The farm
Each year on Black Friday, we gather inside a strange and cozy house that will be an epicenter of my children’s childhoods. It sits next to its brown companion house and across from a red barn - home the much-adored tractors - where it waits to be filled with togetherness and memories, the rhythm of knitting needles, the crackling of burning logs, and the shrieks children thundering after each other up and down the stairs. I do not know how many times I have spent wondering and asking about the origin of the layers of eclectic wall décor that’s accumulated over nearly 70 years, featuring owls fashioned out of every imaginable medium and an above-average number of cows in figurine and stuffed animal form. It’s heated by wood burning stoves and cooled by buggy summer breezes and holds generations of family lore preserved in dusty photo albums, framed magazine articles, and 30-year-old chore charts with peeling stickers.
My husband’s family has been coming here for nearly 3 generations now – long enough for houses to have been rebuilt, for the hedge of forsythia to get unruly every spring, and for the walnut trees in the yard to produce hundreds (thousands?) of aromatic little bombs, cashed in by children at one penny/nut in the fall. He loves coming here; to drive machines and help manage the land and work with his body in the outside air and tell the stories about clearing beaver dams from the creek from 30 years ago. He misses the calluses he used to have in his old jobs when he swung more hammers than his current day job requires, and he’s always happy to muddy his work boots in this familiar ground.
This patch of earth is my 4-year-old’s favorite place. There’s no Internet and the cell phone service is sparse, and so things must be slower, more engaged, more creative. We came here to unplug for a few days in October and it is exactly the kind of place where we could lean on Formica countertops and gaze into a toaster oven to determine the precise moment when flakey top of a croissant is perfectly crisp but not burnt. I don’t usually take the time to teach her essential knowledge like that at home, and when I do, my mind is cluttered by too many other things to appreciate the moment. She knows how to find the seam of quartz along the creek that yields crystals and what chair is best to climb on to ring the dinner bell. When it rains, we go for rainy walks in the woods and she’s quick to suggest that “we can sit on the porch and listen to the rain because that’s fun too!” Yes, child. It is a quiet luxury to count the drops on a metal roof and breathe the mossy dampness knowing that the warmth of a brick hearth awaits you inside.
On the day after Thanksgiving, I wore the baby, who perpetually forms his lips into a perfect “o” shape and begs to go “ouuuuuuu” while lunging at windows. We walked up and down the long gravel driveway beside the recently cleared field where the farmer who leases the land grew turquoise oats for hay this fall. We breathed clear air and watched a few rays of pink sunset pave rose colored runways on the mostly cloudy sky at the ripe old hour of 4:30pm. We returned and were greeted by the smell of grated Meyer lemon, pine, and woodsmoke.
It feels countercultural to come here, though I can’t tell whether it really is. Surely most families value the flushed cheeks and runny noses that are produced by afternoons running in blustery air, whether they’re visiting a family landmark or the park down the block. For me, it serves as a way to recalibrate gratitude, make time for real conversation with the people who are raising their children alongside ours, and to appreciate the gifts of the present moment. It’s not all idyllic peace, of course; doors can be slammed and feelings wounded regardless of whether there’s a cell phone signal. But it’s all part of doing life together, which feels more purposeful here in this place, especially after we are steeped in gratitude and traditions over the holiday. As our kiddos grow up, I imagine that we’ll fill up a car or two with family friends who might join the fray on this last weekend when we can celebrate the quiet magic of this place before it’s closed for the winter. This coming spring, the baby will be a toddler and will undoubtedly inspect each milky daffodil while his sister hunts for crystals, his father muddies boots, and his mother mines this place for stories.
