On a bad day—when a chickenhawk shows up or my charge tear while I ’m articulatio talocruralis - deep in pig muck — I always recall the same affair : “ I do n’t have to do this . ” And I do n’t . I can always get the food I need at the grocer , and there are numerous ways to drop sentence that pay genuine money in payoff for my labor . But what keeps me mucking out barn and chase out hawks is what the study provides me : a connecter to a sentence when folksdidneed to farm to subsist , when the grocer was n’t an choice and rubber muck boots did n’t yet exist . It ’s a connection to story .
Farms have a special way of transport people ’s minds back in time . Because farms are designed and refined over many years to develop intellectual nourishment efficiently , they incline to ride out farm , create and preservingagricultural history as the days pass .
Our farmhouse , for example , was work up during the Civil War on a timberland foundation and with log walls conceal between gypsum and siding — a fact discovered by ( and torturing to ) the poor telephone installer who found himself need to practise a hole in our house for cable television . A monolithic , 100 - old burl oak tree stand in the front grand . The home plate itself is account .
John & Myrtie
When we moved in , our county elongation agent , a kindly cattleman named Keenan , gifted us an image of the house carry during photography ’s former day . In it , a family stand impassive and Harlan Stone - faced . The supporter , John “ Buck ” Payton , is jacketed and behatted , with a majestic belly straining a raddled distich of boilersuit and a horse at his side . John ’s married woman , Myrtie , is put in the shopping center in a high - necked , ruffled hoop attire ; beside her is a younger woman similarly dress , and between them a blurry - face up child whose forbearance was poor than the required shutter time . Five people — two suitable men , and a couple with a infant — stand up on the porch behind them .
I think about John and Myrtie when I ’m out in the pasture , look at the house from afar . Did their pigs run these Wood the room mine do ? How did they frighten away off the hawks ? What did the burl oak tree appear like then ? ( I ’m sure they ’d envy its expansive shade in the hot Kentucky summers . )
When I voted in the most late general election , in a fervour place tuck back off the windy main road , the older woman behind the desk looked at the address on my licence and said , “ Oh , you ’re the untested people who moved into the Payton house ! I used to sweep over the road from a tire tie to that big oak tree diagram . ” She also enjoin us that a pet monkey once populate in our solarium .
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More Recent Times
A market customer divvy up a more recent piece of our home ’s chronicle when he told us his family unit had owned the theater for many years , his parents purchasing it when he was a tike . He afterward brought his elderly female parent by our table to meet us , and she deal that they ’d corrupt the home plate to keep the kids aside from “ those flower people in Lexington . ”
The world and his brother , one a carpenter and the other a mason , by and by brought the mansion back from disrepair , gutting it and refashion the wall , ceiling and chimneys with the skills they ’d get in the year since puerility . After the remodel , our marketplace client had lived in the home , filling the roomy backyard with sunflowers and paths that goldfinches would swoop up through at top pep pill .
A Brand-New History
Farms are extra for many reasons , and history is an of import one .
But not all farms are built on traditional - use land , with creaky sometime farmhouse possess by generation of agrarians . My uncles built dwelling house on open fields and established farming operation on virgin eatage . Maybe you hauled a trailer to an unoccupied plot or collect eggs from a brood of suburban backyard chicken .
If you ca n’t look back at your own John and Myrtie , regard that you might be your homestead ’s John or Myrtie . Your farm ’s story is young , and you ’re write it with every harvested tomato . When your nipper or grandchildren see you deplume an egg from the script - built nesting box or take in you call the cows home to a brand - newfangled barn , they ’re creating and preserve the acres ’s history in memory .
When you choose to tend a while of land in exchange for sustenance , you ’re take part in a custom that ’s thousands of years old . You and your homestead become a distributor point on an agricultural timeline stretching behind and ahead of you . Stand tall in your overall , just like John and Myrtie did .
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