“Some call it the middle of nowhere, I call it the centre of my world.”
I am at my parents place, on the farm. I lay in the bed of the guest bedroom, with the moonlight beaming in through dusty rose, lace curtains. The brilliance of the universal white globe has a calming and soporific effect on me. The window is open, not just a little bit, but all the way. I don’t want to miss a thing. I want to breathe in the night air and hear the coyotes howl and the frogs croaking in the creek behind the house.
The air is calm and nothing is stirring outside. I get up, and for a moment I stand with my face pressed against the screen window, sniffing, like a rabbit sniffs to smell out danger; I am sniffing, to keep the tears at bay. Through the tears and emotion I can smell the air I love so much. It is crisp and fresh and gives me life.
I never get tired of this place; I’ve known it for 53 years, my entire life. It predates me and when I met it, I grew in it, and became a part of it as it became a part of me. I am reminded of the quote from one of my favourite books Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte where one of her main characters, Catherine Earnshaw, says, “I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free.” Then there is the famous quote again by Catherine, “Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change and you and I never change.” I can relate to Catherine’s lament at this moment in the story. To be a child again, free, running wildly through the grass in the pasture where my imagination and reality collide.
Oh, that the landscape would never change; but it does. Change is inevitable and it is my responsibility to accept it so that I can embrace the beauty of my future. My roots go down deep in this space and hold tightly to what was and still is. What is to come, that I am unsure of, and that is the change I wrestle with. I can only hope that those that put their roots down after me allow this place to do to them what it did to me. If they don’t they are only half planted and will never feel the full effects the land can have on them. I can only hope they will choose to do so.
Near the end of June of this year, 2023, my world, for a moment, stopped turning. I was caught in a whirlpool of emotion and I could see myself trapped in a funnel, spinning faster and faster toward the narrow centre, where I knew I would have a difficult time breathing. And…I did. I felt my heart racing, and I could hear the voices around me, but it was just noise, a cacophony of sounds that when mixed with the pain and confusion in my own mind led me to opine that this was not what I wanted. I was not ready for this pain.
I was brought back to the moment, and felt recalcitrant as I was being asked to sign the papers as a witness to what was unfolding in front of me. I didn’t want to put my signature where it didn’t belong. Come to think of it, my parent’s signature didn’t belong on this document either.
This land was where my paternal grandparents planted their own roots 79 years ago after a long and arduous search for the right place to call home. My dad was six years old at the time; the youngest of nine children. Aside from a few years living in Calgary in his latter teen years, this space is all he’s really known. My dad lost his parents when he was a teen and before he knew it, he was running the farm full time and carried the title of farmer, just like his father before him.
Somehow, in the present I managed to pull myself together enough to put pen to paper as a witness. I signed the document that would take the land I knew and loved so very much and place it in the hands of new owners.
My dad puts on a brave face and says, “it’s time for this place to be something for another family.” I see the smile of reassurance, but his eyes tell me something different. I know he’s ready to leave the land physically and mentally, but I’m not so sure he’s ready to leave emotionally. It’s difficult watching your parents being brave over and over and over again. They do it for each other, because they know that is what each other needs. They also do it for their children; once a parent, always a parent.
I know this land like the back of my hand. I know this house even better, but interestingly, it’s the land that has the stronger hold on me. Saying that doesn’t negate the uniqueness and specialness of the home. The memories within its walls pull and tug at my heartstrings. I feel the little tug when I help my mother clean out the rooms and we stumble upon an item that brings forth a memory that has left an indelible mark on my heart. I feel a little pull at my heart, when I stand in my parents bedroom and embrace the atmosphere; I close my eyes for a moment, see myself in that space as a young, impressionable child remembering how the room at one time felt so very big. It’s not really. I see the hamper where I sat for a small chat after giving my mother a kiss on the cheek, letting her know I was going to bed after being up late doing homework. There is another tug as I see myself, five years old, on moving day. I pause at the doorway to the living room and remember the smell of fresh paint and the brilliance of the brand new royal blue shag carpet. Since that day that carpet has hosted many guests but none as special as the permanence of grandchildren. That carpet has hosted hours of play while parents found themselves supine after being well fed in the cozy country kitchen. There is also another pull when I am sent downstairs to bring up a jar of pickles from the pantry to enhance the simple lunch I am sharing with my mom and dad. I have always admired my mother’s pantry. Within the confines of its four walls there are so many stories. Many items have been in a state of quiescence for a long time but they still have a place on a shelf. It is in that space where the items that hold meaning go in the interim before they end up in their final resting place. Which resting place each item goes to, is being determined by my mother and I as we continue to cull the pantry till all that is left is the jars and jars of canned food. There are jugs, oil lamps, old mugs, a container full of old spices when spices were still being sold in tins and even two buckets of old clothespins. I look at each object and see it pass through my mind’s eye on a particular day that I may have used it. The memories escape from the treasure trunk of my mind and flow like leaves in fall. They swirl and dip, duck and dive until I manage to capture one and hold it for a while before I have to tuck it back inside the trunk for safe keeping. The older I get, the memories also age and they tumble out of the trunk a little more crisp and brittle, so I have to take care to not lose a single one.
My memories of the clothespins takes me to the days of hanging clothes on the line on wash day. Most of those clothespins at one time or another passed through my hands. I loved hanging laundry on the line but I loved the smell of the laundry after it was dried best of all. There is nothing sweeter than freshly washed sheets! It’s the sweet smell of honeysuckle, lilac and garden flowers mixed with the wild smell of Alberta Wild Rose, sage and prairie grass drenched in sunshine and country air all rolled into one. Bringing a basket full of fresh dried sheets off the line and into the home is like bringing a bundle of nature through the front door and shaking a little bit of Heaven all through the house.
In my mind as I reminisce about the clothing on the line, I see the old house that sat about five feet from the doorway to the present home. That was where I spent the first five years of my life on the farm. It was a cozy little shelter with a kitchen, living room, and a bedroom on the main floor. There was a second floor, but it was unusable without insulation in the walls to keep out the heat of summer and the freezing, biting cold of winter. I didn’t care though, none of us did because love was in abundance, and size and space didn’t matter as long as there was love.
I was unfamiliar with a household bathroom for the first five years of my life; another commodity that predates me – the outhouse. My mother was always worried her children would fall into the large hole should we be so inclined to go on our own, so she usually accompanied us. It sat behind the house and was only used during the day in all seasons except winter. Winter was too cold to visit the “necessary” as they said in the olden days. So, in winter and during the night we did our business in a metal pail in the rustic dirt floor basement. The kitchen housed running water to fill the sink, it drained in a pail under the cupboard and then got hauled outside to empty it. I share this tidbit of information, not to make anyone think we were poor, we certainly weren’t. I share this to give dimension to the effect this place has had on me.
This land holds everything I hold near and dear to my heart at this point in my life and when it comes to my first home, there is no exception. Portions of this first home now rest beneath a pile of dirt where grass has grown and is now part of the back yard lawn. There is a slight indentation framing the foundation and along with the concrete and wood that is buried beneath, I’m confident one of my stuffed animals got mixed up in the burial and lays resting along with all of its counterparts. So, you see, this land holds deeply, my first home.
I step out of that memory and take a turn down a different reminiscent pathway and find myself standing out on the land. God is the creator of all things and it is because of Him that we have all that we do. I give Him the glory for creating our beautiful world and for allowing our family to experience this little corner of it. The land and everything in it would not exist without His hand and it is because of our Heavenly Father that life that flows from it, what it gives and what it receives.
I do not specifically see one place in my mind’s eye, but several. I was a barefoot child. I chose to run around barefoot as much as my mother would allow. I can still see myself playing or working in the garden, with the dirt squishing up between my toes. To this day, I go barefoot as often or as long as the seasons allow. Despite knowing this was going to be our last summer on the farm, my father and I agreed we would plant one more garden. This gave me another summer opportunity to walk barefoot through the garden as I either weeded or harvested my vegetables. I took time to look down at my feet and watch the dirt squish up one last time between my toes. My mother loved gardening and her mother before her; they instilled that desire in me. I am reminded of a quote from the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer where she says, “This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden – so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.” I have loved every single garden I have tended and so have my parents. When I wasn’t available to weed or water, my father was always there giving the earth, the seeds, then the plants what they needed to grow and service our needs. We tended it, so it could tend to us. That portion of farm land has provided food in our freezers for years and I’m so very glad I had the opportunity to get to know it.
My mindful journey through the land takes me to the pastures where I had to don shoes in order to be permitted to experience freedoms beyond the yard. The pasture was where I pretended to be Laura Ingalls from my favourite books and TV series Little House on the Prairie. I would run and play in my imaginary world, sometimes next to the cattle and one or two horses. Occasionally I would take an inner tube and float in the creek that flowed past our farm and pretend I was Tom Sawyer. Interestingly, the creek that flowed past the farm had a name on maps: Ten Mile Creek. If I wasn’t being Laura pretending to run dramatically away from a situation I didn’t know what to do with, or floating on my river raft, I was sitting on the grass, listening to the gophers chirrup to each other, laying on my back watching a hawk fly high above me, or smiling at the ducks floating in the creekbed that was, if I wasn’t playing with my siblings or cousins.
Recently, on one of my days helping mom clean out “stuff,” I went for a walk in the pasture, and found myself remembering these moments that I just described here. I sat down, put my hands on the earth and just soaked up the warmth of what this part of land gave to me and maybe what I gave to it. The act of reciprocity, so vital for existence. Another quote from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, “knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and to celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that relationship transforms from a one-way street to a sacred bond.” I know the pasture land loved my visits and because of that, it thrived and continued to feed the animals that in turn would feed us and others. It also fed and housed those that help to keep the ecosystems going and sustaining life. I walked out of that pasture thanking God for His hand in first creating and then sustaining the lifegiving grasslands for me and my family to enjoy.
The final stop in my mind’s journey on the land is the largest component and believe it or not, the portion that holds the most meaning for me: the fields. Our farm had two fields that were a part of the main homestead, one on the north side and one on the south. I spent hours riding my horse, cross country skiing, going for walks (barefoot and stepping on a garter snake), helping my dad move cattle, riding my bike (yes, I actually rode my bike in the field) climbing on bales and helping with the harvest, all in the south field. The north field gave me some cattle encounters but mostly driving the combine or baler for my dad during harvest time. It was a little further from the yard. When we were in the kitchen, we could see the field work happening in the north field, and when we were in the living room, we could see the work in the south field. It was in those fields that the real magic happened. They were the bookends to our existence.
I am reminded of a quote I read not long ago with no named author, “And into the field I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” The land’s visceral beauty and power comes from its remarkable performance. The fields portray, to me, the entirety of what it means to be land. The epitome of beauty is land in its most raw state and the best example of reciprocity is a farmer’s field. When the harvest is complete, spring has arrived and the soil is turned and prepared for another season of planting. It is in the dark fresh soil that I find my soul. It is in the being and the becoming of land; it is the only thing that will never leave. It is the only thing on the farm that has never changed. The boundaries to each field may change, but the land as an entity does not. As Gerald O’Hara says in Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, “land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”
So, you see, our family farm is more than a livelihood; it is that, yet so much more. It’s the space where our family worked, played and just made a life together. It is where our father taught us kids what it means to be determined and to persevere. It is where our mother taught us doing is better than sitting idle, how to add color to a landscape with flowers and that planting and sowing is better than buying from a store.It taught us the meaning of hope, afterall, the farming profession is built on hope. It is where we buried all our loving pets on every possible corner of the yard.There is no other profession where individuals that love each other can be born into, grow, learn, play, build their faith, laugh, cry, make mistakes and then try again all under one canopy. So, letting go of the farm is not just selling a property, it’s selling and then handing off everything that made me who I am today. This is why, as October 4th approaches, I can almost not breath. I have played the day over and over in my mind and wondered what it will look like and how it will all play out and I just can’t ever get it right. So I have decided, that day, when I drive away for the last time, I will wave and hopefully smile through the tears and say, “thank you for being there for me, now I hope you do the same for the next little girl,” and I will hold my jar of dirt close to my chest.
