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Chapter Seven
- Michigan State University Press
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127 CHAPTER SEVEN Of course, the proof is in the pudding. —Mom’s reply to my assertion that I could make money raising sheep By February we’d spent countless hours and several thousand dollars planning a house, tearing down the cabin at Mossy Dell, and preparing the site. First we’d developed a floor plan with a national company that sold custom kit homes, airy timber-framed structures, before backing out over the cost. Then we’d worked with a local builder, who tried to approximate the timber frame’s floor plan on his computer, but created a stark rectangular box. Finally we’d hired a local architect to draw a house fitted to the sloping site. At last we clutched blueprints and were ready to get bids from contractors. As a diversion, I e-mailed my skeptical friend Bailey for advice on buying a canoe to throw on Lake Snowden in the spring. Claire and Tom could play with the boat like a big toy in the farmyard pond. Late winter also was a time for researching and ordering plants, for picturing them growing in various spots. We’d moved into a region with milder weather, which broadened planting possibilities and surely accounted for many of the differences in flora we’d noticed. Bloomington was in the southern part of zone 5 on Richard Gilbert 128 the official plant hardiness map of the United States Department of Agriculture , while Athens was in the northern half of zone 6—a slight difference on the map, but the winter felt much less severe. We could grow everything we’d grown in Indiana, and we could try new species, like southern magnolia. Planting Magnolia grandiflora was risky, but I’d spied the glossy broad-leaved evergreens along the Ohio River, which moderated the cold. I ordered a hardy variety, a wild magnolia strain that the catalog claimed had been found growing in southern Indiana. Mossy Dell’s farmyard, already diverse, a blend of wild and domestic , presented boundless planting opportunities. Wholesale creation was unnecessary, but I could introduce new species and fill gaps created by the windstorm. A receipt from J.W. Jung Seed Co. shows that I ordered four climbing roses of the heirloom variety Zéphirine Drouhin, which was named in 1868 for the wife of a French rose enthusiast. I hadn’t grown roses, but I thought Kathy would like them, and romantic rambling roses would embellish the farmyard. Zéphirine Drouhin was said to tolerate shade and to produce fragrant pink blooms; I’d plant her along the stable’s old corral fence. Claire adored raspberries, so I ordered eighteen plants. And twenty asparagus starts of two varieties. I had liked the narrow, swordlike foliage of a Siberian iris I’d grown in Indiana, so I ordered the old standard, Caesar’s Brother, which bears intense blue flowers; he’d be lovely beside our pond. I tried to balance my selections among ornamental plants, food-bearing plants, and those for wildlife. Chestnut oaks, which grow on hillsides and bear sweet acorns for wildlife, seemed perfect, and I ordered several. A farmstead needs lots of lilacs, and I researched them, finally choosing Miss Ellen Willmot to join our farmyard; her white blossoms would light the clearing and perfume the air. Receipts were piling up at a worrisome rate, but I couldn’t stop. I ordered black gum trees, chokeberry, shrub dogwood, bald cypress, winterberry holly, American holly, persimmon, and hemlock. I already had a nursery behind our house in town, but I ordered so many plants that in spring I’d need to stake out another nursery above Mossy Dell’s stable. Not to forget sheep, I researched the portable electric fencing that was Shepherd 129 helping America to join the revolution in grass farming. By then I saw that I’d never make Lost Valley’s tired, overgrown fences sheep-worthy—not by the time Jo’s ewe lambs were ready. I placed an order for rolls of something called Electronet, a mesh of plastic struts and strands of wire, supported by lightweight plastic fence posts. With electricity coursing through the flimsy barrier, the sheep would respect their boundaries, and coyotes would run yelping back into the hills. The fence could be rolled up, thrown over my shoulder, and carried to a fresh grazing area; it could meander around an orchard, trace the curve of a pond, climb a hill, and descend a gully. Fed a current...