by Roxanne Bok
“Well,” I said, “if we’re going to be in the horse business, perhaps being a horse’s ass is an asset. But maybe we can cut some things. . . .”
I said this but didn’t really mean it, and we both knew it. If anything, when faced with a choice between pretty and prettier, or good and best, we mostly, sometimes foolishly, choose the upgrade in an attempt to get a jump on future needs. And it is easier to opt for the “best”; lesser options, even when wiser, require comparison, analysis and therefore time, the commodity Scott habitually lacks most. Luckily for the kids and me, he falls short of “workaholic” due to his efficiency at the office (he makes timely decisions and delegates), and generally he satisfies our demanding family requirements; he keeps that scale carefully balanced. But there is scant room for an ounce more. Still, we both wanted to crack this nut of a personally important farm project; he would tackle the business, and I the aesthetics, united in our innate desire to organize, restore, improve, make work, and, dangerously, perfect. We have checked this compulsion at the door when it came to our kids; regarding the farm, since we are not totally reckless, just the notion of trimming something got us over the hump of backing out.
We were born five days apart in May, both conceptions to four people just either side of twenty years of age, so I envision us both having been conceived under the same Saturday night, August moon. In 1959, our parents-to-be scrambled into timely marriages. That I was born in New Jersey and Scott in Michigan did not matter—we emerged soul mates. We think so much alike that our irregularly exercised communication sometimes results in marital discord. But generally our telepathy operates on the big things—lifestyle, how to raise our kids, politics, culture, friends, décor, food, art, movies, sports. We instinctively knew ourselves incapable of doing a half-assed job (even if we were horse’s asses), so on our bikes we puffed, pumped, sweated and saw our way clear to approving everything on the estimate short of automatic watering systems for each stall and a fully heated barn.
Cutting the equine drinking fountains initially seemed crazy upon realization that each horse slurps down six to ten gallons of water a day. Multiplying this by thirty-eight horses, I envisioned stumbling stable hands yoked like oxen, one sloshing bucket to a side rather than the actuality (I discovered later) of long hoses pulled to each stall for refills. Moreover, the purists claim that an automated system A) makes it hard to gauge how much the horses are drinking, especially important when they are sick (regularly), and B) seizes up in un-insulated barns during the long New England winters. Plus, our horses were going to spend most of their days outdoors, and automatic watering systems for the paddocks were budgeted. It was a relief to excise this expensive idea as our habitual zeal to improve was already edging us from the Buick to the Cadillac of barns.
To her credit, Bobbi also persuaded us against the heating option. When I pictured the horses freezing their haunches off November through March, it sounded like a no-brainer. But I was considering my own comfort in the barn. I ushered my son through five hockey seasons and fully comprehended the misery of frozen hands, stump-cold feet and an ice-numb butt. Saving us from ourselves, Bobbi reported that as cozy as central heating is for us, it messes with horses’ respiratory tracts and is unnecessary as long as they can get out of the wind. Their winter coats insulate them so well that they actually prefer to tough it out in the elements, and even a cold barn is sometimes too warm for their furnacy selves.
“It’s more the heat of summer that you have to worry about with horses,” she informed. “And there’s always the tack room for us, the one well-heated spot in any barn.”
I was thankful to be spared heating a holey, un-insulated structure, and that some of our pastures already had run-in sheds for the horses to take shelter as desired from sun, rain and bitter winds, if not wind shears that might part them from their shoes.
One topic left to consider was a name change for the farm. El-Arabia suited an operation dedicated to breeding Arabians, and given that El-Arabia was lately known as “that run-down place on Weatogue Road,” we wanted to start fresh. We brainstormed selections: “Housatonic River Farm,” “Canaan Valley Farm,” “Rolling Meadows Farm,” even “Jersey Girl Farm” with a wink and a nod to my southern New Jersey roots and the iconic Bruce Springsteen, a longtime favorite musician to Scott and me. I fondly remember an early E Street Band concert, in the mid 1970s in a Red Bank, New Jersey, movie theatre. Springsteen played four hours straight, and we all risked injury by dancing on the flipping up seats. Ahhh, those glory days... but ultimately “Jersey Girl” reminded Scott of a pendulous, sway-backed milk cow as much as me, so I took a pass on that glory.
My personal favorite was Elliane Farm, an awkward conjunction of my children’s names Elliot and Jane. But consensus funneled us toward the place specific, the address being 33 Weatogue Road, and therefore practical “Weatogue Stables” (though more than one person has mispronounced it “way-to-go” stables). Bobbi indicated that “stables” suggests more down-market operations, but a neighbor had already claimed “Weatogue Farm.” We briefly weighed “Weatogue Equestrian Center,” but didn’t feel that posh and in the end challenged ourselves to put some class back in “stables.” “Stables” also nodded to our five years in London and so incorporated that aspect of our lives into what is, after all, a very English pastime. The “Weatogue” part of the name would help the hoards of people looking for the perfect boarding barn find us—wishful thinking couldn’t hurt—and touches on local history, Weatogue being the Native American word for “Big Wigwam Place.” Since our barn is the biggest “wigwam” of sorts around, situated in a stretch of valley where the Weatogue Indians gathered in large groups, it rang true. We love the road and respect our neighbors and liked the idea of cheerlead-ing both. Finally, it is a name that future owners can retain once we relocate, broke and broken-hearted from years of horsekeeping, first to the poorhouse and then to the cemetery across town.
We had a decrepit farm, a cheerful manager, a game plan, a practical name and a lot of naïve excitement that oxygenated our still sparkling dream. We would work and build and ride and make horse-loving people happy. Our kids would grow up kind and well adjusted and not addicted to X-Box and Barbie. They would thrill to the outdoor life, responsibly care for beasts of burden, learn animal husbandry, and keep fit by shoveling shit. We were going to be farmers.
CHAPTER SIX
First, Death
THE MAY MORNING DAWNED EXQUISITE against the dismal forecast—one of the challenges of living among hills is that maverick microcosmic effects buck prediction. But a perk of buying the horse farm was another forty-five acres to walk on, and Scott and I are prolific amblers. For our first walk from our house to our new property, the weather gods favored us. We began our ritual round across the freshly cut alfalfa field and along the ancient tree line that demarcates our property from our eastern neighbor’s sixty-acre hayfield.
Crossing the narrow, wood-slatted, metal-railed footbridge, we checked the culverts for fish and frogs and wound the trail through the brushy woods, occasionally unhooking ourselves from the thorny Barberry, a spreading “exotic” or non-native plant, that pricked through our jean-clad thighs. Spring tinted the air, but the sluggish, muddy Housatonic still emanated a damp chill. We zipped our polar fleeces against the forest shade and pocketed our hands. So far our walk mimicked what it had been for eight years. But as we left the river, instead of heading back across the alfalfa field to our house, we exited the woods northward onto the edge of the open pastures of what was El-Arabia, rechristened Weatogue Stables. We paused, breathing in the privilege of open space. On this very spot Scott and I had decided to purchase this property, concluding that a McMansion paved over this horse farm would haunt us until we died.
As we crunched through last season’s desiccated hay stubble with new growth peeping gamely through, we felt the satisfaction of preserving a farm in a time of their rapid extinction throughout Litchfield County. Though it benefited us and our
neighbors personally and immediately, we also felt we were gifting future generations of Salisbury—open space for our children and their children. A sappy sentiment yes, but also true. Conservation easements would ensure our vision for this land, our little piece of immortality, control from beyond the grave.
Our boots tore through the more tangled, overgrown grassland in the middle of the field we anticipated coaxing back to a healthy carpet of green. We traced the dirt service road that curves past two ancient oak trees and around the eight fenced paddocks, saying hello to big brown Thea and her seven-week-old foal. Rosie sprinted and bucked, recklessly expending her youth in the sunny coolness. She gummed our fingers. Chipper bluebirds and stealthy swallows streaked impossible trajectories through the open outbuildings to rest and sing in the crannied rafters before returning to bug-catching over the manure-dotted paddocks. Reluctantly moving on, we paused again to greet the remaining four mares that Mrs. Johnson could not relocate in time for the closing three weeks previous. Not willing to let even these bedraggled, unbroken horses slide to auction, Bobbi agreed to find them homes. The mares stood ankle deep in mud but did not seem to mind, sensing spring’s imminence. They recognized us now and coyly approached the fences for conversation. I breathed my hello into their nostrils, moist and velvety black. They snorted back and shook their matted manes. The sun’s heat drew steam from their wet legs.
Heading to the barn, we spotted Bobbi, already tanned, sun-bleached blonder and comfortably poised atop a green John Deere front loader, picking up fallen limbs from the grassy entrance. She looked in her element, all smiles as usual. We talked some basic business about recent demolition progress and turned to the eviction of the few remaining mares and the once-celebrated stallion stud Stanislav.
“They should all be gone by the end of the week,” Bobbi reported, proud that she had placed the four Arabians. “But I’m not sure about that one mare.”
We looked toward the near paddock at the segregated skinny bay considering a drink from the black plastic bucket at her feet. She looked fine, like the rest, lazy from years of inattention. But as we gazed, on cue to Bobbi’s words, the mare changed her aspect. She raised her head slightly, looking perplexed for a fraction of a second. She shuddered, twice, like she had caught a sudden chill, before sinking sideways over buckled legs to the ground. The collapse had the appearance of a staged faint, a too-tightly-bound, airless Victorian, sighing and lilting gracefully to the ground. The horse’s head landed last, and even before she became completely still, up she scrambled, clumsily. She shook herself and again grew vaguely confused, like she could not remember having lain down, no easy effort for a horse.
“She’s been falling down all week, just like that I suppose, though until now I’ve only witnessed her getting back up. Dr. Kay took some blood, but it must be a neurological problem, almost like epilepsy, because she rights herself and carries on like nothing happened.”
The mare wandered away to a better patch of grass and grazed, seeming to accept her condition without anxiety. Animals don’t seem to worry, I thought.
“She’s awfully thin,” I pointed out.
“Well, she’s getting her share of the feed but can’t keep weight on. She’s not the low horse on the totem pole either—that fat mare is, believe it or not. Sometimes a sick horse is pushed out of the way and not allowed to eat, but she gets right in there.”
“Can she be helped?”
“We’ll try.” Bobbi wrinkled her nose. “But I’m afraid we might have to euthanize her.”
Sapped of carefree optimism, I fast forwarded to how much harder this will be when it is one of our own adored and long-cared-for pets. This one didn’t even have a name. Death is bad enough, but it is the preceding suffering, particularly by animals, that deeply disturbs me.
“The sooner the better, I suppose,” I said quietly.
“We’re just waiting for the test results to make sure there isn’t anything we can do,” Bobbi replied.
“Just don’t tell Jane or Elliot,” Scott said protectively.
Don’t tell me, I thought.
“Or Roxanne,” Scott added, as if he heard my brain whispering.
“What do you do with the body?” I imagined a large vehicle with straps and hoists. “Does the vet take it away like with dogs and cats?”
Bobbi winced. “No, you just dig a hole.”
Our eyes rested once more on the mare’s ribbed sides. I inwardly willed her to not convulse again. We moved on to happier topics before Bobbi climbed back aboard her tractor, and Scott and I continued our walk, along the road this time. It was our first brush with mortality at our new farm and probably not the last. The predicted cloud-cover overtook the confident blue of the sky. I pulled my coat collar close around my neck against the chill and leaned into Scott. Silently developing thicker skins, we bent our forms into the rising wind, toward lively, healthy children and the comfort of home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Into the Woods
WE TOOK THE PLUNGE: we owned a horse farm. Endless work, lots of money, sickness and death thrown in—how did we get into this mess, overburdened with needy acres, decrepit buildings, ailing and dependent animals?
For Scott, I knew this peculiar destiny related to the land—but how? Occasionally I nosed around Scott’s past to uncover the seedling of his affinity for rural New England, but came up fallow. Nature poetry is not his cup of tea: he’s more of a history and politics buff than a romanticist or a fictionalist. While I escape into Emerson and Thoreau and the Berkshire writers, he thrives in the competitive maze of Wall Street wrestling other capitalists. He is a poster boy for the great American story. Having immersed his youthful self in countless biographies of accomplished men from sports stars to steel magnates, from the age of twelve he planned to head east for school and a career in business. He worked hard at university, endured unglamorous summer jobs, and made two risky but ultimately brilliant career decisions: first, to leave corporate law for investment banking way back in the mid-eighties before the field became so popular and, second, to leave a ten-year, secure position at a prosperous large bank for a start-up boutique.
Scott was the fourth partner to join; eight years later there were forty-plus in a global operation listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Luck played its part as it does in many a bootstraps story: in his case the right place and time of being a white, educated, ambitious male born in the United States. He made the most of his opportunities, success met him halfway, and, at least from my perhaps protected perspective, he made the hard slog look relatively easy. I marvel at his skill and efficiency, and the security he has provided for our family, especially since money and I seem to part company as congenital fact. Making and hanging on to money is a talent like any other; Scott possesses it, I do not.
Scott had a Midwest suburban childhood, an urban college experience, a Jersey girl wife, a Wall Street job, a Big Apple life: yet, as soon as we paid off our loans and could afford it, he and I took to the country like spring salamanders to vernal pools. I know as a kid my husband spent hours catching frogs (and shooting them with a BB gun, he admitted) in the wetlands near his house, but he never revealed much nostalgia for his younger years in Michigan. His father took him deer hunting once, but Scott sat in the woods and read The Grapes of Wrath—in its entirety. No kills. But that is all I uncovered from my husband’s veiled past: a foggy window to his nascent nature soul.
I hailed from the “Garden State,” not the bucolically equine western part of the state, but the strip-malled, smelly, oil-drenched northeast and southern shore. As a kid, I remember regularly burying my nose into my grandmother’s sweater on certain stretches of the New Jersey Turnpike and watching the stacks of the Budweiser factory pour smoke across the endless squat, laddered refinery tanks beyond. I recognized the landmarks in The Sopranos series’ opening credits and knew people who could slip into those story lines with ease. According to my husband, I am an “animal nut,” but my inclination is toward s
mallish, easily managed, clean, non-drooling, non-shedding, heavily-domesticated varieties. And Scott and I are not “handy,” as individuals or as a couple. We bicker while simply hanging pictures. Our “suburbanity” and urbanity had not afforded us any traction in the wise and practical rusticity of the country. Even our six-year-old daughter admonished: “Dada, you don’t look like the tractor type.”
In our young married life we never thought we would even stay in this country, let alone settle in stodgy New England. Restless Anglophiles with the youthful spirit of exploration, one year after we purchased our first house in Salisbury, we knocked the dirt of the US of A from our shoes and moved to London for five years, from 1990–1995. Scott accepted a posting there, and we left with few thoughts of returning. Arriving on August 1st, the hottest day recorded in British history to that date, I panicked at the realization that air-conditioning did not exist in either houses or cars. Not comfortable outside the parameters of a 68–75 Fahrenheit degree window, I was all for flying home, pronto. All too soon I understood: we strode coolly damp and dimly lit through the next five years of British weather.
We enjoyed much travel, taking full advantage of a childless existence (fourteen married years) and the short plane rides to the Continent, but we never really fit in with the British and remained outsiders despite our officially stamped passports designating us permanent residents. I missed skyscrapers and food delivery, NYC street life and even rude, impatient salespeople, the twenty-four hour never-close pace, blue skies and white puffy clouds on frigid winter days, the blare of sunshine, the wilting summers, American enthusiasm and naiveté, a fat slice of greasy-good pizza, and the relaxed atmosphere of friends eating out rather than dining in at formal dinner parties planned weeks in advance. I hear London now sports a more American casualness, but I regret this slide toward globalization. My pet peeves largely made England, England, like antiquated paternalistic BBC telly and gun-less Bobbies on bicycles with nightsticks. Many of them carry guns now, and it saddens me.