As conveyed by a care-worn woman of indeterminate age in a simple flower print dress stained brown with dust

I’m a Homesteader. That’s who I am.

You want to know why I don’t want to leave? Why I fight tooth and nail for my land, even as it blows away? Why I stay when my friends and my neighbors and even my children have left to find better chances in California or wherever? It is because this is my home. This is my identity. I have struggled through death and drought before. I have had pieces of paper claiming to remove me from my land before, and I am still here. I will fight the banks, the lack of rain, even the Earth itself if I have to, because this is who I am. If I were to give up and leave, what would that make me? Another Okie. Another poor soul making the long drive out of the dust. Someone else.

I’m not a Dreamer. I’m not a Traveler, or even just a Farmer.
I am a Homesteader, and this is my home.

How could I Sing away from it?