Chapter 2 — Life of a Farmhand
A serial novel in the form of correspondence while the world as we know it collapses around us. I recommend you start at the Introduction:
https://readmedium.com/climate-for-change-introduction-5331d5ab9313
But you can start anywhere you want.
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Chapter 2:
Text messages (Printed out):
(From Peter/grandpa)
Carol — Eloise and I are in the truck. We are driving in along the route he would take if he were to try to ride his bike out here. It is only 70 miles. He might be pig-headed enough to try it.
(From Carol/mom)
Okay. I’ve got Mel and we are driving around the neighborhood. We are going to check the library, the park, and the coffee shop. Keep me posted.
P: We’ve got him! He had made it fifty miles and is tired and a little sunburned but otherwise fine. We are ready to bring him home to you.
C: Hallelujah! Tell him he is grounded!
P: Roger that. Do you want to try to meet us halfway?
C: Yeah. Let’s meet at the natural foods co-op in Stillwater.
P: Got it.
C: Hold-up, dad. I’m going to pack up Mel and bring her out to your place. I’m still flaming mad… but, I also think Benji could use a little time away, and if your offer still stands, I’d like to take you up on it. I don’t want to reward him for running away, but I also know he is ready for some non-mom time. I know you won’t mind having Mel, too, and I can’t leave Mel home alone when I am at work. Have him call me and we can work out the details. Tell him he is still grounded, just at your place.
P: Okay. Look for the call. Love you Carol!
C: Ok.
P: FYI — You might have to wait a little for your phone call. He said he wants to finish the trip on his bicycle. He is your son! Stubborn and willful.
C: Where do you think I got that from? :)
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Handwritten on paper (delivered through regular mail):
Dear Mom,
Thank you for letting me stay out here, even though you also brought Melody with you. I know you are mad with me. I could tell when you dropped Mel off. I’m sorry. I thought that if I just made it out here and showed you how much of a help I could be to Grandma and Grandpa, you would see that I am ready to move here.
Grandpa says that this June is one of the hottest he can remember. I believe him. I feel like I am sweaty all the time. It cools off a little at night, but I am missing our house’s air conditioning. Grandpa has a calendar near the door, and he writes down the high and low temperatures and any rainfall amounts on each date’s space. He said he has a mind to get out the calendars from years past and see if he is right. He has 40 years of them in the attic.
It isn’t quite what I expected. I know that Grandpa said it would be a lot of work, but I think he is giving me extra work just to try to teach me some sort of lesson. This morning we weeded carrots on our hands and knees for an hour; then Grandpa had Mel drive the tractor while he and I loaded hay bales onto the wagons to bring back to the barn. Mel’s only job was to keep the tractor going super slow and straight while Grandpa walked along and hoisted bales onto the wagon and I stacked them. Each bale is 50 pounds. We did three wagon loads of 200 bales each. By lunchtime I was covered in sweat and dust, and every muscle I have was sore. It has been like this every day. I don’t want to complain to Grandpa, but I’m starting to think about it. Otherwise, maybe I’ll want to come home soon.
It seems like Melody is having the time of her life. If she is upset about all the work, I haven’t heard anything. I think they give me all the hard jobs.
Well, I gotta go. Grandma is giving me a Spanish lesson tonight. I do miss you, Mom, and I am sorry I left without telling you.
Benji
P.S. When do you think I can have my phone and laptop back? Grandpa says I can’t even use their computer without your permission. I know you are still mad with me for running away, but I need my laptop for my history studies. And without my phone, I think I might lose some of my friends for good.
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Dear Benj,
I can’t tell you how pleased I was to get your letter! This house is really lonely and empty without you and Melody. I’m glad you are able to help your grandma and grandpa, but I miss you both a lot. I was so scared when you left. I understand your need to branch out, but it was terrifying for me when I didn’t know where you were. I want you to trust me enough to talk to me about the big things in your life. I’m on your side.
It also might be helpful to trust your grandpa, too. He won’t think any less of you if you have a talk with him about the amount of work. I don’t want you to hold onto things and let them build up. We adults can be surprisingly understanding if you give us a chance.
I know what you are saying about the heat. I also know how passionate you are about the climate crisis. Maybe there is a way that your grandpa’s old calendars could yield data about the history of the weather on that farm? I am excited for you to be on a farm because so many of your school lessons could have extensions that could be explored in the real world. The mysteries of life on the farm could also lead your curiosity to do further investigation in books. I love how curious you and Mel both are. That is a gift.
Please give Mel a hug for me and tell her to give me a call or an email. I’ll come out on Saturday for dinner.
Love,
Mom
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Email:
Dear Carol,
Thank you for telling Benji about trusting his grandpa and grandma. I think he was making up a story in his head about how we were trying to make him work so hard that he would be miserable and would want to go home. That wasn’t true at all. This is just how hard we work all the time. We have been giving him jobs that we would have done ourselves and expecting him to work as hard as we do. If he wants to be treated like an adult, he should know what it is like to work this hard. When he confronted us about it, we realized that we hadn’t told him anything about our idea to have him work like an adult nor had we given him any context for the work. Why are we weeding the carrots? Why are we baling hay?
After our talk, we took Benji and Mel out for a long walk around the property. We met each of the animals and talked about what each one needs to thrive. We looked at the animals’ environments and made lists of what needed to be done daily to care for the animals and what improvements or repairs are needed in the spaces. We went to the woodshop and machine shed and went over the purpose of each tool, and we talked about which equipment needs attention. We visited the gardens, the orchard, and the fields and assessed each crop for why we plant it and what we need to do to help these crops thrive. We made a list of all the plants to weed, fertilize, plant, or mulch.
Finally, we looked at the house, the root cellar, and the pantry. We talked about what we, as humans, need in order to thrive. We made sure to talk about the need for beauty, too. It is just as important to weed the flowers as it is to weed the carrots. By the end, we had a whole list, and they both had a sense of the big picture. We asked them to work with us in the mornings, and then they could pick something off of the list that they wanted to work on in the afternoons. If they see something that they think needs attention that is not on the list, then we can talk about adding it.
By the way, he seems to have picked up quite an interest in World War II after we talked about my grandpa’s escape from Germany in the 1930s. My whole collection of World War II books is out on the living room coffee table.
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Handwritten on paper (delivered through regular mail):
Dear Mom,
That was a good idea you had about getting out all of the old calendars. Grandpa finally let me use their computer, and I spent hours entering the data into a spreadsheet. I charted the temperatures on a graph for each year, and then I overlaid the graphs on each other. It was all right there in front of me. The warming trend is real. Nine of the ten warmest years from Grandpa’s forty calendars have been in the last fifteen years! And this year is topping them all! No wonder I am hot all the time. I have been looking at information like this for years as part of school, but I didn’t really have a sense of it until now. I think I might be protected by the air conditioning in our house. This has all happened in your lifetime. Where are we going? What will it be like when I am your age?
Grandpa and Grandma took us on a long walk around the farm. We made a big list of everything that needs to be done. I think he was responding to my complaints about how much work they have been asking us to do. I get it. Really. There is a lot of work to do. By the end I was just overwhelmed, and I had started to stop listening. It was too much. But they looked like they could just go on forever — looking at every little thing and talking about how it could be better or different. I think they wanted us to be more into the work because now we know why we are doing it. I also think there is a fine line between wanting to help tackle the big list and looking at that list and wanting to not even start. What is the point if you will never finish? I am trying to keep a positive attitude. It helps that we get to choose our afternoon work now.
Did you know that Grandma and Grandpa are working to overthrow the government? Ha. I’ll explain more when you come.
See you Saturday,
Benji
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Next chapter:
https://readmedium.com/chapter-3-a-hat-like-grandpas-5a406b61ab72
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