The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (16 page)

I needed to get back to the Beekman.

I wasn’t exactly sure what my Best Life was supposed to be, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with cooking Thanksgiving dinner with food from the garden, canning enough tomatoes to last through the winter, sweeping up zombie flies, picking apples, and baking cherry pies for a Fourth of July picnic.

I needed to make some Best Life changes before it was too late.

Oprah told me to.

Chapter Fifteen

For true Martha-philes, the real spirit of Christmas is giving or, more specifically, giving up every moment between Thanksgiving and New Year’s in pursuit of beating baby Jesus at his own game.

The stakes are even higher if one happens to work at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. While most of us merely have to deal with the ten-dollar Secret Santa swap at our offices, MSLO employees find themselves having to put to practice the crafts they’ve been preaching on television and in glossy print for the last twelve months. Exchanging Isotoner gloves and Starbucks gift cards aren’t going to put anyone on the fast track to the MSLO boardroom.

Brent had been fretting since Halloween, trying to come up with a handmade gift worthy of bestowing on his colleagues—and Martha herself. The previous year he’d scored a hit with gingerbread cookies decorated with an elaborate white-and-Tiffany-blue snowflake design, accented with silver dragées. We’d spent an entire weekend baking and decorating, and by that Sunday night I was lying on my stomach on the floor, squeezing royal icing from the pastry bag onto the nude cookies. My back had given out from bending over the kitchen counter, but Brent wouldn’t let me stop until the final gingerbread fellow was properly dressed. Worse yet, he acted as quality control, quickly weeding out unacceptable ginger-dudes for transgressions such as cracked limbs and lopsided torsos. It had been pastry eugenics of the most sinister sort.

But they had been a hit. Martha dutifully gave her gracious approval on receipt, which only meant that the bar had been raised for the next year’s effort.

“Why don’t we just do the cookies again,” I asked Brent as we drove to the cut-your-own-Christmas-tree farm in Cherry Valley. This December morning was the coldest morning of the year so far. The thermometer on the truck’s visor read 6 degrees. Plus there was a steady wind blowing up the valley. Since we hadn’t visited Sharon Springs in the months between last fall’s discovery of the Beekman and the springtime closing on it, we had no idea how harsh the winter could be.

“You can’t give the same thing twice.”

“Why not? It’ll be your ‘thing.’ A tradition.”

“At Martha we don’t
have
traditions, we
make
traditions,” Brent recited. “I’d rather give something from the farm.”

“How about the apple butter we made?”

Brent scoffed.

“Pickles?” I offered.

“Not something that any old farm could make,” Brent explained. “Think more Martha-ish.”

“Hand-knitted scarves made from molted goat fur dyed with turkey blood.”

“Something from the goats
would
be cool,” Brent said, perhaps not realizing that I was joking.

The wind had caused a four-foot snowdrift across the driveway leading up to the Christmas tree farm. So we parked the truck on the side of the road and hiked toward the small cabin with a picturesque puff of smoke coming from its stovepipe chimney. Our plan for the day was to bring home our tree, decorate it, string some homemade garlands for the front of the house, and go to bed with sugar plum faeries dancing, etc., etc.

“It’s really freezing,” Brent said.

“Yep.” I forced myself to bite my tongue. It’s a particular pet peeve of mine that Brent doesn’t dress for the weather. Sometimes I think he dresses as if he’s going to a photo shoot of whatever occasion we’re attending rather than the actual event. It’s especially maddening in the winter, and was even more so at the Beekman than in the city. I have to remind myself, however, that he’s a southern boy at heart. In his head he really doesn’t understand the difference between 32 degrees and -15 degrees. To him there is simply “hot,” “warm,” and “I should put on a jacket or something.” The concept of windchill is completely beyond his imagination.

Brent knocked on the door of the little shack, and a man opened it just enough to stick his head out. He seemed surprised that we were there.

“We’d like to cut down a tree,” Brent said.

“Today?” he asked, as if the thought of someone visiting a Christmas tree farm in early December was somehow not part of his business plan. “Kinda cold, don’t you think?” he elaborated, giving Brent’s light flannel jacket and baseball cap the once-over.

I looked across the hills and fields scattered with evergreens.

“Which direction should we head?” I asked.

“Depends. Whacha lookin’ for?” the man asked. Didn’t we just go over this? A Christmas tree. What did he think we’re looking for—the lido deck?

“Well, up over there I’ve got your blue spruce, and on that other hill are the white pines. And those are Douglas firs down by the creek.” Except he pronounced “creek” like “crick.” Clearly our years of buying stumpy trees from New York City sidewalk stands hadn’t educated us on the intricacies of Christmas tree selection. It was too confusing. And everywhere he was pointing seemed miles away.

“Great, thanks. We’ll find something,” I said.

“Good luck! Twenty-five bucks apiece, no matter the size,” he explained. “Pay on your way out.” Before closing the door he pointed out a pile of rusty saws leaning against the doorframe for our use.

We began trudging through the snow up a hill toward a distant stand of white pines…or maybe Douglas firs. It didn’t matter. We were overjoyed to be there, traipsing through the snow to pick our very first Christmas tree for the Beekman. Later in the day we’d string up the garlands, come back inside, and decorate the tree while drinking cups of homemade goat milk hot chocolate. We loved Christmas. We didn’t even pretend to hide it. We were one of those cliché couples who purchased Christmas ornaments from every place we visited together, so decorating the tree each year was like reliving all of our fondest memories.

“Oh tannenbaum, oh tannenbaum…!”
I hollered against the wind at the top of my lungs.

“How lovely are thy branches!!!”
Brent sang back. We sang our way up the hill, starring in our own perfect little Christmas variety hour, until twenty minutes later we reached the most windblown, barren, and gnarled stand of trees I’d ever seen. Each one we came upon was sparser than the last.

“These are hideous!” Brent yelled above the wind.

“Let’s try down there.” I pointed down the hill toward the stream. We began trekking even farther away from the cabin and truck. The snow whirled around my face, creating almost whiteout conditions. I tried to remember my Cub Scout training on how to survive outdoors in a snowstorm, but quickly remembered that the only badge I earned was the “Showman Badge” for writing, directing, and starring in a finger puppet show about playground safety. (“Don’t stand too close to a swing set in use…LOOK OUT!!!”)

Chunks of ice were forming on my knit scarf from my breath. I couldn’t imagine how Brent was tolerating the bone-chilling cold in his light jacket. I thought that we really should’ve turned back, but Brent was too far ahead of me to shout to.

The next stand of trees turned out to be no better than the first. But there was no way we were going to move on to another. We must’ve covered three miles already. The trees in this stand were all about two stories tall, and mostly bare of branches the first ten feet up from the ground.

“Let’s just chop down a tall one and use the top,” I suggested.

We circled through the trees with our necks craned upward, looking for one that was fullest at its peak. Around and around we went, deeper into the woods. I was about to point out a possible contender when I heard Brent yell from about twenty feet in front of me.

“Fuck!”

Brent doesn’t swear. Ever. He doesn’t even use the word “swear.” Some parts of his southern Holy-Roller background cannot be shaken. I rushed over to him to find him shaking his left leg as if it were on fire.

“What happened?”

He pointed downward toward a rushing stream of water under the snow. We didn’t even realize that we were walking around staring upward at the “Douglas firs down by the crick.”

“You’re not even wearing boots!” I scolded as Brent sat in the snow taking off his thin athletic socks to wring them out. “Why the heck would you wear Crocs in the middle of a snowstorm?”

“Let’s just pick a fucking tree and get out of here.” His feet were almost a translucent white as he struggled to get the wet socks back on.

It took us fifteen more minutes to saw, chop, and hack one of the monsters to the ground. This one’s top looked much fuller when it was two stories above our heads. On the ground it looked more like a giant toilet brush with half of its bristles missing. I wasn’t going to point this out to Brent, however, since he was jumping back and forth from one foot to the other trying to keep blood flowing into his wet appendages.

“Grab that side,” he said. I did as he instructed, and we began to drag the behemoth back toward where we believed the cabin and truck to be. It must’ve weighed two hundred pounds. Soon I was wheezing. My heart was racing and throbbing so loudly that it was all I could hear under my ski cap. Ten years ago—hell, even
five
—this sort of task might’ve tired me out, but it wouldn’t stop me in my tracks. I couldn’t believe how badly my body was rebelling against me. I started thinking about all the stories I’ve heard about friends of friends who’ve dropped dead of heart attacks at forty years old.

“I…can’t…make…it…” I wheezed to Brent. “It’s…too…heavy.” I dropped my end and bent over with my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath.

“C’mon. Don’t be a drama queen.”

“No. REALLY, I can’t.” I wondered how long Brent would be able to administer CPR on me before his feet froze solid.

Brent muttered something I couldn’t hear above the wind and began yanking and tugging the tree all by himself. He was really pissed. We made our way back slowly, in fits and spurts. I joined in the pulling when I could, and collapsed into the snow whenever I ran out of breath again.

When we finally reached the driveway, the old man stuck his head out of the cabin again.

“Saw ya draggin’ that thing all the way up the hill! That’s a monster!” he yelled. “That’ll be thirty-five.”

Brent, ignoring him, continued to drag the tree toward the truck while I walked over to pay.

“I thought…
wheeze…
you said…
wheeze…
they were twenty-five dollars…
wheeze…
no matter the size.”

“Yeah. But that’s a big one.”

I was too utterly spent and freezing to argue, so I pulled two twenty-dollar bills out of my wallet and pushed them into his hands.

“Keep the…
wheeze…
change.”

“Merry Christmas! Keep warm!” he shouted after us, before quickly disappearing back into the cozy cabin.

The rest of our perfect holiday Saturday didn’t go much more smoothly. We gave up on our garland-making attempt after we’d laid out hundreds of boughs down the center aisle of the barn, carefully wired them together, and then watched them fall back to pieces the moment we tried to lift and carry them outside.

Then we turned our attention back to our tree. After wrestling it inside, it became apparent just how spindly and sparse the top ten feet of our giant tree was. There weren’t nearly enough branches on which to hang our ’round-the-world collection of ornaments. This tree couldn’t hold an ornament collection of an agoraphobe.

There was no silver or gold lining to this tree. It was ugly. Even Cindy Lou Hoo wouldn’t have missed this one. While I probably could’ve lived with it, Brent, with his Martha Stewart mind-set, would have grown to hate it more and more each day. By Christmas morning he probably would have set it on fire.

“Brent?”

“What.” His demeanor was utterly deflated.

“Get your jacket.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere.”

After ten years together, I knew exactly how he was feeling. About the only time Brent gets in a real funk is when he feels as if he’s wasted his time. The day was nearly over and we had nothing to show for it. No tree. No garlands. No goat milk hot chocolate memories.

“Just let’s go,” I said, pulling warm jackets for both of us out of the hallway closet. “And wear real boots this time.”

An hour later, Brent and I were chewing Quarter Pounders and sipping hot chocolate in the McDonald’s parking lot with a perfectly proportioned, unnaturally green, lush Walmart Christmas tree tied to the roof of the truck.

“Merry Christmas, Grinch,” I said.

He leaned over and kissed me with French fry–salty lips.

I’ve always thought that one of the signs of true adulthood is when you realize that you spend each Christmas trying to relive childhood memories that never really happened in the first place.

But that first Christmas at the Beekman taught me otherwise. It lived up to every sappy holiday commercial ever produced. Both Brent and I had two full weeks off of work, and we spent each day as if we were living in a Macy’s holiday display window. We bought ice skates for our pond, toboggans for the steepest hay field, and made snow forts in the glacier-size drifts by the far woods. We cooked pies and cookies with fruit from our cellar, and made snow cream from the new snow that seemed to tumble down fresh every night. We drove around the village to look at Christmas light displays, and lay down in the hay with the goats to take naps whenever we felt like it. In short, we had everything and nothing to do, and we did all and none of it.

While we’re both close to our families, it also felt wonderful not to have to travel during the holidays. We decided that we deserved to start some of our own Christmas traditions. We were growing bored in our roles of eccentric gay uncles who swooped in from the big city with exotic presents that nobody really wanted, and who complained about having to go to church.