Rural Reading

Yesterday morning, as I was reading up on the recent Nobel Laureate, I noticed that one of his books that had actually been translated into English was printed by David Godine, a small, fiercely independent publisher based in Boston. They consistently keep a clever list of vaguely obscure works in handsome, durable editions. Once I saw the book's cover, I remembered that we stocked it at the SJC Bookstore, which in turn made me recall several titles by the same publisher which we did not stock. In our move, however, I completely forgot about them. So, in the late afternoon rain I went downtown to the Ann Arbor Public Library and checked out First Person Rural, a collection of essays by "sometime farmer" Noel Perrin. Although they were written for a couple of country magazines and the New Yorker in the seventies, they still offer sound farming advice for the uninitiated.

This morning, after I fixed Melody's lunch and she left for work, I sat down with the rest of the coffee and read the whole thing through by noon. As Mr Perrin extolled the various pleasures of agrarian life, I laughed out loud more than once. For example, he opens "Buying a Chainsaw," with this paragraph: "If I were to move to an old-fashioned farm, everything quaint and hand made like a scene from Old Sturbridge Village, and could bring just one piece of modern machinery with me, I wouldn't hesitate a second. I'd bring my chainsaw. It's noisy, it's dangerous, it pollutes the air -- and I love it." He then goes on to describe what constitutes a good saw, how to buy one, and why you inevitably need a good serviceman. I probably like the essay as much as I do because it reminds me of other amateur farmers I know, perhaps especially Dr Garner. The next essay, however, is even better. He describes how, after much trial and error, he arrived at the perfect fencepost. This is what he suggests:

First learn to recognize all the trees you have. If you don't already know how to chainsaw, learn to. Then start looking for stands of young trees that need thinning. In the absence of cedar, wild cherry or tamarack is best, though both hemlock and white pine will do. ... If you're smart, you will have cut all these posts where you can get pretty close to them with a pickup truck, which you now drive out there. Bring your wife (or husband, or unsuspecting houseguest) and an extra pair of ear protectors. Open the tailgate and load the first three or four posts in the back of the truck. While he or she holds the first post steady, you sharpen it with your chain saw. This amounts to cutting a slice off each side the full length of the chain saw blade, getting the victim in the back of the truck to turn the post 90 degrees, and cutting off two more slices. The whole procedure takes less than a minute. It leaves, incidentally, a pile of fluffy shavings, which children find irresistible.

Of course, now that I know how to make a fencepost, all I need is some land and a little livestock.