I want you to imagine it is a blue sky and white roses kind of June day. Our last June on the farm. And we're having a tea party! Yesterday, the real estate agent put up a Farm For Sale sign at our gate, and another at the main road. This morning Joe went to the little village store and happened to meet our neighbors, the ones who's property runs along ours, up the laneway side, although their house is a long way from ours. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. His family has been here forever. They are church going people, the aristocracy of the community and indeed the sign at the end of their lane says 'Century Farm'. They even look aristocratic, both slender and tall. His face has been sculpted by the sun and the wind like most farmers, but she, even in late middle age, is elegant, refined, and quietly beautiful. You can't help but wonder why such a woman chose to live her life in a remote, rural place like this. She could only have done it for love. We've never seen much of them, although they've always been courteous when we did meet up. They've never been here.
But they're coming to tea today. Joe says they were clearly fishing for an invitation to come see the farm before it gets sold. How odd, after all these years. I wonder what they'll think...... I also wonder if we have any damn tea!
We're both nervous as we await their arrival. Why? The place looks the best its ever looked, everything spruced to the nines in preparation for the sale. Even the bed is made! We see Dawg go bounding towards the lane and realize they must be arriving.
"Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!" Mrs. Anderson is exclaiming as she steps out of the car. "It's so beautiful! I can't get over it, I would scarcely know it's the same place." Her husband is nodding assent and looking in all directions.
"You've been here before of course," I say.
"Oh yes, many, many years ago. But it was so...... different." She seems lost for words. Dawg is practically wagging all over, looking for attention, and I speak sharply to him.
"His name is Dawg?" Mr. Anderson asks? "We sure do know Dawg! He often comes over to our place."
"He does?" Joe asks with surprise.
"Oh yes. I'm quite certain we've had more than one lot of Dawg puppies." He smiles as he speaks.
Joe and I look at Dawg. He has the good grace to look sheepish. Can a dog blush? He definitely appears to be blushing!
Mrs. Anderson has gone through the little white gate and is looking at the flowers. "This is so lovely, I never imagined anything like this." Of course you just know Joe and I are starting to pump up like a pan of rising bread dough.
"Please come in........"
"Oh, may we see the rest of the garden first? So many flowers! Why there wasn't even a lawn here before, never mind flowers, and fences, and trees!" We stroll around. Mr. Anderson says how fine the barns look and behind his back Joe grins and gives me a thumbs up. We are seeing the farm through their eyes...... as it is now. We are feeling good.
The vegetable garden is not planted. Only the long row of rasberry plants thrives this year. They are Joe's pride and joy, they have always produced well. We felt we could never walk away from a garden that would be close to picking. Instead it sits neatly cultivated, no weeds in sight, waiting for someone new to reap whatever they might sow.
Inside the house, the exclamations continue. Mrs. Anderson recalls the old man who once lived here, sitting beside a big cookstove and throwing cigarette butts on the old wood floor. The floor is gleaming, with no scars. She notices a rocking chair in the corner...... "What a lovely chair! Do you know, I once had one just like that?"
Joe and I laugh. "Mrs. Anderson," he says, "that is your chair. We bought it at your yard sale several years ago." She looks again. She kneels down and tips it over a bit and looks at the underside.
"There's my name! Emily. I scratched it in with a nail when I was about 12." She stood up. "I never imagined it could ever look like this again. It's beautiful. I'm so touched to see it like this."
A chair. A house. A farm. But it is so much more than that. It is a part of us. Later, as we wave goodbye to our guests we wonder for the umpteenth time if we have made the right decision.
When the real estate agent told us what we should list it for, we thought he was out of his mind. However, it is sells to the very first viewers, by the end of the week. We are in shock. A mix of excitement, and joy, a feeling of accomplishment, and ......... a sense of dread. We've done it. There is no turning back now.
The next weeks go by in a blur, there is so much to do. The cattle are trucked off to the auction barn. The machinery is advertised and sold. We don't want to leave our graveyard of used vehicles so we call a scrapyard to see how much they'll charge to pick them up. To our surprise, they say THEY will pay US fifty dollars for each vehicle, and they'll come and get them. We watch sentimentally as another chunk of our history here disappears down the lane.
The goats....... the goats are not sold! We are saved by Janet and Bob who call us and ask us to come over. They take us out to their barn to see 'something new'. They have built a series of pens, with fresh straw laid, water buckets firmly in place, and a well fenced area outside. "We'd like to buy the goats," they tell us. "In all these years, we've never found just the right animals for us, but you know we love your goats as much as you do." That was certainly true. Sometimes we'd gotten the feeling Janet came over to see them, rather than us!
Joe and I look at each other. "Janet, we can't possibly sell you the goats," I say, and Joe stares at me like I'm being irrational or something. "But we'd love to give them to you. We'd love to know they'll be here, with you and Bob." I am in fact, very relieved. It is the perfect solution to a difficult problem. And Joe instantly agrees. Billy and his four lady friends will have a new home where they will be loved as the pets they are.
Howie and Pete, our great store friends, are sad about our move. We'll be further away, but not so far we can't still visit. And our craft making days will be over for good. They come for a final goodbye to the farm. It is very bitter-sweet for all of us.
The day finally comes to load up a big truck again. Molly and Mary have come and gone, with Mary driving our car back. We'd bought a leash for Dawg. We worried constantly about how he would react when the time came for him to get into the truck. All day he watches as we carry things from the house and load them into the truck. We have no helpers. We'd refused all offers, this is for us to do alone. We wonder now, if Dawg can possibly remember back to the day when he watched us do this very thing in reverse. He seems nervous, and restless, and never leaves us for a minute. Can he possibly understand what it means?
The time has come. As agreed, we both get in the truck. I leave my door open. "Come on, Dawg," I say. "Are you coming with us?" It is a very faint hope that it will be this easy, but worth a try before we resort to drastic measures.
To our complete astonishment, Dawg puts his paws on the steps, and jumps up into the truck. He half sprawls on my lap. Before he can change his mind, I swing the door shut. "Good Boy!" We pat him and fuss over him and his tail wags a bit. He's nervous. He's afraid perhaps. But he is not about to be left behind!
And so..... we head down the lane for the very last time. As we pass the 'barn complex', the new barn attached to the original old small one, a memory comes flooding back to me.
It was a time when Joe was in the city for a few days with his family and I was on my own. A sudden storm had come up, a real downpour, with violent, furious winds. As I stood on the porch watching it, a sheet of metal at the very peak of the two storey older section of the barn suddenly ripped loose. It began flopping and banging in the wind. In no time it seemed, it was stripped back a good six feet by the powerful storm. If that went, the rest of the roofing might follow. We couldn't afford that! The thought of climbing up there in the storm was terrifying but there was no choice, and no time to think.
I grabbed a hammer, and fetched some roofing nails. Putting up a ladder, I got onto the lower new barn's roof and then hopped up onto the edge of the steep, slippery old barn roof. The wind whipped at my clothing and the rain was blinding. Somehow, I braced the sides of my feet against the metal and edged my way up. I pushed with my feet and hung on with my fingernails. 'You can do it, you can do it', I kept repeating to myself. At last I reached the peak. I managed to grab the piece of wildly wind-whipped metal and wrestle it back down. I banged away at it with the hammer, flattening it as best I could, and then nailed it back in place. Done! I was soaked, and shaking. But I had done it! I swung one leg over the peak so I was straddling it and thrust my fists high into the air. I raised my face to the pounding rain and screamed like a madman. Wahooooooo! I felt triumphant.
Suddenly there was a deafening roll of thunder, followed almost immediately by a jagged, neon bright flash of lightning which briefly illuminated the pelting rain. And scared the bejeepers out of me!
I crawled my way back down one whole hell of a lot quicker than I'd gone up! Of course I never told Joe that part.........
Half way down the lane, Joe suddenly stops the truck. I look at him in surprise. "Hold Dawg," he says, "I'll be right back." Pee time already? I watch out the window as he slips through the trees and disappears into the field. But soon he returns, carrying something in one hand. He climbs back in, settles himself and holds out his hand. I reach out. With his free hand, he takes mine, and then carefully places into it a half dozen wild strawberries. Choke up time.
At least it would have been but Dawg bumps my hand and sends them flying all over the cab of the truck. Joe and I look at each other. And burst out laughing.
As we drive on down the lane, I stroke Dawg's head. I wrap one arm around his neck so as not to frighten him and then let out a Wahoooooooooo at the top of my lungs. Joe joins right in. WAHOOOOOOOOO as we drive through the gate and head on down the road.
