Life on the Farm

Back when I was in college I spent my summers away from home—in Annapolis, in Chestertown and one summer in Albemarle County, Virginia on a farm where my cousin Donna and her husband at the time, Mitch, lived.  He was the farm manager.

The farm, Cobham Park Farm, was a 1,600-acre tract.  It produced alfalfa, hay and firewood, and there were a couple hundred head of Black Angus cattle.  There were also a couple horses and various other animals and pets.

On my one visit to the “big house,” the mansion built in 1856 where the owners, the Peter family, lived, I thought I had seen a deed map dating from the 1600s.  But when I looked online for information for this post, it looks like there are no records prior to 1722.  Starting that year, land patents were claimed.  Land grants were given starting in 1779.  You can see a list of those claiming patents, and for how many acres and quaint descriptions of the locations, at http://www.directlinesoftware.com/Pool/albemarle.txt. 

In any event, the farm was old, big and remarkable in its beauty, with spectacular views of the Blue Ridge foothills.

My summer on the farm is one of the favorite times in my life.  I remember waking up every morning anxious to get to work.  How often does that happen?

I had called Donna in the spring of 1977, I think, asking if she and Mitch knew of any farms that were looking for inexperienced, unqualified hands to do work I had no idea the nature of.  I don’t recall what inspired me to seek out such a job; it was out of left field for someone who had spent his high school years and first college summer as a lifeguard, swimming instructor and swim team coach in the suburbs.

They called back about 15 minutes later to very graciously and generously invite me to live with them in their house on the farm and work as Mitch’s helper.  Mitch got the okay from Freeland Peters, the son of the family matriarch and we worked out the financial arrangements.  I would pay a tiny, token amount for food and lodging and would be paid, if memory serves me, $65 a week (after I had a few weeks of seasoning the pay was bumped up to $85) and would work Monday through Friday and half of Saturday.

When I first arrived, Mitch took me into Charlottesville to buy essentials—work boots, a good hammer and such.  I was going to be a real farmer!

The first jobs I had were pretty mind-numbing: spraying thistles in the expansive fields with a weedkiller that was contained in a tank that I carried on my back like a backpack, and painting with creosote the equally expansive board fences around the farm and various pastures and holding pens.

Over time I took on additional responsibilities.  Bush hogging, or mowing the pastures using a tractor (more on that later); building feeders for the cattle; and my favorite, baling and storing the hay.

The haying process involves cutting and raking the hay into windrows for drying, then a few days later driving along the dried rows of hay with a combine that scoops it up, packs it into bales, ties the bales and then shoots them up into a trailing wagon with high rails.  Often the bale would miss the wagon.  Occasionally I got to drive the tractor or jeep, but more often I would walk behind and pick up the errant bales and heave them into the wagon.  You need to be pretty strong to pick up a bale, which can weigh up to 60 pounds, depending on how wet the hay is, and throw it over an eight-foot-high rail into the wagon.  There’s also a technique.  Needless to say, I lacked both in the beginning, but the more I worked at it, and with Mitch’s tutelage, I eventually got pretty good at it.

The final part of the process is loading the bales into the barns.  That’s the worst part.  You set up an elevator—really just a conveyor belt—that rises from near the ground to the top of the barn, where there’s an opening under the eaves.  There’s also a conveyor belt that runs along the rafters of the barn, so when the bales reach the end of the elevator, they drop onto the conveyor and are transported to the far end of the barn.  

When the hay wagon arrives at the barn, one person loads the bales onto the elevator; another person sits beside the conveyor and tosses the bales alternately to the left and right, and moves forward as the rear of the barn fills.   In summer in Virginia you can imagine—or maybe you can’t—how hot it gets in the rafters, while you’re lifting and tossing bales of hay by the hundreds for hours at a time.  Of course, the person in the rafters was always me.

I am seriously nearsighted, something on the order of 20/400 in one eye and 20/600 in the other, and wore glasses from middle school until about 1980, when I switched to the miracle of contact lenses.  I mention this because during one of my stints in the rafters, where I was sweating profusely, my glasses slipped off and dropped twenty or thirty feet into the dark, hay-filled abyss of the barn below.  I frantically made my way to the opening and called for the elevator to be turned off so we could conduct a search.  We didn’t find the glasses.  The next Saturday I drove home to Rockville, squinting like Mr. Magoo, and got a replacement pair.  Do not try this. 

I mentioned bush-hogging.  One morning my job was to mow a flat at the far end of the farm.  I attached the bush-hog to the green John Deere tractor and hooked it up to the power-take-off shaft, and headed for the remote field.  I vividly remember it—it was maybe 20 acres and there was a railroad track across from it.

I was wearing jeans and a long-sleeve flannel shirt.  As the morning warmed up, I took off the shirt and draped it over the back of the seat, which was metal and had foam rubber cushions covered in yellow Naugahyde.  Unbeknownst to me, one of the sleeves was dangling on the very-hot muffler.   

After a few minutes I began to feel something hot behind me.  When I looked around, I was horrified to see my shirt engulfed in flames.  Instinctively I flung it, where it landed on the parched field.  The tractor’s seat back had also caught fire.  I stopped the tractor and tore off my shoe and beat out the tractor-seat fire with it.  I was greatly relieved that the entire tractor hadn’t gone up in flames—until I looked down and saw the field ablaze where my flaming shirt had landed.  I jumped down and, with one shoe on my foot and the other in my hand, hopped around like a shirtless maniac pounding at the fire while trying not to step in it with my shoeless foot.  At that moment a freight train came trundling down the tracks.  I still remember the sound of the whistle while I was dancing around the field fire, shoe raised in one hand to attack the flames.  I bet the conductor had a good laugh at the sight.

There are many more stories.  I’ll recount one about the real farmhand, Mr. Charlie Poindexter.  He knew farming and was a great friend and teacher.  Charlie couldn’t read or write and had interesting theories about spaceflight (“there’s a hole in the sky the astronauts have to go through to get to the moon”) and criminal justice (“rapists should have their nuts cut off and be made to eat them, and work in a salt mine with their open wound”).  He also had an ornery sense of humor.  My first day on the farm, he was standing by one of the pens, leaning against the fence.  He invited me to come over and shake his hand.  He had a mischievous grin and was standing in a puddle of water, surreptitiously holding the electrified wire that discouraged the cows from trying to hop the fence.  You could see the muscle in his forearm pulsing like wild with the current.  I had no choice but to go over and greet him.  Trying to be a good sport, I shook his hand and almost got knocked over from the shock.  I don’t know how he was able to hold onto that wire.

I came across the nomination form for Cobham Park’s designation as a National Register of Historic Places, which was filed in 1973 (and approved in 1974) and amended in 1980 when ownership of the property was transferred from the Peter family to Leonard and Sylvia Milgraum.  According to that document: 

“Established in the 1850's on land that was part of the Castle Hill estate, Cobham Park remains one of the best preserved and most beautifully sited antebellurn estates in Virginia. Particularly noteworthy are the handsome grounds which are a fine example of nineteenth century landscaping.  Cobham Park served as the summer home of William Cabell Rives, Jr. (1825-1890), second son of the noted United States senator and minister to France.  Rives, born and raised at his family home, Castle Hill, obtained his law degree from the University of Virginia and established his practice in Newport, Rhode Island. In 1849 he was married to Grace Winthrop Sears, member of a prominent Boston family.

“Cobham Park remained the summer home of Rives's widow following his death. It was acquired in the early part of this century by the Peter family of Tudor Place, Washington, D.C.”

Here’s a link to the application, which has lots of descriptions of the property: http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Albemarle/002-0153%20-%20Cobham%20Park%20-%201974%20-%20Final%20Nomination.pdf

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