My past and my future….
I grew up on an eighty acre homestead with fresh springs, a creek, some timber, some pasture, and some cropland. Mom had a wooden sign carved with the words Seven Springs Farm and it hung at the driveway entrance between two old wagon wheels. We moved to the farm when I was three and my Dad promptly bought me three ponies and two puppies. We were dirt poor but I didn’t know that. I grew up playing in that creek and chasing crawdads. I played house under the huge maple in our front yard, dressing using rocks, leaves and twigs as my toys. The giant hayloft was better than any commercial jungle gym.
We grew most of our own food and I learned from an early age how to put food by for the winter months. We raised bunnies, chickens, pigs and cows. We always had a milk cow, so we churned our own butter. One of my most vivid early memories is of my Mom salting the butter with an old wooden paddle that I think belonged to her grandmother. When I was little all my daydreams consisted of what I would do to the farm when I was older. In my opinion, it was a perfect setup except that Mom and Dad did not have an orchard and I would definitely have a few acres of fruit trees.
My uncle was good with woodworking so he made my parents a homemade cheese press and a giant cradle which they filled with four babies in rapid succession. Mom and Dad heated the house with one of the old Earth stoves, baking bread in the portable oven perched on top of it and simmering soups the whole day long. I remember crisp autumn days spent in the timber cutting loads of wood and the giant woodpile where we children loved to play house. I will never forget the fragrance of freshly cut trees.
Mom perused her tattered copy of the “Whole Earth Catalog” as though it were the Bible. She still cherishes that catalog. I think it is the last little piece of a dream she had to abandon a long time ago. I know a bit of her pain. It broke my heart to move away when I was 13. I don’t know that I have every truly recovered. I have spent most of my life trying to get back to that farm although when I was younger, I didn’t realize what I was longing for.
I recently read the book Carrying Water for a Living so I have been thinking about the goal of having my own homestead in the country a good deal, lately. It isn’t possible right now, but it is a long term goal for my husband and I. Many of the things I have learned and continue to learn to do bring us closer to that goal.
Sometimes in my daydreams I do imagine other small homes being built on my farm and other people traipsing through my woods with me. Can’t you imagine how cute it would be? Five little houses on about 80 acres, bustling with my children and grandchildren. All of us working together to provide a life for our family, supporting each other through sicknesses, pregnancies and births. I am not foolish enough to believe that all of my children will want this kind of life but I do dream about making it a possibility for them.
The thing that I find the most odd about all this is that I think that it was my mother’s dream once, too. I wonder if she ever listens to my husband and I talk about the things we do or plan on doing and thinks about that little farm. I know I catch myself doing it. I wonder what she ever did with that sign and if she would let me hang it in my driveway someday.
