TheBanyanTree: MY SON, FARMER JOE

[Sharon Mack]

I just found this in my "archives."  It is a story I wrote about my youngest son when he was a boy (he is now 22).  I had totally forgotten about this.  It was actually published in the Sunday Berkshire Eagle (our local paper) under the parenting section (It's a Parent).  

When Ruth Bass called (one of the editors of the paper) re the story, my son happened to answer the phone.  I had read him the story about himself prior to sending it to the paper.  She asked for Farmer Joe....you should have seen his face.  We all had a good smile over that one!

Thought I'd share it.  It brought back some sweet memories for me.  He was the CUTEST kid!!!

MY SON, FARMER JOE

I call my son "Farmer Joe."  I believe he has found his niche in life, along side me, in our postage stamp yard as we dig smaller postage stamp plots for our new gardening adventure.  I have never seen a boy of thirteen who wants to cut the lawn and asks if he can spend his own money on a weed-whacker because I can't afford the one he wants.  He goes out on his own to weed and comes up with more ideas on what to plant where than I actually have the energy for.  He takes any suggestion from people he thinks, "know their stuff" and puts it into action.

I see a peace come over his young face as he digs in the dirt and plays with his plants*everything from tomatoes and peppers to flowers and ferns.  For Mother's Day he bought me marigolds, Impatiens, and my all-time favorite, a lilac bush.  Granted it was small and on sale (marked down from $14.97 to $9.99) but it's lovely and brought me to tears.

He not only works in our yard but has found two jobs doing the same sort of thing. One is a former teacher from the 7th grade who does this sort of thing in the summer months and for the other restaurateur whose overgrown grounds surrounding the restaurant looks defeating to me*.but not for Farmer Joe.  He digs in, working steadily and quietly and when I come to pick him up he beams at me with his brace filled grin.  I can see the difference in the flowerbeds immediately.  He's a perfectionist.  No sloppy work for this young man.

As for me, this is my first time gardening in fourteen years. When my "ex" was not my "ex," we had a wonderful )and very extensive) vegetable garden.  We rented four six-by-six-foot garden plots (all connected, of course) in Columbia, Md., where we lived at the time.  You could plant flowers in your yard but not vegetables (a city code of some sort) and so we rented garden plots at Green Thumb Garden Plots Inc.  Our vegetable garden was gloriously productive and the small yard in front of our townhouse (also of postage stamp size) also boasted a beautiful flower bed landscaped to perfection.

Eventually he (my husband left and we (the kids and I) left and the gardens stayed behind.  Farmer Joe wasn't even a thought in our minds during the height of our gardening years, and later, when he became considerably more than that, the gardens were only  that*a thought in our minds.

For Farmer Joe's first eleven years of life we lived in postage stamp apartments in the big city suburbs of Baltimore and we were lucky to have grass grow between the cracks in the cement.  A few of the better apartments did have yards but not the kind you could dig in.  So, I have come to the conclusion that Farmer Joe's love for Mother Earth and the wonderful fruits of her bosom is a genetic thing with him, as it is with me.  The reason I believe this is because in a recent medieval history class (I've gone back to school in my late years to try to complete something I started before Farmer Joe and his siblings came along) we learned how surnames came about.    It gave me real insight into my heritage*at least part of it, anyway.

According to history, by the late 1200s, names for commoners (that's us) became quite the vogue.  Generally they came from three sources.  Some of the names were occupational surnames such as Taylor (Tailor), Wheelwright, Schmidt or LeClerk.  Others were locational where one worked or lived:  Woods, Atwater, Lake, Fields (remember this last one, please).  Still others denoted family descent, such as Robertson (Robert's son).

Sitting in that classroom, I saw all these facts as proof regarding Farmer Joe's genes, as well as my own.  You see, my father's grandmother was "Grandma Field" and she was (you guessed it) a farmer's wife who, in fact, went on to run the farm alone during the Depression after her husband of many years, Farmer Field, plowed his last cornrow.  She died on that farm and I am sorry to say that family members, who had gotten away from fields and farming and had taken their places as city dwellers, sold the land at a big profit.

And so here we are, Farmer Joe and I.  Though technically still city dwellers like the rest of our family, we find ourselves, in a small way, carrying on the family tradition of agriculture.  It skipped a couple of generations but, I'm here to say, it's back.