As I may have said before, history is repeating itself. The irony is not lost on me. Back in the days when Tony Newcomb was the lead farmer and visionary, he traveled between the three farms several times a week. We all did, but he was on the road more than the rest of us. I think that I am trying to do something new here by watching over just two farms at the same time, but I am really walking on the exact same paths, driving on the same roads. The vehicles are different but the destinations are the same. The vegetables are even different, but the farms are right where they always were. The body is 35 years older and that is definitely different.
Back in the 1970s and early 80s, we regularly traveled that big loop between Southern Maryland, the home farm in Fairfax County and the Loudoun farm. We could get in the truck and head south at 5:30 in the morning, arrive at the Maryland farm in under 90 minutes, work for five hours, and come back home with a truck full of whatever we had picked -- corn or melons or watermelons. Something big and heavy, in any case. Then when that field of corn was finished we might get in a truck at 5 AM on another day and head west, driving about 40 minutes through fog but no real traffic, arrive at the Loudoun farm, pick corn for a few hours and head back home.
With my dad there were always errands to do along the way, and he rarely did the early morning runs. He often left home in the afternoon, spent the night at the other farm and returned the following day. When he went between the farms later in the day, he went to lots of different supply places, the bank, various stores. That is now Jon's life. Just this morning, on his way to Loudoun, he went to Merrifield to get a big air conditioner (I think) and then to Manassas to drop off a carburetor that needs work. When we end up going to Loudoun together, I always bring my knitting so I can sit in the car and wait for him to pick up whatever materials he needs. I never want to go in and browse at Home Depot. I use the time to call Nancy and find out what's going on in the non-vegetable world. I have never been the shopper in the family -- not now, not back then. My inter-farm trips have always been direct, non-stop, same day return.
It is still very early in the season and we are making up new patterns, trying out new routines. But I think this was the first time in my life that I ever remember laying plastic on two different farms on the same day. In the morning I walked behind Ellen as she roared ahead on the big orange Kubota, unrolling a shiny stream of plastic mulch behind her. I followed with the shovel and covered the ends of the plastic so they would stay secured to the ground all summer. That same afternoon in Vienna, I drove the red Case, much slower, while Jon walked behind me, making sure the plastic was just right and wouldn't fly away in the wind. It still feels a bit unpredictable, this dual life. Everything depends on the weather, as always, and so we need a Plan B for all sorts of possibilities.
It is not really the way I want to live for the foreseeable future. I prefer to have a home farm. Coming back to Vienna is still coming home -- the hills, the trees, the small scale, I could walk this place with my eyes closed. But it is exciting to have another farm to memorize. It is wide open, much flatter, the sky is wide, the tractors are big and loud, the view is gorgeous. Maybe by the end of this summer I will feel at home in both places.
It would certainly feel more like home if we had our own kitchen in Loudoun. So far we have only the most rustic amenities, and the mice chewed up most of what was in our sleeping cabin over the winter. Once we get those kinks worked out, maybe we will have dual citizenship. I always told my father that it didn't feel like home unless there was orange juice in the refrigerator. So first we need to be able to power a refrigerator somehow and then we can get the orange juice. (His solution was to make an Electricity Shed right near the property line on the Maryland farm, where the electric line stopped, and then he put a refrigerator in there, but that was still about a half mile from the granary where we slept, so it didn't really meet my requirements.)
Anyway, I am not just like my father, but I do seem to be parking tractors in the same sheds, in the most literal sense. On both farms. This is not what I thought was going to happen.
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