Priscilla was a clothing designer and textile artist for 30 years. She loved her work, but a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis left her exhausted and peppered with constant pain. She had to say good-bye to a huge part of her identity. What was next? When she and Henry sold their house in Baltimore and moved to the farm fulltime, she had a chance to rest—and dream an answer.
After a year, Priscilla was able to imagine a future into existence. She was always dedicated to a holistic way of life and those values helped her understand how and what she wanted to farm. Exploring different breeds and talking for hours led her and Henry to heritage livestock and a commitment to making their land fertile and powerful again. With little understanding of the hard work and dedication that a farm demands, they began their adventure. So many times, as Priscilla worked, she looked at the mountain behind the farm and smiled, knowing she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Ten years later, Priscilla’s body let her down again. After many tear-filled discussions, Henry and Priscilla came to the horrible conclusion they needed to shut down the farm. Months passed. Priscilla managed to make her sadness bearable. And then she began to write her memories of goats and pigs and cows and ducks and dogs and neighbors. Adventure, comedy, tragedy, all of it. Life. She wrote about the years she called her favorite job.
Henry always wanted to call himself a writer, but for all his professional life he was called (and called himself) something else: researcher, clinician, professor, manager. When he retired, the responsibility for playing those roles dropped away like a rented dinner jacket shed after a late-night party. He slipped into his ragged, comfortable clothes and occupied himself with simple chores on the farm and horse rides through the mountains.
But inside, a restless curiosity kept announcing itself with both shouts and murmurs. As it had done for years, it wanted him to explore mysteries and tell others what he’d found. And so, instead of describing the results of a scientific study or the outcomes of a health care program, he started writing about the mysteries he stumbled across during those farm chores and horse rides.
Writing about his own life required a degree of emotional honesty with which he was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Finding his voice was the literary equivalent to holding down a fully-grown male goat for his vaccinations: major bruises with a few near-death close calls. But the stories kept coming and, when a few found an audience, he started to call himself a writer. As he notes in the book, his story telling led to unexpected outcomes, including a role as a board member for the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust.
When he and Priscilla decided to write a book together, some friends doubted the marriage would survive. One said, “Writing a book with a spouse is deadly for a marriage.” Others commented, “Your voices are so different. It’ll never work.”
At some point, they began reading their stories to each other and found themselves exploring in words the land’s pathways and cul-de-sacs they’d previously traveled together on foot. Each learned what the other had seen or experienced, and those insights were sometimes unsettling. A barn fire led one of them to a sense of profound abandonment and the other to acknowledge painful limitations of character. Where Henry would see two goats grazing next to each other, Priscilla would see an older mother comforting a younger doe who’d just lost her baby.
Working together on the book was never easy because each would push the other to make the writing stronger, to tell the truth more honestly. They often made each other embarrassed or uncomfortable or angry. But each re-write changed how they understood themselves, sometimes profoundly.
The book reveals many mysteries they discovered as they lived with the tame, the wild, and the unpredictable. The biggest mystery? Somehow, their love for each other, for the land, and for their animals grows ever more passionate.
