A Very Small Farm by William Paul Winchester

Published 1996

229 pages

It takes a special writer to get me to consider moving to Oklahoma, and William Paul Winchester is one.

I really do find all landscapes on our planet beautiful, so that's not to say I find the plains states repulsive, but this girl needsTREES and HILLS, if not mountains. But there is something to be said about the sheer distance of the horizon you can take in when in a flat topography. As the author William writes, "To be present during the entire life of a thunderstorm, to see the whole show, is an unforgettable experience." I've gotten to witness that a few times in my life, watching storms pass by both over land and water, and it's hard to verbalize the scale. To see a whole storm at once is a god-like feeling, but the tiny human in you is simultaneously shaking in your boots.

I get this feeling everytime I look at the print I have hanging above my fireplace. No one has ever been less of a virtual artist than I, and I am baffled at the way artists can get depth and movement into a static image. I found this framed painting called SUN AND SHADOWS in a thrift store in Florida for $19, and promptly paid nearly another $100 to ship it home to Tennessee (scroll to the end for more on the artist). I'd never really seen a linen panting before, and I was amazed at the way you can feel the storm rolling in. I can immediately smell the rain - a sensation only those of us who spend time outside building a relationship with the weather can understand.

But, back to the book! A Very Small Farm is a collection of essays and journal entries from the author over nearly two decades transforming 20 acres in Oklahoma to his modest homestead. His living is primarily provided by honey, being a prolific beekeeper, supplemented by odd jobs around his small town and a bit of writing. William's small farm is, I must say, precisely my dream. The temptation in America to make things enormous and highly profitable has always been lost on me, so his approach to provide for his needs and forego anything that would take him away from his farm and autonomy speaks right to my nature. He built his small house himself, raises his own fruits, veggies, and grains, keeps chickens for eggs & meat, and a Jersey cow for milk, cheese, and company.

The essays are full of charming small town stories as well as solid farming advice and some tasty recipes, but my favorite section might be his description of the unlikely friend he found in his Jersey cow, Isabel.

"Of a calm and peacable disposition herself, a cow expects the same from you. If you haven't learned your manners, a cow will teach them to you. That is not to say a cow is always placid. Isabel can be frighteningly playful, so overflowing in high spirits she sometimes frisks around me, circling and kicking up her heels, or stampedes down the path after me, hooves thundering. And she takes an impish delight in catching me unaware and nudging me with her battering ram of a head or bellowing in my ear or, more often, wrapping her long corse textured tongue around a sleeve or pant leg and giving a mighty tug,"

Anyone who has spent time around cows is likely smiling and laughing while reading that, knowing it to be very true. Cows are big, sweet, dangerous puppies.

Most of all, I connect with William's self-satisfaction, alone but not lonely on his farm. "...I am not lonely, a word I would never think to use now, It was the farm itself that turned out to be the best company - a full schedule of work, a Jersey cow scuffing along at my heels, the sun and warm wind. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't this kind of life that what we call 'lonliness' is really crying out for. After all, this is the world in which Homo sapiens evolved, and not the manufactured environment and video reality. That it is filled with people, this urban world, does little to make it less lonely."

Her'es to hoping one day soon I'll have my own very small farm that's teeming with life and never lonely.

The Bookshelf Rating: TOP SHELF

More from the artist R. Batchelder

Obituary - I love that she was born in Kingston, NY and now one of her works hangs in my Kingston Springs, TN home. And I'm wildly jealous she lived much for her life in gorgeous Keene, NH! I can only imagine what her "custom built home" must have looked like. I found another one of her works, a winter scene, on vacation at a flea market in Waterbury, VT just a couple hours from her home, and it killed me not to buy it!

eBay - Many treausures!