Sylvia's Farm (26 page)

When I bought this land and this twenty-five-room house, I told everyone who would listen that it is an endless palette for me. And now, remembering the window I drew on when I was nine, I realized I bought a house with sixty-five windows to draw on, or to sew curtains for through which to frame a view. To define creativity as only an art form is too narrow a scope to satisfy the meaning of the word.

My grandfather was a farmer out of necessity, but I've never been sure if he liked it or had an affinity for it. My mother was very poor as a child, and except for a period in her marriage before my father became too sick to run his business any longer, she never had very much in the way of money and material goods, but she felt my brother and I were her treasures, and the poverty of her childhood never affected her sense of self-worth. She was Rose. And that was that.

I noticed the poverty that my brother and I were raised with, but it was a far different kind from that which my mother knew. We had an abundance of food, warm clothes, love, and attention. It never oppressed me, and I had only a sense of pride from learning to make do. And so I've created a lifestyle in which, while I am cash poor, I am materially wealthy. After all, I own one milking cow, one heifer, and one calf. I have a donkey. I have a summer bedroom and a winter bedroom. Never mind that the summer bedroom is a bit too cold in which to sleep in the winter (the winter bedroom can be as well, but I won't think about that). To have two bedrooms from which to choose in the same house, that is wealth.

My mother was raised on a farm in Niantic making me, in fact, a Connecticut Yankee. She was the middle child of seven, the first to finish eighth grade. Children went to work at a very young age in rural communities, to work in the mill or at the local factory. When she graduated eighth grade and was asked if she was to go now to the mill, she said no and went to a two-year high school. When asked again to go to the mill, she said no and traveled many miles to go to a high school that graduated students from a four-year program. There were two high schools from which to choose, one was Chapman Tech, a vocational school, the other Williams Memorial Institute, a middle-class girls' high school. She chose Williams. She refused once more to work in the mill upon graduation from high school and was
filled with guilt. She had not made a contribution to her family's well-being while her older sisters and brother had already made their sacrifices. She turned down a scholarship to a four-year college, accepted one to the shorter-termed Yale Normal School, and became a teacher. She taught in a one-room rural schoolhouse encompassing eight grades. Some of the boys in her school were eighteen years old and six-foot-tall farm boys. My mother was a tiny five foot two inches tall. She gave all of her salary to her father for the first year and a half of working. One day she went to New London, cashed her paycheck, and purchased a “store-bought” outfit to wear to work. She told me my grandfather said nothing to her when she brought the reduced salary to him.

She raised me with a fierce determination. She believed that being a mother to me and my bother was an absolute commitment, unwavering in dedication and intensity. She believed I could do anything I wanted to do. She insisted on that belief. And so I am always surprised when I fall short of the belief she held with such consistency. One of the things I am so grateful to her for is that I have an absolute unrestricted freedom in my life in regard to the elusive and treacherous realm called creativity. If, indeed, our mothers hold such a powerful sway over that part of us then she certainly gave me a remarkable gift. A remarkable gift from a remarkable woman.

T
IME IS
slipping by with an increasing urgency. I've started this story in many ways and discarded them all. And now it must be written through to completion and I don't know how to do it. The events that have shattered our security in this country continue to have their repercussions. As they shall forever. They affect us all in ways both small and large, in ways measurable and not, each of us reacting in our own individual style.

I find that my days have a clarity that I have not experienced since I first lived here, and I was wrapped in a sense of adventure, gilded with hope and promise. Each moment has its own shining beauty, and I see with a sharpened focus that it is new and unadorned. To live with fear is not an unusual state of mind for me. But that fear has been altered to include all of us, all Americans everywhere. And, God help them, the innocent of other countries who, by the sheer accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, shall also soon die. Casualties of a war. Each day holds its own reminder that it must be lived in its fullest. And one must be, in oneself, a better person living it than the day before.

I think of my friends and family, some of whom may even find it necessary to live here on my farm. What in myself needs to change to get along with so independent a group of individuals? How shall I cook? My children are accustomed to the now very old-fashioned French country food that I have always made. But what of my brother who is not? And my late husband's sister? Familiar food is so
essential to morale. How would someone feel never to get to eat things one enjoys the most. Would I give up my tyranny over the stove? What must I do to learn how not always to be the boss?

September has been so very beautiful this year. Clear skies, rare in Delaware County, have been a gift to us. As were the skies, I read over and over again in Angela Thirkell's novels, most beautiful over England the first year of the Second World War. But it is our obligation to enjoy all of the beauty that we are given in each moment and not succumb to the fear the terrorists so absolutely wish to instill. Stories still come every day from the city. It is not over. And may never be. But we must go forward.

I have put the sheep in the barn for the past several days now. They had been on the move. Once or twice, no matter what my effort had been, they managed to get themselves out. Rotational grazing the neighbor's pastures. His cows have been roaming as well. Newcomers to the road think the cows are mine and stop to tell me, “Your black cows are out.” Which makes me laugh. Those magnificent creatures are not mine. Nor would I know what to do with them if they were. They siphon up grass and turn it into meat while my Jersey Lady Annabella Pilkingston siphons up ten pounds of grain a day and is losing condition as she nurses her calf. I like milk cows. The monstrous Angus are just not my style.

I went to Chamber's Auction in Unadilla last Wednesday to sell my old favorite ram, William Fitzwilliams. It is not my habit to stay to watch the sale. I don't care to see my carefully raised livestock frightened in the show ring. This time was different. A friend has expressed interest in owning some laying hens and a Nubian goat or two to milk. It was more important to find her a goat than mourn my ram.

The style of bidding changed for a brief second during the rabbit, chicken, goose, duck, rooster-selling event. The custom is to show
one of the animals being sold out of the box or cage, to indicate what the others look like. I didn't take my eye off of the cage of chickens I would have bought for Jennifer when suddenly to my amazement it was walked out of the door. That cage was sold only by number; they didn't pull a chicken out of it first. I missed it. We then came to a family of kid goats. Some were very pricey. And I hoped they were not going for meat. The tiny one I liked the best went as part of a buy-three-at-the-price deal. I asked a person next to me to include her in his bid. But the lot went up higher than his limit. It was too high for him. I was outbid. When I went to pay my bill I saw the woman who had bought the little goat. “You are not going to eat her, are you?” I asked.

“No, she is for my child,” was the reply. And so the pretty little kid went to a family to be a pet. I was so relieved.

A huge old basket had gone up for sale. It is rare, these days, that I ever buy anything just because I like it. But I did like that basket very much. It had shoulder straps and was in fact a huge backpack, a very nice one at that. I had a limit on what I was willing to spend. Went ten dollars over it. The bidding was fast, very fast. In two-dollar-and-fifty-cent increments I'm not used to. I gave up. And suddenly found the auctioneer saying to me, “Lady, do you want it?” For five dollars over my “ten dollars over my limit.”

“Yes,” I said. They passed it back to me. “You'll never be able to carry that,” went up a chorus all around me. “What you're going to put in it, anyway?”

“I certainly can,” I replied to the first chorus. “Apples,” to the second. I've become obsessed with apples of late. Picking and sorting all manner of varieties. Each type is becoming part of an experiment. Which can store throughout the winter? Which can best be made into a pie? Which makes the old-fashioned apple cheese? And which the best glazed apples? I already know the preferred kind for sauce.
And so I walked out at the end of the auction with a check in my pocket from the sale of my ram, the pack on my back, and neither the kid goat nor the chickens. So be it.

I did a million errands in Oneonta that day, with an atypical resolve. It is rare that I push Ernest beyond what he considers acceptable, but this time I did. I went to the
Oneonta Star
to place an ad for an apartment I have to rent. I bought lath with which to make racks for apples for my newly appreciated root cellar and odds and ends of hardware to take the edge off discomfort here. With dispatch.

I came home to a calm and silent house, and stood in the living room to hear the messages on my answering machine. Ernest called me from the backyard. By name. He never does that. I ran outside. He had just killed a hawk. It had attacked and killed one of the baby chicks in the cage by the kitchen door. The mother hen was still alive. There were feathers everywhere. The hawk had been tangled in the mesh of the cage. Trapped. All of the other chicks were gone. Presumed dead. It was a beautiful and strange wild thing lying there. The dead hawk. Barely a sign of how it had died. Shocking in its immediacy and in its closeness. I have always kept the chicken cage near the kitchen door. The chicks come and go at will. The hen calls warning to them. This time her chick wasn't fast enough. I usually have a roof on the eage. This time I didn't. The hawk must have seen it from very high up in the sky. How strange it all is. Later that evening I went outside and spoke to Celeste Baldwin, my goat. I had let the hen loose but hadn't moved the dead chick or its cage. The hawk was lying on some hay. I wanted to examine it closer. At the sound of my voice, one at a time, each of the four baby chicks emerged and ran toward me.

T
HERE IS
nothing in my life that makes me feel as privileged as to be a farmer. It numbers among the most fortunate experiences I have known to have so accidentally found my true vocation. Tomorrow shall mark a special event on this farm. Tomorrow five new lambs shall arrive. Half East Friesians. They are to be a jump start on the emerging dairy here. They are unrelated to my ram, which means they can be bred by him each year without concern and produce three-quarter East Friesian ewe and ram lambs. Were those to be bred back I shall have seven-eighths East Friesian sheep.

There are few experiences that are equal to the moment when new livestock arrives on a farm. I used to go with a trucker friend sometimes, a long time ago, as he brought newly purchased cows to a farm. The look on the farmer's face would be of cautious expectancy. Joy conservatively expressed. Hope shining in an unguarded moment. And, as suddenly, the mask of stoic normalcy resumed. No. The arrival of new stock was never an ordinary day.

In the morning after chores, his and mine, Ernest Westcott and I shall drive along Route 23 to Old Chatham, New York, on the first stage of this grand adventure to pick up some East Friesian ewe lambs, in his vanilla-colored pickup with burnt sienna lace on its skirts and the very nice livestock box on the top. And a grand adventure it shall be, particularly for the lambs who have been born and are being raised in a far different environment than ever shall be found here.

Snow dusts the pastures. The wind whips around the trees. I've let the chickens out of the portable coop to find their way to their old home in the carriage house. They did. Quickly. They have found where the cow spills some of her grain in the barnyard. And surround her. Cleaning it up to the last kernel of corn. My handyman thought poorly of me feeding Lady Annabella, my best cow, in a bucket so easy to tip over. But a container has never been made that she couldn't spill. She likes her lunch spread out. He watched her while building a new gate for the barnyard and grumbled all along about my wasteful cow, meaning my wasteful self. According to him, that is. “I wouldn't give it to her if she treats the bucket that way,” he said again and again. “She's wasting it.” “You wait,” I replied. “There won't be a sign that there ever was any grain fed out there in a few minutes.”

There wasn't. I was right and restrained myself from pointing it out. And so there is now a new gate to the barnyard. And miraculously enough built more closely to my specifications than things have been built of late. My gates are my pride and pleasure. This one is a copy of the very first one that was installed here. About twelve years ago. It was painted the willow green I love. Gradually it disintegrated as snowdrifts piled around it ruining the paint and sheep and cows battered it until they learned how to unlatch it. The next warmish day shall find it painted green. That very dark Charleston green that Harold in the paint store mixes so well for me. This year's gains were in tiny increments. As tiny as the gate. Some years have been more dramatic. But the year is not, as yet, over. And shall be punctuated by the arrival of the new lambs. Oh, the lambs shall need names. And ways to be identified. And bottles. And a place to live. And, perhaps, even their own notebook, if not a separate chapter in the history of the farm. I remember the second flock of great hope arriving a few years ago and the lovely names each had. Now to find
some lovely ones for these. There is a beautiful and large apple crate in the upper level of the barn. I shall wrap plastic around its walls, stack bales of hay by its sides, and keep a sheet of plexiglas over it for protection from the night wind. The lambs shall live there. I hope.