Country Grit: A Farmoir of Finding Purpose and Love

by Scottie Jones

  Farm and family go together. It’s hard to justify the long hours and hard work if it’s not part of a legacy we build for our children. Probably most business owners would like to see their children take over their business. But if the children are not so inclined, the business can be sold, and the family home remains. Farming is different. It is business, home, and lifestyle all intertwined, and legacy is the glue binding it together.

  This year, our eldest daughter had graduated college and taken a job as an administrative assistant in Seattle. A job that did not require a college degree. When we inquired about the rationale, she reported she wanted to take time “to enjoy life.” It wasn’t the job, but the Seattle lifestyle for young singles that called her. Apparently, offering our lives of hard work and frugality as examples did not persuade her that this was the path to happiness.

  Our youngest daughter, Annie, was in her final year of college, majoring in animal husbandry. Her choice of a major was her choice alone. We remained stoic in her presence so that she could be clear the choice was made without influence. She demurred about her future, saying only that she was focused on finishing college before deciding a direction. Of course, secretly we were proud and hopeful about our joint future. I could only imagine the improvements to our herd she could make. We just had to play for time.

  So here we were in our third year, unable to show the farm as a sustainable entity. Yet if it was to be sustainable, we must build for the future, no matter the debt. By the end of the evening of accounting, we both knew we had to build a house for Annie. Even though she was not decided on her future, we must build it to create the possibility of legacy.

  Well, why not? We had already leapt into the unknown with the farm. If you’re going to leap, leap with faith.

  So, Wayfaring Brothers, you’ve got a job. But it’s not a house, only a small cabin to safe-keep a possibility.

  MICE IN MODERATION

  Old farmhouses come with a resident mouse population. After all, the mice were there before the house and have simply adapted to the structure that was erected over them. Compared to an open field, the farmer’s pantry is a mouse jackpot. For the farmer, the jackpot looks more like felonious theft and vandalism, which requires countermeasures. Most farmhouses are mined with traps. Given the abundance of mice and the high value of the pantry, the best the farmer can hope for is a “mice in moderation” policy. I have come to accept mice in moderation.

  This delicate truce is upset every winter when the house mice are dispossessed by their country relations. The winter population swell pushes the mice to brazen acts of delinquency. This is not to be tolerated. Even Bezel, the grumpy cat who had retired from hunting in favor of the perpetually filled food bowl, has, on occasion, been provoked into killing mice that disturb his slumber.

  As for me, I doubled down on traps. Not just the pantry but every cupboard and closet, including one cynically concealed beside the cat’s bowl. I was still hoping the cat might see the irony and reclaim his self-respect. But the only reclaiming Bezel did was his spot on the sofa.

  Typically, this intensified assault snares several mice the first night followed with declining results thereafter. By the third night, half the traps were sprung with nary a mouse carcass in sight.

  By the fourth night, some of the traps had gone missing. It seems a physical impossibility that a mouse could drag a trap through a hole … unless it’s a really big hole and a really big … well … Rather than think about it, I decided to anchor my traps with strings and tacks. That stopped the pilfering of traps, but mouse mortality remained unacceptably low.

  It was time to change it up. At the Merc, Nate offered a shiny new trap with a fake cheese plate that didn’t require baiting. Since my jar of mouse peanut butter was getting low, this might be just the thing. Sure enough, I caught a mouse the first night, and the second night too. The third night my streak went cold. I changed locations. I left enticing crumbs. I cleared paths for easy mouse access. Nothing. Perhaps I had trapped them all? Except there was mice poop in the mixing bowls and the cat food was disappearing at an alarming rate. The mice were laughing at me.

  I needed a nuclear option. Maybe Nate had something under the counter. Something not quite legal. If not, I bet he knew someone who did.

  I never made it into the Merc. I was stopped at the entrance by a cardboard box labeled, FREE TO GOOD HOME. Inside was a green-eyed black cat. I flashed back on Jack’s advice, “what you need is an Elsie cat.” Could there really be a difference? Did I really have a choice? I reached in to pet it, and it began to purr. I thought about Bezel and began to worry he might feel displaced. Then I thought about the mice. It’s a farm. Everyone pulls their weight. Even grumpy cats.

  On reflection, I probably should have paid more attention to the sign. While it said FREE TO GOOD HOME, there wasn’t anyone there to ensure compliance, suggesting “good home” was broadly defined.

  And then there was the introduction to the family. That too, was probably a foreshadowing of things to come. When Greg offered a tentative, get-acquainted stroke the cat purred and brushed against his leg. This act of affection was reciprocated by Greg, who offered a more committed stroking of the cat’s back. Apparently, this was the act of complacency the cat had been waiting for. It snapped back, both claws clutching its target while needle-sharp fangs impaled Greg’s hand. Greg was not pleased. The cat released its victim and just stood, without contrition, calmly surveying the room.

  Our resident cat, Bezel, took one look at the intruder and went into a three-octave hissy fit. The new cat responded with a predatory stare, leaving Bezel to slink up the stairs. Patches came over for a sniff and got raked across the face, sending her out the dog door. Cisco began a low menacing growl while avoiding eye contact altogether. The cat walked slowly around Cisco, found Bezel’s bowl, and helped himself.

  I felt like I had just witnessed the feline version of a Clint Eastwood movie. The dark stranger had put everyone on notice. Greg was giving an emphatic, and swollen, thumbs down to the new addition. “Okay, I understand your reluctance, but we’ve got to do something about the mice. Let’s give it a night or two.”

  The next morning there were three mouse carcasses, in various stages of dismemberment, scattered through the house. This was promising, but I remembered the pattern was always good the first night. The second night was punctuated by cat paws bounding across wood floors, those little mouse squeaks, and the thump of mouse bodies hurled in the air and hitting the floor. Then, silence. It was another three-mouse night. Every night thereafter was a three-mouse night. I had an Elsie cat.

  Greg took to calling the new cat Bubba, because he seemed satanically inspired. Since we already had a Bezel, might as well complete it with Bubba. Two ends of the satanic spectrum—sloth and slayer.

  After the first few weeks, Bubba had depleted the inside mice population, so he took to thinning the outside. A variety of other dismembered rodents began to appear in the house. Disgusting, but I rationalized, better than having mouse poop in your granola.

  Then I found mouse poop in my mixing bowl. Not possible. Probably a leftover from the Bezel era. I found more poop in more places, and the cold truth had to be acknowledged. There was a mouse in the house. A little detective work revealed the source: Bubba. Like any good sportsman, he had adopted a catch-and-release policy. He was bringing mice into the house and releasing them, mostly for his own late-night amusement.

  So now you understand. It’s that eternal compromise with mother nature. Even with an Elsie cat, the best you can hope for is mice in moderation.

  A PLACE FOR ANNIE

  We decided on a place for Annie. Something that would call her home—that is, call her to a home she never knew as home. We hoped it would call her to a possible home.

  Daunting as that task might be, Oregon land use laws made it harder. Oregon was founded by farmers who trekked the continent to be able to farm here, and ag culture continues to have a powerful voice in Oregon politic
s. Oregon’s farmers were among the first to recognize the dangers posed to farmland by urban sprawl. Real estate developers have the dual effect of increasing the price of land and the property taxes, in effect pricing farmers off their land and turning valuable farmland into lawns. Remember, the efficiency of farmers has made farming a thin-profit enterprise, and that means land has to be cheap for farmers to compete. To protect farmers, Oregon passed some of the most restrictive land use laws in the nation. Essentially, no new homes can be built on a property unless it is within an “urban growth boundary” designated by an Oregon city.

  Farms are allowed a limited exemption to build a house for farm labor. And that was exactly our intent. It takes as much legal work as wood work to build a house on a farm, but we were approved. Now came the hammers and saws.

  Initially we thought to purchase lumber and have the Wayfaring Brothers build the cabin, but Brick interceded. He reminded us that we live in a lumber yard. The only difference between a tree and a house is a saw and a man who knows how to use it. Logger logic. What seemed a large-scale industrial operation to us was, for Brick, a weekend do-it-yourself project. No need to fell trees when the wind has done that for you. Just hook a choker cable to it and haul the log to the mill. Easy peavey (a peavey being a wicked-looking tool with a long pole and iron claws for moving logs).

  Okay, but a log is not a board. And that’s why loggers have friends who are millers. Mobile Mike had a mill on wheels. No need to haul logs to the mill when the mill can come to the logs. So, with Brick’s help, Greg bucked a dozen trees and dragged them off the hill. Mike set his mill up in a clearing beside the creek.

  For five days the mill sawed logs into boards. Greg used the tractor to push the logs onto the mill’s giant claws. The pneumatic claw lifted the log onto the mill’s track where metal teeth held it in place as a band saw traveled the length of the log, stripping off boards. Mike sat in the cockpit monitoring the speed and tension on the blade. Too fast or slow caused the blade to bend, scalloping the board or breaking the blade. Each log presented a mathematical puzzle to determine how many boards could be harvested. Dents and bows in the log had to be compensated for. And each board had to be pulled and stacked with spacers placed for drying. Jack was brought in to help with the stacking. Or storytelling, depending on your point of view.

  As with most things ag, the days were long, and the work was both hard and tedious. Cedar was cut for planks and sheathing, fir for studs and beams. The men were covered in sawdust and sweat. Mike loved his job and insisted everyone take a turn at running the mill, drawing the men into shared work. Around this, Jack wove stories that invited others’ stories.

  This is how homes are built in Elsie. With hammer and saw and diesel and wood and with great loops of stories that hold them together. The sore backs, mashed fingers, and wood splinters offset with horseplay and jokes. All for the house that would call Annie home—to a possible home.

  STEPPING UP BY SETTING DOWN

  The truth is always there—silent, resolute, immutable. There it stands, waiting for us to acknowledge it. Yet we defer. Perhaps it’s not the truth we resist so much as what that truth will require of us. Better if we can slip past to the other side where we imagine the grass is greener. And of course, we can do that. We can always step around an uncomfortable truth.

  So when Greg noticed my horse Chaco stumble, I noticed how infrequently it occurred. When Greg saw Chaco clip a corner or bang his head, I saw how he had been distracted or bumped by the other horse. Had I looked, I would have noticed how he always followed Mora out of the corrals. I would have noticed how Chaco, a great jumper in the arena, never jumped on trails.

  I waited until the truth stood in front of me one evening. I was about to ring the bell that calls the livestock in from the fields when I noticed Chaco was already there. Very odd that he would have separated from his partner. Then I saw the blood dripping from the gash in his chest. He was also missing a shoe. After doctoring his wound and locking him in a stall, I went in search of a cause. It didn’t take long to find the broken fence post and snarled barbed wire. This fence section was near the tree line and in deep shadow. He apparently walked into it and then panicked. The truth was that Chaco was going blind.

  In all probability, his sight had been diminishing long before we moved to Oregon. It just wasn’t apparent in the predictable world of riding arenas. In Oregon, the deep shade of trees merging with the dark green moss made the terrain void of form. Chaco developed a strong preference for level pastures and the close proximity of his trusted navigator, Mora. And the sheep knew to stay out from underfoot.

  Until now, that had worked reasonably well. I inspected his wound, which was relatively superficial, and decided he could still manage his world. I would leave his chin whiskers long. At least he could feel his way around the paddock and he showed no problems finding the hay in his bin.

  Greg saw the same truth and drew a different course of action. How does a horse survive when he can no longer see? How many fence entanglements to escape, painful gashes endured, or bone-breaking falls lay ahead? He already refuses the bridge because he can’t see the edge. Would he be swept from his feet that winter by a raging creek because he wouldn’t cross? What does our love count for if we can’t be responsible for relieving the suffering of those we hold dear?

  Chaco was my horse. I had spent many hours working with him. Those hours forge a bond between horse and rider—an instinctive sensing of each other’s body that results in a blended will producing a single fluid action. The rider signals a direction but the horse chooses the implementation. A good rider yields to the horse’s action as much as the horse yields to the rider’s direction. It is a cross-species relationship that is both unique and powerful. That is to say, it is a relationship that does not brook interference—not even by a spouse.

  Apparently, I effectively conveyed that sentiment when I suggested to Greg that he take his negativity and peddle it elsewhere. He sucked in his breath and walked off. Chaco was fine. He wasn’t completely blind. He could see shapes and forms. His partner, Mora, steered him onto the pasture every day. She was getting older and wasn’t taking any wild runs through the woods either. They were a team, both compromised by age and both compensating for the other.

  As I thought about it, they weren’t the only aging team on this farm, managing to get by through mutual compensation. Who can say when it’s another’s time to die or how much pain makes life unbearable? Or how that equation changes when those charged with caring for us actually care for us—in heart and deed? So not to worry, Chaco, I will look out for you. And Farmer Jones, you might think about how you’d feel if your caretaker adopted your policies? When do your disabilities outweigh your value? When should we put you down? Consider that.

  The call came in the middle of the night, as those calls always do. It was my sister. Our parents had been in a terrible auto accident. Dad was in the ICU.

  My flight back to Connecticut was divided between nostalgic memories of my father and my fear of what I might face in the hospital. My father was that rare man more comfortable with nurturing than directing. It was my father who made breakfast every morning, tucked me in at night, and assuaged every bad grade with “don’t worry, honey; you’ll do better next time.” It made him very popular with my friends, who marveled at the contrast with their rule-enforcing fathers. So while my friends feared upsetting their fathers, I worried about disappointing mine.

  I think that made it harder when I saw that gentle man lying in a hospital gown, unconscious and hooked to life support. He was so frail and so dependent on us, his family, for his care. Mom was in another section of the hospital recouping from lacerations and broken ribs. She was barely conscious herself and heavily sedated. So it fell to us, the children, to be adults.

  My father was a fastidious man, known for his attention to the details in life. He was the first to have his sidewalks swept after a snowstorm as an assertion of civic pride. The first to j
ump up after a meal to wash the dishes as an act of family fidelity. And he was a real stickler for proper grammar. We all suspected he slept with his pajamas buttoned to the collar—possibly adorned with a bow tie. No one knew for sure because no one ever saw him in his pajamas. He came dressed to breakfast.

  So I was shocked to learn from his lawyer that such a fastidious man had not prepared an advanced medical directive. There was nothing to assist us with his wishes at this difficult time. Perhaps for him, this was one of those truths that was easier to step around.

  By the second week his condition was deteriorating. I was having trouble aligning my memories of the man who once held me in his lap with the bundle of broken twigs under that hospital gown. The surgeon and the social worker were making it clear that we, the family, would have to make that decision for him. The hope for recovery had passed, and the machines were artificially prolonging his life. What followed was a very uncomfortable discussion. Which child has the authority to make that decision and based on what criterion? You can hope for unanimity, but with four of us, total consensus was more ideal than real.

  After a long day of discussion, we came to an agreement. We would meet the following morning to turn off the machines. When morning came, my sister had reconsidered. What followed were intense feelings of frustration compounded by ancient memories of childhood betrayals and slights that threatened to split the family irrevocably. We elected to step away and discuss it further the following day. I secretly feared the next day could be worse. That night, my father, the soft-hearted pacifist, slipped away, easing the family tension just as he always had done.

  We buried him with a fitting celebration of his life and legacy. Mom was still mending. It would take her months to overcome the shock of this catastrophe. She would never be free of the grief.