Reflections on the Third Week of Spring – Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday

Old Farm Photo of Wells Wood

Day Trippers

1997 – 2005

Friday afternoon, April 11, 1997, Spence listened to Science Friday on the radio while he drove from Ohio to Mercer, Pennsylvania―a drive that changed our lives.

Across from the Mercer County Courthouse, he walked into the ERA Johnson Real Estate office and signed papers to purchase Wells Wood from his mother’s estate. On the following Monday, while the real estate agent filed those papers at the courthouse, Spence drove to Pennsylvania again. He moved the For Sale sign from the yard to the porch and left a celebratory potted pussy willow by the porch door.

And every year since, we’ve celebrated Paper Signing Friday, April 11, and Farm Purchase Monday, April 14.

The first celebration we planted trees. Below the far end of the garden, the shape and size of a football field, Spence thrust the post hole digger into the ground, pulled out a clump of soil, and released the clump.

Kneeling on the other side of the row, I shook the sod-topped clump and inhaled the fragrance of moist, rich earth. Dangling an evergreen seedling’s roots in the hole, I filled soil around the roots and moved onto the next hole. Shaking the clump from Spence’s fourteenth hole released more than soil. A baby garter snake fell out and coiled in the bottom of the hole. I shivered at the thought of touching it even though I’d touched many a squiggling worm that day. “Spence. Would you move that?” I pointed into the hole.

He peered in. “The snake’s happy there.” He tossed the sod on top of the snake. “I’ll dig another hole.”

Spence dug thirty-three holes, and we planted.

5 white pines

5 Douglas firs

5 Frazer firs

5 Canadian hemlocks

2 weeping willows

5 American filberts

1 white dogwood

2 Sarah mountain laurels

2 Yankee Doodle mountain laurels

Over the years, we’ve planted more than a hundred fifty trees and bushes. Some became deer snacks. More than half lived.

The next April two trees had fallen across the woods path to Deer Creek. Spence took a foot and a half wide stance to wield his chain saw. Brum-brum-brum-brrrrrrrrrrrr. Sawdust sprayed, and logs thudded to the ground.

While a breeze blew wispy hair into my face, I carried armfuls of logs and stacked them by the edge of Deer Creek Road. Our neighbor Mary Ann burned those logs in her fireplace.

Over the years, Spence cut fallen trees, and we stacked logs. The wood piles served friends’ fireplaces in Cleveland and Carlton before feeding our own wood burning stove. Branches of trees became fence posts and raised bed walls. Spence only downed one live tree―the hemlock growing into the porch of his parent’s cabin.

After trees―going in and coming out―garden work dominated our celebratory visits. Accompanied with generous amounts of weeding, we planted garlic, onion sets, peppers, wildflowers, strawberries, grapes, and more.

At the top of the old driveway on Palm Sunday April 2003, punkies swarmed around my face. I swatted them between stabbing the ground with a trowel. Rocks scraped against the metal blade. Spence could have dug faster, but he squatted to plant a pound of onion sets in the garden. I dug three holes in the memorial planting for Aunt Marge’s friend Chris―two butterfly bushes and a shasta daisy. Then I dusted the knees of my jeans and walked back to the cabin for another memorial planting honoring my friend Pat, a colleague and cat-lover. Without scraping stones, I dug a hole by the cabin door for a giant pussy willow―the spot I would have planted the original celebratory pussy willow if someone hadn’t stolen it.

With the pussy willow patted into place, I picked up a watering can to get water for the memorial plantings. I rounded the porch to the barrel my father-in-law placed below the drain spout. A dead mouse floated in the rain water. Taking a giant step back and giving myself credit for not shrieking, I pivoted and followed the path through the woods to fetch water from Deer Creek.

Over the years, we carried many a bucket of water to the garden until we collected rain water in cisterns. Spence created another garden in the south field, built more than a dozen raised beds, started seedlings in the basement, used PVC pipes for plant supports and protective cages, and tinkered to secure Mr. Hooper, his portable greenhouse.

The eighth celebration, of Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday, started with gardening―planting a third pound of red onion sets, two-thirds pound of white, and one pound of yellow. Then we cleared the cabin’s screened in porch. Spence steered the Gravely, his Dad’s old walk-behind tractor, out of its center-floor parking spot. I carried armfuls of travel gear to the pickup truck. Finally, I scrubbed the plastic cloth on the picnic table, dusted the benches, and swept the tracked-in dirt out the porch door.

Spence and the Gravely April 2011

At 4:00, Samuel Somers, a Mennonite log house builder, arrived in his pickup and carried a folder of papers to the porch. He and I sat on one side of the picnic table. Spence sat on the other. Page by page we discussed the log house Samuel would build in the potato patch because that soil drained well―a fact numerous groundhog burrows verified.

Superior walls (precast insulated concrete walls) or a cement brick foundation?

Samuel would check the prices.

Which of two wood stoves―the less expensive Dutchwest with a catalytic converter or the Quadra Fire 3100 with better efficiency and a lower EPA rating?

The fellas said I could decide that and the kitchen layout.

How soon could we get the well operating?

Spence would look for the contact information for the Sandy Lake well company because Samuel needed running water for construction to start the end of May.

After adding items to the plans―an electric bathroom heater, a cistern for collecting rain water, and outlets for ceiling fans―Spence laughed. “Samuel’s trying hard to keep the house within our budget. We keep adding things which increase the price.”

Over the years, we sat with other contractors for Wells Wood improvements―a detached garage, demolition of the old cabin, installation of solar panels, and re-staining logs too high for Spence to reach on our ladder.

This year, my project for celebrating Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday took a total of five days. I read all twenty-two years of April farm journals and reflected on Verlyn Klinkenborg’s  words.

When you take on a property . . . you leave traces of yourself with every decision you make, every fence you build, every tree you fell or plant . . . In twenty years’ time, a self-portrait emerges, and it exposes all the subtleties of your character . . .”

The Rural Life (page91) 

The journals and the view from our large let-nature-in windows confirmed Klinkenborg’s assertion. Tree work, gardening, and construction projects exposed our character traits―practical, living in harmony with nature, the simple life. The PVC pipes and Mr. Hooper’s stability revealed Spence’s ingenuity. The memorial plantings revealed my sentimentality.

The journal reading also revealed a corollary. The land lured us closer and closer.

Over the years, a dozen celebrations included walks. Walks to view daffodils, find frog eggs, and count kinds of wildflowers blooming. We walked through the woods but not in the creek. Only our niece Laura ventured into the creek in April. “It’s cold,” she said holding her hands out from her sides with fingertips resting on top of the waist deep water. But she didn’t climb out.

On a rainy day in 2000, when Spence and I made the trip for a two and a half hour stay, I carried our bag lunch, and we walked through the woods to Deer Creek. Water ran high, wide, and clear. Farmers hadn’t plowed upstream fields yet.

Spence and I stopped on the bank by the “thousand dollar log,” which his mother named because she and Spence’s dad had to pay an extra thousand dollars to extend their land purchase far enough to include that log. The rain stopped pattering. I spread my raincoat―wet side down―over the log and sat like my mother-in-law had on her walks through the woods. I opened the lunch bag and patted the space I left on the coat beside me.

“No thanks.” Spence stood behind me and reached his hand out for a sandwich. “I’m tired of sitting.” After he ate, he took photos of the creek. Then we squished through puddles on deer paths to check out woods ponds. Full with rain water, four different ponds contained frog egg masses―some clear, some white, and some with black dots of developing tadpoles.

Frog Eggs April 2005

Over the years, Spence and I combined Paper Signing Friday and Farm Purchase Monday with other holiday celebrations―his father’s April 5^th birthday, Earth Day, Palm Sunday, and Easter. We changed day trips for weekend and vacation visits.

Day Trippers	Weekenders/Vacationers
1997 – 2005	2006 – 2013

On Saturday, April 11, 2009, I’d planned three projects to celebrate Easter the following day. First I lugged twenty-six cartons of drying egg shells from the cold cellar to the kitchen table. Only my crazy brain would connect egg shells with Easter’s promise of eternal life. I dumped two dozen dry shells into a paper grocery bag and smashed them with a rolling pin. Spence said, “You’re a pip,” but I had fun smashing the shells to put under tomato seedlings in May. Why? Egg shells provide calcium without raising the soil’s pH level. And calcium, hopefully, will prevent blossom end rot.

The second project? Baking hot cross buns like I’d eaten in England when visiting Spence’s distant cousins. While I lifted the buns from the baking sheet to the cooking rack and savored the fresh baked aroma of our Easter breakfast, gravel crunched under tires in the driveway. Our son Charlie had driven four hours from Columbus, Ohio to surprise us with an Easter visit.

The third project was postponed for a walk to the bridge on North Road where we listened to Deer Creek gurgle and splash.

After supper, I coaxed Charlie into helping with that third project―dying hard boiled eggs. While the eggs drip-dried, we grabbed jackets, stepped outside, and gazed up. In an array of sparkling stars, we found Leo, Gemini, Cassiopeia, Orion, and the Big Dipper.

The sky, the ground, and the peace lured us to Wells Wood again and again. We changed from weekend and vacation visits to permanent residence.

Day Trippers	Weekenders/Vacationers	Residents
1997 – 2005	2006 – 2013	2014 – 2019

On one Paper Signing Friday, I cracked the black walnuts I’d harvested from our trees. On another Farm Purchase Monday, Spence cooked his breakfast of bulgar, rice, celery, green beans, and pork. Leaving the concoction on a low burner, he walked outside into the foggy 48ºF (9ºC) morning. He cut wild garlic shoots growing in the dewy grass. Back inside, he chopped the shoots and added them to his breakfast.

I coughed. My lips burned. My eyes itched.

Spence lifted the pan off the burner and carried it outside. Despite the weather, he ate the breakfast on his summer porch desk and read news from his laptop computer.

And this April 11, I put on my glasses and headed for the breakfast table. A sharp sting radiated through my right ear lob. Fearing the fourth tick bite within two years, I bend my head in front of Spence. “Do I have a tick behind my ear?”

He held my ear between his thumb and finger. “No. But you’ve got a cut and a black mark. You probably scratched it. It’s red.”

Uh-oh. The last time I got a tick, he’d thought it was a scab. To be safe, I put Vaseline on the spot to smother the tick―if it was a tick―and waited a half hour. When I reached back, I felt something sticking out of my ear. I squeezed it between my fingers, pulled, and looked. I had half a tick in my hand.

I must have gotten the tick when Spence and I walked through my friend Catherine’s woods looking at fallen trees for firewood or when I cut white pine branches into kindling sticks the day before. Figuring I could avoid the one Doxycyline pill treatment if a nurse dug the tick out before noon, I called Primary Health in Sheakleyville, a fifteen minute drive away.

No appointments until the afternoon. But the telephone nurse could get me a morning appointment in Transfer, a forty-five minute drive. I took it.

The Transfer nurse dug the tick out at 11:50 a.m. Phew. No Doxycyline needed.

But the Transfer doctor prescribed Doxycyline anyway―two pills a day for ten days. Sheesh.

Klinkenborg got it half right.

We left traces on the land. But the land,and its creatures, left its traces on us.

Field April 2003