getting free

our time on the farm

'“When it’s just me and the world, I make a place I can find escape from / Running down the street, away from what I thought I wanted / Getting free”

- Eliza McLamb, “Getting Free”

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We went to the farm with the idea that it would be a formative experience. In the spring we had been looking for something with purpose, something that would, in some way or another, change us. We wanted to escape our lives, to find some sort of freedom. The farm seemed perfect and beautiful and full of promise. Getting off the grid. Working with our hands. Eating fresh produce that we picked right from the soil it was planted in.

We were so sure of all of it.

We packed big bags, completely overestimating the amount of books and batteries we would need for our two week stay. Alexa made a playlist for the trip and I downloaded our favorite albums. The drive to the farm was nearly three hours through the Georgia hills. We watched houses change in size and style, boasting more land but lacking in structure as we headed farther away from the city. We stopped at a gas station at some point, and there were slot machines by the bathrooms. Alexa asked if we were old enough to gamble. Of course the answer was no, but we decided there was not much of an appeal to it anyway. We continued on our journey.

Eventually we turned down a dirt road that became more of a hiking path covered in sticks and leaves and pine straw. Hand-painted signs talking about Earth and work greeted us, and soon we reached the farm where a girl a few years older than us was waiting. She wore big glasses and those hippie patchwork pants, all multicolored and full of intentional seams. We toured the farm together, from the gardens to the cabins to the chicken coop. She showed us the the owner of the farm’s “manifesto,” which consisted of extensive rules about each space, followed by required readings. When we met D, the owner, she greeted us with a hug. Though I tried to feel good about it, the hug felt apprehensive.

We arrived at the farm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, for lack of a better phrase. Everything seemed full of promise, the beginning of an experience we had been romanticizing for the better part of a year. We did not consider the dangers, or the struggles, or the downsides. We simply dragged folding chairs out in front of our cabin (called the bunk house) and read our books as the sun set. I even started a new journal, marking the dates of the farm trip on the first page, so sure that it would all be important in some grand way. It was, to be fair — just not in the way either of us expected. The sun began to set behind the trees, golden hour at 3:30pm. I wrote, “it’s all so beautiful, it’s a lot to take in.” And in that moment, it was.

Dinner was cooked over the fire. Beans and rice in cast iron pots that had definitely seen better days. We added goat cheese and sriracha, and D brought cooked greens for us. The meal felt magical, if not labor intensive. We washed dishes in the dark (wash bucket, then rinse bucket) and had tea with turmeric chunks in it. We went to bed at 7:30pm. I felt hopeful.

When we woke up, though, it was cold. I hadn’t slept much, uncomfortable from being too tired to get up to put tights on or go pee outside. We dressed in layers upon layers, waiting for the sun to fully rise, and got to breakfast early to try and start the fire. All we had was my Bic lighter, which was no match for the morning wind. Eventually, D brought us matches.

The coffee was made in a cast iron percolator and tasted like burnt wood chips. I tried to drink it, but side-eyed Alexa to see if she was too. We cooked oatmeal with little understanding of the ways of the farm or where anything was. We found out later than the nuts we put in it were harvested from a grove at an old mental institution. I tried not to think about the energy of that. We washed up from breakfast and after a few dishes had been rinsed already, I found a dead mouse in the dishwater. Energy, again. Alexa poured out the water and we started fresh. I put it out of my mind.

Our list of things to do for the day was written in D’s chicken scratch, almost completely illegible. We figured out how to cut back the dead crops and what plants to pull versus prune. We gave the dead tomato vines to the chickens and took a break for lunch after a few hours. Peanut butter sandwiches on bread from a plastic bin. It wasn’t too bad, to be fair. For the rest of the day we painted palettes that held things like potting soil and compost, adding illustrations and discussing color combinations.

The work was not hard, yet something was building in me. I had a feeling I was having trouble shaking. We went to the library (the only place with internet connection) and as soon as I saw my mother’s face on my phone I started crying. I tried to tell her that I was fine, that I was having fun, but the tears that ran down my cheeks spoke for the situation. Even as I declared that I had to stick it out, my brain was rationalizing reasons to leave. Something about energy.

I cried to Alexa and she gave me a hug. I felt guilty, feeling so strongly about a situation that wasn’t that bad. We would be grateful for it later, but in the moment I just felt stupid. I spent a while laying down with my eyes closed, waiting for it to be dinner time. D was making us chili in her cabin since the other girl on the farm, M, was on a day trip. It would just be the three of us.

We walked up the path with our headlamps on, spooning ourselves bowls of chili in the dark. The dogs followed us to D’s new cabin, where we ate the chili by candlelight. Cabin, in the case of the farm, is a strong word. They were all more like one room structures, with beds and maybe a small table. D showed us how to light a wood stove for heat, and we talked politics and literature. Eventually, as the conversation lulled, Alexa asked how D started the farm.

“Well, growing up in the 70s, I’ve always been really interested in cults.”

She showed us a book on mesmerism, which we had to look up later. I thought back to the manifesto we had read on the kitchen table. To the use of the word “propaganda” to describe the signs painted by hand and put up everywhere. In the moment I was maybe not engaged enough to feel concern, but her non-answer was answer enough for us. The gut feeling I had felt was not unsubstantiated. She told us to leave our bowls in the sink in the other cabin’s kitchen. I noticed the clutter, the pill bottles everywhere alongside a pipe, which made me laugh a little.

In the woods it was dark. Scary in the way that if you looked behind you while walking back to the bunk house it felt like staring at a black hole. We wore headlamps and lit prayer candles at night with a lighter packed on the assumption that something would need to be lit. Sometimes our favorite of the dogs, H, led us home. Still, the cracking of the dried leaves and the chirping of the crickets felt like they were interrupting the night. Like we weren’t meant to be making all this noise.

We decided the next day we would tell D we had to leave. Alexa would lie, braver than I was, that when we arrived at the farmer’s market in the town over she had just gotten service and realized there was a family emergency. I felt grateful to have a friend like her, one who would lie to a 70 year old woman just to get us out of a situation we didn’t feel comfortable in. Still, I tossed and turned all night.

The next morning was oatmeal again, this time with M. She pulled out all the fixings, brown sugar and dried cranberries and more, and made coffee even though we had politely declined. We worked through the list of tasks together, picking greens and bundling herbs and potting elderberries for sale. It was fun, in some ways. We lacked direction, but M was helpful. She had been on the farm for a month, and weirdly understood the ways of D. After work, we decided to drive separately to the market, for some sense of peace and privacy, and also to discuss our escape plan.

On the way to the market we stopped for gas station coffee, the same Starbucks cans we had bought on the way in, and felt lucky to be using a real toilet. When we arrived we set up the table with all the herbs and plants and produce. A woman bought four containers of turmeric, five dollars each. Alexa pulled D aside and told her our story. Though D was surprised, she received it well. I could tell Alexa felt terrible, but she hid it as much as she could. D told us to explore the town with the time we had left.

We wandered off to a local record store, where we ran into a group of older people who we had coincidentally met as they toured the farm the day before. They recognized us, and told us that one of their sons owned the record store. It all felt a little strange, like the connections from the farm shouldn’t exist in real life. Like D shouldn’t exist in real life. We bought a few records and went back to say goodbye to D. This time her hug felt genuine, if not a little sad.

On our way out, an old man stopped us to try honey. I bought some as he told us that we had to visit the old Indian burial grounds, and made me take a picture of a book about Native American spirituality. I carried my honey to the car. I tried not to think about energy.

When we arrived back at the farm it was just us. We took one last hike, walking to the “sacred circle” on the map that we couldn’t quite find. The scene felt fuzzy, the sunset pink as the light faded. Again, the energy.

It seemed as though everything on the farm was dying, in some way. The pecans fallen from an abandoned grove, the dead mouse in the rinse bucket. The crops we cut back, D’s struggles with money and old age. The light died each night with no concern for life. Why should we be resuscitating something that clearly wants nothing to do with us?

Knowing we would be leaving at first light in the morning, we wrote D a note. A little too kind for the circumstance, but still we felt it was important to leave with love. I watercolored a picture for her as well. At this point we realized the cabin was infested with wasps, one of my big irrational fears. I made Alexa switch bunks with me, and I realized the mattress she’d been sleeping on was only slightly molded. We slept with fears of D and M coming after us, maybe just as irrational as the fear of the wasps. Still, I tossed and turned again.

At 6am we packed our things in the dark and drove off at first light. The morning was full of fog, and we found as we went up the driving path that D’s truck was parked in the way. We had no choice but to drive the walking path, Alexa’s tiny car bouncing over hills as I guided us off the farm. We listened to Eliza McLamb’s “Getting Free” with new meaning this time. We realized that maybe, the freedom we had been looking for had not been on the farm at all.

Where we expected farm fresh salads, there were sandwiches with reduced price peanut butter. Where we expected kind instruction, it was chicken scratch to-do lists and being left alone. It was all work without learning, work without purpose. Dogs that were on their last leg but a leg nonetheless. People that were running from something, wanting to escape the world they lived in.

Alexa and I shared maybe too many conversations trying to rationalize our leaving, explain the reasons that we had decided to run. In the end, we realized a lot of things had not been as they seemed. That the farm was not as safe, not as beautiful as the hand-painted signs and the pictures made it seem. There was a certain guilt we felt leaving the farm. Like we owed somebody something, which we later dissected to be a product of some sort of Stockholm syndrome. Even now, reflecting on the experience, there’s a sort of fear around saying anything at all. But, if anything, it’s good material— an interesting story to tell.

As we drove farther from the farm and further into society, we stopped at a Waffle House. I felt grateful to be around people, to have someone pour me coffee that didn’t taste like burnt wood chips. I ordered the biggest meal they had and ate everything but the toast.

I went off the grid and realized that I quite like my life. I like a hot shower and a cup of coffee from a machine that requires electricity to run. I like reading the New York Times on my phone and washing my dishes without worrying about how much water I’m using. I like seeing people, talking to people, staying connected. Sure, it’s nice to be in nature, to test the limits, to see how much you can go without. But at the end of the day I like the places that I’ve made mine. I don’t feel the need to escape them.

I’ve learned that getting free is not always about running away. You can have a formative experience without fear, you can change yourself without corroding your psyche. The farm was many things, but, most importantly, it was a reminder that life is not something I am trying to escape. I think I’d rather embrace it.