How I got duct tape in my hair.  And why I’m leaving it there.

Shannon Hayes

It is two o’clock Saturday morning.  Yes, I should be sleeping.  The kids are sleeping down at the farm with Grammie and Pop Pop.  Bob and I need to leave for our farmers’ market at 6:30.  But I’m sitting in the dark, meditating on the idea of abundance.  Or, rather, I’m trying to meditate on abundance.  That word is on the tip of my tongue lately as I puzzle over how Bob and I can take over this farm.  But in spite of my intended focus, my sleep deprived mind is wild with its wanderings.  It drifts to the night before, when Saoirse was brushing my hair while I read our bedtime story.

“Mommy!”  She exclaimed, interrupting in the middle of a page.  “You have a gray hair!”

I turned and looked at her.  Her eyes were wide and moist in the corners.  I put the book down and smiled for her.  I didn’t feel like smiling.  But I didn’t want her to know that.  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s just….well,”  she wipes a tear from her cheek.  “I don’t ever want you to change.”

“Change is what makes life interesting,” I told her.

She forgot about the gray hair.  But at 2 am on Saturday morning, I am thinking about it.  I am wondering when it sprouted.  I think it was during late winter, while Mom and I sat through the farm transition class together.  Sometimes the class offered solid nuts-and-bolts information about the pragmatics of moving forward on a family farm.  Other times, when financial consultants stood before us and spouted figures for college savings, for retirement savings, for life insurance and long term care insurance, I had to laugh out loud.  It was the only way to keep from throwing up in my mouth.

Many times in the past six months since we initiated this process I’ve asked myself why Bob and I are moving forward.  I’ve asked myself if we should move forward.  I’ve asked Bob the same thing.  We could shut it all down.  We could just homestead, gleaning enough for ourselves, and abandon the worries of managing a family business.  But every time we consider this, we keep coming back to the same conclusion.  We are doing this for the girls…So that they will have a choice someday.  If we let it go, abandon the markets we’ve built, and the infrastructure we’ve created, then they lose that choice.  They might be able to learn to trap muskrats, spin wool and wrestle pigs, but they will have no choice for an income without starting from the ground up.  And if they don’t have an income to help pay the taxes and make the repairs, they may have no way to make the hills, forests, pastures, stream beds and ponds that define Sap Bush Hollow the paradise for their children that it has been for us.

But the numbers for taking on this business just don’t look good.  I’ve been wracking my imagination to find a way to balance them.  I am learning a simple truth about the farm.  As Mom and Dad have grown tired, it has been in the red lately more often than in the black.  Frugal living and love have been holding it together.

I return to my focus.  This is about abundance,  I remind myself.  Don’t trick yourself by focusing on scarcity.  It will only fool you into believing we can’t do it.  

My mind drifts again.  This time it drifts to lunch at Rachel’s house.  Rachel Gilker is an agronomist.  She and her colleague and friend Kathy Voth run On Pasture, a website devoted to sharing research and experience about grassfed farming.  Rachel has stepped into my life at a time when I most need her.  She’s an outsider, but she knows the business I’m in.  Her observations can be refreshing.  Last week, she lured me to her house an hour way so that our kids could have a water fight, and she and I could split our time between talking shop and swapping stories peppered with invectives from the front line of motherhood.  We were standing beside a tall hutch in her kitchen.  She plunked a bowl of fresh cherries between us, strategically above the sightline of short people.  We took turns popping them into our mouths, sorting the sweet meat from the pits between our teeth.  She asked me how things are moving along with Mom and Dad.

I shrugged and reached for another cherry, hoping I could avoid the question by filling my mouth with food.  It was a mistake.  It just gave her more time to talk.

“I mean, Shannon, I gotta ask.  Last time I was at the farm, I counted nine people sitting around the lunch table on the porch.  There’s no way your farm can support all those people.”

I pushed the bowl of cherries at her, hoping she’d take the hint and just eat.  I didn’t want her to say any more.

But now, at two in the morning, I am picturing those nine faces around the table.  Some of them are my own family: Mom and Dad, Bob, Saoirse and Ula.  One is Kate, who is ready to leave her job as a vet tech and join our farm full-time, assuming Bob and I can outline a business plan that will cover her salary.  Then there’s Dave.  He has another part-time job, but he still comes to the farm a few days a week.  Dave has a family.  He’s been looking for full-time work for ages, but he’s had no luck.  On the farm, he helps with chore relief, he helps keep up with maintenance and repairs, he helps Dad with lambing.  I know Dave loves to be here.  I long to offer him the steady commitment he so rightly deserves. And then there was Clint, a local butcher who has become one of my surrogate brothers over the years, and his new business partner Jim, who is building a house with his fiancée.  Clint and Jim are working at building their own butcher shop, but they use our cutting room at Sap Bush to stay in business until they’re on their feet.  They also cut most of our meat for us.

Rachel reminded me of what I didn’t want to think about.  I want to believe that Bob and I are carrying on for the benefit of Saoirse and Ula.  But it is bigger than that.  This is not just about Saoirse and Ula.  It is a gift to share a table with nine people who you care about.  But if the farm is already in the red, how the hell am I supposed to float all these people?  Abundance, I say the word again.  Don’t fall for the scarcity illusion.

After 20 minutes, I abandon the meditation and resort to outright prayer.  Sometimes, just asking the divine for help is easier than trying to discipline my own mind.  I stand up and head back upstairs to join Bob in bed.

But as I climb the stairs, I see that the light is on.  He is standing in the middle of the room, eyes wide in panic.  “What’s wrong?”  I hasten over to him and put my arms around him.  “Is it your blood sugar?  Are you sick?”

“What have I done?”  He asks me.  “Or, I mean, I haven’t done…I mean,” he can’t seem to find his words.  His voice is breaking.  I push him down gently on the foot of the bed and take his hands, waiting for him to speak.  “I’m so sorry, Shannon,” he never says my full name unless something is really wrong.  “I should have gotten a job.  I should have done something to protect you.”

I don’t know what to say.  I am worried about a future for Saoirse and Ula.  I am worried about Kate and Dave, about Clint and Jim.  About Mom and Dad. And while I was downstairs, making my hair gray over those worries, he was upstairs in the dark, alone, lying awake and worrying about me.

“I never asked you to have a job,” I spoke softly.  “We chose this.  And we’ll find our way through.”

We lay back down on the bed, our arms wrapped around each other, waiting for morning to come, waiting for the predictable rhythm of the farmers’ market, for the comfort of seeing our customers’ faces, for the simple relief that comes from doing the one part of our job that we still know how to do.

We made it through another week, all the way to Father’s day.  We decided to take a day away with the girls, to go see a play, to go out for lunch.  The girls wore dresses.  Bob dressed up with a crisp white shirt and a pair of khakis.  Sensing the family’s compulsion to be a bit fancier, I abandoned my normal jeans and pulled something dressier out of the closet.  I brushed a little makeup over my eyes as the girls watched in awe.  I wrinkled my nose.  There are a few more lines on my face.  Many of them are from smiles.  But some of them are care-worn, too.  The makeup doesn’t cover my flaws as easily as it used to.  I shuttled the kids off to the car, then returned to the mirror to tie my hair back in the way Bob likes it best.  And there it was.  That silver thread that wasn’t there a few months ago.  “He’s color blind anyhow,” I told myself, and rushed out the door.

We went out for Mexican food.  We sat outside, where Ula’s compulsion to wriggle and spin in her chair would be less disturbing, where she could pursue her fascination for ants.  I looked across the table at Bob.  “Happy father’s day?”  I tentatively suggested.  He gave me a weak smile.

“I have a game,” I announced when the chips and salsa came out.  “I’d like each person here to name three things that they’re really good at, and three ways that they can use those gifts to make the world a better place.”

Ula jumped in.  “I’m really good at playing!”  She announced.  “And I can help people learn how to play.”

“I’m a good baker!”  Saoirse offered.  “And I can write, too!  I can use those skills to raise money for people who need it.”

I looked at Bob.  “What about Daddy?”  I asked.

Bob twisted his mouth.  “I don’t even think that way,” he shuffled uneasily in his chair.

“Daddy’s humble!”  I began.

“I’m good at drinking margaritas,” he finally volunteered, tipping his glass.

“And he’s funny!”  Saoirse continued.

I raised my glass up in the air.  “And you hold it all together,” I said, meeting his eyes, realizing what I failed to say at two in the morning a week before.

“What does that mean?” Saoirse asked.

“Haven’t you ever noticed?” I turned to her.  “I start things.  I’m a good starter.  But Daddy always finishes it.  I cook dinner, but he cleans up.  I make soap, but he makes sure the pots are scrubbed and all the packaging is done.”  But there was so much more.  I write the stories, he edits them.  I sell the chickens, but he makes sure the coolers are full.  I worry about the nine people around the farm table, he worries about me.

“He’s the DUCT TAPE!”  Ula shouts out for the entire restaurant to hear.

We all laugh as we recognize the truth in her observation.  I raise my glass and the girls lift up their lemonades.  “To the duct tape!” we cheer.

We finish our meal with much needed laughter, then get up to go.  I slip off to the bathroom while Bob waits for the check.  I stop at the sink to wash my hands, and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror.  I see the silver strand.

And suddenly, I am in love with it.  Because it reminds me of the duct tape that I cannot live without.  Money is a form of abundance that is relatively easily had.  Love, especially in the form of duct tape, is far more rare.  There will be more silver strands before this farm transition is done.  And each one will remind me that I have the strength to move forward, inventing solutions, discovering opportunities, finding answers one step at a time.  And all the while, he will be there, holding me together.