Buying the Farm

September 14, 2010

I caught tonight’s moonflower blossom at evening, before full night came on. The center is a five-ribbed swirl of gold-green, like a star whirling its arms in a white heaven.

Tom came with me to see a farm on East Fork Road near Mars Hill. The drive there was beautiful, but the property itself was not. The good features are a wide creek and an open field, part of it depressed enough for a pond and wetlands. The bad features are everything else. The western end of it is about five acres of steep kudzu thickets, which climb the trees that form the border between it and the next property. The realtor suggested that a few goats would make short work of the kudzu, and fertilize the ground as well. Unless I lost count, six double-wide trailers sit rusting away on the property, hauled there to serve as vacation cabins, a purpose they apparently never served. There is a school bus, several derelict vehicles of other description, and a family graveyard. The house itself is a couple of double-wides jammed together. The fact that it has a real foundation, of sorts, seemed to the realtor to make a difference. The present owner lay on the couch with a bad back. His rather beautiful mistress tried to hide in a bedroom, but, caught, came out and smiled at us through the tour. There is gap-toothed tobacco barn, which would be an excellent feature were it in better repair. The barn is filled with mowers and tractors and materials for the house the present owner means to build himself in Tennessee. There is big garage, an open shed, and several more or less permanent outbuildings, all of which are rotting and crammed full of exactly the junk a Hollywood set designer would choose for such a scene. The family is evidently acquisitive to an extreme degree, and slovenly to an equal one. The realtor says the owner will haul everything away I want hauled away, but that sounds to me a covenant promising to be an epic and endless quarrel. Finally, the road goes directly through the center of the property–little used, as the realtor pointed out, but a road nevertheless. I hated this property in particular, but moreover had second thoughts about the whole enterprise. How will I deal with large-scale mowing, septic tanks, well water? As I search, I will face an expanding universe of rusting double-wides and complicated rights-of-way and sheds full of yard sale treasures. Can I plant the gardens I want amid the kingdom of the deer? What I wanted was the life I have now, but on more property. Second thoughts about everything: the trip to Madison County was time well spent.