Barnheart Read online

  I’d recently heard through the vine of Sandgate gossip (which flows from Wayside in copious amounts) about the neighbor’s new barn. It was the talk of the morning, this giant structure that was going up in a few weeks. Everyone had a guess what it would be for and when it would be completed. The news about the construction shocked me, mostly because the owner’s current barn was already seven times the size of my house and provided plenty of space for the dozen or so horses he owned. A second barn? Really? Couldn’t he add stables to the current structure? And why did a man who traveled so much and was so rarely around need another enterprise? To start raising dairy cattle? Sheep? A pig barn for raising his own salamis and charcuterie? None of these turned out to be the reason for the construction crews assembling the gigantic structure that fall. He was building a barn to house antique cars, with a recording studio upstairs.

  It was a slap in the face — unintentional, and none of my business, but a slap nonetheless. It was like building a recreational baseball field in your backyard when your neighbor learned to pitch by throwing rocks at trees. The idea that an ark was being assembled at great cost to match the rural landscape and to house a man’s hobbies made my stomach burn. The land that family owned was for leisure and for show, but if my dirty-fingernailed fists ever got hold of such a gift, what an empire I could carve! Sometimes I would walk by the property (just off the main road I walked with the dogs every day) and shake my head at the lost possibilities of the plantation. I could grow enough food to feed the whole town. I’d have a pair of workhorses and turn those fields into meat, milk, and wool production. I’d have acres of vegetables. I’d start my own vineyard. I’d grow wheat and corn. And I would love every second of it. I’d think about this and sigh and walk by with my dogs. It was all the worse that the owner was a chef. He could live an entire life around food if he wanted to; instead, he played with it. Anyone who doesn’t think decadence thrives in America is fooling himself.

  Not far past this empire lay another example of personal/agricultural heartbreak I encountered on my regular dog walk: the blue cottage. About a mile down the dusty road from my mailbox sat a small blue house nestled by the side of the road. Across the street were a small barn, a pond, willow trees, and old pastures. Beside the house itself were a small horse shed, an acre of pasture, and a well-maintained sugar shack previous owners had used to make maple syrup. The house was well kept, humble, and nothing compared to the hundreds of acres and several large structures of the horse farm and car barn down the road. Yet in a way this place was much harder for me to accept. The owners, whom I’d met on such dog walks, were from an affluent suburb outside Philadelphia. This was their second home — a place they occasionally visited when their calendars were clear. At least the guy blaring Grateful Dead covers in his barn studio was around to feed his horses on the weekend and pick some tomatoes. But this young couple had made a dream homestead into a rarely inhabited vacation destination. As someone who could have turned that plot of land into so many things in one year — a sheep farm, a rabbitry, fields of organic gardens, a waterfowl pond, an orchard, a honey factory, and God knows what else — seeing it domesticated into a gentrified weekend getaway actually nauseated me when I walked past. I had to tell myself “It’s just not my time” and speed-walk past the always empty house with a lawn mowed too short for the deer to bother with.

  These are the kind of people a lot of agrarian Vermonters deal with. The rich guy playing farmer, the second-home owners ignoring their property. And I’m sure I would have fit into the taxonomy of annoying Vermonters myself. My green-living, composting, sustainability-driven small farming probably annoyed the hell out of the conventional dairy farmers trying to scrape by. Seeing a girl with a decent-paying job throwing her money into a backyard farm so she doesn’t have to buy the conventional food they’re struggling to produce must make them shake their heads. I saw how I was to them. But intentions and desires are complicated things. I had every right to grow my own ice cream if I wanted to. Car barns are not illegal, and neither are vacation homes. We’re all just trying to live the lives we aspire to.

  A wiser version of myself understood that stereotypes are pointless. And around here they often weren’t so clearly defined. At the feed store I may have run into a yuppie ski-home owner buying organic dog food for his Weimaraner as easily as I could have struck up a conversation with the cheese-making goat farmer posting signs about Nubian kids for sale. The dog-food buyer may have had his deer license and been born in Rutland, and the goat farmer may have been an ex–New York novelist, and still I’d find myself more similar to the guy who knows how to milk a teat than to the guy who spent every Christmas break at Killington. The intentional lives we grow into is where we most often find common ground.

  In Sandgate the residents find common ground in its small-town traditions. There’s the Christmas party with Santa at Town Hall. There’s the dead-Christmas-tree bonfire and children’s sledding night every Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. There are pig roasts and parties, but regardless of the season or the guest list, they all center on the age-old practice of sharing home-cooked food.

  Potlucks are king here in the sticks. Since the community covers the catering, it requires only a friendly host and some sort of beverage to get the party started. Somehow, no matter how many you go to, potlucks never get old. How could you grow tired of something that requires such little effort for the amount of fun you end up having? You make one dish, grab a six-pack of beer, and show up to a spread of mismatched tables covered with food. Potlucks are unapologetic in their gluttony, a chance for each of us to share our special talents. (My neighbor Phil makes the best cheesy potatoes you’ll ever eat.) Tables overflow with so much food and finger desserts that you get self-conscious standing in line. We may not have a single stoplight in our town, but we sure know how to feed a mob.

  Every summer in Sandgate there is a community ox roast, and this was my first one. Around dusk, I left the cabin for the ox roast with two very important things in hand: a pie and my fiddle. Generally, people who show up with fiddles and pie are welcome in almost every enjoyable place in America. This is a truth to live by, friends. If these two items aren’t welcome where you spend your free time, you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd.

  So when I crested the steep, rocky driveway of the farmhouse, I knew instantly that the night would be pro-pie and pro-fiddle. Sprawled out before me were old Colonial buildings and a big white barn. Picnic tables with fresh flowers dotted the lawn. Sandgatians smiled and nodded as they sipped iced tea from Mason jars. The twilight sky was lit by table lamps on wooden pillars or set high in barn windows. (Extension cords were the workhorses of this fine evening, that much was true.)

  All around me were hundreds of adults, kids, and the occasional dog running around off leash. In the center of the commotion were three musicians in red plaid shirts playing a fiddle, a guitar, and an upright bass. They were sawing out a version of “Blackberry Blossom,” a beloved old-time fiddle tune. My heart swelled.

  These were my people now: a feral group of New Englanders who square-dance in tie-dye or tap their maples in stoic red plaid. They’re farmers, loggers, small businessmen, bookkeepers, and florists — pretty much any odd job that lets them be the boss of their own lives. But most of all, tonight they were a happy, wild-eyed people who wanted to be outside with their neighbors instead of inside with their televisions. For that, I wanted to kiss them.

  This was not a group of people who drive their garbage bags to the curb and don’t know how the people next door pay their mortgage. This was a community, and this newcomer was going to get to spend a night getting to know it a little better. It was a bona fide first date. My mom always asked me if I was “seeing anybody” because she hated that I was still single. Well, call me a hussy, but that night I was on a date with the whole 247-year-old town. I stood there in my old hat, holding a cast-iron skillet of apple pie, a fiddle over my shoulder, and walked into the fray smiling. I told my
self, “Men will come in time, but for tonight let there be food and music!”

  Food and music there were! The smell of a steer on a spit filled the air, and a huge potluck spread filled rows and rows of tables. Twenty yards of cloth-covered folding tables adorned with every form of Tupperware and Pyrex made since 1964. There was a giant canteen of iced tea and an outdoor freezer sporting our local hero’s product, Wilcox Dairy ice cream (which was what all southern Vermonters ate; since Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is from northern Vermont, it is not local enough).

  Of course, there was also a full cast of characters, live and in person, like the maverick genius from Washington, D.C., who wired up the UN’s first phone service. People said he drove his neighbors in the suburbs crazy with his antics and backyard projects. He belonged in Vermont, one older lady said, as her flock of old-lady friends nodded in silent approval. She said this as matter-of-factly as if he had broken a leg and needed a cast.

  I spent most of the night listening to stories about the people who lived here. My favorite was about an original Norman Rockwell painting that someone found in his deceased parents’ house, jammed behind a false wall. And there was the story about the two women who built the Sand-gate covered bridge by themselves! I listened wide-eyed and enamored.

  How did I end up in this amazing town? What Fates helped me find my cabin in a random want ad from twenty-eight hundred miles away? By pure chance I landed here. I felt blessed.

  As the sun went down and my stomach was full of good food and maple ice cream, I pulled out my fiddle. My neighbor’s beau, Sam, and I played music while other people digested. Simple guitar and fiddle tunes in lonesome chords. We stopped when the paid band started up again. Slowly, people made their way to the dance floor, which was lit by a Tiffany-style lamp hoisted up by a ladder from a tractor. People twirled around while the string band’s bassist called out square-dancing moves. The local kids knew all the words to “Red River Gal.” There is hope for America yet, I tell ya.

  We stayed for a few more hours, mostly to talk, sip wine, and laugh over stories about work and family. I left pretty late, but folks were still dancing when I pulled away in the station wagon. I was happy. It went well, as first dates go. I was developing a serious crush on this place.

  THE SOCIETY OF LAMB AND WOOL

  AS THE SUMMER TURNED into a stretch of farm chores and fly-fishing excursions, someone at the feed store told me about the sheepdog trials over at Merck Forest. Apparently, every summer there was a big open event held for competitors around the entire Northeast. It was quite the to-do in the local world of competitive herding, and since it was less than fifteen minutes from my front door, I had to check it out.

  I did a little research online and found the club hosting the trial. It boasted a fully interactive website for herding enthusiasts, complete with classes, seminars, beginner trials, photo galleries, and a membership program with a newsletter and lending library. I had no land of my own, no sheep, and no sheepdog, and my entire rented cabin seemed to be somewhere around the size of a holding pen for ewes at such competitions. And yet something about all this resonated with me; I had to be involved with it. I had wanted sheep for years, had dreamed of understanding and experiencing that relationship between a working border collie and a handler. For so long I had nurtured all these big plans for “someday.” But when fate dangles a carrot in front of you, you just have to bite.

  I clicked on the information for the Merck Forest Open Trial and e-mailed Steve Whetmore, a sheep farmer in upstate Vermont who was listed as the main contact for the trials. I didn’t know if that meant he was running the show or that he was the sucker who had to field e-mails from crazy people like me, but it went something like this:

  Hello, Steve,

  My name is Jenna, and I’m really interested in getting involved with your club. I don’t have sheep, or a sheepdog, but I will soon. Can I come watch your event, volunteer, or do anything of use? How does one get started in all this? —j

  He replied shortly thereafter, telling me to just show up and introduce myself, that he’d be happy to talk to me more about the collies and the trial. I was beginning to picture myself standing on a windy hill with a black dog and a crook. I’d be in a waxed-cotton coat and slouch hat, and if people didn’t notice the white ear buds, they might think it was 1846. Sign me up.

  The trials were held on a miserable Sunday morning. Or rather, the weather was miserable. It was midsummer, but it might as well have been October to those of us outside on that angry, gray day. The rain was falling sideways. The high grass all around me was slick and cold, whipping around in the harsh wind. But I’d happily left my warm bed at dawn to be a part of the eager crowd on that rainy hill. All of us had arrived to watch fast paws and panicked hooves.

  Despite the weather, I was having a grand time. I pulled down the brim of my felt hat to keep the mist off my glasses. In hopes of staying a bit drier, I sat hunched with my back to the gale, secretly wishing I had one of those snappy folding chairs everyone else seemed to have brought along. Lacking such luxury, I sat on my backpack instead. Honestly, though, I wasn’t too concerned about the weather. I was transfixed on the athlete performing in the pasture below.

  Roughly a hundred yards from my vantage point, a border collie named Cato was herding Romney sheep. His black-and-white silhouette darted and dashed. I’d never seen anything like it before. He seemed to sidestep between raindrops as he expertly followed his handler’s whistled commands. I barely blinked, not wanting to miss an instant.

  Cato herded his small trial flock down the hill toward his shepherd. I’m not sure what modern shepherds are supposed to look like, but this fit, middle-aged woman was wearing a technical mountaineering jacket and jeans. If it weren’t for her large crook and the triangular silver whistle around her neck, you’d have thought she was posing for a Patagonia ad. Cato tore into the green around the post and somehow got the sheep to circle around it and head back the way they’d come, driving them back up the hill. I knew it was a border collie’s instinct to gather and herd sheep, but how did that dog get trained to lead them away? I leaned forward to take in more, as fascinated as a child at her first drive-in movie. It was eight-thirty on a rainy weekend morning, and I was grinning like an idiot watching these sheep. Normal people do not do this.

  Fortunately for me, “normal” in this kind of a place was hard to define. Sheepdog trials aren’t like suburban soccer games — the subculture is scattered, underground, and made up of people from every corner of society. Like the woman at the post, the members look surprisingly ordinary. These were not elders in Donegal tweed; these were baby-boomers in baseball caps. The average crook-wielding participant with a border collie at her heel could have passed for a dental hygienist or a landscape architect.

  For some reason, this pleased me. Seeing these people leaning on their crooks next to a dented Dodge pickup and not a vintage Land Rover made the whole notion of becoming one of them more reasonable. They seemed to be walking, breathing examples that this can be done — anyone can decide to become a shepherd. A sheep person may be ahead of you in line at an ATM or she may be teaching your kids advanced literature in their freshman year of college. They’re Red Sox fans and Yankee fans, plumbers and poets, farmers and financial consultants. Some came into the work of tending sheep by choice, and others were taken there by their dogs. More than one unassuming border collie owner has ended up in sheepherding classes with his overactive pet and before he knew it had a small flock of dog-broke ewes in his suburban backyard. Others have always lived among the fleece, knowing the feel of lanolin on their palms since before they could walk. I wasn’t any of these people yet. I wasn’t even the clueless spectator with a pet-shop border collie in my arms. I was just a girl with a hunch.

  After two days of watching, eavesdropping, and asking complete strangers stupid questions, I knew that Cato had just accomplished a beautiful out run, executed a fine lift, run down a straight-lined fetch, turned the post, a
nd completed the drive, and was in the middle of a decent cross. He had penned and was about to shed. His handler, who someone told me was a former rock climber, yelled commands into the wind. When the wind proved too much, she blew into the whistle on the lanyard around her neck. Cato balanced the sheep like a pro. Not too far from where I perched, a man in his mid-sixties stood in an oversized blue sweatshirt, and on the end of a frayed lead, his border collie sat beside him. They were next. I was so envious of him I sunk a quarter inch into the ground. I had come on a lark, didn’t know a soul, and barely understood enough of the sport to keep up with the sideline conversations wafting around me. But I was happy. I didn’t even mind having a soaked butt. I was falling in love.

  The idea that I could make a living raising sheep for wool and lambs, work outside with these amazing dogs, and perhaps write about it from time to time made my palms sweat and my voice pitch higher. These people were living my dream. Regardless of who they were or what they did with their lives, they all had managed to figure out how to become shepherds in the modern world. They all spent their days with ewes and rams and these highly skilled dogs. I wanted to be one of them so much it hurt, but like the dogs waiting their turn to pump up the hill to their flocks, I needed to be patient.

  Even though every muscle in my body quivered to get a border collie and a couple of sheep as fast as I could, I needed to be realistic. Finding a way to own a farm and transition to a full-time farm career seemed almost impossible. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in a mortgage, the start-up capital, the high credit score, even just the electric fencing seemed far out of my reach.

  I also needed to remember that I already had two roommates at home who might not adapt to the shepherding lifestyle. I’d arrived at Merck dogless. For someone who owns two wonderful working dogs and was going to a working-dog event, this felt wrong. But I didn’t have the heart to bring Jazz and Annie. Besides the fact that the temperature the day before had been in the 90s (scorching hot for two huskies with heavy undercoats), I couldn’t bear sitting there with two dogs who had to be held back on leads while they watched countless other dogs scamper around leashless inches away from the animals they desperately wanted to devour.