four

There are two things I have always wanted to do–write and live on a farm.Today I’m doing both.I’m not in E.B.White’s class as a writer or in my neighbors’league as a farmer,but I’m getting by.And after years of frustration with city and surburban living,my wife Sandy and I have finally found contentment here in the country.
It’s a self-reliant sort of life.We grow nearly all of our fruits and vegetables.Our hens keep us in eggs,with several dozen left over to sell each week.Our bees provide us with honey,and we cut enough wood to just about make it through the heating season.
It’s satisfying life too.In the summer we canoe on the river,go picnicking in the woods and take along bicycle rides.In the winter we ski and skate.We get excited about sunsets.We love the smell of the earth warming and the sound of cattle lowing.We watch for hawks in the sky and deer in the cornfeilds.
But the good life can get pretty tough.Three months ago when it was 30 below,we spent two miserable days hauling firewood up the river on a sled.Three months from now,it will be 95 above and we will be cultivating corn,weeding strawberries and killing chickens.Recently,Sandy and I had to retile the back roof.Soon Jim,16 and Emily,13,the youngest of our four children,will help me make some long-overdue improments on the outdoors toilet that suppliments our indoor plumbing when we are working outside.Later this month,we’ll spray the orchard,paint the barn,plant the garden and clean the hen house before the new chicks arrive.
In between such chores,I manages to spend 50 to 60 hours a week at the typewriter or doing reporting for the freelance articles I sell to magzines and newspapers.Sandy,meanwile,pursues her own demanding schdule.Besides the usual household routine,she oversees the garden and beehives,bakes bread,cans and freezes,drives the kids to their music lessons,practices with them,takes organ lessons on her own,does reseaches and typing for me,write an article herself now and then,tends the flower beds,stacks a little wood and delivers the eggs.There is ,as the old saying goes,no rest for the wicked on a place like this – and not much for the virtuous either.
None of us will ever forget our first winter.We were buried under five feet of snow from December through March.While one storm after another blasted huge drifts up against the house and barn,we kept warm inside burning our own wood,eating our own apples and loving every minute of it.
When spring came,it brought two floods.First the river overflowed,covering much of our land for weeks.Then the growing season began,swamping us under wave after wave of produce.Our freezer filled up with cherries,raspberries,strawberries,asparagus,peas,beans and corn.Then our canned-goods shelves and cupboards began to grow with preserves,tomato juice,grape juice,plums,jams and jellies.Eventually,the basement floor disappeared under piles of potatoes,squash and pumpkins,and the barn began to fill with apples and pears.It was amazing.
The next year grew even more food and managed to get through the winter on firewood that was mostly from our own trees and only 100 gallons of heating oil.At that point I began thinking seriously about quiting my job and starting to freelance.The timing was terrible.By then,Shawn and Amy,our oldest girls were attending expensive Ivy League schools and we had only a few thousand dollars in the bank.Yet we kept coming back to the same question:Will there ever be a better time?The answer,decidedly,was no,and so – with my employer’s blessings and half a year’s pay in accumulated benefits in the pockets–off I went.