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| Acrylic washes on paper by Phillip Hoyle after a Navajo petroglyph design |
In adult life I enjoyed living in ever-larger cities until we ended up in Mid-Missouri, a young family with two children living outside the city limits. The town wasn’t all that large (under forty thousand) and the country seemed lonely and deserted to me. Even though I was astounded with the views of ridges and hollows swathed in morning mists, sunrises and settings of amazing hues, and an abundance of multi-shaded green grasses and trees, I was nervous the whole time we lived out there. I locked doors and wondered who had just driven by on the road and why. My country-reared wife thought it was funny given that all the years we lived in cities I had rarely locked doors. I just felt uneasy in the country, like if I needed help, no one would hear my cries. And yard work seemed too much like farm work for the lawn was way too large.
As a parent I wanted the best for my kids; wanted them to have full, wonderful lives. I didn’t push them towards anything particular, but I did harbor distrust of some lifestyles and occupations. My daughter seemed to like living in Missouri. She has lived there most of her life and—like her dad—seems to prefer living right in town, close to work, close to schools, close to the library, close to her friends, and close to neighbors. My son Mike has lived most of his adult life between Colorado and Missouri. Well, listen, I’ll tell his story from my parental point-of-view.
The artist and musician emerged early in my son Mike’s life. He had a beautiful singing voice, loved to dance, and drew and painted with exceptional talent for a youngster. I was pleased he might become an artist, something my father had cautioned against. I could easily imagine a life in the arts as being a fine choice for my son.
But Mike liked outdoors activities as well as music and art. Unlike his sister and his parents, Mike became a country mouse. I wasn’t surprised. I’d known for years the little boy who adored his farmer grandpa Vance, who was even built and looked like him. I’d known the kid who backpacked, canoed, and explored caves. I’d known the teenager who in his old Chevy van went off to the farm to help his uncle plant corn and then returned for the harvest. I’d known the young man who later returned to the farm with his growing family to work for his uncle. I’d known the young man who moved to a commune where he raised organic carrots to sell in the commune store. Of course, he did lots more there: taught art in the commune school, fixed things around the place’s several houses, but he also repaired fences, helped with livestock, planted, weeded, and harvested. You know, farm stuff. Still, I’d persisted in thinking of Mike as a husband and dad, an artist and musician, and of course, my son.
After a year at the commune the family returned to Missouri where they lived in the country adjacent to a national forest. There they raised chickens and goats and a garden. Michael found a job at a native plants nursery some thirty miles away, down near Brazito. There he kept machines running, helped harvest prairies, sorted seed, assisted customers, and eventually planted and transplanted the great variety of flora, and coordinated the work of the other employees. His family moved into town to cut down on the commute. Then, about four years ago, the firm’s beautifully-illustrated, full-color catalog listed my son as the nursery’s Farm Manager. Heather, his wife, told me Mike was terribly embarrassed. She was proud of him and entertained by his modesty. I still enjoyed his music making and his painting, still thought of him in those terms.
Last fall Mike told me that the past couple of years he’d been taking trailer loads of native plants and seed to a farmers market in St. Louis. Then he and his family started searching for a country house to buy. With the generous help of a family friend, they bought one on twenty acres—a steal of a deal—and prepared to move back to the country.
I planned a trip to celebrate the graduation ceremony of two grandsons. During the last phone call before I left on my trip, Mike told me how busy he was and how elated he felt living again in the country. I looked forward to seeing their farmhouse, barn, orchard, and pasture.
“Will you get goats?” I asked.
Michael said, “Probably not.”
I saw the beautiful old house when I went there for the graduation party. Two evenings later I returned and Mike gave me the grand tour. Walking past the garden, he realized no one had gathered the asparagus that morning. After we took a nice basketful back to the kitchen, we put the chickens and ducks into the hen house. In the corral I met the new cow and her calf. By then it was pretty dark; we returned to the house.
The next morning we went back outdoors and walked the pastures. Mike had rented part of his land to a neighbor for a bean field. Mike wanted it farmed for a couple of years to get rid of all the European grasses. His plan is then to seed it in native plants to return it to its old state. He can make more money by harvesting it as native prairie. In fact, he could make a lot more money off it and graze the cow there as well. When we stopped by the corral, Mike showed me his new tractor pointing out its advantages and disadvantages. He spoke of it like my Denver friends talk about their new cars—with pride and great satisfaction although, also like them, saying he paid more than he’d intended.
When we walked through the orchard of pears and apples, peaches and plums, something in his information and in his enthusiasm brought into focus what I’d been hearing for years. Mike was becoming a farmer—a real one who loved to plant and harvest, to feed himself and others with the fruit of his labor, to become the husbandman of his own Garden of Eden, and to drive his tractor. He had his own acreage, his own place, an image that had also surfaced at times over the years. This man, who as a child had wanted his parents buried so he would have a place to visit them, now had the place, a farm where he could feel secure on the face of the huge and abundant earth and eventually spread his parents’ ashes. The farmer in him was now connected to the soil.
Heather told me how they had felt so wrought up at the realization they were becoming landowners, something they had never really dreamed. Their conceptual solace came in the notion that they were now caretakers of a bit of the earth put in trust to them. And they are both caretakers: she of the animals, he of the land and plants. With this in mind, they’ve become farmers as well as musicians, dancers, painters, and writers. Now I am a farmer’s dad.
I talked again with Mike on the phone the other day. He told me more about the farm, about pears, nectarines, plums, apples, and peaches. He mentioned several goats and bees too. The garden is producing. They haven’t been able to sell much yet, but thankfully, there is no waste. With five people and all the animals, everything gets eaten. Mike now farms four days at the nursery and three days at home. Heather cares for the cow that produces milk for the table and for making butter and cheese. The orchard is ready to burst even though it is just a fraction of what it had been years ago. The bees are making honey. The hens and ducks are about ready to start laying eggs. And to my deep joy and his, farmer Mike, my son, continues to paint and to play his guitar, sometimes even to his goats.
Denver, 2011
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