Plan To Raffle Off Farm Is Pure Poetry

Plan to raffle off farm is pure poetry AG WORLD Ag World UNIONVILLE Mo ùHazel and Raymond Hirst nicknamed Bud call it the Bitter Harvest Great Farm Sweepstakes And the prize they re offering is a 476-acre slice of rural American good life they couldn t sustain: their farm The rules are simple enough If the financially strapped Hirsts say they can sell 50 000 copies of Bitter Harvest a collection of 14 poems by Mrs Hirst one of the buyers could win the farm And to comply with no-purchase necessary lottery rules even those who don t buy the illustrated booklet will be able to compete simply by sending the couple a stamped self-addressed envelope The plan by the Hirsts who say they re about $200 000 in debt has drawn national attention and skepticism But Missouri Assistant Attorney General Bill Van Hook says it s perfectly legal ù and a nifty idea The raffle says Tam Ormiston Iowa assistant attorney general is a perfect mirror of American agriculture It s high-risk and chancy ù like the situation that exists right now down on the farm But if the Hirsts add they can t raise enough to pay off their debt the sweepstakes will be canceled and the book-purchase money refunded We ll either sit and wait for foreclosure or bankruptcy Mrs Hirst says Maybe we ll think of something else ù I don t know They started making their offer public in July Right now they re 48 000 book sales short Still there s little question they re offering an abundant prize: a modern one-story three-bedroom home valued at $100 000; a private lake stocked with bass and catfish rolling hills near the Iowa border that are home to wild deer and turkeys Total value of the package: $500 000 ù the amount the Hirsts hope to raise at $8 a book plus $2 for postage and handling For 20 years the Hirsts owned and operated a motel and tavern in Decatur Ill at one point employing 14 persons Then I just said Hazel why don t we publish your poems you keep writing? We thought Why don t we give the farm away and let somebody else fulfill a dream? We weren t going to sit back and let somebody take our farm away It was a good business but we just got burned out said the 53-year-old Mr Hirst whose father and uncles had farming experience We wanted to just move out into the hills somewhere and get away from it all The couple looked in southern Illinois and Indiana before a friend mentioned the property near Unionville about 180 miles northeast of Kansas City In 1972 they packed their gold Cadillac and moved intending to make their profit by raising cattle and hogs and by growing corn and soybeans They paid $100 an acre for the land cleared some timber and built their brick home I used to think that I didn t have enough experience ù that it s me Mr Hirst says But when I went to the sale barns and got the same price for corn as the rest I knew I wasn t alone It just wasn t a lack of skill he maintains You know it doesn t mean a damn thing if a sow lays out 10 pigs or two pigs ù you lose money on every one of them By last January the couple had a second mortgage from the Farmers Home Administration To make ends meet Mrs Hirst says they took anything and everything as second jobs She tried selling recipes to mail-order catalogs sold food at area farm auctions and worked as a part-time store clerk Mr Hirst obtained a real estate license They even thought about building a dam flooding the property and selling lake lots But an engineering survey showed their lake would be so shallow that to drown you d have to lie on your back Mr Hirst says He remembers hearing the wind whipping outside last January sitting with his wife around a wood stove about as depressed as anybody could get In one of her poems titled The Naked Truth Mrs Hirst writes: The fault is yours right here at home You just stood idly by I heard your laughter saw your tears But not your battle cry I say good-bye to fields of grain To hills of sweet red clover You never made a stand my friend ù The war is almost over If all goes accordin

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