Assignment 2 Final -- Our Farm

Assignment 2, Final

Our Farm

by Lilless McPherson Shilling

June 28, 2009

 

 

My grandparents are buried in an old cemetery in the woods in a rural area in North Carolina. My mother sometimes took my three brothers and me to visit their grave site. After my mother died in 2006, our families took her ashes there, sprinkled them between her parents’ graves, and held a private memorial service for her. We planted a hosta plant over her ashes.  Then we rushed to the nearby creek to wash off to try to avoid getting chiggers.

 

My first time back was a few weeks ago, when I visited the graveyard alone.  The hosta was still there.  I stayed a while to talk with my mother and weed the plot.  Then I rushed to the creek to wash off.

 

About a mile away is our farm.  I visited it too.  I call it our farm because my three brothers and I own it now. The house on it is empty.  No one has lived in it for many years, but it still holds many memories. Unpainted and dilapidated, it only stands erect because plants are holding it up and is barely visible from the road because of the grass, bushes, and trees that hide it. Once it was a comfortable country home. It had shingle siding and a tin roof. Flowers, plants, and trees abounded in the yard: a gardenia by the chimney, the cedar tree by the mail box, purple bearded irises, a grape arbor, crepe myrtle trees, rose of Sharon trees, a weeping willow tree, a locust tree, loblolly pines, blackberries, raspberries, and thistles. The cedar tree is still there but the mail box isn’t. Everything else is overgrown.

 

The house stands on a five-acre lot and the land around it is one hundred acres, about half of which is wooded and half farm land. Today a local farmer rents the farm land to plant cotton and soy beans.

 

Located on Nixonton Road near Elizabeth City in eastern North Carolina, our farm was originally the home of my great grandparents, the Davises. In 1947, when I was about five, my grandmother and grandfather (the Pendletons) moved into her father’s old deserted home. My grandparents renovated it and added a porch, garage, new kitchen, new bathroom, and new bedroom to the three bedroom, one bathroom house.

 

When my grandparents lived there they were among the few people in the area with indoor plumbing and electricity. The water at the farm house, which tasted like iron and had a slight rust color to it, came from a well. Most of the people (black and white) in homes nearby had outdoor pumps and outhouses and used kerosene lamps for light. The children I played with when I visited my grandparents lived in those homes. While I did not feel like I was better than they were, I did feel privileged compared to them.

 

Keeping the farm in our family was not easy. When my grandparents died in 1960, my mother and her two siblings inherited the property. For a while, renters lived in the home and it gradually went downhill. Then, my mother, who was divorced and whose four children were grown and gone, moved into the home to take care of it. This proved difficult and lonely for her but she was determined to keep the property in the family. However, when one of my brothers and his wife had their first child, they asked our mother to come live near them and help them with the baby. Again, renters moved in; and again, the farm house declined. Soon my mother’s brother and sister wanted to sell the farm, calling it a rural slum. My mother resisted their efforts to sell the property because it represented a legacy from her parents and she felt land was a good investment. In the late 1980s, When my uncle died, his family was insistent about selling out. Around that time, we sold some of the timber and my brothers and I used our portion of the profits to buy out my uncle’s part of the property. The McPhersons then owned two-thirds of the property and my mother was delighted. When my mother’s sister died a few years later, her children did not insist on selling the property because all of us knew how important it was to my mother. But after my mother died in 2006, her children started to urge us to sell or buy them out. Finally, in 2008, we bought them out. Now the McPhersons own the entire property.

 

While our farm house is almost gone, our plants are still living, and our land is still there.  We still smell the cedar tree. We still hear the bob whites and other birds. Cars still pass by on the old country road.

 

When I go back to our property and feel a sense of ownership and can picture a future for my brothers and all our families there, I realize this is why my mother struggled to keep her parents’ home.  This is what she wanted. Our legacy continues.  It is worth getting chiggers.

 

Our farm house still stands

My family owns the land

We will persevere