How it could have been different

Recently, I did a series of interviews with people that work on family ranches.

The subject matter was interesting and I learned a lot. During several of the interviews I mentioned that I came from farming stock. Dairy farming stock to be exact.

My father was raised on a 200 acre dairy farm in Virginia. I have no idea how many cows were on the farm, although I do have an old picture of the place framed and hanging in my bedroom.

I have always liked this particular picture because the frame is round, as is the glass, and the photograph is big; 25 X 20 inches. It represents another time.

I believe the picture was taken in the 1940’s, possibly the late 1930’s, and it is in color although not sharp. In the photograph, there is a dirt road leading to the farm and I have counted seven major buildings.

The outhouse is nowhere to be seen, but I know there was one. The main house is obvious. It is a wooden two story with a big porch wrapping around it. The color is gray and somewhat faded.

The other major buildings are the red barn with a huge silo next to it. I can also make out a small guest house, which probably was the original home before the larger house was built. I assume the other buildings housed machinery and tools.

I know my great-grandfather was a large landowner in Fauquier County, which is about 100 miles from Washington D.C. As I understand it, the family has been living on this land since two brothers came from the Scottish/English isle about 200 years ago. One brother went north and eventually settled in Ohio and the other settled in Virginia.

I can’t say how much land the Armstrongs in Virginia started out with, but I do know that my great grandfather had 18 children and he bequeathed land to all. My grandfather got 200 acres and I would guess all the children got the same. I have no idea when the buildings sprung up but I do know I am related to almost everyone who live in the small town of Midland. My grandmother as I understand it, was a maid for the family. I don’t know if she was the maid at my great-grandfather’s house or my grandfather’s. I do know she was one of 21 children.

There is a reason I am related to almost this entire small Virginia town.

One thing I do find a bit ironic; my father was an only child. Even more interesting, my grandmother didn’t have him until she was in her early 50’s. My grandparents had been married over 30 years. I don’t know if she had lost any pregnancies before, but I do know my grandmother thought she was going through the “change of life” when her pregnancy symptoms showed.

I guess, in a way, she was going through a change of life.

My father was born in the Depression but he told me they always had plenty to eat, just not much money.

My father was a gifted student. He attended the University of Alabama at age 16, had a 4.0 his entire time in college and was in the Reserve Officers Traning Core (R.O.T.C.) Even more incredible, at age 14 his father died and he ran the farm. When he left for school a couple years later, his best friend’s family, who were neighbors, helped him.

My grandmother was in her late 60s, so I know my father was having to juggle a lot in his life going to school while keeping the farm going. After he graduated, he became a captain in the U.S. Air Force until he went to work for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the mid 1950s.

I know when I was born, my grandmother came to live with us for a few years and then went into a nursing home. She was in her late 80s by then and actually insisted on living at this place.

My father sold the farm when I was five and I always assumed it was to pay for my grandmother’s care.

For several years, we would go and visit his best friend who bought the place, after we moved back to the D.C. area. Those visits exposed me to the life my father had grown up in, like getting eggs in the morning. I remember being in awe at seeing brown eggs instead of white. Learning to milk a cow was a novelty because there were machines that did the work much more efficiently.

My first use of an outhouse was there too. I was probably about 10 and I don’t remember my reaction other than not liking the smell.

I grew up learning about gardening and fixing some things around our house in the suburbs because my dad felt it was necessary, but I was no star. Working on my 1966 Mustang and an outboard boat engine was about as mechanical as I got.

My father on the other hand, could fix anything.

To his credit, he tried to get me interested in working with my hands but, I have to admit, I was a suburbs kid and my interests were more about hanging with friends. I wasn’t a farm kid and I didn’t understand why he was trying to make me into one.

Now I do.

It took me listening to ranching people tell me about the generations that loved the land that was handed down to see what my father was trying to do.

The problem was, the land he grew up on and where he learned all these values was no longer in our possession. A house in the suburbs just doesn’t have the same inspiration that a home with history does.

But what if we had kept the farm?

I can’t be sure much would have changed because my father loved working for NASA and a commute from Midland to D.C. would have been a long two hours. Even if he was up for the commute, my stepmother is not someone who I see embracing farm life. She was raised in San Antonio and had been a reporter before marrying my father. I know she couldn’t wait to get back home from our farm visits.

I don’t know about me and my sister, but I think we might have made a go of it. When I was about 13, my mother bought a farm. Besides having your basic farmhouse and barn, the place had stables, corn crib, a work shed, the original house with a root cellar, a pond for fishing, an apple and peach orchard, a vegetable garden and several rows of grape vines that produced awesome black grapes.

It was only five acres and was not really a working farm. All livestock was gone and all the acres of corn that surrounded us belonged to someone else.

There was plenty of work for my sister and myself during the summer when we stayed with my mother and stepfather. Both had jobs and it was expected the kids take care of the place. We were paid pretty decent for our efforts and, overall, I don’t remember any chore being really terrible.

However, it wasn’t like I was fixing tractors or mending fences. It was mostly keeping up with taking care of the fruits and vegetables.

So it is possible, if we had kept the farm, I might have really learned to love the land.

I would have gone to a small school instead of one I went to, which had a graduating class of about 500. No doubt high school years would have been different and I doubt my first job would have been at Burger King.

I am happy that I live in Wyoming now. It feels great to have lived in different countries–Hawaii, and to have been exposed to lot of cultures that have enlightened me to so much. I honestly feel there is not a whole lot that I would like to have changed in how my life went.

Had my father decided to keep the farm and raise his kids there–and if I learned about how to take care of the land and farm that had been handed down for generations in the Armstrong family–might say the same thing.

There might be a strong reason I am drawn to that photograph of the farm that I never understood before.