Postcard from Hardwick: Which Way Forward
In March, I emailed my friend Jim Ryan to ask if he had ground beef to sell. In addition to a day job, Ryan owns a nearby small diversified farm with his partner, Katie Black. Like everyone else in the state, facing an expected shelter-in-place order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, I was looking to stock my family’s pantry. Ryan dug into his freezer and emailed that he had a few pounds to spare. On a windy afternoon, I drove along a mud-rutted road to pick up the meat. I’ve known Ryan and Black for years, attended their harvest jubilees, wandered in their gardens and greenhouse. But that afternoon, we stood the requisite six feet apart, talking.
Like many people, Ryan had scrutinized media reports of this virus and prepared to isolate. Still, he admitted, like most of us he was stunned at how rapidly everyday life had turned upside down. The couple is well-situated to endure a pandemic. Yet their future — like all of ours — is unknown. Will he and his partner lose their jobs? Will either or both of them contract the virus? If so, will they survive?
While the coronavirus has no preference for any political party or income tax bracket, some groups of people are more prone to contracting the disease and suffering fatalities. Others will experience more hardship during — and after — this pandemic. Long predating COVID-19’s arrival, the fractures in the Vermont economy are interwoven into our nation’s much more vast economic landscape, layered with the complexities of class, race, and economics. One increasingly clear strand of the American economic terrain, nonetheless, is that the rich are getting richer and the middle class and poor are getting poorer — especially the lowest wage earners.
The economic forecasts range from grim to unbearable: a looming unknown. What is evident, however, is that whenever we emerge into a post-coronavirus world, our society will be broken and needy in ways we are only now beginning to envision. But the rawness of this world will also provide an opportunity for rethinking, reimagining, and recreating the kind of world we want to inhabit.
When I left Ryan’s farm that windy afternoon, I remembered the summer he had purchased the tumbled-down farmhouse. With a crew of carpenters, he salvaged the little house, sowed an extensive garden, and put cows, chickens, and sheep to pasture. The land lies on a windswept hillside, with a view of Jeudevine Mountain his now-deceased neighbor poet David Budbill lovingly immortalized in his book Judevine.
The house contained a jumble of possessions that had accumulated from multiple generations of inhabitants. In particular, my young daughters were fascinated by an amber-hued tintype. The early photograph, printed on a thin sheet of metal, depicted a young couple in what appeared to be their wedding photo. The man’s shoulders and upper arms were brawny — doubtlessly from strenuous farm work. As I headed home — with a box of meat for our freezer and my family’s dinner table — I thought back to that young couple, long since gone from this world. With the same strength and optimism that couple imbued, Ryan and Black have put their hands to the land and the house, restoring the farm not just to a picturesque Vermont farmhouse but to a thriving homestead.
Hard times have come and gone and come again. In times of tightness, one way forward is to draw inward and isolate. Inevitably perhaps, some people will do what’s best for their family — such as hoarding toilet paper — whether through fear or greed or ignorance. Or, we can collectively seize this time as an opportunity to reappraise the fissures and crevasses of our society that existed long before the coronavirus.
The pandemic appeared in an election year once dominated by the divisions between us, as a state and a nation — politically, racially, philosophically. But COVID-19 rapidly diminished those differences, in loss after loss of lives and livelihoods. No one knows yet how all of this will shake out, although every one of us will lose something: a job or a school semester — in the worst scenario, friends and loved ones. In these daunting days, however, our individual acts of kindness gain immeasurable more worth. Countless people immediately stepped up to volunteer and donate. But we will endure by our smallest generosities, too — by wishing good morning to strangers across a street or thanking people from all walks of life who keep our world functioning, from health care workers to grocery store clerks.
Just before I turned at the bend in the dirt road, I parked my little Toyota on the muddy roadside and got out. The little farmhouse was tucked into its sloping hillside, tendrils of smoke drifting from the chimney. Overhead, three geese flew over my head, honking noisily as they headed for open water: a sure sign of spring.
