Guess who’s coming home?

Yes, today is our last day on the farm. The last couple of days have been a weird kind of limbo. Betwixt and between, we’re not really here and we’re not in Brooklyn either.

The kids are so ready to come home. Twenty days away from Brooklyn is a lot. And they’re dying to see their friends.

The waning days of our summer vacation mean picking up all the clothes, toys, books, and other family detritus that has migrated to all parts of this big house.

It means taking care of the errands we promised we’d do while we were out here but never got around to.

It means finishing up the left-overs in the fridge and taking our last walks around the farm, saying good-bye to the goat, the vegetable garden, the walnut orchards, the barns, the cats, and the Giverney-esque garden created by my mother-in-law.

This year is especially sad because the farm is being sold to a local real estate developer, who  plans to build a McMansion on the far side of the farm with a grand staircase a la "Gone with the Wind," where he will live with his four brothers and their families.

It is, truly, the end of an era. 

My husband’s grandparents moved to this farm in 1928 from Los Angeles.
They raised 5 children here and ran an award winning Guernsey cattle dairy. There were also sugar beets, alfalfa, tomatoes, and other crops through the years.

My husband grew up on the farm in a small house intended as a guest house that grew in size as the years went on. His father planted the walnut orchards the year he was born. When his father died in the 1980’s, his mother (who grew up on the farm) decided to take over the farm. She’d never paid much attention to farming when her husband was alive, as she was busy raising the kids, and creating beautiful and inventive ceramic art. But after his death, she learned everything she needed to know about walnut farming and farmed the orchard for 20 years by herself with the help of a small staff.

Now in her seventies, she has just retired from farming and is busier than ever with her art-making, gardening, studying at the local community college, and swimming. A self-taught architect, she is also designing a new entrance way and a pool house for her home.

Most of her siblings have died, but their heirs feel strongly that it is time to sell the farm. She has made her peace with it and will still retain her beautiful home and the surrounding acreage.

I know my husband is deeply upset about the sale of the farm because he’s been very quiet and he sighs a lot ( a sign that he is full of worry or pain). Yesterday I asked what he was feeling and he said: "Overwhelmed. Y’know that sense of place thing."

These are like code words between us. This place means more to him than just about anything. He is rooted here like a big old oak tree. Losing the farm is like losing a limb. This farm IS who he is: creative, resourceful, reverent to the past, deeply connected to the place he is from.

I am very touched by his appreciation for the world his grandparents and parents created here: the houses and farm buildings his grandmother designed, his grandfather’s farm equipment, the John Deere tractors, and pick-up trucks. He loves the landscape – the orderly rows of trees in the orchards, the yellow Sierra foothills in the disance, the big, blue sky.  I know the next few months won’t be easy as the sale becomes a reality.

His sense of place in the world depends on this farm and it’s hard to say what will happen when it no longer belongs to his family.

I expect my husband to sigh a lot in the next few months. He’ll probably be pretty quiet as he mulls over this enormous change in his life. I’m hoping he’ll take the time to express his feelings to me. For one thing, I like to be clued in, but I also think it helps to let it out so it doesn’t burn you up inside.