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Working next to him in the garden, Papa admired the palpable strength of Scott’s character and was encouraged by the fact that a man who’d been fired from his teaching posts by a conservative society had gone on to lead a full life of his own choosing. Now, with an unpopular war being waged in Vietnam, the Nearings’ example was inspiring increasing numbers of back-to-the-landers. In Papa’s eyes, Scott had won.

Joining Helen and Mama on the stone patio, they talked over carved wooden bowls of vegetable soup topped with freshly chopped parsley. In Mama’s memory it was the most delicious soup she’d ever tasted—to this day, the smell of parsley brings back that charmed afternoon.

Back at Franconia in August, Mama, while waitressing at a restaurant called Lovett’s, found herself running to the bathroom with nausea after delivering food to diners. She thought her period was late because she hadn’t been eating much, but soon it was confirmed that she was pregnant, due in April. Her heart danced a jig. For the past year, something in her body had been telling her it was time for a child. Papa was also thrilled, but at twenty-nine years of age, with a twenty-three-year-old wife, he felt ever more strongly the need to provide a home and income for his growing family. During the July visit to the Nearings’, the older couple had mentioned owning a hundred-some acres on Cape Rosier, though Papa hadn’t dared to think they would sell. As the cool weather of fall began to close in, he decided to write and ask. A week later, they received that postcard from Helen offering them the sixty acres.

“I’m afraid to believe it’s for real,” Mama said, as they drove up in the VW to look at the land. Back in the Nearings’ kitchen, Helen and Scott asked what they could afford to put down. Papa estimated about $2,000, leaving enough reserves from their $5,000 in savings to build a house and live until they could start making money. Divide $2,000 by sixty acres, and the Nearings offered them a price of a little over $33 per acre, the amount the Nearings had paid when they bought the land almost twenty years earlier.

“Most important to pay as you go,” Scott said, referring to his lifelong economic philosophy of never going into debt. He also said he didn’t like to make income without doing work to earn it, which meant it was morally offensive to him to raise the cost of the land simply because it’d appreciated over the years. Helen piped in to say she’d seen in the lines of their palms that they’d be good neighbors. So with a handshake, it was settled—Papa would bring the $2,000 in cash when he returned.

It was not the dream farm Papa had in his mind’s eye during the search, lacking as it did cultivated fields and a pond. But none of that mattered; it was their ground on which to stand, unbeholden to a mortgage or bank, and it was up to them to make it into the dream.

As I tottered and babbled after the chickens, Mama finished carving and painting her masterpiece, a large sign for the end of our driveway with the words “The Vegetable Garden” in big letters over a painted outline of a wheelbarrow full of a cornucopia of vegetables. She planted a bed of marigolds and snapdragons beneath it. Our farm stand was ready for business. At first it was only a few baskets of this or that next to a chalkboard with names and prices. With Mama’s help, the random customers could select for themselves the lettuce or tomatoes of their choice.

Soon word got out, and the trickle of customers wandering down the grassy lane began to increase. They’d heard about the flavorful tomatoes that Papa pronounced “to-mah-toes,” “because you say ahhhh when you taste them.” The carrots were so sweet, they would eventually be dubbed “candy carrots” by an appreciative child. There were butterhead lettuces that held the beautiful formation of enormous roses, and cabbages the size of basketballs. “I’ve never cared for spinach until yours,” a customer said of Papa’s large and especially tasty leaves. Even Helen and Scott