This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [23]
Another successful habit adopted from the Nearings was their attention to detail, planning, and observation. They kept careful notes of what they did each year in the garden, such as which lettuces had grown well with what soil amendments and which ingredients worked best when making compost. Many of their discoveries came from chance observations that a less astute farmer might have missed, and from being in the right place at the right time. If something wasn’t working, it was time for a new plan, and they were always thinking ahead, even putting in trees to create a windbreak they might not live to enjoy.
“Helen and Scott are the only octogenarians I know who are planning for ten years down the road,” Papa often joked, but their steadfast and purposeful effort appealed to his still-young and impetuous mind and provided him with a framework to achieve his goals. The Nearings would prove, like most mentors, to have clay feet, and their ideas fallible, but their achievements will always be an extraordinary example of the power of determination and effort.
“Just you watch,” Scott liked to say about the unlikely force of water. “With continual effort it will find a way to the sea.”
“Let’s visit the Nearings,” Papa had said to Mama two years earlier as they headed out in their VW truck with its built-in camper on a land-hunting trip around New England. They’d stopped at the Nearings’ coastal Maine farm on Cape Rosier once before, to find that the Living the Good Life authors welcomed visitors, as long as you weren’t afraid to help around the farm.
It was the summer of 1968, and Papa had just lost his job at Franconia College. That spring, Vietnam protesters at Columbia took over the administration and shut down the university, the musical Hair scandalized Broadway with full nudity, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. For Mama and Papa and others, there was a feeling of powerlessness in the face of opposing forces and a longing for ground on which to stand.
The political climate at Franconia College was also in turmoil, tension building between the liberal faculty, including a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, and the conservative board. On April 5, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated, an article ran in what Time dubbed the “archconservative” Manchester Union Leader. “Bare Debauchery at Franconia: Drugs, Liquor, Sex Rampant on Campus,” it declared, effectively dwarfing the MLK story. Although the tales of sex and drugs at Franconia were said to be exaggerated, students certainly grew marijuana in the woods, and unmarried couples slept together on campus. The fallout was that Franconia’s president was forced to resign, and many of the more vocal faculty members, including Papa, were let go or resigned in solidarity.
“To hell with them,” Papa said. After the initial sting of loss, he felt a new freedom. They could do anything; now was the time to find land of their own. He had $5,000 in savings, which seemed like a lot of money at the time; the average national annual income was about $7,000. Following the Nearings’ example, they sought a place they could afford to pay for in full—a perfect piece of land to start a farm and home.
“Everyone shares a kinship with the land,” Papa wrote years later in his first book, The New Organic Grower. “No matter where we are in time and distance, the desire for the ideal country spot is very real. Whether the image comes from books, childhood experiences, or the depths of our souls, it has an indelible quality. The dream farm has fields here, an orchard there, a brook, and large trees near the perfect house, with the barns and outbuildings set off just so. The dream is effortless. The difficulty comes in trying to find such a place when you decide to buy one.