“I’m Marg; g’day mate,” she said with a grunt, extending a dirt-stained hand.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” John said, and left.
He sure wasn’t spending much time showing me the ropes. I didn’t mind. I’d just eaten a big meal a couple of hours ago; it was warm and sunny, and Marg seemed nice enough.
“So what is it we’re doing out here, Marg?”
“Tending the vines,” she said, pointing to the new, wayward shoots not yet attached to the wire. “The trick is, you’ve got to get the twist tie on there just right. Then you’ve got to crouch real low and check each of these irrigation drips at the bottom of the base to make sure a rabbit didn’t chew it off.”
After about twenty minutes, Marg announced, “Time for a cuppa!” She pulled out a thermos and offered me a sip of tea. Then she pulled out a raw onion sandwich from her shirt pocket, took a couple of bites, and let out a tremendous belch.
“More tea?” She extended the thermos toward me, with a piece of onion hanging out of her mouth.
“Uh, no thanks.”
“Well, that’s enough work for today,” she said, taking off her gloves. We couldn’t have been there for more than an hour. On the drive there, John had told me he preferred hiring foreigners because “they work damn harder than the Kiwis.” He seemed to have a point.
The sun was getting lower in the sky, and I was in charge of making dinner. “I’d best be getting to the house, Marg,” I said. “See you tomorrow?”
“You bet, see you bright and early—well, not too early.”
BANG! A shot rang out on the front porch. I was so startled I dropped the cookbook I had been browsing. A moment later, John came into the kitchen, carrying a rabbit by the ears that was dripping with blood.
“Cook ‘er up into a stew,” he said, pushing it toward me.
“Not on your life!” I squealed.
At first he looked angry, then he grinned. “All right, I’ll give it to the dogs. Do you know how to make shortbread?”
“Desserts are my specialty,” I smiled.
When I was a kid, nothing made me happier than whipping up a fresh batch of brownies while belting out show tunes. Although I no longer had aspirations of becoming a singing pastry chef, cooking for John was the next best thing. He went through plates of my shortbread like they were handfuls of peanuts. Each day, I’d come in from the fields or vines an hour early, crank the radio, and sing at the top of my lungs as I prepared dinner and another round of cookies.
John McCaskey was quite a character: A short-tempered yet good-natured fellow who muttered curses under his breath on the tractor and laughed at his own dirty jokes. A lanky, Scottish immigrant, he loved playing the saxophone as much as he loved working the land.
One day, John called me down to the sheep barn. “Can you hold steady under pressure?” he asked.
I must’ve looked worried, because he added, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to castrate any more lambs.”
He escorted me into the main barn, where the temperature was at least 100 degrees. There was a team of husky, sweating men with clippers, shearing the wool off the sheep in record time.
“We got a lot of sheep to get through today, and your job is to keep ‘em moving. Get under the barn and push the sheep up the chute. When you’re done with a round of sheep, run back up here, get the wool from the shearers’ feet, and throw it in that tall burlap bin over there. When the sack is full, stomp it all down and sew it up with that twine. Got all that?”
I must have lost ten pounds that day, slapping sheep on the butt from under the barn, running up to the shearing stage to clear the wool, jumping into the burlap sacks up to my knees, and then hustling back under the barn. The men let me try my hand at shearing during the lunch break, and it was much harder than it looked. By the time we stopped at ten o’clock that night, we were all sweaty and exhausted, but also elated.
“Good work, mates!” John said, clapping the shearers on the back. “Pub time!”
Marge Piercy wrote a powerful poem called, “To Be of Use” about jumping in the trenches and getting done what needs to be done. That’s exactly what I loved about being on John’s farm. “Fence post needs fixing? No problem!” “Irrigation system not working? I’ll figure it out.” “Snip the dirty wool off the legs of 900 sheep? I’m on it!”
I didn’t want to just skim along or hang out in life; I wanted to contribute. I needed to feel like my life had a purpose. This drive for meaning and purpose started when I was sixteen years old.
The summer before my high school senior year, I was an exchange student on a Swiss farm. While most kids back home were filling out college applications and stressing about the SATs, I was happily milking cows and hoping that my cute blond host brother would notice me.
For the first time in my life, I felt completely at ease, living in a peaceful, beautiful countryside surrounded by kind, authentic people. Living directly off the land felt so natural and “right.” Every morning, I awoke at dawn for the 5:00 a.m. milking. Walking barefoot down the cobblestone street of our village to the local dairy, I would exchange my buckets of fresh milk for a large wheel of cheese and some newly pressed butter. Stopping at the bakery on the way home, I’d pick out a loaf of country bread that was still warm. Before walking inside the farmhouse, I’d graze my way through the patch of overgrown fruits and vegetables next to the shed, hoping not to get busted by my host mother. Dori was a powerful, imposing woman whose generous, but no-nonsense attitude had earned her widespread respect as the matriarch of the village.
“Laurie, as-tu mangé dans le jardin encore?” (“Laurie, did you eat in the garden again?”)
“Moi? Mais non!” (“Me? Of course not!”) I protested, with blackberry stains around my mouth.
“Qu’est-ce qu’on va faire avec toi?” (“What are we going to do with you?”) Laughing, she wiped her hands on her apron.
One evening, sitting high on my favorite hillside, listening to the tinkling of cowbells on the patchwork of fields below, I wrote my first song, called, “Who am I?” Strumming along with my host brother’s guitar, I crooned out soul-searching questions about life and my place in it, as only a teenager can. Soon, I’d be finishing high school and have to decide what to do with my life.
In Switzerland, people choose at age twelve or thirteen what they want to be when they grow up. Based on that decision, they’re either officially finished with school a few years later, or they begin an academic track toward their chosen career. My nine-year-old host cousin already knew that he wanted to be a farmer like his dad. His eleven-year-old brother wanted to be an aeronautic engineer.
Both boys’ decisions were received with open praise and enthusiasm. No one looked down on the younger son for wanting to work a blue collar job, and no one scorned the oldest son for not carrying on the family tradition. In their culture, children were encouraged to follow their dreams, whatever they might be. These values made complete sense to me. I saw no point in going back to the American rat race.
“I’m going to live here for the rest of my life!” I informed my parents the day before I was scheduled to fly back home to New Jersey.
My parents balked, then made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. “If you go to college now, you can travel every summer.”
Surprise!