A slice of life down on the farm

If you were to stand in the middle of David Drake's 100-year-old hay barn, a few feet to the left of the bat guano, and between the two wooden hay bins, you'd see clearly what impresses Drake about it most.
Through the weatherworn sides of the ventilated barn, a muggy breeze pushes across the stored hay. Drake runs a hand over his nearly bald head, grins knowingly and says, "This barn is square and 50 feet across."
Then he points up at the roughly hewn beam that extends across the entire back of the barn. "What do you notice about that?" the 74-year-old says. "It's continuous! And that one. And that. Fifty feet across and hand-hewn."
(One struggles to envision four, straight, 50-foot tree trunks and someone hewing them into timbers by hand.)
There is pride in Drake's voice. He says, "There are a lot of memories in this barn." No doubt. Drake and his wife, Carla, have been married 52 years and call the farmlands of North Jackson, where they reared their three children, home. They live on a 100-acre farm that was part of Drake's parents' farm.
Two white geese enjoy their pond and myriad birds are invited to keep the Japanese beetles and other pests at bay via numerous birdhouses. Under the hay barn, where cows used to feed, barn swallows live in more than a dozen mud nests.
And Drake, a retired Republic Steel employee who is, I think, a farmer at heart, has rifles on the wall to keep his birds, his corn and his garden safe from the critters every farmer scorns: rabbits, raccoons and foxes.
A learning experience
The Drakes allowed me to spend a day with them at my request, learning, as it turned out, not only how to bake bread, but about how gracious and kind two North Jacksoners can be.
Carla holds a degree in psychology, but through the years her primary job has been wife and mother. It was through "trial and error" she learned to bake.
"My mother was too fussy, and she wouldn't let me help," Carla recalled with a smile. "His mother was really good at it," she said, pointing to her husband, "but she couldn't teach me because she just used 'a little of this and a little of that.'"
But her trial and errors led her to be an excellent, if modest, cook. And, I'll tell you now, having someone SHOW you how to do it is vastly different from reading a recipe.
I had never quite gotten the feel for bread dough's proper consistency until Carla acted as my mentor. "A little more flour. Let's see. No, that's still a bit sticky ... a little more."
Out for a tour
It was while our dough -- a combination of sesame seeds, Living Naturally Seven Grain seeds, whole wheat and bread flour -- rose that Mr. Drake took me out in his pickup on a tour of the neighborhood. I borrowed Carla's midcalf rubber boots and prepared to walk through soggy, dirty and cow-plopped terrain. We saw their daughter's home in the distance and several other concerns up close.
"When I went in the service, they called me a dumb farmer," Drake said as we drove along. "I said, 'You name one thing in town that I can't do, and I'll name a thousand things on the farm that you can't do.'"
He pointed out the window at the vast green fields as we rolled along in his pickup. "I used to trap down in there. Trapped my first mink. And that's the Sugarbush. Those are all sugar maples. That's where we had the sugar maple camp. Now over there, that pit is filled in, but the sandstone came from here for that house back there."
How things have changed
He continued driving and pointing. "This is the watershed for Meander Lake. We farmed this when I was a kid. Corn, oats, wheat and hay was the normal rotation back then. And it was organic. We used artificial fertilizer but no weed killer. We didn't have pesticides."
"If it was wet, we couldn't cultivate it, and then the weeds took hold. Now, they plant it, spray it and let it go."
Back at the house, unbeknownst to Drake and me, Carla was worrying about the rapidly rising bread dough. Our promised half-hour drive had turned into an hour-and-a-half one!
Come back to Thursday's column for more on the Drakes, a tour of a dairy farm and racehorse stable and to discover whether Carla could turn even me into a baker.
murphy@vindy.com