not much – I’m standing again beside my grandmother as she scoops corn from this bin and oats from that one to be scattered on the ground for her chickens.

Here’s the spot where a few strokes of the pump handle produced truly delicious well water on hot summer days. We drank from a dipper that hung out in the weather all year long, and Lord knows what was seeping and floating down below. Somehow, we survived.

Out there in the middle of the field, a few decades later than most of the boys I grew up with and some of the girls, that’s where I finally got to drive a combine through the corn.

Of course, not everything went perfectly. In this corner of the yard, my friend smacked into a tree with my motorcycle. Over there, I managed to tumble backwards off the roof of the henhouse. Fortunately, all of the injuries were minor ones.

Grandma’s house was torn down more than 10 years ago, but I can still see it, run my hand over the stucco and hear the screen door creak open and slam shut. In my mind, I can go inside and feel the heat from the kitchen stove, leaf through the stack of Presbyterian Life magazines and walk warily through the spooky basement.

South of the driveway, submerged in thick grass and weeds, is a little chunk of concrete with my oldest sister’s name on it. It was originally the base of a clothesline post, but when a visitor found it, she gently asked if “Judy” was the name of a family pet. No, I said, that’s my sister; she’s in Ames. That really threw her, because she thought it was a grave marker. That’s right, I said. In my family, we believe that when you die, you go to Ames.

We burned a million sticks and branches, and we kept mowing the lawn long after the house became vacant. When other duties started piling up – and I started finding wine bottles and underwear at my sweet, innocent little farm – that was the end of the high-level maintenance.

Now the lawn and garden are a tangled, overgrown mess, and it’s hard to find the jack-in-the-pulpit plant that my mother pointed out every spring. It won’t be there much longer; the new owners plan to take out the trees and plow everything up.

I don’t think I’m going to miss the place, though. You don’t have to own the soil to keep the memories.