Country Grit: A Farmoir of Finding Purpose and Love

by Scottie Jones

  I will say this. It is hard to look at your angel of mercy with apple mash dripping from her nose and think, thank you for saving my life. Personally, I think angels of mercy should comport themselves with a little more dignity.

  The losers (we took a vote and it was the guys) had to clean up. We went inside to wash off the pulp and prepare a meal. We netted thirty gallons of juice, enough to see both couples through the year. But as with most things on the farm, the intended goal was only a process that lead to richer unintended consequences. Consequences that opened new possibilities with each other and with ourselves. We had made friends through a food fight. Hard to imagine that happening in my previous life.

  FROM RUBBLE, MUSHROOMS RISE

  Beneath the moist, green, life-giving canopy of the Pacific Northwest lies an abundance of rot and decay. And from this abundance of rot springs a delectable array of mushrooms—a reminder of the paradoxical duality of the life cycle. For, just as every living thing is destined for death, every dead thing is both platform and sustenance for new life in a continuous cycle. So on a beautiful autumn day, a common avocation in the Northwest is to tromp the sun-filtered woods in search of chanterelles or morels.

  For farmers, the thought is, why scavenge when I can grow?

  For the Sunketts this thought, along with consideration for the soft impact of mushrooms should they be hurled at your face, lead them to suggest we have a mushrooming party. The idea was to assemble suitable logs, drill holes in them, and then tap in wooden plugs soaked with mushroom mycelium. Six months later the log would sprout beautiful mushrooms from every surface, like kernels of corn popping from a cob.

  Of course, not any log is suitable. They must be deciduous, and the heavier the grain the better. And they can’t be freshly cut trees because the trees have their own immunological response against the mycelium. And they can’t be lying on the ground because then they’re likely to be infected with undesirable mycelium. So the logs should be freshly cut and then set off the ground to cure until they’re ready to be drilled. Once drilled, they should be plugged and sealed with wax to prevent infection from undesirable mycelium. The logs are then set in a moist, sun dappled area of the forest to incubate.

  It’s a lot of work, but it can easily be broken into steps just right for a production line method, similar to our juicing party. When we assembled I noticed Greg was dressed in throw-away sweats with a boonie hat pulled low, just in case the party degenerated. Silly, since we were too mature to let that happen twice … and there’s no fun in pitching mushrooms.

  We settled into the routine of the work and conversation followed. After our previous, superficial bonding over apple mash and a life rescued from death, it was time to go deeper. Time to confess. I announced we were selling the farm. Greg reviewed our long litany of failures that lead to the inevitable conclusion. I noted we had already engaged a realtor. Kathy and Mark were shocked, then disappointed. We had been off to such a good start as neighbors and now this!

  It did feel like a betrayal, and I suppose withholding the information is a deceit by omission; but that’s what happens when you’re in transition. It’s hard to be authentic when you’re standing between two realities. We were farmers, but failed farmers who might not be farmers much longer but secretly still wanted to be farmers. Well, the deluded part of us still wanted to be farmers—the part that was drilling holes in mushroom logs we probably wouldn’t be around to harvest.

  The Sunketts, being new to the lifestyle, tried to defend our delusions. This was good, because it’s easier to see the delusions when someone else is saying them.

  “Why?” they asked. “You have such a beautiful farm, why would you give this up?”

  “Because it’s incredibly hard work for low pay and high risk. Better to ask, why would anyone want to keep it?”

  “High risk?”

  “Yeah, farms are expensive. All that capital tied up in land and machinery and all of it bet on this year’s harvest. Our entire life’s savings depends on the right amount of rain fall.

  “And then there’s the risk to life. I almost died. I didn’t, but only thanks to you. Greg had two close calls this year. If it’s not a tractor rolling over or a tree bucking back when falling it, then it’s a hoof to the head or a hay elevator catching a loose sleeve and ripping an arm from a socket. It’s risky in every sense of the word.”

  “It’s risky driving the freeway to work. And depressing, too. At least it’s pretty here.”

  “So what? I can live in the city and drive to the pretty on weekends.” I was digging in.

  “Yes, but would you have that connection to the land? To this lifestyle?”

  “Right, the hard-work, low-pay, high-risk lifestyle? That ‘back to nature’ thing is a romantic delusion. You’re gardening, so you’ve minimized the risk and that makes sense. But, small farming is doomed to fail. The economic winds are always blowing against us. It’s a small boat on a very choppy sea and at some point you’re going to swamp. And the thing about being in a small boat—there’s no dinghy.”

  Well, that shut the conversation down. Greg glowered at me, but I was being authentic. Or, at least, I was representing truths I had tried hard not to see before. Everyone became very focused on their individual tasks. Until Mark put down his drill. He had that far away gaze of someone churning an idea in their head.

  “I think it has something to do with scale. That’s what makes the difference between city and country life.”

  “Scale? Really?” Greg was issuing the challenge. I decided, better if I just kept working.

  “Yeah, it’s this weird, reversal thing. Cities are these big, electric landscapes created by people. We’re at the very center of city life. We build the buildings, turn on the lights, create the jobs—and yet everyone in the city feels small and insignificant. We go home to sleep in our little boxes, watch movies through our little boxes, text through our little boxes. It’s all kind of small.”

  “Small? I would have said self-absorbed.”

  “Yeah, kind of the same thing. When we make ourselves the center of the universe, we make the universe our size—small.”

  “Okay, maybe.”

  “Look at our fascination with celebrities. What are we at now, the D-list of celebrity status? Why do we care so much what some celebrity is doing? We feel small and imagine that being a celebrity would make us feel big and worth knowing.”

  “Right. And now we can all be stars on YouTube. With our own PR firms on Facebook.” Kathy had caught Mark’s far-away gaze. Our production line was breaking down.

  “Yeah, except the more cyber-connected I am the more cyber-needy I feel. Like that saying, ‘I don’t know I’ve had an experience until I see it on Instagram.’”

  “And I don’t know how I feel about it until I see the number of ‘likes.’” Kathy added.

  “Exactly. But out here, nature is big and people are small. I’m just a small part of it … but I’m part of it. Being small, in nature, feels ‘right-sized,’ instead of insignificant.”

  “That’s kind of a contradiction—in the city we’re big but insignificant, but in nature we’re small but significant?” Greg was still challenging.

  “Pretty much.” Mark gave a bear-grin, drawing up the corners of his brown eyes with delight.

  “As an example, out here, I could care less what some yowser celebrity is doing. I’m more concerned with what my garden is doing.

  “And when I go to the Merc, I know Nate is going to call me by name and ask how my garden is doing. I don’t feel insignificant and I don’t feel big and I don’t feel a need to be big or celebrity or whatever. I feel right-sized. It’s all about the scale.”

  “Yeah, and I like what you said about the Merc.” Kathy was contributing. This couple took pleasure in stimulating each other’s ideas. But then again, they were brightly deluded.

  Kathy continued, “There’s like this ‘see and be seen’ thing. At the Merc, people know me by name. I feel ‘seen
.’ I think we only know we exist when others recognize us. When I walk down a city street, no one recognizes me and I begin to feel invisible.”

  “Right. That’s what leads people to wish they were bubble-headed celebs that everyone would see,” Mark interrupted.

  “Probably,” Kathy noted, then resumed. “Here, I feel ‘seen.’ People know me. And that causes me to acknowledge them—so I ‘see’ them. And that makes me feel even more ‘seen.’ Kind of cool it’s reciprocal like that.”

  “So your self-esteem is really based in others’ seeing you?” Greg, the psychologist, felt professionally bound to claim this domain by planting the flag of “self-esteem.”

  “Kind of … it’s me reflected through the eyes of others. And if there’s no reflection, then it’s a little like I don’t exist. When I walk down a city street, there’s no reflection. I’m nothing special.”

  “Okay, but how special do you feel after putting in twelve hours of back-breaking work?”

  Yes, that was me killing the conversation again. But, I was being vigilant against idealizing farm life. To my surprise, it was Greg who answered.

  “Maybe not special, but I feel of value. I think we have hard work misconstrued. We talk about it like it’s derisive. Hard work is doing something, which is better than doing nothing. That applies to self-esteem too. If you want to feel better, do something. Pick up a shovel. All work is honorable if it feeds my family and contributes to the world.”

  “I can tell you one thing wrong with hard work. You’re too old. And you’re getting older, so let’s check the romance of ‘honorable work.’”

  “I can still make a difference.”

  “Yes, but for how much longer? If you had children who wanted to farm, who could fall in behind you and pick up the slack, then maybe.”

  “We have a cabin. We could hire farm labor that could pick up the slack.”

  “Really? And pay them what? We’re losing money.”

  That may seem harsh but that was the reality. We were done as farmers, and no re-visioning of farm life could change the economics. I knew too well the price of those delusions. And Greg knew the price too. He was just succumbing to the sweet allure of the delusion at that moment. The intoxication of good conversation and mushroom mycelium had him lightheaded.

  We were all faces down and focused on our chores. The boys drilling, me tapping, Kathy painting the wax. I felt bad about being the killjoy. My mind kept churning those thoughts—the scale of our lives; see and be seen; meaningful work—looking to justify my actions and wondering if they were justified.

  This life had changed me in profound ways. It had purged my romantic delusions and replaced them with a sense of purpose—yes, and a sense of place too. After the purge, what remains is the richness of the farm experience itself. It’s the richness that occurs when you’re doing something meaningful, like growing food, within a context of a people with a specific history and in a specific geography—so it’s purpose and place. I can grow food that feeds me, my family, and my community. I can deal with loss because I know there is always renewal. And I know I’m not in charge. Nature is much bigger, and I must make my adjustments. And now, this final adjustment—learning to quit. We were selling the farm.

  Those were my thoughts, when Greg blurted out, “Yeah, I guess I’d rather visit a farm than buy one.”

  I looked up. “Exactly!”

  It was a great idea and it had been sitting there, in front of us all along. “We’ll rent Annie’s cabin.”

  Greg looked perplexed and maybe a little frightened by my exuberance. “Uh, sweetie, we already talked about this. People are moving out of the country, not into it. No way that rent in rural America will pay the mortgage on the cabin, much less the farm.”

  “True enough of long-term rental. We’ll do vacation rental. People will pay to stay on our farm.”

  “Why on earth would anybody pay to stay on a farm?”

  “You just said it. Same reason people want to buy a farm.” I was on a roll.

  “People will come for all those romantic ideas about farming, but they will experience the real thing, just in small doses. There’s the education about small-scale food production that comes when they pull carrots from the garden. Then there’s the stewardship of the land and how that relates to the steam coming from our compost pile. We can share our trails and our creeks and give families a place to reconnect with each other and disconnect from their devices. They’ll leave with that sense of scale we’ve been talking about. It’s the perfect antidote to urban alienation. And people will see the work that goes into growing their food, which could lead to better appreciation of the food … and of farmers. And we’ll be able to pay our bills. Factory farms can’t offer this experience; they’re too big. Only small, family farms have the ‘scale.’ It’s our niche!”

  “No way. I don’t want to run a hotel.”

  “It’s not a hotel. It’s a farm—our farm. We’re just letting them visit in our lives for a little while. It’s not a room; it’s a particular place, a culture, a lifestyle. You know what it is … it’s an American heritage. We’re preserving a lifestyle and foods that would go obsolete if small farms go out of business. And we’re inviting urbanites into our world … both as patrons and participants. We’re inviting the people we were five years ago.”

  Okay, maybe not all my romantic delusions have been purged. Kathy and Mark were enthusiastic, but as I noted, they were also brightly deluded. Greg was reticent.

  “Do you really think anyone would want to stay on a farm?”

  “Do you want to say ‘no’ without finding out?”

  And that’s what we did. Kathy and Mark took their plugged logs home and six months later had beautiful Shitake mushrooms for dinner. We opened the gates to our farm and six months later found our niche.

  CONSIDERATIONS OF A FARMING LIFE BY THE FARMING WIFE

  Umm … maybe it wasn’t quite that easy. The day after the mushroom party, I placed two phone calls. One to Tanya, the realtor, asking her to put the sale on hold. She probably wasn’t pleased, but she was too much the professional to show it. Like I said, I liked Tanya. The other call was to the county to look into zoning requirements. There was no clear precedent, since no one had ever attempted a farm stay, but Oregon’s land-use laws were quite restrictive. It took a number of consultations to work it out.

  Once we were green-lighted by the county, I designed a web page offering a farm stay to the public. We really had no idea how much disaster we were courting. Visions of small children darting between moving tractor wheels kept my husband up late at night. For me, I felt launching a website was like writing a rescue note, sealing it in a bottle, and throwing it in the ocean. If you’ve never heard of a farm stay, why would you look for it? Fortunately, people did find my rescue note on the Internet, and parents were not inclined to let their children play beneath the moving wheels of a tractor.

  The first visits went quite smoothly. Typically families helped with feeding the animals, collecting eggs, and picking berries and vegetables. The pace was relaxed with ample time for playing in the creek and hiking mountain trails. The children were thrilled with the direct interaction with the animals and reported having “more fun than Disneyland,” while parents seemed to be genuinely appreciative of the farm and of the farmers. For us, it was not only financially rewarding, but emotionally affirming as well. We met people from different walks of life and learned about their lifestyles, so it was a more collaborative experience than we expected. Several of them, by asking simple questions about farming, have given us great ideas that have improved our farming practices.

  There were several hiccups, so we wrote the book on farm etiquette that I wished I had at the beginning. Basic things like—they’re called “rams” for a reason; never turn your back to them if you want to avoid experiencing the reason. And—leave the gate the way you found it (pasture management has some gates open and some closed, depending on rotation).

&nbs
p; The biggest area of confusion was the chicken coop. Many people, having never eaten fresh eggs, were alarmed by the bright orange yolk and disposed of them. Others were fearful of finding a chicken fetus when they cracked the egg. They had to be educated on brooding behavior of chickens. Others entered the coop with thongs on their feet, not realizing that, to chickens, toenails look like kernels of corn. And everyone liked gathering eggs for their breakfast—that direct connection to their food. All of these experiences are why the farm stay was a success. It was like nothing these families had experienced before, and they took home wonderful memories.

  Not long after launching the website, lightning struck. An editor at Sunset magazine found the site and posted a few lines describing this novel vacation idea. That was picked up by a national morning television show, with some help from my state tourism department. I’ve been booked to capacity ever since. That was years ago.

  The first thing families experience when they come to our farm is the quiet. If you live in a city, you probably aren’t aware of the urban noise around you. It’s the absence of the noise that tells you this is how much noise your brain has been so diligently screening out. Quiet has a way of provoking unique thoughts, reflections, and family connections.

  Presently, I’m sitting in the quiet of my farm. Here are my thoughts.

  I was not born to be a farmer, but look what I have found.

  After five years, our guests continue to enjoy our mushrooms … and carrots, and potatoes, and tomatoes, and beans, and onions, and eggs, and lamb. Many return annually for their farm “rescale” therapy. And thanks to them, we are paying our bills. We’re not getting rich, and we’re still working hard, but that’s what we signed up for when we came to the farm. Tater is still tampering with every latch on the farm. I’m still selling the latch that keeps him frustrated and secured. Paco is never without a friend, as small hands brush clots of dirt from his matted hide all summer long. He is a favorite of the children who visit.