October 2002
We didn’t expect the farm to go to my dad.
Aunt Mary had no children of her own, and no other living relatives besides my dad and his three siblings. So we assumed she’d split the farm between them. Fair, even, practical. But when the will was read, the entire 117-acre property was left to him alone. No explanation. No note. Just the legal confirmation of something quietly decided.
My dad stood in stunned silence when he heard the news. He hadn’t seen it coming. But once the shock settled, what remained was a quiet, reverent kind of gratitude. Aunt Mary had always been more than a relative to him. When his own mother was gone and his father was working long shifts in the coal mines, Aunt Mary became a constant. She never had children of her own, but she mothered him. And maybe this farm was her final way of saying he had always been hers.
I don’t know how his siblings reacted. If there were hard feelings, I never heard about them. Maybe they knew about that bond between Aunt Mary and my dad. Maybe they didn’t want the responsibility. Maybe they were just relieved not to be tangled in another family decision.
The bigger question, once the dust settled, was: what now?
The farm hadn’t been fully operational in decades. No cows. No pigs. No horses. Just a ragtag mix of ducks, geese, two surviving chickens, a cat, and a dog. The immediate priority was simple—take care of the animals. The bigger decision, though, loomed over us like the ridgelines surrounding the house: Do we sell it, or stay?
My parents didn’t deliberate long. In fact, I wasn’t even around for the conversation. I was back in South Carolina, caught up in college classes and part-time work. Two weeks after the funeral, I drove up to check on things, and my dad met me at the front porch.
“We’re keeping it,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He wore the same work boots he always did when something big was about to happen.
Honestly, I wasn’t surprised. The farm was a part of him. He had grown up there. He’d swung from grapevines in the woods, hunted for arrowheads, and learned how to work with his hands in the barns and fields. This land had shaped him, in ways South Carolina never could.
The plan was simple. My aunt and uncle would move into my parents’ house in South Carolina under a rent-to-own agreement—an opportunity they’d long hoped for. My mom and dad would pack up their retirement dreams and head north. I’d stay put, finish school, and visit when I could.
Even though I understood their choice, part of me was sad. I had moved to South Carolina to be close to them. Now they were moving hundreds of miles away. But I also knew what the farm meant. Aunt Mary might be gone, but the land still breathed with the past. The tall grass and the orchards, the holler where the farmhouse sat—all of it was a living thread that connected us to where we came from.
The house itself was another matter.
Built in 1883 with timber cut from the surrounding forest, the old place looked like it had emerged from the hillside itself. Most of the acreage was forest, tucked into hills on every side like a cupped hand, with the only open stretch leading to the road below. The whole layout reminded me of a toilet lid, with the house resting in the dip of the bowl.
Despite a few modern upgrades—a carport my Grandpa Slatt had built, a wash house used mainly for storage—the house was still stuck somewhere between the 1940s and 1960s. No insulation in the walls. Plumbing that wheezed and rattled. Electrical work that had clearly been done in a hurry, or by someone who hadn’t expected to live long enough to regret it. The stairs to the second floor were so steep they felt more like a ladder than a staircase.
Water came from an old well, and it had a strange texture that made your skin itch. Pressure was low, and it was clear the house would need to be connected to municipal water sooner rather than later. My dad, ever the fixer, started making plans to overhaul everything—wiring, plumbing, insulation, even the foundation if he had to. If they were going to live here, the place had to be livable. Comfortable. Safe.
My mom wasn’t as easily convinced. She worried about being alone in her old age, especially if my dad ever had to travel—or if something worse happened. But in the end, he made her a promise: she could finally get a collie. That, apparently, sealed the deal.
We walked the land together that weekend, retracing childhood paths. The outhouse still stood on the north side of the house, a monument to what once was. Near it was the old chicken coop, crushed by a tree in 1998. Dad had built a new one, baby blue siding and all, per Aunt Mary’s request. We called it the Hilton. It looked absurdly luxurious for a couple of chickens, but that was kind of the point.
Across the driveway sat the pig pen. Beyond that, about four hundred yards down, were the old barns, their beams sagging and walls crumbling after decades of neglect. We made mental notes of what had to be torn down—the pig pen, the outhouse, the smokehouse—before someone got hurt. But there was history in those buildings too. You could feel it in the nails, in the weathered grain of the wood.
As we stood there, my dad turned to me, grinning like he had when I was a kid.
“You know,” he said, “you could always move up here.”
I laughed. “I’m good, Dad. Weather’s too nice in South Carolina. I’ve got a life there. This place is great to visit, though.”
I meant it. I loved the farm—for what it meant, not just what it was. But I was in my late twenties, in school, with a path of my own to walk. It’s what adult children do. We build lives that branch away from our roots. But sometimes, when the wind blows just right, you still hear home calling from the hills.