The traditional January thaw never really ended. February was a rotten month—raw, unseasonably warm. Early January’s stark, crystalline beauty morphed into dull overcast skies, sleet, freezing rain. The Himalayas of snow I’d built shrank to dirt-crusted little ridges, and the farmyard became a basin of muck and slush. When the weather did flash cold for a day or two, it froze the rain onto cars and trucks and glazed them in rock-hard clear ice that was impossible to scrape off. All the snow melted off the fields and the hop yard, making Erik and Brassard nervous about having adequate water in the spring. Though it was often warm enough to put the cows out, we seldom did, because they came back so slimed with mud that we couldn’t manage adequate shed and parlor hygiene; Bob the dog was functionally under house arrest for the same reason. Trips to town became arduous due to the early melting of the dirt roads and the deep mud that resulted.
But the dark sky—that was the worst. Without the drama of a thunderstorm or high winds, no crazy whimsy of snowfall, that static pewter gray weighed on us. The sky literally seemed a burden we carried on our shoulders.
Still, I can now see that something good emerged from that gray smear of a month. You must understand that this is not just my Pollyanna penchant speaking, but one of those insights that can reveal themselves only over time. Nor does it have anything to do with Nietzsche’s dour cliché “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” No: It’s that when people endure troubles together, and stand up to them, they witness the best of each other. There’s no other way to discover that resilience but through shared hardship. Earnest, Will, and I had observed one another’s varied approaches to dealing with Brassard’s and the farm’s difficulties, the scope of determination we revealed. We came to greater respect for each other as a result. Greater loyalty.
And Brassard: He cranked himself back upright, inch by inch, marshaled his willpower. Ultimately, it was he, not me with my duct tape or Will with his tractor keys, who bound himself to the mast, kept himself away from the Sirens of anesthetizing spirits. The mast was the work that needed doing and the responsibility of being the elder and, ultimately, the captain of this particular ship. I suspect this was the perspective Earnest had been nurturing in those long-closeted conversations they’d had. Brassard rose to it.
February slipped into March, windier but not much brighter. The wind blustered erratically down in our valley, rattling the branches of the apple trees around the house, but it hit the ridgetops hard and steady; at night I could hear the vast, diffuse roar of my own forest, like distant surf. Looking over the fields without the snowpack, Brassard and Erik grew still more anxious about having enough soil moisture for the crops. Brassard said he had noticed this trend over the past decade: warmer winters, changing rainfall patterns. He read us an article from the Agriview newsletter about likely impacts of climate change on Vermont’s farming—a dismal prognosis.
Erik finally brought a girlfriend home for dinner with us. They had connected at a gym in Barre, where he’d taken a membership and she divided her time as receptionist and fitness trainer. Kiera was plain of face, with unconvincing blond hair, but her gym-toned muscles gave her a nice shape and a lithe step. Though she’d never lived on a farm, she was a native Vermonter and had been around farmers all her life—in more ways than one, definitely not “a princess.” In common with Will, she was an avid Celtics and New England Patriots fan and could match him stat for stat. She was about Erik’s age, I figured, and they moved easily together.
Still researching the topic, I took Erik aside at one point and asked him if she was effulgent. He rolled his eyes. “No, Annie! Jesus! She’s just a good pal.”
After that, I added good pal to my relationship-cataloging process. I assessed women in the grocery store or hardware store to see whether they were effulgent or were good pal material. Some were obviously contenders for neither, such as Millie, the short-spoken, laughless woman at the general store who had explained to Cat why she kept night crawlers in the fridges. Mostly, though, I had no basis for judgment and so came away no wiser from my inspections. Anyway, I knew there were more categories to be added to the list. Was Cat effulgent? I couldn’t see it, but Robin was a definite maybe. Was Lynn a good pal? No, she was much more, too keen and balanced to be dismissed so lightly. What was she, then?
We had some good times despite the relentless weight of the sky and the anxiety created by the absence of snow.
On Valentine’s Day, Brassard, Will, Earnest, and Erik each gave me some token. I felt very appreciated. Given the diversity of their approaches, I don’t think it was a coordinated effort. Brassard’s was a Hallmark card with a note written in his careful cursive, wishing me a Happy Valentine’s Day and telling me “we” were lucky to have me in the family. Will bought me a set of four much-needed earthenware plates, suitable for pasta, playfully colorful, for my chicken coop apartment. Earnest’s gift was a cupcake he’d had specially made at the Grand Union’s deli counter, red frosting topped not by a sugary heart but by a licorice-looking Pilgrim’s hat with an arrow through it, which I considered sublime wit. Erik knocked on my door, opened it before I could answer, tossed me a red rose wrapped in green tissue, and blew me a kiss.
Toward the middle of March, Erik and Kiera decided that we should have a big dinner together. We invited Lynn, Theo, and Robin, and Brassard invited John and Sarah Hubbard, the middle-aged farming couple who owned the land on the
