Chapter 6

Charlie bought the farm ten years ago with two other women. They had intended to run the farm as an educational establishment, teaching people in the area how to grow their own food.  It was never Charlie's intention to run the farm alone, but the first year Susanne left for a life in Peru and the second year Antonia and her young son left for a cleaner house.

After Charlie bought them both out, she was left with significant debt.  The farm was still run according to her dream, but she now relied heavily upon the help of seasonal apprentices who lived in her home, ate her food and borrowed her car as payment for 20-30 hours of farm work per week. Sometimes the workers worked out great, other times they worked out horribly.  It became somewhat of a trauma for Charlie, because when a new helper came, she never knew if at the end she'd be kicking out another abusive man or mourning the loss of another deep, new friend on their way to another adventure.

It was two years ago that one of her longest staying and most beloved apprentices returned to join her again in living on her farm, but this time with his whole family.  It was always intended to be a long term arrangement, and at two years in, it is shaping up to look like this is going to work out just fine to be a permanent set up.

Back when Jack moved on to the farm with his family, it was a rainy winter.  At the end of the season he had started moving his farm equipment from the place he had been renting to Charlie's place. On a sunny day in October he cleared out his garden and dug up the irrigation pipes and hoses.  His energy had been slow since a devastating burnout in his early twenties, so this task took all day to complete.  At the end of the day, once his equipment was safe and sheltered in the barn, he took a look at the gardens he had worked so hard on and saw that they looked bleak.  His heart fell. Was this really the right move to make?  Just then a loud crash at the nearby highway intersection reminded him of what he considered to be the most attractive feature of Lynn's farm: silence.

Jack's family is not the kind of family you would expect a young man in his late twenties to be taking along with him when he moves to a new place.  He was not packing up his wife and children, in fact, Jack had not yet married at that point.  Instead he was packing up his parents and sisters.  The family went through a couple devastating traumas together, and then there was illness and chronic pain which debilitates some and forced the others to work to support them.  Despite the potential for this to be a bad situation, it was actually a harmonious set up, not a bad one.  All members of the family do what they can to take care of each other and support each other, either financially, emotionally or both.