Of Men and Mushrooms

I remember being a kid who was, always and perpetually, horse-obsessed. When I was about 4, I began pestering my parents for a horse, for a farm, for living in the country. My dad used to tell me "I'll get a horse for my grandchildren." I think I understand now that they would really love to have given me that, but it was not within their reach. I know this because I am now the parent who didn't manage to give her kids that experience until they weren't kids any more.

When I was in residency training, I promised my youngest daughter - the only one still living at home by then - that if I just got through it we would live in the country, wherever we ended up, and she could have whatever animals she wanted (within reason - I did have to put the hammer down on an elephant). I PROMISED her. And did not deliver until she had graduated high school.

But here we are, on a farm, with animals. So my other kids all came for their holiday visit and saw the farm for the first time. I was really curious how they would respond to it, whether they would love it or hate it or not care two figs about any of it. And like a kid with a new toy, I could not wait to show it to them. I insisted my husband was not allowed to take my son who arrived first on a tour of the property, he had to wait and let me take him. This is the son who has never (unlike his brother or younger sister) been horse crazy or expressed a desire to get back to nature. The son who has traveled Europe, seen great cities, worked in research in Germany and graduated with a degree in engineering. I did NOT expect him to be particularly impressed. Hah. After years of academic drudgery he had started wanting to get more connected to things, the earth, whatever, and to do real work with his hands. Hey, I am ALL for this, I have a lot of real work that needs doing, so I was down with that plan.

Four days later his siblings arrived, my oldest daughter, son-in-law, and youngest son. A couple days later the engineer's best friend arrived. We suddenly had a very full house. It was insane. And I loved it. Not the mud, exponentially increased quantities of trash and recyclables, or reduced frig space from all the exotic beers, but the pandemonium of MY KIDS filling my house and my farm.

Each in their turn got the walk through the pastures, shown how to feed the various animals, shown the orchard, and then up to the upper field to tromp around and see the view. And each in their turn found their response to the farm. My oldest daughter took her camera and found lots to photograph (which she does rather brilliantly much of the time). My engineer and his friend - who studied mycology in college and was a horticulture major - became obsessed with finding and identifying all the mushroom species on the place. I had NOOOO idea how many fungi I had around here. My kitchen table looked like a science lab - multiple plates and trays with carefully laid out mushrooms with overturned glass bowls on top of them to try and capture the spores and help in their ID. I got them a book on mushroom species of the Northwest. And prayed an awful lot that they were neither eating nor smoking any of them.

My youngest, the one who is dying to live "off the grid" and who has always been obsessed with anything having a motor and a key, couldn't wait to learn to drive the tractor. Then he very helpfully jumped right in and despite the rain cleared out the stumps, old bits of this and that, and debris behind the woodshed so I could put a chicken house there. My older son (the engineer/mushroom hunter) had been giving me no little amount of grief for driving my diesel-burning, pollution-belching farm implement to do things like move hay, which he (being considerably more buff than I) could just do manually. So it cracked me up no end to look out as my other son finished up his clearing project to see the two of them taking off up the firelanes headed for the upper field - on the evil machine. When they could have walked. Boys are such - BOYS.

Gradually they left for home, leaving my engineer here for another week. Two days before he left, I came home one night and found him up near the garden in the fading light. I called out to him to ask what he was doing. "Digging." Digging what pray tell, in the near dark? "A hole." Well, that was highly illuminating, but whatever. The next night I came home to find out he had come into the house requesting an extension cord and Christmas lights. Apparently he plopped an entire string of lights in a big wad down on the ground to provide light so that he could keep digging, knowing he left the next day and wanting to finish. Finish WHAT??? Just digging.

So the morning of his last day here, I went out in the daylight to see what it was. He was inordinately proud of it. It was a good 2 feet deep, square, a good 6 feet on a side. A gigantic - hole. With an island in the middle, about 2 feet square. And all that excavated dirt had been piled up on 2 sides and crowned with beer bottles. It was rather elegant. And hysterical. So this is what happens when a large strong male with energy to burn is turned loose with a shovel and no restrictions. When my husband asked me why I thought he had dug the hole, I said "Because he didn't get to do it when he was ten."

I love having this place. I hate that I didn't get to have it for my kids when they were growing up. Except that they are still growing up, and hopefully one day their kids will play here, but in the meantime THEY are getting to PLAY. Some of their play is work - my son did rake up a lot of debris from the filbert orchard and planted 14 blueberry bushes - and a lot of the work seems like play to them. This might not last, but then again - I am considerably more "grown up" than any of them and I still delight in the work of my hands (and back, and knees, and all those other things that hurt) around this farm.

This, my dears, is living.