Want to catch up on this particular story line? Start here.

I released the news about our family’s letting go of the farm a couple of weeks ago; and there are a couple of things I want to say:

First – I hope that it wasn’t too jarring a start to the story (by the way – if you need to catch up, you can start here). For years, many of you have enjoyed the yarns and images and Christmas Greetings from the Farm, and some have privately shared with me that this little plot of land on Willow Road seemed to have a personality of its own and often felt like a member of the family. Like I said early on, the journey ended very well; but getting there practically and emotionally unfolded over the last few months.

Second – Your response (though perhaps a little stunned) has been overwhelmingly supportive. Many of you shared little sketches of your own “letting go” process, and I want to thank you for that. Each of your well wishes were a great reminder of a little community that had built up around the place – many of its members having never experienced it but through my pictures and meandering words.

All of the feedback was fantastic, but the question that only a few had the courage to ask was this:

Why the hell would you sell the farm?

I can only speak for myself in answer to that question – even though this was a family decision. And as I reflected over the last season, I was a little surprised to discover that it was years in the making.

There was no traumatic event or sideways twist of circumstances that forced our hand here. For me, anyway, there was simply a quiet peeling back of events that led to eventual clarity…

In the hot summer of 1966, Bob and Mabel Cook moved their family of three kids and one newborn boy (yours truly) from the suburbs of Detroit back to the community of their birth. Bob had grown up in the nearest town and Mabel was born in the little farmhouse a nine iron shot from our front yard.

Bought from the estate of Mabel’s late father, Ernie Gleason, the farm was a decision that they were going to let go of Bob’s exhausting career track in exchange for an environment and ultimate rhythm for life that would be far more valuable than executive promotions and stock options. Bob would spend the next thirty years driving a two hour round trip to his employment in Detroit, but always come home to the refuge and subject of endless chores and projects that was the farm on Willow Road.

It was here that they would raise their family, fully embracing the neighborhood and community, and create a launch pad of sorts from which the dreams of their four kids could begin.

And it was the best place on the planet for a boy to grow up.

But it was, indeed, a launch pad. And then it changed into something else. One after another, the Cook kids lifted off on the adventures of their choosing; and for each of us, it changed from home to a place of refuge and rest that we could always return to. The porch light was always on and the back door was most often left unlocked for a former resident turned wayfarer looking for a warm fire, abundant leftovers and clean sheets.

Verdant springs and summers slipped into the majesty of autumn (hands down the best season on the farm) and then into the quiet of winter where the land slumbered. If we were to indulge our temporal aspirations, we could have almost convinced ourselves that those carefree days would never end.

Until the warm summer afternoon in 2002 when Mabel, as she watered her flower beds, fell down and couldn’t get up. And the complexion of the farm changed forever.

Bob was foursquare committed to bringing his wife home from the hospital, and we did the day before Thanksgiving that same year. It was a big adjustment, and the farm changed with us. There was still the ancient thrum of the land all around us – I’ve never been able to describe it better than that. But the activity, especially in and around the house, orbited around caring for the stricken woman who made the farm what it was.

Though still lovely in the warm light of an autumn sunset, it was no longer the carefree atmosphere of our youth. Nonetheless, a new but more careworn rhythm was found and sustained until she died on a sunny June day in 2008.

We spent a lot of time that year keeping Bob occupied with trips away and a lot of time just being with him on the farm. Even though he had made the hard decision to let a nursing home care for Mabel in the last year or two of her life, he was still by her side for much of the day and then went home alone.

Perhaps it was a bestowed kindness that Bob got the chance to ease into life without Mabel – I’ll not land on that either way. But the encouragement was that, though the ache of her loss was real and never went away, he seemed to settle into his new role of neighborhood widower and elder statesman.

Things sailed along quietly for another six years with Bob taking regular visits from his kids and being heavily loved on by the neighborhood in the moments between. He even found a deeper friendship in Sue (who had pounded the stage boards of the local theatre with Mabel in years past) and they enjoyed many dinners and outings together.

But in those six years, there was a subtle but unmistakable shift. Bob let go of the chores and projects that in the past had given him joy. We rearranged our fall cleanup regimen to me on the tractor and him “supervising” from the golf cart. Though he still loved an outing to the Bridgewater Bank for lunch, he gave himself more to quiet moments with his paper or book and watching the sun dip below the hill at day’s end.

And then, just before Christmas 2014, Bob fell ill with an influenza virus that robbed him of his strength and independence; and the hard decision was made. He moved to an apartment in town that could take much of the burden of daily life off his plate. And for the first time in 48 years, the farmhouse was empty.

We still went to Saline and enjoyed the farm as much as we could. Bob was near and it still worked well as a “base of operations” as we connected with him. And after all, it was still home in some way. But most of the time it remained like one of the nearby fields lying fallow. Our mindset quite necessarily shifted toward treating it more like an asset to be managed and just a little less like the home and refuge that it used to be.

But there was something more primal going on for me, at least. And it occurred to me in this writing that the farm had, in truth, been a container for our experiences that had simply become less able to hold new ones for us. There would always be the deep connection to the land itself; but over fifty years, the aggregate potential energy for the love we could receive from it had reached a kind of fulfillment.

I think Bob felt it as well. There was a grieving process as he let go; but within a year or two he started asking what the plans for the farm were. My answer would come out in words like, “Well, this was a dream that you and Mom had, and it has been awesome for all of us to be able to call it home. But maybe a time is coming that we need to let it go so another family can build some dreams there.”

Have that conversation enough times, and your heart has to change. And that realization of the farm’s fulfillment in my life – even if I couldn’t articulate it in the detail I have here – made my soul ready for what would follow. It also cleared away the emotional (and ultimately less helpful) considerations and made way for more grounded ones:

• As wonderful as it was to visit, there was no clear path toward sustainable ownership by any of our generation.
• Even if that were not the case, no one in the next generation was going to take it. So the days that the farm would remain in the family were numbered.
• We had seen far too many homesteads fall into disrepair and none of us wanted leave the farm as a broken down liability to the community we loved so much.
• And yes, the market was hot and we’d have a summer to get things done if a buyer presented.

So after a ton of consensus building within the family and a thumbs up from Bob, a FOR SALE sign went up at the farm on Willow Road in the middle of May. To our astonishment, we accepted an offer fifteen days later.

And logistically and emotionally, we were in for a hell of a summer.

The story continues here.