Time moves on

Sam Smith – Although I’m generally perceived as an alternative urban journalist, my parents bought a Maine farm in 1946 and I worked on it numerous summers as a teen ager and ended up as chairman of its board for several years. Wolfe’s Neck Farm was an early organic farm and is now known as Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment.

Last weekend I attended a memorial event for one of our board chairs and was shocked to find, in a room with over 100 guests, that I knew less than a dozen of them. For a guy like me approaching 89 years old in less than two months, it was another sign that one’s role in humanity is closing.  Such as over 200  friends, relatives and co-workers who have already passed away.

Despite my urban background, I was both fond of, and deeply affected by my time on the farm. For example, when I was 13, the farm director  Jimmy Mann had taught me how to drive a tractor and a six wheel truck. In fact, I claim to be the farm’s first farmer since before we even had any cows I was daily feeding three pigs.

But now those days are over. And I am reminded regularly that farm life is like show business. It absorbs you and then doesn’t need you any more. And so you go an event to honor the past and hardly recognize anyone there. Fortunately, my wife and I now live in Maine fulltime.

 Back when you were one of "The Cruds", one thing I remember were the group's white buck shoes with soles that looked like giant Eberhard Faber Pink Pearl erasers. - rslemay