The Road Home

Copyright © 2011 Leslie H. Garrison

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Balboa Press rev. date: 6-03-2013

Contents

Introduction

In the Beginning Was…

Construction of a Dream

The Facts of Life

The Great Outdoors

Becoming More Self-Reliant

And on this Farm, They Had Some Cows

Foul Tales

Winters in the Wilderness

In the Good Ole Summertime

With an Oink-Oink Here and an Oink-Oink There

Books Abound

Visitors

Harvest Time

Exodus… and the Road Home

Epilogue

About the Author

Endnotes

For my family

Introduction

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

from Walden, Conclusion

by Henry David Thoreau

B eing born into a typical suburban family in the mid-1960s, I took for granted all the comforts and conveniences modern society had to offer. I was completely addicted to them as my first decade on the planet neared a close. Imagine my surprise when my family gave it all up and moved to what seemed to me an outpost beyond civilization.

The goal was to become more self-reliant, to provide life’s necessities with our own hands. Not only to know where our food came from, but to produce much of it ourselves. Life’s more extravagant things were optional. If we could not make or afford them, we could survive without them. We were going to live the simple life.

As with most dreams, our new circumstances didn’t quite live up to every idyllic pastoral fantasy we may have envisioned at the start. Like any good adventure, once embarked upon, reality offered up unexpected twists, turns, triumphs, and tears. Each surprise and new experience meant adaptations had to be made and new skills had to be learned.

We did not come from generations of agricultural masters. We were soft suburbanites, winging it in the world of self-reliance. During my teenage years, I became increasingly aware of the sacrifices we were making. While our suburban counterparts would spend an hour at a conveniently located grocery store to gather supplies for a decent meal, we would spend months tilling the soil, planting seeds, and waiting for crops to grow, to accomplish the same feat.

Whenever I questioned the sanity of our mission, the response was always a firm one: We’re trying to teach you self-reliance. It was said with such purpose that I found consolation in the thought that I may not understand it yet, but someday I would come to appreciate how it had shaped me in an important and helpful way.

Before I could reach that understanding, our rural existence ended. As I was completing college, my parents divorced, and our family abandoned the experiment in self-reliance. We each returned to civilization and began lives of our own, enjoying all the comforts and conveniences previously lacking.

In the decades that followed, I would occasionally look back on the farm years and wonder what to make of them. On the surface, our lives today didn’t seem to share any resemblance to the years of self-reliance. How had those years shaped us? Was there any purpose after all? Was the endeavor a failure?

Life takes each of us on a unique adventure. There are always gifts and lessons to be learned, if only we take the time to recognize them. In an attempt to gain that long-desired understanding, I began to recall those days in the stories presented here. In the end, I found my way to understanding and appreciation, and I can wholeheartedly say, thank you, Mom and Dad, for the sacrifices you made to give us this foundation in life.

CHAPTER ONE

In the Beginning Was . . .

The Land

 . . . I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; . . . .

from Walden, Economy

by Henry David Thoreau

I t all began with the most fundamental of desires: independence. My family lived in the second-floor apartment of a century-old farmhouse owned by my maternal great-grandparents. They resided symbiotically on the floor below us. While this had been an acceptable arrangement for my parents in the first months of marriage, when they were barely out of high school, five years and two children later, it was becoming a bit claustrophobic.

Inspired to strike out on their own, they began considering their options. They weighed the delicate balance of price and location over weeks of exploration and eventually resolved that their meager life savings would be best spent on several acres of land in the country, rather than on a tiny plot in suburbia. With this settled, a profound new idea soon followed. More than merely providing a home, they had the power to transport us to a completely different way of life.

They were young. Dad was twenty-five, Mom twenty-three, and they had all the enthusiasm and idealism that youth bestows. The thought of raising their children away from the increasing pace, pressures, and influences of society (such as they were in the turbulent late-196os) was appealing. Visions of an idyllic farm life began to form.

There were other less-conscious influences. Mom had always loved animals and the great outdoors. As a young girl, she would take every opportunity to escape to the barn and pastures of a neighboring dairy farmer. She felt most at home among the farm animals and the tranquil, wide-open spaces nature provided.

Furthermore, she had read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, the story of one man’s adventure living apart from society in his hope of gaining an objective understanding of it. He wanted to simplify his life, to rely more completely upon himself for his existence, and to determine if that might ultimately impact his quality of life. His experiment captivated her imagination and stayed with her, even if only subliminally.

Perhaps there were further inducements of which I am unaware. But for all these, to a four-year-old girl it seemed the interest in moving was due solely to mice. Great-Grandma’s farmhouse was infested with them. Each night, as we lay in our beds, we would hear the pitter-patter of tiny rodent feet running inside the walls behind our heads. Occasionally, Mom would find mouse droppings cradled in the spoons of the silverware drawer. Based on her repulsion, I got the impression that our living conditions weren’t ideal.

**The decision**

Moving to the country seemed straightforward enough. We could not have anticipated how profoundly that choice would affect our lives. Before the move, our daily existence was similar to most of our suburban neighbors: full of the support of family, friends, and modern conveniences. We lived on the same street my mother had grown up on; in fact, there were four generations of her family living within a mere half-mile of us. Nearby grocery stores provided all the food we could possibly desire. Our doctor’s office was just a few miles away, and he made house calls if needed. Water flowed from the tap in an unending supply, as easily and conveniently as air flowed in and out of our lungs. So much was literally at our fingertips that we had the luxury of taking it all for granted.

But this mainstream existence began to ebb away one fateful afternoon, when my younger brother, Jimmy, and I were called to a family meeting. Since we didn’t usually have these, Jimmy and I knew something important was happening. The four of us gathered around the kitchen table, where Mom and Dad explained in businesslike seriousness that it was time to get a place of our own. They wanted to purchase some land and build a house, but they didn’t have quite enough money. They would need to borrow Jimmy’s and my savings as well, if that was okay with us. Paltry amounts though they were at our tender ages of two and four, every penny counted. They would repay us as soon as they could.

Well, this had adventure written all over it! Not to mention it seemed to depend on our contribution, which made it all the more exciting. We enthusiastically bought into the scheme, and our fortunes were thrown together that afternoon.

Within the year, Mom and Dad purchased forty-two acres of land in rural western New York. It was approximately fifty-five miles away from our entire world. In 1970, that was so distant from everything and everyone familiar that it might as well have been on the moon.

The Land, as it came to be revered by us, was mostly woods backing to a creek. In addition, there was a thirteen-acre field for planting hay and corn crops, and clearings along the road frontage that would make an ideal setting for a house. It became official: we were moving to the country.

As fate would have it, our parcel of land was located just outside the town of Concord, New York. It is believed to be named after Concord, Massachusetts, the home of Henry David Thoreau. One hundred twenty-five years earlier, he had moved to Walden Pond on the outskirts of Concord, Massachusetts, to launch his experiment in self-reliance. Now it was our turn. Like Mr. Thoreau, the first thing we needed to provide for ourselves was a home.

**Let the adventure begin**

Dad, by now an electrical draftsman in the aerospace industry, began designing the house. His evenings and weekends were devoted to drawing up a floor plan that would suit our needs. He consulted with Mom on the details. Initially their ideas were grand, but the realities of time and budget reined them in considerably.

While the plans were in development, we yearned to explore our newfound patch of earth and began visiting on the occasional weekend to camp and scope out the terrain. None of us had ever camped before. We were absolute rookies when it came to surviving without basic amenities like plumbing, running water and electricity. But, undeterred, we gathered camping supplies, loaded our 1968 Ford pickup truck, and headed for the open spaces, accompanied by our devoted dog, Sugar Toes. She was part toy collie, which gave her the appearance of a