My apologies for going two months with no productivity. Such slacking would get anyone but a writer fired. Luckily, no one has hired me as writer on any basis other than a by-the-word rate. I will do my best to keep more posts coming, so check back weekly.
So after these months of silence, here is a bit of musing into the void of the internet:
I spent the last week living on a farm. It is a modest farm, mostly hay, with a few goats, chickens and turkeys. A large garden dominates the hillside between the farm houses. There are multiple farm houses because three families went in together to buy the property, and their unassuming homes form a neighborly cluster around the garden. Sociably gathered into a corner of the farmstead, they resemble the pastured goats they overlook. These are not the first families on this land, of course―great black walnut trees tower over the buildings, their crowns spreading high into the soft Oregon sky. Even from the upper homes, the grand trees are imposing. These, and feral, unpruned plums and apples along the fencerows are legacies from the original homesteaders. They came West from the poverty of Tennessee and Kentucky and might have wept upon reaching so fine a valley. Even the uncultivated forest offers good living. Elderberries, wild apples, roses, huckleberries, and evergreen blackberries are sweets ready to be taken. Nettles, miner's lettuce, marsh mallow, dandelions, and other greens are easy to find near the flowing water. The acorn mast would have been rich feed for hogs. Black tail deer wear paths into the undergrowth, and smaller rabbit tracks are visible. This is a land of abundant life.
Perhaps it is this abundant life which makes the country life so appealing. Its proximity was enough of a draw for the three families on the farm. It was enough to occupy me happily enough to barely track the passing of days. The time from sunrise to stargazing was full, every day. Never in a rush, we nonetheless filled out time. We awoke at dawn to feed the chickens and turkeys, to milk the goats and turn them out to pasture. As I turned over in bed every night, I could hear the mischievous banter of coyotes. The farm was on the margin of cultivation, the edge of the woods. This meant it allowed me to interact with the real. I learned which gully provided the best thermals; every morning Swainson’s hawks and turkey vultures rose with the days heat. I ate meals harvested with my own hands. I did not exchange currency for a table, I built one.
I call these things “the real” because the problems of a farm are authentic. A laying hen is not an abstraction. The questions which must be dealt with daily have life and death answers. A goat, forgotten about for a day or two, could easily expire. Untended gardens fill up with weeds, go to seed, or wither for lack of water. Poison oak cannot be explained away, or repealed, or vetoed. Laziness leads to failure. All these lessons are reasons Aimee and Silas came here to raise their children, Ukiah and Metolius. It is why the three families pooled their assets and invested in something worth more than its assessed value. They are responsible for their own lives; they understand what living is.
They also understand that welcoming others is the best way to share what they love. They happily invited not only Michael, their new tenant on the farm, but Rachel and myself to dinner. We dined in the open air, with the children trying to make jokes along with the rest of us. The dogs were curled up at our feet, and when the three recent college graduates mentioned researching something for fun we got mocked. “You guys will never get invited to parties!” Silas cracked. “But it is what we have been trained to do for 16 years!” Michael replied. And of course, being on a farm with a swimming pond, we are the ones throwing the parties.
The night before I left Michael and I crept up to the pond in the dark with some friends still at Linfield. The stars were visible in the pond, outlined against the tops of the oaks. Shooting stars left trails in the sky, as we lay on our back in the pleasantly sun warmed water. Life on a farm is tough. Crops fail. Prices fluctuate. Questions of stewardship of the land are never ending. The work day is sun up to sun down at best. But stars, the low calls of owls, and midnight dips with friends are enough happiness to stay fixed in a memory for a lifetime.
May the country life never be overthrown by our cities, for it gives us a view of our orienting stars.
