Living on the Family Farm

There is something comforting about living in a house where your uncles, grandfather, father and brothers built the kitchen cupboards from scratch out of pine. We haven't always lived here though. My grandfather was the youngest of 9 children. He was born in this house he told me; just as my mother was born in the last house I lived in. He grew up here. But he had moved on, as had everyone else who grew up here, save two single uncles whom I never knew. Earl and Charlie faithfully kept the Jersey dairy until their health failed and they died. My grandfather had established himself elsewhere when he inherited the place. Many times, I heard stories about the boxes of overalls in the attic - that Earl and Charlie wore the same ones, never washing them, until they were unusable, and then stored them in the attic. And about the smell of tobacco spittoons. Grandmother tried to clean up the house, but they rented it for years. The farm grew over in multiflora rose bushes, a briary weed.

Until age 11, I grew up in a transient way. My parents were teachers, trying to advance their careers by moving from district to district throughout Ohio every few years. The summer I completed 5th grade, they decided to settle themselves on the family farm, however, and we moved here. We bought a Jersey calf, and my father set about attempting to restore the farm of his childhood. I spent Saturdays in the orchard crawling under rose bushes with a chain and wrapping it around the woody, thorny base so my father could uproot plant after plant with his tractor. I went to school in the fall after a summer on the farm with scratched, wirey, skinny arms from haymaking. My disco-happy 70's preteen classmates thought I was "poor." Until I had a slumber party in the hay loft, atop my pride and joy - the loose hay pile I'd helped put there. And then I was cool.

I didn't stay here. Like all kids who grow up on a farm, I wanted to get far away from the work; the yelling; the "oppression." I went to a state university and played too much. I got married, had children and divorced. Alas, my parents aged, and no longer wanted to stay. But they didn't want to sell it either. So I moved here to "keep" it for a few years. And I'm still here. After being out in the world - out where people tend to move every year or three and follow jobs around the country; where new houses are built; where food comes mostly from the grocery store, there is something comforting about being here. It feels like the responsible thing to do to keep such a place; like something sacred.