Barnheart Read online

  After what felt like an eternity of days run on raw nerves and DayQuil, I arrived in the land of Green Mountains and black-and-white cows. It was mid-February when we crossed the final state line from New York into Vermont. Bennington County was coated in ice. There were no picturesque snow-covered barns or white-tipped branches. Just ice. Angry, tenacious, road-skidding ice. As we rolled away from the town of Arlington, up into the Taconic Mountains, we passed a sign that read SANDGATE EST. 1761.

  Sandgate wasn’t so much a town as it was a village. And even calling it a village was a bold overassessment — there was one whitewashed town hall and a Methodist church. A collection of farmhouses and livestock scattered around eleven square miles. All the houses we passed in the afternoon sunset had smoke coming out of their chimneys, lights on inside, and a few horses by yard fences. But aside from this scattered evidence of human life, the place seemed empty. No one was outside. I wasn’t expecting a welcoming parade or anything, but it did come across a little colder than this new kid in town preferred. I guess the locals had no need to run to their windows and see the ten billionth Subaru roll past their houses.

  I turned the last right at the end of a series of dirt roads, and there she was: tucked under a pair of giant pine trees and squarely situated on top of a hillside was my new cabin. I parked the car and nearly ran up onto the porch, loving the high, red roof and thinking, as I turned the corner to the screen door, “My God … this is all mine! For at least a year, this is all mine. …” I grinned like an idiot.

  Then I heard a voice calling my name. It was the neighbor. She seemed to be in her early sixties, with long gray hair, a pair of heavy carpenter pants, and a wool sweater. After handshakes and a brief chat about the poor road conditions, she showed me around. We walked around the perimeter of the small home that already felt like the HQ of my future homesteading empire. She talked about important things like septic tanks and oil deliveries, but I could only think about where the chickens’ brooder box should go. Finally, she handed over the key. I waved to her as she walked down the hill to her property, just a hundred yards away. I liked that someone was close. As she disappeared through the pines to her own cabin, I turned to the big green door in front of me. An old-fashioned doorbell that you turn like a key jangle-rang as I cranked it. I laughed at the simple design; the sound was friendly. After a good look up and down, I unlocked the door and went inside.

  Inside was a perfect little kitchen with a cork floor and a few conventional appliances that seemed fairly new. It was the biggest room in the cabin, and I could walk across it in six steps. Off to its right was a small living room with a fire-place and a wooden futon. My inner design student tends to snub futons, but this one seemed to have some substance. On top of it were some blankets and a quilt. The room shone with some sparse furnishings of lamps, end tables, and an entertainment center, which I would turn into my bookcase (I don’t have a TV). On the kitchen table was a stack of local maps, menus, and contact information. Off to the left was a bedroom without a bed. The movers wouldn’t be here for a few days, so I was silently grateful for the futon. I’d eat some interior-decorating crow. It beat sleeping like one.

  That first night in our new home, it was just the dogs and me. Whoever had prepped the cabin had left us some dry wood, so I started a roaring fire. While it heated up the small house, I made a warm bed out of the blankets and unpacked my Sherpa of a station wagon. Inside the packed car were all sorts of things I just didn’t trust a moving van to deliver intact. I’d brought along with me my most prized possessions, mostly musical instruments. My fiddle, dulcimer, and banjo were along for the ride, and so were my favorite antiques — a ceramic dinosaur, a music box with a mechanical dancing President Nixon, and an ancient Lassie stuffed animal with a plastic face. I unpacked a Fire King jadeite mug and a stove-top percolator. (Coffee is something I don’t go four hours without unless I’m unconscious.) I set up my computer on a coffee table against the cabin wall, so I could watch a movie before bedtime.

  Between the fire, the warm dogs on both sides of me, and the fiddle propped up on one of the cabin’s wooden chairs, I relaxed completely. I had made it. Through a blizzard, the flu, and miles of icy roads, I had made it to this cabin at the end of the world. I didn’t know a single person. Hell, I didn’t even know where to buy breakfast cereal, but for tonight I was all set. It didn’t feel like home yet, but it did feel like the beginning of one.

  The next morning I woke up a Vermonter. (I know locals around here cringe when transplants call themselves that, but as far as my income-tax files were concerned, I was now a resident of the Green Mountain State.) I made coffee, took the dogs out for a walk, and got my first real look at the place. To my surprise, the garden looked fantastic — a large twenty-by-fifty-foot plot with a wire fence, gate, the works! It wasn’t exactly in great shape, though. It looked like no one had tended it in years, but the possibilities were enough to cause a big smile to slide across my face. The ground that wasn’t covered in patches of ice showed dead grass, even and untilled. The gate was apparently being held together by spite and tetanus. The fence posts were falling down. It had been easily a decade since this soil had hosted a pumpkin on a vine or a row of sweet corn. But the potential was like a shot of adrenaline. The first real sign of homestead life was beyond that garden gate. There would be food.

  Behind the old garden was a metal shed. It was a small structure, the kind of place where people park a riding mower and some rakes. I sneaked inside, past the broken door, and discovered nothing but old flowerpots and cookie tins inside. The walls seemed solid, though, and the roof just as sound. It had a dirt floor and some old pieces of a long-ago-orphaned carpentry project. The place obviously hadn’t been used since the garden was in production. All I could think about was chickens.

  This old shed would be a veritable hen mansion. In Idaho I had ten birds living in two tiny coops; this shed could easily host twenty layers and a proud rooster. Maybe even a pair of geese or a few ducks. My eyes scanned the property, my mind gathering ideas. The open area around the cabin seemed to be about an acre, maybe slightly more. The clearing was surrounded by a windbreak of trees. I could hear the rushing of the cold creek that circled the property line. There was a rat’s nest of field fencing behind the shed, possibly used to hold leaves for composting at the edge of the woods. A few cinder blocks were stacked by an old woodpile. I could already imagine a hive of bees swarming there, happily buzzing, their legs heavy with yellow pollen.

  I sharply inhaled a lungful of cold air, and Jazz looked up at me as if something were wrong. “Good Christ …” I realized aloud, “this place is going to change everything.”

  This was hope, folks. This was exactly the place I needed to continue my homesteading aspirations. I could build and expand on everything I had learned in Idaho, maybe even start setting down roots. This place was primed and ready for someone who wanted to really use it. I already had the collateral of a year’s experience and the will to work as hard as I needed to. It felt like fate herself had landed me at this little cabin with a garden, a coop, and even some pasture waiting for me. Beyond the garden was a clearing about half an acre in size. I looked out into the dead tall grass and let myself close my eyes, seeing it in my mind as high summer with sheep munching away. The likelihood of sheep on a rented parcel was about as realistic as the landlord’s letting me turn her garage into a high-stakes casino. But a girl can dream. In a New England winter, dreams keep you warm.

  My heart was pounding. My eyes were tearing up. I knelt on the ground to hug Jazz and Annie, who were sitting alongside me. “Guys,” I whispered to them, “this is going to be wonderful. Just wait and see.” Jazz and Annie didn’t comment. Siberian huskies are known for being professionally stoic as they age, but they got it. Both looked up at me with wagging tails and panting behind wolfish smiles. They didn’t know it yet, but the small dirt roads of Sandgate were perfect for their small kick-sled. We would be able to mush for miles here and
not worry about running into highways or herds of livestock like we did in Idaho. Or maybe they did know? They smelled something good in the air, their black noses lifting to the rush of pine needles and smoke from the neighbor’s woodstove. I wouldn’t put it past Jazz. He understands everything.

  If luck could cripple, I was limping. The property seemed to have endless possibilities. It could host a garden three times the size of my raised beds in Idaho and produce enough vegetables, eggs, honey, and angora wool to keep me stocked and occupied all through the next winter. I had no idea how long the cabin could be mine, but I was certain of the next twelve months. As long as I kept paying rent, this place would in turn earn its keep for me by providing me with most of my food and entertainment. I’d have a full growing season ahead of me. By the time the last of my Cherokee Purple tomatoes were dropping off the vines, I would be welcoming my first Vermont autumn. It is staggering how much I looked forward to October. November 1 is my least favorite day of the year.

  This year the high harvest would include more than just pretty leaves and red-covered bridges — to me it would be a round of applause. Even though the place was a barren tundra at the moment, there would be blood pumping in its veins in a few short months. Young pullets would scatter themselves through the green grass. Peas and squash would swirl around that old dead fence and make it come alive again. Visions of gray geese on that green-painted porch, next to a hutch of Angora rabbits began to inhabit my already overstimulated mind. This property was going to take all the lessons I’d learned in Idaho and turn them into advanced courses. Now I just had to get to work. There was a lot of planning, a slew of phone calls, and some amount of begging for permission still ahead of me. But in my gut I already knew that this year was going to be okay. It had to be.

  A VERY LONG WINTER

  IT FELT LIKE WINTER WOULD NEVER LEAVE. All of southern Vermont was filled with grimy snow, turned gray from mud and exhaust. Driving to work was like driving through a war zone of sludge, naked trees, icy turns, and barren fields. This was Mud Season. Part of me was happy I’d moved here in the most climatically desperate (not to mention least touristy) time of the year, because I’d really appreciate spring when it finally did arrive. But the other part of me just thought the place looked beat, dead, and unlivable. I had all these big plans for poultry and a garden, and right now the place reminded me more of Chernobyl than the scenes from The Sound of Music that the Vermont board of tourism brochures had promised me.

  Weekends of exploring grocery stores, movie theaters, and Laundromats took over the borrowed time I now had in my schedule. All my homesteading plans were on hold until the thaw came. I couldn’t slam a hoe into the ground or bring home chicks until late April or early May. Northern New England is a place that takes winter just as seriously as the Pacific Northwest does, and that year the cold season seemed to last lifetimes longer than the winters of my past. It had started before I’d left Idaho, with the first snow in October. The succeeding weeks pounded Sandpoint with so much powder that by the time I left in February, the driveway had plow piles close to ten feet high, and even the flattest, driftless areas were topped with four and a half solid feet of snow. (You know you’re dealing with a different kind of winter when the clothesline sticks up only eight inches above the snow.)

  Then there was the big journey east, followed by a cold snap and more snow. It was mid-March, and Vermont was still flaking away fresh inches in the morning. I forgot I owned sandals. I’d look at photos of Tennessee on my computer and want to cry. My new neighbors told me there was no spring like a Vermont spring, so lush and dramatic after the barren deciduous trees came back to life. But apple blossoms and maple buds seemed like something from another planet. I had been wearing my snow boots since the other side of a continent was home. It had been a very long winter.

  Those following months in the cabin were physically inactive yet emotionally exhausting. I was snowbound for a stretch of weeks without a farm to keep my body, mind, and soul busy; it was starting to wear me down. Now that I no longer had a small homestead depending on me, I realized how much I missed the routines and responsibility my last place had offered. Life as a new Vermonter felt helpless and boring compared to being in Idaho. My life revolved around my desk at work and my two dogs, who had become so adapted to my world that I no longer thought about their care as any sort of effort. Feeding and walking the dogs were as routine as brushing my teeth and starting up the car. I had never longed to haul a water bucket to livestock as much as I did that February.

  You can understand my need for deliberate activity. I wanted to grow again, and I mean that in every sense of the word. Adding sled dogs, chickens, gardens, bees, and rabbits to your life is about more than just rolling out of bed and shaking some food into a bowl. Your home turns into a breathing being: something that needs tending, weeding, and the occasional yeast packet. I longed to get up early and feed the rabbits and chickens before heading to the office. I even missed trudging through the waist-deep snow to refill frozen water fonts. The harmony and hardships of homesteading had completely melded into one song for me. And it was a song I couldn’t get out of my head.

  Maybe it was just my disgust with those still-unmelted snowdrifts, but I really missed the garden. I never set out to become a Gardener; it was on my list of skills to learn because growing my own food was important to me. A garden is a way to plant your own insurance, a way to depend on yourself for dinner even if you’re cash-broke and the car’s out of gas. I loved eating my own salads and stewed tomatoes, but what I really yearned for were those hot days out in the yard with a hoe, breaking sod, getting that sunburn, feeling my arms ache, knowing that a few hours of sweaty effort mixed into a heavy layer of compost and manure would produce amazing, beautiful, clean food.

  I also missed the feeling of responsibility the garden gave me. Like the animals, it was another thing that needed me. Gardening is just as much of a mutual agreement of effort as raising animals is; you need to feed, and tend, and water, and weed, and do anything else to keep those plants healthy, and they’ll produce for you.

  I would sit in my car after work, staring out at the dark winter sky, and pull a crumpled Seed Saver’s Exchange catalog from the sun visor and read through it, like garden pornography. You mean to tell me I could be growing Dragon’s Tongue beans and Green Zebra tomatoes in a few months? Really? I was skeptical that the sun would ever show up again. My Idaho garden seemed like a lifetime ago. I was jonesing for some topsoil between my toes.

  Come March, gardeners are all pacing like caged wild dogs. We have sacks of sprouted, mutant potatoes; packets of snap peas; and six-packs of lettuce to put in the ground. We’re scratching around in our pots of houseplants to remember the feeling of working soil. During dinnertime conversation we bring up rabbit manure and blood meal, nonchalantly asking our tablemates if they think the horse owners next door would let us pick up a truckload of manure. We’re awful, but we also can’t help it. It’s a labor so addicting, so complicated, and so dear to our hearts, we’re barking for turnips by April.

  To break the fever that winter, I’d grab my fiddle and work on a few songs. It was the only way to get my head out of the compost pile. But then I’d come across an old tune about shelling peas, or Jimmy Dickens would holler, “Take an old cold tater and wait!” and I’d be back to despondent thoughts of my comatose garden. That rusty fenced-in area outside just needed some swirling pea blossoms to bring her back to life. I could make out where a compost pile once was, in a crust of ice. It was sectioned off like a small wooden wheelbarrow without wheels. In a few weeks, when everything melted, I would have a better idea of what I was dealing with. My hope was that the last renters used the place to grow food, too. If they did, I might spend less time breaking sod and building raised beds and start right in shopping for heirloom sweet corn. To temper the desire to plant, I tried to think about sunburn and mosquitoes. But we all know they’re just collateral damage in a life lived outside. Now in my
fifth month of snow, I’d have handed the mosquitoes a damn syringe if it could have gotten me another twenty degrees and a couple of extra hours of daylight. I’m not above bargaining here.

  I was overcome with this empty feeling that people get when they know what they want but can’t have it just yet. Maybe you’ve felt that same hollowness yourself and can understand how vulnerable it makes you feel? It’s no different from pining for a lover you can’t hold quite yet or reading the menu of a restaurant you can’t afford until your next paycheck. My recourse was simple: I put my mind someplace else.

  To try to meet some like-minded locals, I posted flyers advertising beginner fiddle lessons. I’m not a professional musician by any means, but I did teach myself the basics. I also figured that because I’m far from talented and still manage to make music, I could understand the foggy beginner’s mind. With my previous year of self-education fresh in my head, I thought I could help some other wannabe fiddlers out there start sawing away, too.

  The flyers were a huge success. Within weeks I had met a slew of locals, all of whom were entrenched in the music scene. Some had friends in bluegrass bands, others wanted to learn to fiddle while their children took classical violin lessons at school. Some of them were even homesteading on their own small farms. A woman named Shellie from just over the border, in Hebron, New York, had forty acres with a flock of sheep, laying hens, ducks, and an old farmhouse that had been ordered from the Sears, Roebuck catalog around a century before she started farming there.