The bus pulled up beside some train tracks and I was dumped there on the side of the road, clutching my bags to me. I was glad that a passenger had mixed up where she was supposed to get off and was spending a couple minutes discussing this with the bus driver so that I wasn't alone there waiting. A couple older men watched me from a deck a level above me. I clicked the on button on my phone to check the time again. Still 5 minutes early. As I looked down a white truck pulled up with two young men in it. They made a U-turn and the one driving leaned out the window and called, "are you WWOOFing with Goodness Grows?" Yes, that was the farm I was looking for. "Yeah," I called back. The truck came to a stop and both men hopped out and came towards me. I pulled my suitcase over towards the truck. The older one stuck out his hand, "I'm Jeremy." Then the younger one, "And I'm Caleb." I shook their hands informing them that I would probably have to hear their names a couple more times before I got them. "So what do you have to do with the farm?" I asked them as we threw my stuff in the back of the truck. "I'm a WWOOFer, I got here yesterday." That was Jeremy. "I'm Dawn's son. I'm 16." So Caleb was the oldest son.
Caleb showed us around Cumberland. It reminded me of Ithaca a little in the way that it had a commons area. As we walked we chatted. It turns out Jeremy was from Cincinnati and he worked in a factory that made armored cars. He would get laid off for a week or two at a time (because his company couldn't afford to pay all their employees all the time) so he would take that week and go off on an adventure (like this one). Cincinnati and Ithaca seemed to have similar viewpoints and so did Jeremy and I. We got in the truck which was rather tight with all three of us in the front seat. As we got to the outskirts of Cumberland Caleb pointed out the window. "This is my dad's house." Jeremy stopped and out he hopped. I was confused. "He doesn't live on the farm with us?" Jeremy explained that Caleb lived with his dad during the week and on the farm on the weekends. "I guess he's Dawn's son from a previous relationship and then Dawn and Rob got married and had Silas and Levi. Silas and Levi, I thought. I'll have to remember those names.
I made my way down the stairs and over to the smoking corner, under the porch. Dawn, Rob and Jeremy were there, finishing up their after dinner cigarettes. I squeezed in next to Jeremy and listened to their conversation. I tend to be quiet around new people, which was fine, because Jeremy seemed to be happy to ask all the questions. When their discussion wrapped up Dawn and Rob excused themselves to go to bed and I said, "I changed my mind."
We made our way down to the edge of the pond by the light of the moon (and a little help from Jeremy's flashlight, but he liked to keep it off if he could help it). We flipped over the canoe and located the paddles. I willed myself not to think about ghosts. Dawn had told us earlier in the day that someone had died in that pond. In that pond! They had up and blacked out, fallen out of their boat and drowned. The pond had had to be dredged and the body was recovered. I think Dawn had been there that day, and watched the whole thing. The reeds around the pond whispered to me as we pushed the canoe out, then we paddled into the middle with silent strokes.
We craned our necks up and pointed at the stars. "I see Orions Belt!" "Where's the North Star?" "I found the big dipper." "Shooting star at 12'o clock." "I don't really know any constellations." "I only really know three." Each time we spoke was surrounded by silence, but not really silence. I could hear the crickets, and the cars on the road, the reeds whispering, almost like ghosts. I could hear the dip of his paddle and once in a while the sound of an animal on the shore. We decided that the moon was either full or very close, and stayed out until we couldn't feel our fingers and our toes and I had finally seen a shooting star. We pulled the canoe up vowing to return a different night, later this time, so that there would be less traffic to disrupt our stargazing.
"Today we're cooking soil," Dawn announced at breakfast. Why? I thought, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I figured it was something about killing certain things in the soil that could hurt plants. I decided to ask later.
Our first step was to gather the dirt from a big pile of compost (that I think had mostly been mucked out of the pig's stall because I knew that all kitchen scraps were fed to the pigs). The dirt that we were gathering had been sifted the day before by Jeremy, Dawn and the boys, so it was ready to be cooked. We brought our five buckets of dirt down the hill to the big outdoor woodstove (that provided heat in the wintertime for their house, a hoophouse and a large greenhouse by heating water that then ran through pipes, providing the heat) with the skidsteer. The skidsteer was a multipurpose farm implement. It was motorized and had a big bucket that could be taken off and replaced with forks (like a forklift). We built up a fire and stuck a huge barrel into the belly of the woodstove, right on top of the fire. Then we shoveled the dirt from one bucket into the barrel. Dawn explained pasteurization to us while we took turns mixing the dirt with our shovels and checking the temperature every so often. Dawn also explained that yes, we were trying to kill any pathogens or other things that would be harmful to seedlings. We were making our own potting soil.
We undressed by the pond and Jeremy charged right in up to his waist. I on the other hand was slower. That water was cold! I picked my way in, trying to find rocks to stand on instead of the slippery mud. "It's cold!" Jeremy tried to convince me to come in faster. "Come on! Don't make me drag you." Eventually, once I made it just past the top of my maroon bikini bottoms, Jeremy decided that my time had come. He grabbed me playfully and dragged me in with him, exposing me all too quickly to the freezing depths. "It's so cold!" I protested, laughing. "Stop!"
We tread water, shivering as we kicked cold water at each other, or floated on top, trying to stay warm. We stayed in as long as we could, but the water was very cold and the weather had changed from the hotness of the greenhouse to breezes bringing cold air down from the hills.
Dawn sent us off to collect a salad for dinner. She suggested filling it with wild edibles, appreciating our interest in foraging. We set off with our big green bowl and wild edibles book. Levi tagged along, more for companionship than to help us collect. Jeremy and I squatted down, discussing which plants would be best in a salad and swapping plant varieties. Clover, plantain, sorrel (but not too much), mint, a pink flower that Jeremy introduced me to, and some others. From his vantage point on top of the hay bale fort Levi piped in, "We have other plants you know? Ones people haven't stepped on."
We spent one full day preparing a field for a hoophouse. This was a field that had previously been used to store bricks that Rob had collected over his years of being a construction worker. Unfortunately many of the flats that had been used to store the bricks had rotted. This means we had to transfer those bricks to new flats. I knew that bricks were heavy, but I didn't know just how heavy they would be until I had spent a full day moving them. I would estimate that I ended up moving at least 100 times my bodyweight in bricks. Probably more. The next day we went back out and finished up. By noon I literally couldn't move another brick. Luckily that was the day that Jeremy and I had planned on exploring an abandoned turnpike that he had found when he was exploring the area. The turnpike had been abandoned in the 50s and was now used as a biking/walking path. We borrowed some bikes (that were from around the same time the turnpike had been abandoned) and set off in Jeremy's truck. We biked along, enjoying the changing leaves and the beautiful sun. Then we got to the first tunnel. We hopped off our bikes and went exploring.
We biked on. Biking through the tunnel was so scary. The floor was wet and all I could see was what my head lamp was showing me. Maybe I've watched too much Bones, but I was sure there was a dead body in there somewhere. We finally reached the end (the light at the end of the tunnel!) and wheeled our way out into the sunshine again. About a quarter mile later Jeremy stopped. He had a flat. We had to turn around. We walked together some but then I decided to bike on (with his encouragement). I biked until I reached the tunnel, and then I climbed up the side of the hill to reach the top of the tunnel. The view was beautiful.
Here are the pictures:
