So there was a petition in Bedford, NH, a wealthy suburb with most farms now sold and turned into point houses* - to forbid roosters and geese. One sees their point, in a suburb. For reference, Dean Kamen is a neighbor and he helicopters over the family I will mention to come home at times. But the charm of the suburb has always been that there is real farming going on at the margins. The highschool even manages a working farm out by the town line. (And yes, we know the science teacher who manages that quite well.) But the few farmers who are left are a remarkable crew, and the petitioner did not reckon with these children. This is Autumn, age 12, speaking before the Board of Selectmen. Her sister Willow (10) testified as well about the importance of being farmers in their personal development.
The original petitioner quickly laughed and asked to withdraw his petition after listening to them. New Hampshire is still New Hampshire - just barely, maybe. That a person annoyed by the noise of domestic fowl could throw up his hands under the reminder of their subtler value is very much the NH progressive/libertarian/conservative/communitarian mix. These are the four oldest below: Owen, Willow, Piper, Autumn. Really...could you turn them down for anything? We cannot, and the Wymans remain deeply interpenetrated with this family (and the grandparents and siblings.)
Their parents are "young" friends of ours, young meaning almost forty, but the wife known to us since before she was born. Our first two sons introduced her to her husband. He is a brilliant pianist who gradually moved instead to managing and is now the owner of Events United, which is a national production company. (I have mentioned him before, reinventing himself and his business during covid, including one of the first online concerts of 2020 by the Dropkick Murphys). And he's the normal one of the two. His darling wife has always had dreams of many children and a big farm - loving husband indulges reluctantly, loving the barn and equipment though does not love farming - now has five homeschooled** children and a ridiculous number of chickens, ducks, goats, horses, sheep - I think the alpacas are gone, only a few of the animals come in the house - and of course dogs and cats. She has a couple of side businesses. The children now have side businesses of selling cut flowers, making soap, selling eggs, God knows what else. I swear Autumn could skip highschool and just take over her father's company in 2032. He needs the rest after all this pressure.
* One point seven million dollars, three point one million dollars. Point houses.
**OF COURSE THEY ARE HOMESCHOOLED. This is multidetermined. Parents are evangelical, lean toward natural living, are musical and entrepreneurial outliers, and unconvinced that the average school district will understand their children. Plus mother just thinks she should, so she does.
My parents had close friends in Bedford, part of a group that would get together and play bridge every couple of months or so. It started when we lived in Manchester and continued for years after we moved to Massachusetts. There were ski trips as well. Anyway, this family built in Bedford in the 1960s and still lives there. The father was second generation industrialist of a family-owned local company and had the foresight to buy enough land to be able to give some to his kids, to build their homes. Tight knit. He had horses (team draft-type) and so used to work his land, cutting hay and so on - last time I saw them was probably about 20 years ago and they were still hard at it. I hate to see small family farms getting sucked up by developers - I've watched it around my sister's home in Plano for years. Good for these kids!
ReplyDeleteWhen we purchased our current home we were required by county law to sign a paper reading in part:
ReplyDelete"This disclosure notice is to inform prospective residents that the property they are about to acquire lies partially or wholly within an agricultural district and that farming activities occur within the district. Such farming activities may include, but not be limited to, activities that cause noise, dust, smoke, and odors."
Early on in our tenure here, on one occasion I arrived home from work, and when I exited the car I farted. I found myself enveloped in a miasma that had me wondering what ON EARTH I had eaten to cause such a smell, and then my brain started working and I understood that the wind must be coming from the direction of someone's foul manure pit. It was just happenstance that I passed gas at the moment when I'd be opening the car-door to notice the oder coming from upwind.
Even grown to womanhood, farm girls are hard to deny anything. This is how I ended up with horses and numerous plantings of gardens and fields; and how I may end up with chickens in the springtime.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather was an egg farmer with 300+ chickens in his coop, and I still remember that it took a few days to adjust to 4AM wake times when I would go down to visit him. Plus shooting garden-eating animals at what seemed to me random moments.
ReplyDeleteStill, nothing like dealing with his second wife, the original cat lady of the 1960s - including magazines with kittens in baskets with balls of yarn looking cunnin' in her words.