The Farm and the Farmer

My life in Essex, NY, where I now live, is complete in all the ways it was deficient in Manhattan. I landed here by chance, which is perhaps the reason that I stayed. I am a believer in following the unexpected.


I came to Essex by chance; it was a stop on my way to South America. I already had my ticket to Lima, Peru. At the time I was teaching English to Saudi Arabians at the University of Northern Iowa. I had moved back to Iowa and taken the job so I could save money for the trip. The one-way ticket was scheduled for June.

In early March, I received a call from my aunt in Essex. My uncle, who suffered a brain injury in a car accident 6 years earlier, had begun having grand mal seizures that shook up all the fragile pathways his brain had rerouted after the accident. He couldn’t remember where his friends lived, even though their house was a block away from his and he had known them for 20 years. He couldn’t remember his children’s names. He cried often and could not explain why.

My aunt wanted to know if I would consider spending two months in Essex with my uncle before my trip to South America. I agreed.  He has always been a favorite uncle of mine. As a child, I visited him often and have fond memories of hiking with him in the Adirondacks. Always a prankster, he would pretend to hear rattle snakes and send me running up the trail. He was also a fantastic chef and I remember eating pizza from the brick oven he built in his backyard.

I was nervous about going to Essex in early March because the hamlet has only about 60 year round residents, most of which are retired. I made peace with this reality by thinking of these two months as a time of quiet, introspection, and writing before the heat, noise, and distractions of South America.

But it was not a time of introspection. Three weeks after arriving in Essex, I met Tim at the farm where my uncle was supposed to do some rehabilitation work. The day we were supposed to go to the farm, my uncle had another massive seizure and went back to the hospital. My aunt asked me to go to the farm anyway, to get a feel for it. When I arrived, the task at hand was to slaughter a steer.

As a vegetarian, I found the whole scene horrifying, yet fascinating. I couldn’t look away as the man steadied the rifle and then shot. Quickly the steer fell to the ground flailing and another man jumped in and cut across his throat letting the warm blood run. After several other grisly cuts, I needed a break, I walked around the shed and found Tim there boiling sap into syrup. It was such a lovely thing to smell and see after the slaughter.

Tim was checking thermometers and draining sap at exactly the right time. He was handsome. Slender, well built, hair in a thick plait that extended down to his waist, green eyes, and freckles. He gave me sap to drink and we talked about where we were from who we were. At lunch time, I decided to go home and Tim and the others went toward the house. I opened the car door and mentally chalked up the whole morning to Well that was Interesting. But before I could slide into the front seat Tim turned around and walked back.

“Hey, I know you’re probably really busy hanging out with all the young people around here, but would you like to go out with us on Friday to the North End?” he asked.

I paused for a minute and said, “Sure.”

He took out a little pad of paper, asked for my number, jotted it down, and walked away.