Maria and I went out to dinner tonight to celebrate Jamie Nash’s moving into Bedlam Farm. We haven’t signed any papers yet, but we shook on a deal and it feels good to us. The future of Bedlam Farm has been a remarkable experience for Maria and for me. Maria loved the farm, but it was always a place she saw as mine, not hers. Our new home is different, we are very much in it together. It is ours.
The sale of Bedlam Farm has altered our lives. It had a profound impact on our financial lives, one that will last in one form or another, for most if not all of the rest of my life. I told Maria at dinner tonight that I was so proud of her, of me, of us for the way we have dealt with this experience. I have struggled all of my life to know how to deal with money and now I know something about it. I am no longer afraid of money, no longer in panic about it, we are moving forward with our lives. I learned how to deal with a good and supportive bank (yes, in rural life there are still those). And I have often struggled to stay grounded, we never lost our footing, our confidence grew every day.
We always supported one another, never turned on each other or let the pressures in our life separate us. We have maintained a spiritual center in all of this, but never succumbed to the growing idea that what you imagine will come to be, nor did we really ever believe that all of the talismans, shrines, statues and positive thoughts would bring the right people to the farm. In the final analysis, I believe in a spiritual life, but it is the market that sells homes, not pendulums and statues of St. Joseph. Houses sell when they are ready, when someone wants to buy them.
I was surprised at my discomfort with the people who came to look at the farm, and stopped going to showings. I saw that most people are not like me, and that is something I just have to accept. We were sometimes frustrated with our realtor because it was taking so long, but we always pulled back from blaming her, we know better. It was hard to accept the realities of the new real estate market – waves of obnoxious people with their noses in the air – and the fact that it takes longer to sell houses than it used to.
The big idea behind Bedlam Farm it’s beautiful old farmhouse and gracious barns and pastures was that it was not for everyone, it was for a very few. It would always take someone like Jamie Nash to buy it – so much energy, so many ideas, he can see all of the things a place like that makes possible, he didn’t come looking for reasons not to rent the farm and possibly buy it, he came wanting to know how he could buy it and love. And love it he does. In the final analysis, this means more to me than anything. Except this, Maria and I were strengthened so much by this as a couple. His feeling for the farm was so affirming to me, I had come to doubt what my own eyes saw and my own heart felt.
We stood in the Pig Barn, where Maria held her art shows, and Jamie was stumped. The one building I don’t know quite what to do with, he said. Easy, I offered. How about an office. That’s what I had in mind when we restored it. I wanted to write a book there. Jamie, I said, you can hold open houses and seminars on farms there. Yes, he said, I get that, I like that. He could not know how much it lifted my heart to think of the Pig Barn being used that way again.
Maria and I are a couple now. We are partners, we trust one another, we stand by one another. We never criticized each other, undermined each other, blamed each other or argued. When we had to go and mow, we did. When we had to go and clean up and paint we did.
We were determined to stay even, to keep thinking of new ideas until we found the right one. We never stopped believing the right family was out there and that they would make their way to the farm. In the end, it was our decision to rent the farm that brought Jamie Nash to us. He will rent the farm for three years with an option to buy, he is a man whose word is bond, I feel that about him. I believe he will buy it somewhere along the line, he and his wife love it as I did, as Maria does. I trust in that, and if for some reason he does not, then someone else will appear.
From this experience, I take faith. I take a renewed understanding that fear and panic is a disease. I feel stronger, in myself, in Maria and I as an entity unto ourselves. Our love is strong, our support for one another enduring, our faith in each other steadfast. . A couple of years ago, we met and loved in panic, rushing from one crisis to another in our minds. We have come through to a better place, and that is yet another gift I can be grateful to Bedlam Farm for giving us.