May 2011

I want to write about what really happened today. Today we pulled down the corn stalks and fed them to a neighbor's heifers. But I need to go back to May. I'm trying to catch up to real time here.
In May, it rained. It rained nearly every day. The ground was soaking, there were constant flood warnings, and there was no way the garden could be plowed up. So we left town. We flew to California as a surprise for our son's 30th birthday. We met our son and daughter-in-law at a lovely restaurant in El Segundo and we all kept it such a great secret that he was truly surprised. We spent four wonderful days in sunny (not rainy) California playing with our grand-daughter and having a great time.
And, another surprise -- when we got home and drove in the driveway, our new vegetable and fruit garden had been plowed up! Lovely, lush, fertile loam -- our farm soil merely waiting for us to put in rows of veggies and new fruit trees. Or so it seemed to me at the time.
The first thing was to put up the deer fence. What state isn't crawling with deer? Michigan is no exception, so without the fence, the whole exercise would be pointless. Putting up the deer fence took the better part of 4 days. We fenced in 5,000 square feet. So my new house was 2,000 square feet and my new garden was more than twice that. Undaunted, we ordered the fruit trees.

Oops. I don't know how to fix this yet. You'll have to turn your head sideways to see us planting our first dwarf apple tree. The catalog has promised 3 bushels of apples by the 3rd year. We'll see.
By the end of May, we had planted 20 tomatoes, 16 peppers, potatoes, spinach, beans, cabbage, broccoli, lima beans, beets, carrots, cucumbers, radishes, peas, garlic, onions (300 onions!), eggplant, and shallots. And that was just the first wave. We had high hopes, high opinions of ourselves, sore backs and dirty fingernails.
But we were farmers. We were gardeners.
We were insane.

First Three Weeks

The first three weeks have passed. I have stopped crying. I am sitting on the sofa in the sun porch having coffee in the morning. There is a really old apple tree out in the yard. I have my 60th birthday coming up this week and I wonder if the tree is that old. Maybe older, I think. It is going to be shaded by an enormous maple, so I don't even know if it will bloom, much less bear fruit. But there is this one branch that hangs off to the left, a large gentle arc, perhaps a place for a swing for my youngest grand-daughter, and it is beautiful.
My daughter and son-in-law and grand-daughter have come to visit for a few days. Before they arrive, I have feverishly tried to make things look as good as possible. I've painted over the dings on the walls made by the moving company. I have cleaned and dusted and polished the floors. There are clean sheets on the bed and I have a turkey in the oven and the place smells pretty good.
But my daughter is tired from travel, too much work, and an impending move herself. So now she is crying and saying, "Oh Mom, it's so little and old!" She means the house. At least she doesn't mean me. Not yet anyway. My son-in-law seems to like the place, though, and he goes on the trampoline with his daughter and pushes her on the trolley swing we have hung between two large trees. And my grand-daughter seems to love the place. Two out of three.
One other thing:  There are still no leaves on the trees so every morning when I get up, the sun hits the two small lakes, one to the east of us, and the other to the south, turning them silver. Two swans have appeared from nowhere and they are gliding across the larger of the two lakes. I take this as a magical sign.

April Fool's Day

I'm not sure where I am when I wake up. It's a strange bedroom. Oh. The farm. Ah well, much to do and a million boxes to unpack. It is still cold and we turn up the heat but the house is slow to get warm. Of course it is, I think, testily. After all, it's a million years old and all the heat is probably going straight up the chimney.

I spend the morning unpacking. All four of us are unpacking. My sister makes lunch.  After lunch my son calls on the phone to see how it's going. I burst into tears. "Mom," he asks, "is this some weird April Fool's joke?" "No!" I wail into the phone. "It's NOT."
I am crying because I am over tired and because moving is hard. Down-sizing is a popular expression these days and it is the politically correct thing to do. But right now, for me, down-sizing is about not unpacking any fancy shoes or fancy clothes because I'll never have a place to wear them anymore. Ever. Do I know how this sounds? Yes. Childish and spoiled? Yes. Do I care? Not at this moment.
A new neighbor arrives in a white pick-up truck. He is cheerful, asks if we've fired up our outdoor wood stove. There is no wood, but he is in the business so he drives off and reappears half an hour later with a cord of wood. My husband fires up the wood burner and heaven -- the house is warm. I am happier because after a 10-hour day of unloading in cold weather, I have developed a cough and a cold. Still, having the house evenly warm is a blessing.

Moving In Day

March 31, 2011. Moving Day Day. It is about 35 degrees, cold and sunny but I am grateful it isn't raining. We are moving into our farm house on 10 acres in southwestern Michigan. My husband's dream. Not mine. Not today anyway. The movers can't pull the van into the driveway so four men spend the day carrying all our furniture up the driveway, either by hand or with a dolly. I spend the day in the driveway pointing and saying, "Put that in the barn," or "put that in the garage," or "put that in the house." It takes 10 hours. I am exhausted and cold.
My sister and her husband have come up from Florida to help us move in. At the moment I don't know what I would do without them. My sister has put herself to work in the kitchen. She tirelessly unpacks, decides where to put things, and cooks lunch for 10 people. There are four of us, four movers, and two teen-aged boys who have stopped by. One of them used to live here and is picking up the last of his things. They happily wolf down their Frito pies.
My husband and I, 68 and 59 respectively, have come here from a very large home in Madison, Wisconsin, population roughly a quarter of a million, to live in Delton, Michigan, population roughly 7,000. But that's a rural population spread out over a wide area. When you drive around here it looks like the population can't be more than 500 or 600 people. If that.
We are retiring.
We are down-sizing.
We are going to have a large vegetable garden.
This is the plan. Right now all I can think about is how exhausted I am and why on earth did I let my husband talk me into buying a house that's 140 years old?