Behind our farmhouse, by the pasture fence, just behind an old stone wall, Florence Walrath once had a small garden. It’s a nice spot for a garden, lots of sun, some shade, and an open field with a view behind it. I decide to resurrect her old garden, I have the gardening bug. This morning, at the Hubbard Hall Plant Exchange, I got the idea to fill this small garden with Dahlia’s, which I love, to make it mine, in her spirit and my taste. So I bought an armful of Dahlia bulbs (they aren’t hardy, they have to be dug up in the Fall and placed in our cold storage room for the winter) and brought them back to the farm. I’ll plant them tomorrow.
There are several different kinds of Dahlia’s there (I’m going back this morning to get some more), red and black and blue. I always get twitchy at unsolicited warnings and advice, but sought-after-advice is something different and I like to do things right, so if there are any Dahlia lovers out there and on Facebook, I’d welcome some counseling before I plant my Dahlia garden. I’m excited.
I can’t believe myself. I’ve never been a plant exchange in my life, and when Anne Dambrowski, our friend/gardener/bookkeeper told us about the Hubbard Hall Plant Exchange which began at 8 a.m. this morning behind the Hubbard Hall Arts Center in Cambridge, N.Y., it was like we just got a ticket to the World Series. I got up early to feed the animals and Maria and I were pulling into the Hubbard Hall Parking Lot with Red just after 8. We both scrambled around, stockpiling perennials, bulbs and some bushes. I’ve become a woo-woo, meditating and gardening, talking to my naturopath, going holistic. I love it.
We got $70 worth of flowers, all of which goes to benefit Hubbard Hall (where I teach my writer’s workshop). I decided to buy a bunch of dahlia’s and plant my own garden. More to come.
When we put Bedlam Farm on the market about a year and a half ago, we were asking $475,000 for it, and that, we were told, was priced to sell, comfortably below its assessed value. There is a beautiful old farmhouse, eight books were written there, a movie was shot there in part, its four lovely barns had all been restored, the house has all new wiring and plumbing and it has not only a beautiful view but a mile-long riding and walking path of its own in the woods. It never occurred to me that the house wouldn’t sell in a flash, and I surely would not have imagined writing in the next Spring that it was bring touched, painted, and out on the market still for $375,000 – as low as we can or will go. Yesterday Maria and I went there to pick some things up, and I looked at this farm, especially beautiful in the Spring.
“I can’t believe it hasn’t sold yet,” I said, genuinely surprised. “It is such a wonderful place.” Maria nodded. “Someone is coming,” she said, “who will just love it.” I think that it so. I have always considered Bedlam Farm a spirit, an entity. It has always been a teacher to me, old and wise and filled with humor and insight.
What, I wonder, is the meaning of it still being for sale? What does it say to me? The farm continues to teach me, even as it awaits its next chapter, its new people. The farm has been attracting owners for nearly 200 years, it will soon have another.
So it teaches me perspective.
No one predicted the farm be on the market so long. So it teaches patience. It is not what people say, it is what life says. No one can predict the course of life, how it will go, where it will go. I remember reading two years ago that we would all run out of oil shortly and be guarding our homes with guns. I read yesterday that new fossil fuel extraction technologies mean we will be energy independent in a decade or so. There are all kinds of people who will tell you what the future will bring, but very few who can do it.
I felt an obligation to be present when people came to see the farm. I did not care for most of them, or their manner. I did not want any of them but one to have the farm, and she didn’t seem to really want it either, just the idea of it. So I don’t go to showings anymore because I don’t want to harden myself against the new and obnoxious way people look at homes in such a buyer’s market.
The farm teaches me tolerance.
Having two farms, two taxes, two electric, oil and maintenance bills has challenged us financially. No long term health insurance for this couple, no trips South in the winter either or IRA’s drawing interest.
So the farm has taught us resourcefulness, we are thinking about money, spending it carefully and well. I am doing more, learning more, liking the sense of responsibility and confidence that comes with that. We even learned to love our bankers, who are understanding and helpful.
We did all of the things anxious sellers do in this odd market. We go the St. Joseph’s statue, we planted in the garden, talked to someone practicing Feng-Shui. We put a shrine up in the window, bought some crystals. We talked to the farm, released it, came to terms with it, as we were told to do. We were told our energy would release the farm when the time came. We were told to imagine the people who would buy it, and they would appear.
So the farm taught me that spirituality only goes so far, you can only take it so far, you can’t ask a statue or a shrine to do what the real estate market is now beginning to do. You can’t alter fate or destiny with plastic statues planted in the ground. I learned not to blame myself for not thinking thoughts that weren’t positive enough or cheerful enough. The world has its own realities, and the farm will sell when the forces of the world – buyers, the market, banks, rates – are all in alignment. Or maybe it will take an ad in the right market.
I love Bedlam Farm. It broke my heart a bit yesterday to see the beautiful restored Pig Barn where Maria had her wonderful art show, I thought we would be doing that forever, and I am determined it will happen again on our new farm. Walking yesterday on the Spring light, as the grass and flowers began coming up, I remembered how much I loved that place, how creative I was there, how beautiful it was, how wonderful to live in a home with tall ceilings, a screened-in porch, the Studio where my beloved wife came to life. This all good, all to the good. The farm has brought me wonderful memories.
So the farm teaches me to have faith in it, and in it’s purpose in my life. And I do.
