Farm Fables – Thoreau-ly Attuned

I just watched the PBS documentary about Henry David Thoreau. I already knew quite a bit about him – even visited his historical site in Concord, MA once; now I know a lot more.

I think I delved into his book Walden but at the time found it a bit heavy going in its style although I definitely appreciated the sentiments about nature. Later on, I discovered the Transcendentalists and its leader Ralph Waldo Emerson who was also Thoreau’s mentor; it seemed to fit in with my meditation and neo-Buddhist leanings. In the documentary the Transcendentalists were described as America’s first youth movement, challenging established norms in government, society and religion. I actually used one of Emerson’s quotes to launch a column I wrote for a local newspaper in California. The column was called Jest Kruisin with a logo of a pair of rollerskates. The quote was “We live among surfaces and the true art of life is to skate well on them.”

Two hundred years ago Thoreau built his famous hut on Emerson’s property by his beloved Walden Pond and lived there away from distractions of “modern” life. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” he wrote, “To front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

I think I had something like this in mind when I asked a friend if I could park my recently purchased used trailer on the 47-acre farm he had recently acquired. His plan was to turn it into a recreational destination with our mutual sport, disc golf at its center. (My acquisition, the trailer came from a chance meeting at a brewery taproom. The seller was a handyman, so although the trailer was old, everything worked – stove, bathroom, heat. The price $3500; he even towed it up to the farm for me. My offer was to help with the project, but my plan also included creating a space, like Thoreau, to retreat, away from life’s hustle and bustle.

The farm, known as The Oasis, has a pond also and many a morning I’ve spent listening to birdsong there, punctuating with my penny whistle. It really is a beautiful, unspoiled property, with woods and meadows and wildlife. I observed, indeed participated, in nature’s weather patterns, and beautiful night skies as well as helping with the disc golf course and creating our hopfield, albeit on a part-time basis.

My Thoreau plan worked to some degree. My business – the Ale Street News brewspaper – had run dry, a victim of the dawning digital age, so I had more time on my hands, if not much money (like Thoreau); then the Covid epidemic hit, demanding more isolation and separation from society. (Unlike in Thoreau’s day, however, we are never really isolated with internet and cell phones in reach).

But one thing I never have been able to separate from for long is drinking, mostly beer. Sure, there have been times of abuse, but having survived 30 years in the craft beer industry, the alcohol never really got the upper hand, and it provided a living and support for my family for a quarter century. On the farm it provided another silver lining; needing an activity during Covid I began making mead, a favorite of farm owner Dan’s. And now that phase 2 of the Oasis project is complete – our Fence Road Farm Brewery – my five years of mead homebrewing has provided me with a job in the brewhouse, under the wing of head brewer Charlie.

Now, I confess, the alcohol is ever present and I’m beginning to think my Thoreau experiment has run its course. I still have my trailer, in its 10^th summer season here on the farm. I named it Usu, short for Usufruct, which is a term that can be described as the right use right to use and benefit from someone else’s property without owning it, which is basically what I have been doing here at The Oasis. Usu is also the site of the Limetree Roadside PubCafe which is the physical manifestation of my website.

We had to move Usu when brewery construction started. No longer do I have the beautiful meadow vista; peace and quiet has given way to hungry and thirsty brewery customers with continuous happenings in our event space; the parking lot lights pollute the night sky. But it’s a great place to be, and I’m happy to be involved in such a fantastic gathering place, a different kind of Oasis now, and I think a much needed one.  

Indeed, Thoreau’s aim was not to cut himself off like a hermit; there were frequent visitors to the pond and he often made trips into the nearby town of Concord. Interestingly, though, he wasn’t much one for booze.  On alcohol, Thoreau wrote, "I would fain keep sober always. ... I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor. ... Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"

Thoreau had a lot of time to think, or as I put it here at the Limetree Café to Relax, Contemplate and Reflect. He was not necessarily trying to find answers. “Who are we, where are we, are not questions you want to answer, they are questions you want to live,” he wrote.

And…“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has he imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours and will pass an invisible boundary. New universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”

I’m not sure if I’m anywhere near that yet, but my time at the O has definitely helped on the path and still attempting to emulate Thoreau, “I have found a way to live, my steadiest employment, if such it can be called, is to keep myself at the top of my condition and ready for whatever may turn up in heaven on earth.”