Homesteaders In 2020

Fair Haven has awakened a sincerity in me that I never knew nor dreamed existed, the love and longing I have for 79 Countrywood Dr., Jackson, TN.  Fair Haven is yet untamed, the halter on but not much more.  The Tennessee rises out of its banks twice a year, the soil is shallow and not yet able to provide for much more than was already here and what does survive the deer eat.  Our small studio stands like a blunt glass-faced stone to the many storms that roll in from the west and the sun is intensified off the river.  We are off the grid and our driveway dead-ends at the end of the forest and the beginning of the river.  We put in all the utilities and amenities including the road that allow us to survive and bring in supplies.  We work continually making a homestead to which someday we hope to add a home.  Her wilderness never lays down and surrenders and great wisdom is required to know what needs to be tamed and what just needs to be kept at bay.  Countrywood Drive, however, is an oasis in the woods, 27 mature trees surrounding a solid brick home old enough to be completed married to her setting and connected to all the conveniences of modernity.  It’s a comfortable home needing only the love of an occasional remodel to continue to serve as our home.  The most meaningful is the ease by which we care for one another, she long since tamed to the wagon, we aging to mostly need the lift.  Fair Haven is a mustang, never bridled, and will need both of us to break her.   The key, like parenting, is to break her will but not her spirit, and hope to have the backs still strong enough to pull it off.