It’s nine-twenty in the morning. I’m sitting on the porch of a cabin on a lake in rural Vermont. I am drinking coffee. At nine-thirty I hear a cockcrow nearby. Nine-thirty? This rooster is either a late riser or God didn’t impart to him the proper sense of time that roosters ought to have. Maybe he never learned to tell time. I know that some people never learn. It’s a common malady. I have relatives who seem constitutionally unable to show up when we’ve agreed on a time. They’ll say glibly that they lost track of time. I think they just like making an entrance.
Looking less critically, I can imagine that this rooster is a free spirit among roosters whose lives are constrained by tedious barnyard routines. For the rooster, servicing hens all day may not be as glamorous as we might imagine and may even become tiresome. This rooster is his own rooster, with a variety of interests and responds fully to what the moment presents him. He gives no thought for the morning much less the morrow. This rooster thinks outside the henhouse.
I’m of two minds about time; I feel a kind of muted admiration for anyone who doesn’t let the pressure of time dictate their lives. Yet, if I expect some person at two and he shows up at four, I’m irked. In the particular case of the rooster, I was simply expecting the rooster to crow at sunrise.
Life is all about time and how we use it.
I think of time and my thoughts drift toward old clocks and watches. I’ve accrued a few over the years. I have three old pocket watches: one, my great uncle’s, another my grandfather’s, and one, my father’s. I have another timepiece, my grandfather’s clock, a chronometer with bells that ring indicating the beginning and ending of a sailor’s deck watch. As long as I’d known my grandfather, the chronometer sat on a shelf next to his smoking stand. On his death, it was bequeathed to me. It stopped running soon after he died, a monument to the last watch he stood.
Is it just because I’m older that I think time’s changed its velocity and that fifty years ago time traveled about half the speed it does now? Yes and no. It may be scientifically unverifiable, of course, but it’s psychologically credible. I believe our lives were lived more slowly then than they are today. Our present cultural norm is not ‘steady as she goes,’ but ‘how far, how fast and put it to the floor.’ Zero to sixty covering a one quarter miles in 12 seconds is not just a hot feature in modern cars. It’s how we live
Once I left my car at the garage for an oil change; now it’s now jiffy lubed. Since we’re well into the fast food era, dining out offers a kind of accelerated experience. Eating out was once a production, a big deal, characterized by waiters who took our orders (curiously most wore black, like morticians), schmoozed us and then brought our order asking solicitously if everything was to our complete satisfaction. The experience was characterized by leisure. The entire affair was good for at least an hour, often more. In fast food restaurants, we can order, lets say a three course meal – burger, fries and coke – pay for and eat it, all in under five minutes. Few words are exchanged and the person you ordered from passes you the order while staring at a computer. Highly caloric, streamlined, but interpersonally, spare.
It’s a common practice in businesses, including the health care industry, to pack an employee’s time with so many tasks that it reaches critical mass. I remember talking to some nurses about their work. Men and women became nurses for the hands-on patient care that they found so rewarding. As health care becomes big business and economizes, employers increase the workload for the nurse without extending his or her hours. The endless administrative tasks limit the time the nurse spends with patients. Time, in the service of profit, gets placed on steroids.
My stepson and his wife, farm. She tends the chickens. After I heard the rooster crowing that morning I asked her what she made of it. She said she could speak only anecdotally, but she thought a part of a rooster’s habits are dictated by circadian rhythms, but not totally. As she has observed, her chickens, the younger roosters especially, are inclined to crow more often during the day and occasionally at night. Older ones crow less frequently, she observed, although she’s seen exceptions, like one old rooster who crows all the time. I’d also add, that one sees this among the males of our own species. As the book of Ecclesiastes counsels us, there is a time for everything under the sun. Not everyone gets it.
Before traveling to Vermont, on an impulse, I took an old watch to the jeweler to have repaired. It was the first watch I ever purchased. I bought it in New York City in 1960. Previous watches were graduation gifts. This watch was a Croton, a good watch in its day. Like many things old, when wound to go, it moved with determination, but slowly and at times barely made it through the day.
The jeweler looked at the watch, somberly, intently, like a doctor examining a patient. He concluded that my watch could be repaired. He quoted an extortionist price I might expect for the repair. It left me facing the great existential question about time that everyone dreads: just how much am I willing to pay to buy more time.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
Robert Hall (BobHallsr) says
Last night at dinner we were reminiscing about our life in Vermont.
From Country Clubs to the Grange Hall
After 20 years, in the corporate world, I left my job as president and CEO of a major transportation company. My wife, Penny, and I decided that it was time to enjoy a slower pace and bring up our four children in a different environment. So we did what most of my executive friends only talked about … we bought the farm. It was in Vermont, a 3,000 tree, run-down apple orchard of 150 acres situated on a small mountain and fronted by a half mile of a river, filled with native trout. Yankee Magazine once featured the orchard as one of the most beautiful farms in New England. While searching for an appropriate name, we found 225 year old references to the site as “Burnham Hollow,” and we became proud and naive owners of Burnham Hollow
Orchards.
We immediately set about reconstructing the 1790 farm house, which was ready to collapse at any moment, by restoring the original additions dating back to 1815, 1850, 1900 and 1934. When it was completed, the contractor handed us the final bill and said, “Folks, I could have built you two new houses for what it cost to restore this relic.” During the next two years, we rehabbed the trees, purchased new equipment and built a cider mill along with a cold storage. We learned how to grow apples, and unfortunately, learned how to purge our savings account. We were ready to take on the fruit growing industry but forgot to check with Mother Nature to see if she agreed with our plans.
She didn’t. During the first 5 years we suffered 3 total crop losses from 2 hail storms and a deep freeze. After the third disaster our family was reduced to picking apple “drops” from the cold wet grass, early mornings, at a neighboring orchard, to keep the cider mill operating. It didn’t take long to realize that we were fighting a losing battle. Exhausted, depressed and near broke, we decided to change our direction by distributing our own apples and cider to area stores and dairies and opening a retail store. The next year, we developed a pick-your-own operation. After visiting local orchards, it was apparent that most of them considered a PYO sales outlet as a chore. After announcing our open picking, the competitors dropped their prices. We raised ours, after promoting the operation as a festival, offering free cider, hay rides, and a petting zoo,* accompanied by personal greetings and a party atmosphere. We also opened a satellite store in the barn, which led to a lively competition between the farm PYO and barn store sales vs the store sales in town.
One Sunday, during our third season, a farm hand rushed up to the picking area saying that the state police just arrived and were very upset. We were in trouble. I flew done the mountain to the barnyard and yes, the police were upset. They excitedly pointed down the hill to the main road yelling “do you see that mess?” The main road was blocked for two miles with cars waiting to come to the orchard. That mess turned out to be our first major success. From then on, we greeted customers from seven neighboring states along with “Leaf Peepers” as far away as Texas and Florida.
Meanwhile, we purchased a building, in town, opening a country store in our local city, 20 miles away, and close to the ski areas. Burnham Hollow Farm Store stocked with our own farm products, cider, maple syrup and apples. We soon added dozens of Vermont home-made gourmet foods (remember “Baby Boom”), several of which became famous brands. Burnham Hollow became the test distributor for the new Vermont Food Products Marketing Board, helping us to attract hundreds of tourists and skiers. To augment the off-season, we bought more land and started a small fruit and vegetable farm to grow corn, vegetables, and flowers, eventually selling everything we grew. Penny ran the store, while I handled the orchard and farm. Next we started making fresh pies and baked goods, all made by hand. In a short while, we were barely able keep up with the demand, reaching 9,000 pies a year Our final venture was a mail order operation that served customers in 38 states.
Determination, business experience and self reliance saved us. By embracing the first personal computers in 1983, we were able to help prevent crop diseases, develop valuable crop growing procedures and reduce our chemical usage by programming our farm operations. Computers also assisted in maintaining inventory controls for our retail and wholesale business. We also adopted recently developed business promotion systems such as “guerrilla marketing,” along with innovative personal and product branding techniques.
By 1990, my sight loss had reached a point where I could no longer operate the equipment or drive safely so we sold the orchard and the farm, but kept the country store operating until 1995. Our original reason to move to the farm was fulfilled. Despite hardships and disappointments, our journey back to the land nurtured close family ties that make our life rich in many ways. My wife, Penny, was a perfect companion and became an astute partner, our anchor, during the the bad times and the good times. Our four children, who cheerfully shared the hard work with us, learned values which have made a positive and visible difference in their lives, to this day. Looking back at our toil and troubles and eventually reaching our goals, we can say: ‘We Did It Together – We Did It Ourselves.
But come …my wife and let us try, before we die,
To make some sense of life.
We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good… we’ll do the best we know.
We’ll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow…
—Voltaire/Bernstein, “Candide”
Highlights of our Back-to-Nature-Journey
The orchard was never ours. Even though we were accepted by the town folks the orchard always remained as a major feature belonging to them.
We should have read the early signs of impending disaster. The week that we purchased the farm, the temperature plunged to 45 degrees below zero, ruining the plumbing and heating systems in the main house, tenant house and the barn.
At our first fruit farmers meeting, we were told that a line of growers at a table was for people betting how soon we would quit and return to the city. Later, these same farmers elected me to the boards of the Vermont Fruit Growers Association, the New York & New England Apple Growers Association and the Fruit Growers Marketing Council.
During first five years, we hired spray planes, flown by former war pilots with a streak if craziness. Most of the spraying was scheduled early morning and their favorite trick was to wake us up, next to our bedroom window, with an explosive engine noise, (like a truck “downshifting”). One Sunday morning I ordered a spray and told the pilot that we might be in church if he arrived soon. In the middle of the priest’s sermon, the spray plane pilot buzzed the church not more than 25 feet alongside and blasted his engine, shaking the small structure. The priest calmly announced, “Mr. Hall, you are excused, please tend to your trees.”
After opening the store, we bought a neighboring farm to grow vegetables and flowers,
I asked the state and federal experts to look it over and help me establish a sweet corn operation. After a few hours later, they concluded that I was wasting my time, without an agriculture education and my background as a “big executive from New York.” Two years later we sold sold all of the crops including 30,000 ears of corn in our country store.
* The petting zoo consisted of horses, cows, sheep, goats and pigs. The Three Pigs lived in a small hut with their names painted on a sign – “Peanut, Butter and Jelly” or “Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato.”
Our wholesale apple and cider business selling to stores and dairies in the region required a new larger truck. The day it arrived was immediately after the eye doctors took my keys away, so my wife was designated as an alternate driver, thereafter known by the farm hands as “Mrs. Double Clutch.”
Life is Good,
BobHallsr
Easton, MD
the [email protected]