Shepherd: A Memoir

Chapter Fifteen

277 CHAPTER FIFTEEN At the start of lambing three inches of rain fell. By afternoon it was sleeting, which changed to snow in the night. We’re warming up soaked lambs by the woodstove. —e-mail to a friend Long ago I’d stopped talking of building a new house at the valley farm and selling the hilltop. We didn’t have the physical or emotional reserves to remount that rollercoaster, money concerns aside. We’d become averse to disruption. Our house, new from the ground up, reflected Fred’s legacy in the form of a wet basement. But it was home. And it didn’t appear that I’d ever run sheep on both places; I didn’t have the energy for it, and feared getting hurt again. Other than arranging hay cuts on the roadside field, I’d hardly visited Mossy Dell in two and a half years. There was no reason to; in retrospect, it was too painful. So in March 2004 we sold Mossy Dell, our beautiful farm, my boyhood dream, our shared wish. I’d always assumed that our selling would result in the place being split into plots for houses by its new owner. After we first listed the land, developers did look at it. We frustrated our realtor with our lack of enthusiasm and our limited desire to bargain, especially with anyone who wanted to Richard Gilbert 278 subdivide. We refused two low offers, didn’t mourn when several other prospects drifted away, and finally took the farm off the market. Then, one night in late winter, a woman called. When she was young, she said, she’d been close friends with Kenneth and Mabel Vaught. Like them, she loved horses, and her husband loved hunting and country life. And as it happened, their daughter was about to marry and would need a home. We closed the deal without much haggling. We might have made more money by listing it again, but in the end, the right people got Mossy Dell. The newlyweds did what we should’ve done: they bought a prefabricated house, which arrived in early summer on flatbed trucks that convoyed down Ridge Road and made groaning right-hand turns onto Snowden Road at Sam Norton’s house, also factory built. Such homes were popular in our area because they made financial sense, eliminating confusing squads of subcontractors. My parents’ house at Coral Tree Farm had been prebuilt , and assembled onsite in about a day—the perfect time frame for my impatient father. I’d been certain that Mossy Dell’s new owners would raze Massey’s shed in the north pasture and put their house there, overlooking Lake Snowden. Instead they built at the entrance to the south pasture, east of the old cabin site, above the placid farmyard pond that I’d rebuilt with such trauma during a dry year five years before. Sam told me about it; he said it was large and attractive. I never drove over to see it, not trusting my emotions enough to assume I could risk a casual visit. The sale of Mossy Dell more than replenished our college savings for Claire and Tom. For all of my mistakes, the old farm had turned out to be a good investment. Just before we closed the sale, I explained this to my mother. If we could recoup money and earn a bit, we could chalk up the whole misadventure to experience. We could rectify my overreaching. “But it’s the end of a dream,” I added. “So what?” she said. “You still have a farm.” “A small one.” “That’s all you have time for.” Her bluntness startled me, destroying the fragile calculus between head and heart I’d just offered in vague hopes of commiseration. Confused, I Shepherd 279 ended our talk. I wanted to avoid her rubbing my tender romantic nose even more vigorously in the Facts of Life. She was an expert on dreamers, after all. And I’d adopted her view that we’d have been wealthy if Dad hadn’t single-mindedly chased his passions. He might even have succeeded as a farmer if he’d heeded her cautions about spending. Yet I believed in Dad, in a way that departed from Mom’s mythos, in a way that maybe only a son like me could. Not only had I adopted his agrarian interests, I respected what seemed to me the virtuous seed of his dreams: loving your...