I loved Stringtown Rising Farm in the sentimental crazy way that only a sentimental crazy person like me could love a farm that was one of the most inhospitable, inaccessible, and unmanageable pieces of land on the planet. I loved it anyway, and for my love of it, I stayed there longer than I was happy in my personal situation. I couldn’t bear to leave the farm, but that night in mid-October I recognized that I had a responsibility to love myself more than I loved the farm or my job.
I didn’t know if 52 meant his words. He’d complained and sometimes refused to pay other bills until I’d taken them over, one by one, by myself. His statement that night about the mortgages might have been nothing more than a ploy, a mind game, a way to get me to take over all the rest of the bills, or even simply the latest way to torment me.
I suspected the latter, but it didn’t matter whether he meant the words or not. In the three and a half years I’d lived at Stringtown Rising, I had never been able to imagine leaving, but once those words left his lips, I couldn’t imagine staying. I’d always felt as if my life at Stringtown Rising was at risk, but the direct threat was the last straw. Even if—or especially if—he didn’t really mean it.
I’d spent a solid year or more going over in my mind if there was any way I could possibly remain at Stringtown Rising on my own. I’d made a series of lists of what I would have to buy, build, change, and hire done (regularly) in order to operate the farm alone were I to buy out 52’s half (if I could even come up with the money or if he would even agree). The farm was awkwardly laid out due to the terrain, and in the winter, it was at times barely accessible to completely inaccessible, in or out. There was no mail delivery. No trash pickup. The school bus didn’t come. In the winter, the river was often either too high or iced over. The road the other way was narrow, icy, steep, with sharp drop-offs and no guardrails. There were also numerous issues with the well and the water supply that were beyond my ability to personally maintain. There was inadequate fencing, inadequate pasture—how much hay did I want to haul and handle by myself because of the inadequate pasture? How would I replenish the hay and feed supply in the winter? How much would it cost to build more storage for winter? How would I get Morgan to the school bus in the winter? There were often stretches of weeks at a time from January to March when I was afraid to even move my vehicle and could only get myself or Morgan out with 52’s help. Would I have to send Morgan away to stay with my cousin for three or four months of the year?
The lists were long, and expensive. Stringtown Rising Farm was an adventure fueled by manpower. To stay alone, I would have to fuel it with a huge infusion of cash for improvements and hired help, and money couldn’t buy everything to make a farm like Stringtown Rising more manageable.
Money couldn’t buy out winter.
To remain at such a farm alone was a stupid idea, even if I could afford it, and possibly dangerous for a woman on her own—and I could no longer remain there with 52. Stringtown Rising would have to be put up for sale. I stared down the barrel of my greatest fear, and within it, I found the strength I’d been searching for all along.
I looked for a farm of my own that would provide everything I needed to be independent and safe.
I found it about ten miles away, still in Roane County, West Virginia, in an area known as Clio. It was a hundred-acre farm on a hard road. Not only was it a hard road, there weren’t even any potholes. No potholes! There was mail delivery. Mail delivery! And the school bus came—right in front of the house! The house was a small but charming 1930s move-in-ready farmhouse that had been restored and maintained, and it came with free gas to keep me warm in the winter.
There was a separate studio in the back that I could use as my second kitchen for classes and other farm-related events. Under the studio was a large stone cellar. There was a mature cherry tree and several mature apple trees in the yard. On the land were wild raspberries, blackberries, sassafras, ginseng, and morels. There were creeks and springs—and a sunny flat space for a garden.
Much of the hundred acres was cleared (and flat!) and fenced, primed for animals to move right in. There were many different fields with connecting gates to allow for rotational grazing, including huge upper meadows. There was a large field near the house perfect for goats, and it came with a goat house. There was a faucet at the goat field for water—no carrying water! There was a good well, and public water was also available.
There was a vintage but sturdy 1890s red barn with a number of stalls, tack room, and paddock. A couple of the stalls were set up as horse stalls in particular, and some of the fields were fenced specifically for horses. Former owners of the farm had had wild mustangs and Percherons. There was a water faucet at the barn, and electric. There were lights in all the stalls and the alleyway. There was a large hayloft with a winch. It was a farm made for animals. It was a real farm—and a manageable one. I knew I could handle it by myself.
With the layout of the farm, there was even a very good likelihood that the chickens would go in the road.
One of the first few times I went out to the farm, I noticed there was a telephone pole with a light by the road. I was standing by one of the fields across the road (the farm spanned both sides of the road and held the view in every direction), talking to the owner. I said, “Is that a streetlight?”
He said, “Yes.”
“Does it come on?” I must have sounded as if I’d just landed from Mars, but there was no such thing as a streetlight anywhere near Stringtown Rising Farm.
He said, “Yes. It comes on automatically every night.” Noting my excitement, he added, “There’s a light at the barn that comes on automatically every night, too.”
“Wow.”
On the farm at the time lived two men and the sister of one of the men. She lived in the studio. According to her brother, she was a psychic and had owned a metaphysical shop in nearby Clendenin. After I’d been out to the farm a few times, he told me a story. This beautiful farm had been available for two years. During that time, they’d had many takers. Every time they had an offer, the sister said, “They are not the one.” And every time, as she predicted, the deal fell through.
After the first time I visited the farm, the brother told his sister about me, and she said, “She is the one.”
That farm had waited for me for two years so that it would be there when I needed it. It was the only farm I went to see, and as soon as I laid eyes on it, I knew I would move heaven and earth to make it mine. It looked like it had fallen off the pages of a children’s storybook, and it was everything I’d ever dreamed a farm would be.
Moving heaven and earth mostly involved moving money. I had a retirement account that had been awarded to me in my divorce. Early withdrawal came with huge penalties, which was why I’d never broken into it before. I cleaned it out and made the farm mine.
Planning the move was a huge undertaking. I didn’t just have to move my furniture and other things, but animals, too. I called the old farmer, Lonnie, who was a friend of Georgia’s. He raised cattle and I knew he had livestock trailers. I planned to move the animals the weekend before I moved my furniture and other things, to get them settled in. Lonnie was up in years. He told me, “I’ll be there Saturday if I’m still alive.”
I asked him how he was feeling. He said he felt okay. He was still alive that Saturday, and longer after that because he helped me move some hay, too. Life with 52 was uneasy in that month between the time I told him I was moving out and the weekend I started moving the animals. I worried about whether or not he would fight me over the animals, though I felt they were all mine. All the animals that had been purchased had been paid for by me from my personal account or had been given to me as birthday gifts other than some of the chickens. He’d bought chicks at the feed store a few times. The animals that had been free had come through readers from my website who had given them to me. He was moving back to the city and would have no place for the animals anyway, even chickens.
He was at turns sad and angry, but he helped load the animals on the trailer, and he even helped me when I started trying to catch the chickens. There were a few stubborn chickens I never could catch. I asked the Ornery Angel if she wanted to come up to the house with her three kids and take home whatever they could capture. She’d become a good neighbor, if not a friend, and I was sad to leave her and all the neighbors in the ’hood, though I don’t think she ever cared one way or another about me, which was how it should have been, of course. Approximately 99.9 percent of our relationship had been in my head.
For the first time, we’d raised a couple dozen meat chickens that year, and our last “farm adventure” at Stringtown Rising was to butcher them. Skip came to help with his homemade plucker. It was also 52’s birthday, which made it a strange way to spend the day, but he had chosen the slaughter date. The kitchen was already mostly packed up and I didn’t make him a cake, but I did buy him a chocolate cheesecake at the grocery store bakery. I think he just wanted the day to be busy. Or maybe killing chickens as the last new thing we did was some kind of fitting punctuation to our life together.
Before I’d started packing up in earnest, I showed the new farm to Morgan, who didn’t yet know that we were moving. I picked her up from the bus after school and told her I was taking her somewhere for a surprise. She bugged me with “What is it? What is it?” for a few minutes, then I asked her if she still wanted a horse. Of course she still wanted a horse. She’d wanted a horse all her life, and for many years she’d taken riding lessons. She started complaining about how she couldn’t have a horse because we didn’t have enough pasture or fencing or a barn.
I said, “What kind of horse would you have if you could?”
She chattered about different breeds of horses and which were her favorites and why for a few minutes. Then I reminded her that we didn’t have enough pasture or fencing or a barn. She told me that I was mean to get her talking about a horse when she couldn’t have one.
I suggested that she could put our two miniature donkeys, Jack and Poky, together and they’d add up to a horse!
Then I got her talking about what kind of horse she wanted again, and as soon as she got going good I reminded her that she couldn’t have a horse because we didn’t have enough pasture or fencing or a barn.
We arrived at the farm, and I pulled over to the side of the road and said, “Look at that! This road is such a nice road, isn’t it? It doesn’t even have potholes! And look at that! Is that horse fencing? And look, there is a mailbox. And do you know what else they have here? A school bus. And isn’t that house cute?”
Then I told her to get out of the car and I walked her up the (short and not steep!) driveway. I said, “Look at that! That’s a nice barn, isn’t it?”
She said, “Yes. Why are we here? Why couldn’t you buy a farm like this one?”
She was completely exasperated. I think she wanted to smack me.
I said, “Look at that house again, Morgan. That is your new house.”
She stared at me and said, “What?”
I told her again. “That is your new house. This is your new farm. We are moving here.”
She flipped around and looked at the barn again, then she screamed. And she kept screaming and then she was screaming and running—to the barn. Her shoes flew off her feet, and she ended up at the barn door in her socks, and she shouted, “This is my barn!”
She looked inside every stall (after she put her shoes back on). She ran upstairs to the hayloft, then back down to the stalls, examining and inspecting every stall all over again, chattering away about what she would need to clean out the stalls and prepare for a horse. Then she ran out to the fields and up to the hay meadow and just everywhere, running and running and screaming.
One night not long before I finished moving out, 52 and I sat at the fire pit at Stringtown Rising. He was helping me burn some things that I didn’t want to pack and weren’t suitable to give away.
He put his arm around me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I didn’t treat you right.” He told me that he loved me.
I couldn’t tell him that he was wrong about how he’d treated me, but at that point, it felt cruel to tell him that he was right. I said, “I love you, too,” because it was true. “We did something amazing here, you know? We made this place a farm.”
I knew that he meant his apology, and I also knew he would behave badly all over again if we stayed together. If our relationship had been a romance novel, I could have dug into his past, unearthed his motivations, and even transformed him. That was how I always ended my books. But life isn’t a romance novel, and real people are much more complex than fictional characters.
We put our arms around each other and for a long, slow beat, just cried together for a dream we’d shared and lost, and for the best of what we’d had. He was headed back to life in the city, and I was headed for a new farm and a new dream. Though we saw each other a number of times after that, that moment was to me our true good-bye. Before I moved out, he left my ring—and his—beside my laptop one day when I wasn’t looking. I took them down to the Pocatalico River and threw them in, pieces of my heart left in Stringtown forever.
We were moved in at the new farm by Thanksgiving, along with Beulah Petunia, Clover, and the whole gang down to the chickens. Georgia sat in the middle of the bustle of friends carrying furniture and boxes into my “new” old house. She still loved an outing, even if she couldn’t participate in the activity, so of course she had to be there. I told her that as soon as I could I’d break in the new house by canning some jam and I’d bring her a jar. She said, “Well,” which in Georgia-speak that day meant she’d get her spoon ready.
Stringtown would always be rising in my heart, but I knew I had finally become a real farmer since I’d found myself capable of such a difficult decision to make myself an independent woman. I had finally passed the only test that mattered—my own—and I would never have to choose again between my happiness and my farm.
I named my new farm Sassafras Farm. First, the word was just fun to say and made me feel happy. Second, there was sassafras on the hill. Third, I was feeling sassy with a farm all my own.
Stringtown Rising had been a great adventure. It had shaped me, changed me, birthed me as a farmer in fire. It was over, but a new adventure was just beginning.
I put on my chore boots and jumped in.