Gaining Ground: A Story of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, and Saving the Family Farm by Pritchard Forrest

Author:Pritchard, Forrest [Pritchard, Forrest]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2013-05-21T05:00:00+00:00

Travis LaFleur.

Two days after his announcement, on Monday morning, he showed up promptly at five thirty. I started work at seven, and didn’t even get up until six. I found him that morning banging loudly on my front door, rousing me from a deep sleep.

I greeted him, bleary-eyed and tousle-haired, naked except for my boxer shorts. “Hello?”

He took a sharp step backward, eyeing me up and down. “You ain’t going to work dressed like that, I imagine.”

“Going to work?” I repeated, sleep-addled. I squinted at him in the bright morning light, genuinely confused. “Who are you?”

He placed his hands on his hips, indignant. “I’m Travis.” As though feeling the need to clarify, he added, “I’m here to work.”

I ran a hand through my hair, and then rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Right. I remember now. So, I don’t usually get going till around seven . . .”

“Seven? Cows need to be checked before then,” he interrupted. “You got a truck?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Alright. I’ll check the cows, you put on some pants. I’ll be back in a half hour.”

I still wasn’t quite awake. “You’ll check the cows . . .”

“Are the keys in the truck?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

He turned to go and then stopped. “You’ve got boots, right? You need boots on a farm.”

Now it was my turn to feel a little indignant. “Yes,” I said, straightening. “I have boots. I’ve . . . I’ve got lots of boots.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Travis replied. “See you at six.”

Through my window, I saw him driving down the lane in my Toyota, headed toward the herd. Self-consciously, I glanced at my waist, having no recollection as to what I had worn to bed the night before. Pink polka-dot boxer shorts sagged around my hips. It must have been quite a first impression.

A little past six, after Travis was sufficiently impressed with my boot selection, he informed me it was time to check the fences. He made no pretense of relinquishing the steering wheel, so I climbed into the passenger seat beside him.

“You always got to check the fences,” he said in a tone that left no room for argument. “Every morning. Trees fall down in the middle of the night. Bulls’ll break posts. A farm’s got to have good fences.”

It was a bright, beautiful morning. Enormous clouds pushed against the blue sky, and for a few moments, I forgot about my colossal failure at the farmers’ market. We made a slow circuit around the farm, until we came to a section of fence that straddled the property line where Travis had worked the previous thirty years.

He slowed the truck to a crawl. “I put that fence in right there. Myself.” He gestured. “Dug every posthole by hand, stretched the wire and stapled it.”

“The whole row?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“But . . . there must be three hundred posts in that line.”

“Probably.”

I considered this in silent awe. I had set perhaps one hundred posts in my entire lifetime, and each of them had been arduous work.

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