“But it’s not incest!” Henry replied, and was about to point out that in most places in the world a fourth cousin wasn’t even really considered a relative. But Abby evidentially saw how distressed he was and quickly said, “I’m kidding. I’m kidding. It’s not incest. I know. I know. We’re not even really related. Dude, you’ve got to lighten up. But seriously, though, don’t try to kiss me. I’m only inviting you along because I know we’ll have fun together.”
Henry paused, then said, “Yes, well, I was kidding too. And don’t worry. I don’t want to kiss you. I just wanted, that night, to talk about kissing you, because it seemed to be an issue.”
“Well, it’s not,” Abby replied, again flashing Henry a smile, although now with just a bit of effort. “It’s really not. But let’s not even ever again talk about kissing being an issue.”
Henry nodded and agreed. He thought that perhaps he might take the opportunity to say that it was Abby who had, in fact, brought it up this time, but he decided it might be best to just leave things alone at this point.
At any rate, on the following Friday, midday, they found their way to Henry’s parking space in Greenpoint, got into his car (it was a silver Volvo station wagon that he had inherited), and headed north. The farm was in southern Vermont, not far from Manchester, and this was, in fact, Abby’s second trip there that month. Abby kept herself alive in Brooklyn by doing various odd jobs—dog-walking, freelance Web design, etc. She even played viola in a so-called alternative musical band made up of women who all played obscure instruments, and they occasionally made very small amounts of money at bars. And when she could, Abby slipped away for two- or three-day stretches to work on her aunt’s farm, making a little money there as well and enjoying a break from the city. The truth was that she was also very interested in farming, as she insisted over and over in the car.
“It’s just really strange how alienated we are from what we eat,” she said. “I mean, it’s incredible the kind of care and labor that goes into it all. And the economics of it. And the weirdo luck. You can have a great harvest one year and then a terrible season the next, and usually that’s because of something like a drought in the Ukraine or overproduction of turnips in Arkansas.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that’s true,” Henry said, and, although it was not something he had thought much about, he began looking forward to learning more about all this, and to getting an insider’s view of American farming.
It was a fact, however, that this particular farm, although clearly “working” by any definition, was hardly the sort of thing that would qualify as an example of the American farm. Rather, as Abby explained, it was a very expensively run organic farm that had been financed by Abby’s uncle, who managed a hedge fund in Greenwich. His wife had bought the farm (called Highgate Meadows) several years earlier after his fund had had a particularly astonishing year, purchasing it from an older couple who were retiring and moving to Florida. This husband and wife were real farmers. They made their living that way. But they were fairly well off, as these things go, and the land they owned was spectacular—nice enough to finance an extremely comfortable retirement in sunnier climates.
Abby’s aunt (named Hannah) put another $4 million into the property, building a greenhouse, buying harvesting machinery and equipment to make cheese, and, apparently, tending a flock of Libyan heirloom goats that were entirely unique in North America.
“And she’s a little affected,” Abby said. “She can’t quite understand why everyone can’t pay twenty bucks for a pound of hamburger meat. I mean, by worldwide standards I’ve got some cash, and I definitely can’t pay that much. But she doesn’t really get that. But I like her. There are things I like about her. And I like going to the farm. It might be a bit utopian. Rich-person utopian. But I like it there. And I do think it’s important. Maybe it’s the farm that I like.”
6
HENRY WAS ABLE to piece together more of the story when they finally arrived. They drove up the long gravel drive, parked at a surprisingly impressive stone farmhouse that looked to be at least two hundred years old, and then walked around back to find Abby’s aunt standing in a patch of sunflowers that she was cutting with a large pair of gardening sheers.
“These things will grow right into the first snowfall,” she said with a strange kind of mania when Henry and Abby approached her. “But it’s best to cut them back now. That’s what they say, at least.”
She clipped two more sunflowers and then walked over to embrace Abby and shake Henry’s hand.
For the next few moments they exchanged customary greetings, which included remarks about the now-diminishing autumn leaves and Abby’s extraordinary slimness. The two young people were then offered something “hot to drink” and before long they were in the modern and expansive kitchen of Highgate Meadows, chatting about the farm.
“I’m worried that I’m a little too obsessed with all this,” Hannah said, pulling a large copper kettle off one of twelve Viking burners. “I used to scream at my husband about being such a workaholic, but now I feel like I’m the neglectful one in the relationship. But it’s all so fascinating. And what I’m doing is very, very important.”
“Abby told me a lot about it on the way up,” Henry said, putting his hands on an antique butcher block that had an alarming amount of cleaver scars. “It does actually seem very important to me as well.”
“Well, I’ll show you around just as soon as the tea is ready.”
After they each had a cup of tea in their hands, they commenced the tour, which took them through assorted venues, including the new greenhouse (with a large crop of a strange kind of hydroponically grown yellow tomato), a large aging barn filled with various tools and farming equipment, an empty field where, as Hannah explained, a crop of organic acorn squash had been harvested a month earlier, and then to what Hannah described as the pride and joy of Highgate Meadows—the goats and the cheese facility.
“I built all this from scratch,” Hannah said as they approached a single-story shingled building with a low-pitched roof.
Henry did remark to himself—and this really was the only cynical reflection he had on the entire tour—that Hannah didn’t look like she’d ever really built anything at all physical on her own. Despite her ragged clothes and a few dirt smudges on her hands and forearms, she still looked like she was some kind of grand Connecticut lady—tall, athletic, fully exfoliated and moisturized. But the farm was beautiful and obviously a success, so who was he to say what an authentic farmer or builder should look like? And certainly he too was a complete failure when it came to physical labor and building things, so he really was in no position at all to judge anyone.
And the fact was that it truly was impressive. They stepped into what Hannah was now calling the cheese house, and it all seemed to be from the set of some sort of futuristic movie. Everything was either white, stainless steel, or transparent plastic, and it felt like a kind of high-end science lab without so much as a hint of germs or dust. It was also entirely empty—not unlike utopian (or dystopian) movies.
“Not much action now,” Hannah said. “We’ve shut down for a little bit. We just made a huge batch of cheese and we’re not putting up anything else till February. There’s no room to store it. Anyway, there’s no rush, and it’s always best to do things right.”
All the same, without the so-called action, it was very striking—the mixers, the beakers, the refrigeration units, the stacks of cheese wheels in the large storage room. It wasn’t, however, as interesting as their next stop. They left the cheese house, walked across a small quadrangle, and came to another shingled building that was attached to a large fenced pen.
“This is the goat barn,” Hannah said as they stepped inside. They walked into a little anteroom, then opened another door and entered a dark, low-ceilinged chamber, filled with what Henry determined were at least eighty surprisingly tall and confused-looking goats. The room was smaller than Henry would have expected, but, as Hannah explained, “Th
ey get skittish when they have too much space.”
Hannah also gave a fairly detailed description of the goats and their value. Apparently she had purchased them from a farmer in Delaware who had started with only seven goats in the 1950s and, since then, jealously managed the flock. They were one-of-a-kind in North America, since none of the flock’s generations had ever been sold off. Perhaps more relevant, they had originally come from Libya—where they were also fairly rare—and importation of Libyan goods, to say nothing of goats, hadn’t been permitted for quite a long while.
“And even today,” Hannah said, “with Gaddafi supposedly joining the ‘world community,’ it would be next to impossible.” (It was then about time that George W. Bush was applauding Mr. Gaddafi’s generous and courageous abandonment of WMDs). “And there are all sorts of strange diseases to worry about and endless FDA reviews,” Hannah said. “It would take decades. And they’re hard to take care of because they’re very temperamental. And they need to be kept warm. That’s something that’s hard to do in Vermont. They hate temperature shifts, especially when temperatures fall, and it shows in the quality of the milk. But they’re worth it. They’re worth the trouble.”
One of the reasons the goats were worth so much trouble was that their milk was unusually sweet, which allowed for various opportunities in cheese-making that other goats couldn’t match. There was also the general wealthy person’s interest in exotic provenances and one-of-a-kind culinary experiences. Cheese made from these goats commanded excessive prices at high-end restaurants around the Northeast, where proprietors wanted to say that they bought locally, as it were, but still offer products that had the cachet and obscurity of the deserts of North Africa. Hannah used about a quarter of the milk herself and was able to sell the rest to artisanal cheese makers around New England for “top dollar,” as she insisted. The goat milk was, in fact, the only part of the farm that produced any real revenue.
“But as for profits, not revenue, but profits,” Hannah said, “that’s going to take a while. This was a huge capital investment.”
“How much does a goat like this cost?” Henry asked.
“They’re expensive,” Hannah said, “because you can sell their milk at such a high price. And they’re one-of-a-kind. So each goat, and I have about a hundred, cost around ten thousand dollars.”
For just a second the number ten thousand registered in Henry’s mind as the value of the flock, so the first impression he had—again, just for that second—was that $10,000 seemed like a very reasonable price for such a valuable commodity. But then he reconsidered Hannah’s statement, and then did just a little math, and realized that this particular flock of goats that was now before him was worth a million dollars.
“Oh, my god,” Henry said, although he regretted his reaction just a bit. After all, it’s hardly polite to gasp at the price of another person’s possessions, even if it is a million-dollar flock of goats. “Of course, it’s obviously a very wise investment,” Henry quickly added, “seeing that they bring in good revenue.”
“Yes, well,” Hannah said, a little more quietly, “I know it’s a large sum. But the point of this farm is bigger than making money, even though I want it to be profitable.” Hannah paused for a moment. “I was actually fine with it at first. I mean, I still am. But there’s just a bit of resentment in Vermont over people buying up farms and launching this kind of project. I mean, it’s always been this way. This farm was built by a Quaker family that had a lot of money, and they did very well. Farming and landowning, after all, used to be one of the ways rich people got rich. And there’s always been poorer farmers—or farmhands, mostly—who weren’t crazy about that. I mean, I guess they might have some reason. And we really try to pay everyone well. And health insurance. Those we can.” Hannah paused again, laughed in a bit of an exaggerated way, then said, “I guess this is on my mind because there’ve been a lot of pretty hostile articles about my kind of farm in Vermont newspapers—Burlington, Manchester, a lot of our newspapers. I’ve been mentioned once or twice. Particularly by a columnist in Manchester who writes about farming in the state. He likes to talk about know-nothing city people and rich New Yorkers ruining Vermont’s way of life. And I suppose I know how it sounds in the abstract, out of context—a million dollars for a hundred goats—and somehow he found out what I paid and has talked about it in his column. But I’m really trying to do something important here. What’s important is the mission, not the price. I mean, how can you put a value on doing what’s best for the world and the environment?”
Hannah paused, although she looked like she had more to say. She was certainly a little flustered at this exact moment. But after another second she announced that she had to work on some rabbit hutches she was building and that perhaps this would be a good time to conclude the tour. “The rabbits are arriving in a few days and I’ve got to be ready! I don’t think this is a work weekend for you, Abby, so do whatever you like. Maybe tomorrow I can get you to help mend a fence that’s fallen, but for now, why don’t you two just enjoy yourselves, and there’s plenty of beer and wine, if you just want to sit by the fire.”
Henry and Abby spent the rest of the day in various ways. They walked the perimeter of the harvested squash field and then along several other fields that grew, at different times, alfalfa, yams, pumpkins, and numerous other crops that could survive in Vermont. They wandered through the machine shed, and Henry examined the tractor attachments and a portable generator, and also looked over the long workbench. Every kind of tool imaginable hung above the bench, and the long wooden work area was flanked by two space heaters, a paint-covered portable radio, and a small fridge that, Henry saw when he opened it, was filled with Miller Lite.
Henry and Abby also passed a little time watching three very strange Wiltonshire pigs, each of which had an unusual meaty growth on its forehead. Apparently there was quite a market in the city for this kind of pig. Fashionable restaurants were now naming their pork and beef by breed, and the New York Times dining section had profiled this particular variety of pig (as Abby informed Henry) and said that its meat was the best a person could get.
“Can you eat that thing that hangs off the top of their heads?” Henry asked. As he asked this, he did think that perhaps this was something of a gruesome question. But he was honestly curious.
Abby didn’t know. “And, frankly, that’s kind of disgusting,” she said.
“But it might be good,” Henry replied, trying to affect a sort of worldly ease with the grim realities of farm life. “I once heard that on farms nothing is wasted.”
“I’ll ask my aunt if she’ll cook you one tonight,” Abby said, punching Henry softly in the shoulder. “Wiltonshire forehead flap with applesauce.”
“That sounds good to me,” Henry said.
Dinner was, in fact, duck, roasted whole with shallots and butter, parsnips (from the farm), and bread baked by a bakery down the road that had also been started by the wife of a hedge fund manager.
Hannah hesitated a bit as she added this last bit of information—the three of them were in the dining room, all pleasantly lit by two silver candelabras, and eating with great enthusiasm—and she now looked just a bit remorseful for bringing this up.
“I suppose sometimes it’s embarrassing,” she continued. “For all the reasons that I told you, I’m a little embarrassed by the goats. But what are you going to do? Money has to come from somewhere. And I could be spending it in Miami or Gstaad, so it seems like my husband’s professional windfall is being put to good use. But ‘wife of a hedge fund manager’ has such an ugly ring to it. And, like I’ve said, I haven’t quite been accepted as part of the farming community here. I understand the criticism. Or where it comes from, at least. The important thing is to keep my head down and keep my mouth shut—even though I could spend the rest of my life talking about sustainable agriculture. If I stick it out, they’ll accept me. I hope so, at any rate.”
It was an interesting moment of introspection
—interesting and just a bit moving, to Henry, at least—and the wine they were drinking certainly made everything more appealing. It was a type from California that Henry knew nothing about, although he knew absolutely nothing about any kind of wine at all, so this wasn’t surprising. As Henry took a bite of his duck, he thought he might actually like to spend more time learning about wine, and then, leaning back in his chair and surveying the austere but beautiful farmhouse dining room, he thought that maybe he might one day even like to own a farm like this. He couldn’t quite imagine actually managing a farm, but country living held quite a bit of appeal to him. This farm did, at any rate. It really was a wonderful place.
And this struck him again, later that night, and the next day, when he and Abby were invited for another visit. “You can come as much as you like, Henry,” Hannah said as he and Abby packed up for their return to Brooklyn. “It’s hard on me being mostly alone up here. My husband can’t make it up as much as I’d like. And as I said, I’m hardly in a position to accuse him of being obsessed with work, since it seems to be my problem as well.” They were standing by Henry’s silver Volvo as she said this, and Henry once more had the vague idea that perhaps one day he’d like to have a place like this. He looked to his right, across an empty patch of gravel, and at the goats, which were now outside, wandering around their pen. Maybe if he got his own farm he’d even get his own flock of goats to take care of—a flock of Libyans, perhaps, although he concluded that this was probably unlikely.
“I’d love to visit again,” he said. “It really is nice up here.”
The Best of Youth Page 2
