It was, of course, nothing like that.
Megan came over the other day with her husband, Eric, to take me birding, the latest in what Mark calls my string of sudden enthusiasms. Megan and Eric were fully nerded out in buff-colored outfits, brimmed beige hats, binoculars attached to their chests with complicated-looking straps. Eric had brought his iPod stocked with recorded birdcalls, and I listened for a few minutes to the high, incomprehensible chatter. I’d begun to feel like I had some kind of bird-centered learning disability. I still couldn’t tell the difference between a wren and a nuthatch. Eric, who has been watching birds for years, assured me that was normal for now.
We set out from the farmhouse, and I learned some birder lingo—MoDo for mourning dove, as in “Oh, forget it, it’s only a MoDo.” Flotsam for birdlike clumps of leaves. Also some birder aphorisms: If you think it’s a raven, it’s a crow; if you know it’s a raven, it’s a raven. Let the birds come to you. If it acts like a stick, it’s a stick.
Suddenly, there were birds everywhere, birds I didn’t even know existed, let alone right outside my own door. We saw an energetic, olive-colored bird in the sugar bush, a ruby-crowned kinglet, which Eric called the smallest bird with the biggest song. We heard a kind of Ping-Pong call that Eric thought might be a Nashville warbler, but the bird that was making the sound eluded us. In the acre of stunted old nursery trees, we saw a field sparrow, a species Megan had never seen before. He was at the very top of a spruce, chest puffed, head raised, wings just slightly spread, proud and theatrical like a teeny, tiny tenor. I could have watched the performance for hours. On the way back home, Eric stopped and glassed a spot in the marshy pasture just west of the house and got tense with excitement. I saw nothing until he and Megan patiently talked me to it and then, not twenty feet away, spotted a pair of savannah sparrows, a species with seventeen subspecies, and one that Eric was particularly hoping to see. I might have walked past those dull brown birds for the rest of my life and never seen them. Subcategory of a subcategory, and even the world of the sparrow is infinite.
The town is unknowable, marriage unknowable, the farm—just a single tablespoon of its soil—is a confounding mystery. But as the weeks ticked into months, into seasons, as I slowly became a farmer, something else emerged, and it was something to hold on to, something less slippery than knowing.
I’ve been tracking the spring peepers for seven years now. The first night they sing from the pond behind the farmhouse marks the week the fields are dry enough for work. This year, the ice and snow hung on and I thought my system would break down, but then the frozen fields yielded suddenly to a run of warm, windy days. One day there was nothing but white, and the next, there was bare black earth steaming in the sun.
Yesterday I harnessed Jay and Jack and hitched them to the spring-tine harrow, heading for the new ground that was cleared and turned last fall. The garlic to its west did not winter well. A quarter of it had not sprouted, and digging down I found the rooted clove glossy and on its way to rotten. I had a boyfriend once who liked to gamble, and I’d ride on the back of his motorcycle through the Holland Tunnel and along the New Jersey coast to Atlantic City. Sitting at the table, watching the cards being dealt, I heard a man say that the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro doesn’t have an emotional reaction to losing anymore. It’s just the other side of winning. I guess I’m a farmer now, because I’m used to loss like this, to death of all kinds, and to rot. It’s just the other side of life. It is your first big horse and all he meant to you, and it is also his bones and skin breaking down in the compost pile, almost ready to be spread on the fields.
I couldn’t wait to get out there, and then I couldn’t wait to go in. Jay and Jack were excited by spring and their first rations of corn, from the heavy draft of the harrow over the soft, rough earth. They wanted to walk too fast, and they pushed so hard on their bits and on me that I was practically skidding over the ground, my toes jammed into the fronts of my boots. The field was full of loose, half-buried tree roots that tangled in the harrow. Every few yards I whoaed the team to lift the tines and clear them, leaving lumpy piles of dirt and rock and roots in my wake. The horses chafed at all the stopping, and then Jay antsed and backed too close to the evener, got a foot over the tug. I had to unhook and rehook it, trying not to get run over or kicked in the process, wary of the pinned ears. We got going again, and I tripped over the bight of my lines and fell flat. By now the tracks we were making in the soil were not the straight musical staff I’d been aiming for but completely abstract, slanting left, then right, interrupted by a sickle-shaped veering, the lumpy piles, and the dirt angel where I’d gone down. I rested, looked for the humor, regained my composure, and began again, and halfway down the length of the field the harrow picked up a heavy root, drew it back like a striking snake, and sent it snapping into the bone of my shin. Hot tears welled up, one-eighth pain and seven-eighths frustration. This is farming, too, just the other side of satisfaction.
By milking time the horses were lathered and blowing, and they’d remembered that they could move in a lower gear. It had been a little soon to go out after all. I’d pugged up the low patches and muddied the horses’ bellies. Another few days, though, and the great crescendo of spring would begin, the list of things to do fast outpacing the things that can be done. At least we’d set back the quack grass and pulled up some of those dreadful roots.
Unknown outpaces known like to do outpaces done. These acres are a world. What answers has the ground offered? Only the notion that there are answers. Underlying soil is bedrock, and if you dig deep enough, you’ll hit it. That’s the closest I’ve come to surety, and it is enough for me.
Acknowledgments
Huge thanks to my friend, former boss, and agent, Flip Brophy at Sterling Lord Literistic, who never saw this book coming when she hired me to answer the phone. Thanks to Sharon Skettini and Judy Heiblum, who helped see it through. At Scribner, thank you to Nan Graham, Kara Watson, and Paul Whitlatch for their skill and support.
I could not have written this without the help of friends and family. Thanks especially to David and Margie Reuther, who are responsible for getting the book started, and also for helping me finish up at the end. Nina Nowak and Peter Lindberg were first readers and steadfast supporters, and David Schairer provided generous amounts of technical help. Thank you to Ronnie and Don Hollingsworth, Barbara Kunzi, and Beth Schiller for being such good friends to us and loving caregivers to Jane, and to everyone at the Essex Volunteer Fire Department, where much of the book was written. Thanks to Lars and Marit Kulleseid, for giving us a chance to farm this good land. Thank you to my parents, Tony and Linda Kimball, for a lifetime of support, and for hosting Jane and me for long stretches in the book’s final stages. Thank you to my sister, Kelly Kimball, for absolutely everything. And all my love and thanks to Mark and Jane, who have patiently waited.
The Dirty Life.On Farming, Food, and Love Page 23
