Abby, Her Farm
AUGUST 1941
Can a child’s imaginary farm be transformed into reality?
It began with a chance remark at age seven, on a Sunday afternoon in the country. “When I grow up, I shall have a farm.” Her father and I smiled, perceiving nothing ominous.
Thereafter, the references to a farm – ultimatums – came with increasing frequency. About a year later, vaguely disquieted, and thinking to take up the slack of our eight year old’s morbid rural yearnings, I bought her a thoroughbred mare and boarded it in one of those sweet-scented, spit-and-polish stables.
It worked – for about a week. And then one day, accusingly, “Just look at this horse’s feet! Those shoes will hardly hold! Now if we had a farm...”
I groaned and looked away from those remorseless eyes that bored through my makeshift soul. “But darling, we can’t,” I began for the hundredth time. “We have a lease. Your father works in the city. Have you any idea what that means?”
But somehow, during the next few weeks, a large dog, two rabbits and five cats were added unto us. Though otherwise extremely prudish, Abby did not quail before the facts of reproduction. Kittens aplenty and frequently a-borning were to be found anywhere, from our best shoes to the kitchen sink. “That’s all right,” she would reassure us. “The mother will clean it up. But on the farm, I may have to help the lambs get born.”
“It would be nice if we had a pig – now,” she said implacably. Our zoning restrictions very definitely prohibited pigs. “But how would they know?” Abby argued reasonably. “The cops don’t even catch kidnappers. How would they catch a pig?”
“By smell, if nothing else,” I muttered. “Now for heaven’s sake keep still about it! Pigs are out.”
Scarcely were the words out of my mouth when the school’s Parent Teacher Association announced its annual party – with a greased pig to be given away to the parent lucky enough to catch the slippery hog bare-handed.
The odds of 200 to one against Abby’s father catching the pig must have challenged his spirit, for when the time came to loose the creature upon the school lawn, he had organised a ‘pig circle’ with all 200 fathers holding hands. Someone sprang the box lid, the frenzied animal made a beeline for the nearest man, and Abby’s next-to-fondest dream came true. She had a pig.
Burning with mother love, she husbanded the poor creature into its box, then shut it in our car. “You and Pop can go back to the party now,” she said firmly. “You aren’t enough like other parents as it is.”
“But that greasy pig will get out on the upholstery! Besides, he’s hurt – he’s groaning. He should be killed at once!”
Then, “What do you mean, I’m not like the other mothers?”
Her eyes never left the boxful of pig. “Well, you aren’t. You don’t knit, you never make cookies and you haven’t any bosom.” I threw up my hands and allowed myself to be led away, muttering, by her ribald father. When we got back the pig had been freed. “It had claustra – claustra – that thing you get in the subway,” Abby explained. “Anyway – pigs are nervous.”
Stricken, we stared inside the car. It had indeed been ver y nervous – all over the upholstery. We considered the poor panting creature at bay on the back seat; then we considered Abby. “I think,” said her father heavily, “it would be cheaper to trade her in for something civilised.”
Christmas brought only one wistful request, for a female goat – ungranted. “But we could drink the milk and save money,” she protested.
Her terrifying blend of logic and economy finally took its toll of resistance. Every time the market went down, her father would gaze across the dinner table and say, “Abby, tell me about the farm. Could we live on silage?”
By New Year’s he had left on a business trip and I was alone with Abby and the Rotation of Crops.
“What is that book you seem to be making?” I asked one night.
“My farm book.” Hesitantly she brought it to me – a thin, cardboard affair tied with green yarn illustrated with beautiful pink and black watercolours of Poland China hogs.
I stared at the first page and read: “In the beginning of the 20th century, Mr Aaron Aaronsohn discovered a wi ld wheat growing on the dry and rocky slopes of Mt Herman.” Page two was solid with statistics about the yields one may expect from an acre of corn. The next page in a fine spirit of non sequitur, bore only this avowal: “Nothing Will Be Bought From A Store. I Shall Weave My Clothes And Wear Long Hair.”
“Abby!” I cried. “Is this why you won’t have your hair cut? Is this why I go through hell and high water every day fixing those pigtails? I peered sharply at her braids and remembered how she measured their weekly progress with a piece of string. “Will you have spring shearings with the sheep?” I asked.
HER TERRIFYING BLEND OF LOGIC AND ECONOMY FINALLY TOOK ITS TOLL
“If you’ll turn to the end of the book,” she said, unmoved, “you’ll see what the farm’s going to be like. Then you won’t worry so.” Rebuked by her dignity, I turned to a sort of prose poem, entitled simply ‘My Farm’.
I want the kind of farm where chickens run loose in the front yard, and a timid long-haired colt pokes his inquisitive nose out from his mother’s back to stare at you in surprise.
I will hear the tinkling of bells made by the big Merino sheep as they drift slowly along, following their leader. I will see the big fat mother sow and her recent family grunting for food and enjoying the cool inviting mud.
Then I will go slowly through my fields of waving corn to a low rambling farmhouse nestled among the lilac trees. I would enter. There will be a smell of good things in the air. I will see sausage broiling on the stove.
The sunbeams will find their way across the thick planked oaken floors to the pewter plates on the mantelpiece. The flowers on the table will match the crazy patchwork quilt on my high wooden bed. The sheets will be old and fine; there will be a rag rug on the floor.
Yea, though I walk through the Valley... my mind subconsciously
“IF YOU TURN TO THE END OF THE BOOK YOU’LL SEE WHAT THE FARM IS GOING TO BE LIKE”
went on in the rhythm of those paragraphs. Then I closed the Farm Book and laid it down gently.
“I see I was wrong about those pigtails,” I said. “They’ll be very proper – if we can keep them out of the churn!”
With a wild whoop she was upon me, and the guerrilla warfare of two long years was wiped out with one tremendous hug.
“Wi l l you wi re Pop right away – will you tell him to buy a farm?” she shrieked.
Clinging to reason with one enfeebled hand, I managed to push her off to bed without that final incriminating ‘Yes’.
An empty victory. Next morning I found on my desk this conclusive document in a familiar hand: Dept. of Agriculture Dear sirs, My father is going to buy a farm so I wish to be prepared for whatever might follow. Could you please send me instructions for the care of these certain domesticated animals? A few cows of Guernsey breed, a few of the harder things about horses, goats (the best breed), sheep and where to buy the best stock.
I picked up the phone and said to the operator, “Western Union telegrams please. And hurry.”