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| Better Farm's religious dining experience. |
In honor of her impending visit tomorrow to enjoy a North Country weekend filled with
pirate invasions and a
music festival, I'm reposting a story
my older sister, Kristen, wrote as an exercise in writing from someone else's point of view while merging fiction, memoir, non-fiction, and stories from other people. It's an Alice's Restaurant-esque piece taking place at Better Farm:
Better Grub Supper Club
The view from
Better Farm's
kitchen window is of a wide-open field stretching out toward a
hilltop. Trees create mountainous shadows, and the tops of bushes peek
out over frost-filled grasses and a large manmade pond Nicole's father
once gleefully referred to as the "mosquito breeding ground". The sun at
this particular moment was beginning its dip over the backs of the
silhouetted trees as a dozen people—roommates, artists-in-residence, and
locals—made their own dips down Cottage Hill Road and into Better
Farm's driveway.
Better Farm is an artists' retreat and sustainability education center started in 1970 as a hippie
commune. My Uncle Steve bought the property—a small 19th-century farmhouse,
milkhouse, and falling-down barn seated on 150 acres—with insurance money paid
out to him from a car accident in 1963 that left him paralyzed from the
chest-down. His parents had been taking care of him in their suburban New
Jersey home, and buying the acreage upstate was his way to be out on his own.
He got his friends, cousins, and brothers on board with heading north for a
summer, doubling the size of the house, and moving in to care for Steve's daily
needs. It would be 30 years before the last of them would leave.
The name for the place came from the
“Better Theory”, a concept Steve and his friends came up with that basically
says every moment presents us with a chance to grow as human beings. Instead of
seeing something as negative, then, it's “better”: an opportunity to become
more.
After a great deal of shopping, bartering, and cultivating, Nicole was
welcoming a cast of characters to the farm to commence Better Farm's First
Better Grub Supper Club Thanksgiving Dinner, in much the spirit of Arlo Guthrie's beloved “Alice's Restaurant”. Nicole leaned into the oven to check on
the main courses, taking care to baste the turkey and Tofurky in equal measure, a puff of steam rising out of the oven and enveloping her face in the scent of roasted bird, faux meat, stuffing, and
onions.
As she stood up, she couldn't help but think "world harmony begins when Tofurkeys and
turkeys can roast side by side."
I started spending a lot more time at the farm after Dad died, doing the
700-mile-round-trip Dad and I used to take, taking it now by myself or with
friends. It was sort of like a pilgrimage for me; a way to get out of my head,
reconnect with memories of my dad, and occupy the same space as Steve, who was
this human being who was so much larger than life. Steve and I would have
hours-long conversations about books, politics, birding, the environment; or
sit around at the kitchen table all afternoon and do crossword puzzles. The
farm became a place where I could relax and kind of reconnect to what was
important.
The
summer before Uncle Steve died, my sister Kristen and I were up visiting for a
weekend, and we all got on the topic of what would become of the farm should
anything happen to Steve. There was some discussion of it being left to the
group of us: Kris, our cousins Dan and Mike, and me. Kris squashed this,
reminding Steve of Mike's nomadic lifestyle and Dan's penchant for the same;
and her own love of the farm, but lack of time.
"Leave it to Nicole,” she told him. “We'll help her with what we
can, but she's the one who will love it for you, and make it into something
special."
Nicole
brushed a wavy lock of brown hair out of her eyes and thought back to her
apartment in Brooklyn, the one she broke the lease on to move out to the
country. It had a view of the gravel-covered flat roof below, and beyond that,
a brick building with windows that gazed into neighboring apartments. The
sounds of the traffic, the Kenyan restaurant below, police sirens, and barking
dogs were loud there; while here in Redwood, population 584, there is the vague
brush of the wind and the occasional ATV hum in the distance. Strains of The
Grateful Dead's “Friend of the Devil” meandered out of the iPod on the counter
and Jerry Garcia sang: "
Didn't
get to sleep last night 'til the morning came around/Set out runnin' but I take
my time/A friend of the devil is a friend of mine"
Steve's funeral was attended by
men who openly wept through their beards, running their hands over shiny heads
that once housed long, thick locks; and tribes of women who'd loved and
worshiped Steve. Kristen read a poem comparing Steve to Woton, the god in the
Wagnerian "Ring of the Nibelung" cycle who gives up his eye for
wisdom. Ex-girlfriends and cousins read poems and told stories. I muscled
through a eulogy of my own, which felt totally empty without the man himself
there to hear it.
Two months later I packed my bags,
adopted a puppy, and headed north to begin cleaning out, renovating, and
turning the dilapidated home into a green-living center, youth hostel, bed
& breakfast, and artists' retreat. I rented one of the rooms out and took a
couple odd jobs to make ends meet as I filed Better Farm's LLC status, while
Kristen create a website. Planning commenced for summer programming, like
workshops, internships, and artist residencies. I read books about gardening
and staked out a plot of ground in the yard for our organic farm, learned to
fire a gun, took up horseback riding, and became impervious to black flies and
mosquitoes.
In two days, Nicole would be leaving
for a brief respite to New Jersey. She'd visit with her family in her mother's Victorian
house in the affluent Northern New Jersey suburbs; a family gathering around a
formal dining table covered in an antique tablecloth, china her mom has had for
40 years, and sterling silverware polished for special occasions.
Behind her at the moment, though,
sat a giant wooden table and two 12-foot church pews packed with the people
living at Better Farm and a number of guests from town. There were mismatched
glass plates, all in different shades of white, and silver eating utensils with
different handles, collected over the years from the various miscreants who
invaded the farm. The cups were a mixture of mason jars, and coffee mugs with
dirty sayings and odd cartoons.
A family
friend, in talking about Steve at his funeral, said Steve became "an
island around which humans float." Nicole was beginning to feel like the
Better Farm house was fast-becoming that island in his absence.
We started with the library, a
1600-square-foot room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on each wall. Every
book had been read by Steve before being placed, in alphabetized order, by the
hands of one of his caretakers. We removed them, rebuilt some of the shelves,
dusted behind all the old volumes, and revealed decades' worth of fuzz, dog
fur, and long-abandoned mice nests. You should have seen the books—everything
from the Bible to Harry Potter, the Quaran to Dr. Zhivago, Dostoevsky, Oates,
Rand, and Hawkings. It was unbelievable.
Mike, Nicole's cousin, sported a beard reminiscent of Rip Van Winkle and sat at the table
chatting with Chris, an Iowa transplant who'd fallen in love with farm living,
and Bob, a truck driver from town. They were discussing the merits of eating a
turkey while planning out a designer chicken coop for Henrietta, the chicken Nicole
saved from becoming soup a few months earlier and the two chicks taken in to
keep her company.
"She's family, so she should
have a nicer area to live in," Mike said, his stringy blond hair nodding
as he moved his head in an affirmative motion.
"Organically, she's the same as
the bird in the oven. I don't see why we should be spending more than the
turkey cost to house next year's dinner," Bob jumped in, his belly
rumbling beneath his black Harley Davidson T-shirt at the thought.
"She should at least be
comfortable while she's fattening up," Chris stated, his own form
bumping the edge of the table as he moved to rise off the pew.
Nicole turned, her calloused hands
covered by tropical fish-shaped potholders, and picked up the pot of potatoes
rolling in the bubbling water. She began to pour the frothy white liquid
through the strainer balanced in the sink. "We are
not eating
Henrietta," she said, blue eyes focused on the task at hand. "She's
like a pet."
"But by next year, she would be
a rather delicious pet." Bob nodded, his eyes narrowing at Nicole's dog, a
large mongrel she'd rescued the year before. "Koby would eat her."
Kobayashi Maru slapped her tail against the floor in agreement.
"No. Koby, you are not eating
Henrietta," Nicole said, as the potatoes slid down the sides of the pot
and into the colander, landing with squishy
thwaps. Koby opened her long
snout and yawned, rolling onto her side. "And neither are you," she
said, pointing the wooden spoon at Bob.
"Man
is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he
intends to eat until he eats them.' Samuel Butler," Mike said to Bob,
crossing his arms over his white T-shirt, stained yellow from sweat at the
armpits.
"If God didn't want us to eat
meat, He wouldn't have made it so tasty,” Bob retorted. “A T-shirt in Alex
Bay." Chris and Mike laughed.
There were notes stuffed in some of the books, quotes from different
philosophers, Emerson, Thoreau, even some Ginsberg and Bob Dylan. When I moved on
to Steve's desk, it was like an explosion of paper. There were folders of notes
he'd sent and received, an entire box of letters from my parents' travels in
the 70's, and pieces of writing of Steve's, things he probably started and
forgot about. In one drawer, I actually found a slip of paper on which Steve
had scribbled his Philosophy.
"Crisis
teaches you cool; pain teaches you pleasure; love teaches you loss. Every large
and small and good and bad thing that comes at you has the potential to propel
you forward into something better. All we have is now, and nothing else exists
except that, so anything right now is always better than even one second before
now. And now. And now. All you’ve
got to do is climb aboard, hang on tight, and push yourself forward into the
abyss. It’s a tricky theory to keep up with—try having “better” be the first
thing out of your mouth next time you stub your toe or hear terrible news. But
the truth is, Better works."
"The dinner smells delicious
Nicole," Chris said, his feet shuffling towards the smells wafting from
the stove. He turned on the oven light, and salivated as he eyed the turkey.
"Can I help with anything?"
"How good of you to ask,” she
answered sarcastically. “You can mash the potatoes. Use soy milk and margarine
in half of it for the vegans.” She pulled out the masher and ingredients, her
thin, toned arms miming as
she spoke. Chris grabbed the overflowing colander
and set to work.
I always personally took the Better
Theory to mean out of the bad, comes the good. What you do
with your biggest hardships makes the most difference—ask anyone who's ever
overcome in some way. Instilling that idea into the people at the farm,
who come from all over the world to study green living and organic farming, or
to work on their art, or to live more simply and communally, is one of the most
exciting things I've ever been a part of. It's amazing what people
are capable of when they really see everything as an opportunity; they just
start to thrive when they get that concept.
Mike got
up and walked over to the pot of boiling string beans, legumes picked in
September and frozen. He dipped in a ladle and liberated a couple, dropping
them onto a plate, and checked them for doneness with his fingers. Finding them
reasonably cooked, he popped one in his mouth and tossed the other to Kobi, who
chomped down with a grateful crunch.
"I have to say, I'm impressed
with the harvest,” Mike said, still chewing. “When dad talked about the farming
in the 70's, all he would say was that they couldn't grow potatoes bigger than golf balls because of the clay soil,
and that nothing would really grow." He turned his attention to the cans
of cranberry (the only thing not grown in or around Better Farm), and set about
creating cylindrical art sculptures on the serving platter before bringing it
over to the table.
"Nicole started us on mulch
gardening,” Chris declared proudly. “We make layers of compost, cardboard, dead
leaves, and hay in the fall, and by spring there are inches and inches of
healthy, black soil.” He got up and pulled a cast iron skilled down from an
overhead hook. He turned on a burner, threw a pad of margarine into the pan,
and melted it along with a few cloves of garlic. He threw the concoction into
his lumpy mashed potatoes.
Since we redid the kitchen, we
try to do a big family dinner every night. We put in a wood-burning stove to
generate heat, put tin ceiling tiles in the dining alcove, and replaced the
rusted old stove with a stainless-steel restaurant quality one.. The biggest thing,
though, was getting enough seating for any and all residents and guests. I
remember driving 30 minutes to pick up the church pews after we found them on
Craigslist for $40 a piece, and joking the whole drive back that if they didn't
fit in the breakfast nook, we'd just have to set them up in the library and
create our own religion.
An hour later, they sat down to the
feast. Grace was a hearty "Thanks to Steve and the good Lord above for the
grub on the table, and the friends around it," and the clinking of plastic
on glass. The poster-sized photo of Steve at age 13, standing a foot taller
than his mother (Nicole's Granny) next to him, beamed down from the far wall, as
if granting approval over the festivities.
Most nights, the head of the
table is empty, a result of a lack of chairs and everyone's preference to the
pews. But there was a day not too long ago when the realization hit that its
vacancy also serves as a tangible reminder of Steve's absence. That was his
spot because of the wheelchair. I can still picture him, leaning on his bony
elbow and sipping his water out of a straw stuck in a pitcher. He had these
bright blue eyes, a wide smile, and this hoarse voice, gravely and lilting with
joy.
I think it's Passover when the
religious set a place for Elijah, and leave a seat vacant in anticipation of
his arrival. Elijah's visit is said to precede the Messiah, who will transform
our world from its broken state to one where injustice is unknown, compassion
is everywhere, and happiness fills our hearts. I can't help but think of Steve
as our own personal version of the prophet: the one who guided us to this
table, guided us to pick up where he left off, and create a better celebration
of life and friendship. He would have enjoyed this version of now.
And now. And now.
