The Column: Vermont's Northeast Kingdom has lessons for us

Forty-five years ago this summer, we turned to farming.

That is an outrageous overstatement and should immediately be discounted.

I am no more a farmer than skydiver, bungee-jumper, bronco buster or synchronized swimmer.

Remember the impatiens blight on Long Island awhile back?

With a little sleuthing, a forensic horticulturist probably could pin it on me.

Perhaps I planted the plugs along our lane indelicately or was too rough separating the roots. Maybe my blend of perlite and vermiculite sparked a genetic meltdown — who knows?

Next season there were no impatiens. Get me a lawyer.

OK, I was not an ag major but, true enough, on a bright morning in 1975, we loaded a U-Haul and moved to what Vermonters know as the Northeast Kingdom. Dairy farms. Dirt roads. Rolling green hills. Sugar maples. Solitude.

Friends were baffled.

“Where’re they going?”

“Middle of nowhere, looks like.”

Abandoned was a sweet little house in Blue Point, a job at Newsday and, in the opinion of my mother, good sense, perspective and any hope of financial stability.

When Mom disagreed with one of our decisions — say, painting a big yellow and orange graphic on the living room wall to achieve a certain psychedelic effect or letting my wispy hair grow to shoulder length so that I looked alarmingly like a bedraggled Ben Franklin — she would fall silent.

“Going to jump off the roof, Mom, and see if the bedsheet works as a parachute.”

“Oh,” Mom might say. “Well, be careful.”

Our Vermont transfer was intended as a one-year experiment. Newsday said it would rehire me — you never know — and we’d resettle somewhere, somehow, if luck and money held out.

Mom listened to our plan and put down her mending.

“Isn’t it time for ‘Mary Tyler Moore’?”        

How to explain our move?

To tell the truth, I’m not sure what we were thinking when we — my wife, Wink, and I — decided to cash in the little we had and leave Long Island with four kids under 12. Something in the air, back then, you know. Drop out, locate your inner Appleseed, get away from the strip malls and pinball pace of modern life. Or something.

Anyway, it turned out swell.

We rented a small house with a metal roof outside a tiny town called Groton. Up the road a piece was a farm run by Ken and Barbara Murray. Their cows moseyed past our windows a couple times a day. It wasn’t Sunrise Highway, anymore.

The Murrays had two kids, Steve and Sheila, who played with ours but, of course, Steve and Sheila had daily chores and often were otherwise occupied. So, right off, there was a teaching moment: Not everyone got to spend hours listening to Donny and Marie or stage sit-down strikes because it was time to take out the garbage.

In winter, the Murrays rescued us from snowbanks and, when the weather broke, took us along as they tapped maples and distilled sap into syrup — maybe 40 gallons for one of sweet golden goodness, a sort of life lesson in itself. Most times, nothing good comes easily.

They were busy people — no sick days, leisurely lunches or even extended coffee breaks — operating on a thin margin as small farmers do, but we’ve never met anyone more generous and good-hearted.

The year ended. We came back. Something like our old life resumed.

Vermont is long ago but fresh in memory.

The grace and kindness embraced so naturally by the Murrays — boy, I’ve been thinking, that’s just what we need these days. Big time.

Here’s some late news:

I heard from Sheila the other day by email. She’s moved but her folks still own the farm. Steve is nearby.

Recently, she said, neighbors ran out of water.

Ken and Steve arrived to work on a new line.

“No questions were asked,” Sheila said. “The neighbors needed water. Dad and Steve dropped everything to help.”

And you know what?

Amid all the pandemic weirdness, we see plenty of that stalwart spirit around here, too — people donating big bags for the local food drive, checking on the ill and elderly, going to work no matter the risk, maybe just remembering to wear a mask or call out “hello” when once you might have passed in silence.

That’s the ticket, for sure — Vermont, New York or anywhere else.

Show up. Lend a hand. Do it again. No questions asked.