My house, the semi-famous Little House by the Vineyard, is, overall, a great delight to me. No one is ever going to accuse it of having good bones, but it is pleasantly laid out, with a large kitchen, new paint, all my furniture in place and the walls covered with my modest treasures, which is to say, the things I like to look at.
It’s got a big master and two other bedrooms, which means I can have one for guests and one for my office. The front porch is delightful and the large rear deck commands a close view of Vineyard B at Union Grove Farm.
It is owned, like the rest of the farm, by my brother-in-law, Greg Bohlen, who graciously rents it to me at a steep family discount. I’m happy as a lark here.
Directly behind the deck is a large dog pen, surrounded by an attractive and sturdy fence painted in Union Grove brown. I don’t have a dog, but if you come to visit and bring yours, rest assured that it will be happy roaming the pen, while we sip refreshing beverages on the deck. The pen was designed so the dogs could come in under the deck if they wished to. That’s where the problem is, or was.
To keep dogs from getting out on the sides of the deck, someone in years past put up a barrier of truly ugly woven wire. Not tacked neatly to the sides of the deck floor, but just hanging wildly from a variety of unmatched posts, some wood, some metal. A true eyesore, and in addition, it attracted leaves, which had piled up and were gently rotting away, making perfect breeding and hatching grounds for roaches and other despicable creatures. This week, I resolved to tear it down, and I have succeeded in doing so. Now it looks much nicer and I am able to blow the leaves away into the woods.
Where the wire met the ground, time had built up the soil, so the wire was actually underground by as much as two inches. Extracting it (with great difficulty) I unearthed a bunch of buried stuff, shards of flowerpots, pieces of roofing and pipe, and, to my astonishment, an American flag. I carefully pulled it up, and laying it out flat, I saw that it was intact, although filthy, a little frayed at the edges, and with tiny weed roots growing through it in a number of places.
It was a cheap 3x5’ printed flag, not a nice stitched one, but still it was a flag, and deserving of the same respect as its fancier cousins. I pulled out the weed roots, brushed off the globs of dirt and resolved to rescue it, or at least try.
I took it inside and put it in the washing machine. It came out looking refreshed, but still stained from the dirt. I doused it in Shout and washed again. Noticeably better, but a long way from pristine.
Greg has been wanting to put a big flagpole out by the road in front of the house, and I hope he does. But I have decided to display my rescue flag, too, on a small, angled pole affixed to the front porch. It will perhaps become a conversation piece, and hopefully the conversation will be about how, for 235 years now, these colors have flown over the land of the free, a nation that is rightfully proud of its manifold virtues, and ever determined to abrogate its faults.
Agriculture has been one of America’s greatest strengths, literally a wonder of the world which has fed millions by its productivity. Now it is time to create a new paradigm for agriculture, one that is truly sustainable, based on enrichment of the soil using regenerative techniques like the ones Greg and the team are pioneering here at Union Grove.
It will happen, I am convinced, and in the American way, through the genius of entrepreneurial action, and not by government decree. Union Grove is taking a leadership role in that transition, with Greg, as one newspaper headline recently read, literally “betting the farm” on it. I sure wouldn’t bet against him.
You can sign up for a tour of this remarkable vineyard, which is in the vanguard of the regenerative movement, and if you do, ask your tour guide to point out the Little House, where yours truly and his rescue flag live.
