Place Names

Things must be official now: the farm has a sign. It was crafted by my father and painted by me, and the post was my first attempt at notching and joining two posts. I think it looks alright; awfully white, though. What do you think?





The 'naming of things' has always held a spot on the ticker-tape of my mind (in part because I have a horrid memory for names and such, and am more likely to call the bird "evening water whistler" than Ginormous featherii), and the physicality of the sign, with the farm's chosen name, invites me to verbalize some of my musings. Don't mind if I do...
I approached my landlady Mary Anne in the first summer of my working on the land here and asked her if there was a particular name for the farmstead. No, there wasn't, but she invited me to come up with some options, from which we'd choose a winnah. I immediately reflected on the 'original' farmsteading family, the Severances, who worked the land in the late 1700's. Though it was a nice concept to pay homage to the former stewards of this hill-top soil, I found it to be a bit abstract. I knew some things about the family from town historical records, for instance, but not enough.
What I did feel like I knew enough about (not enough in the sense that I am a know-it-all, HA!, but that I felt enough about) was the greater landscape here. Between the two named mountains, Kearsarge and Ragged, is a veritable universe of existance for me. The landscape carries my origins and adolescence, as well as the representions of my longings for bigger mountains and wider vistas far flung from the Andover hamlet. So, while the name Two Mountain Farm is a very literal indicator of landscape, it is also quite personal.

Curious to me is the way landscape informs the names of things in a regional sense, too. I did a very informal survey based on the listing of localharvest.org's farms in the vicinity of my zip code, and was unsurprised to find that most farm names related to a certain few things. You may see the trend in this sampling:

Webster Ridge Farm
Kearsarge Mountain CSA
Broadview Farm
Weather Hill Farm
Tower Hill Farm
Springledge Farm
Greenhill Farm
Corn Hill Farm
Stoneridge Farm
Arbutus Hill Farm

Indeed, my neighbor's farm is called Stonemeadow Farm, and it is the running joke that if one could harvest and sell rocks, I'd be RICH!
And in contrast, we can look to the following examples of farm names from the area in North Carolina where I labored for a few summers in the soil:
Cowgirl City Ranch
Sunshine Lavender Farm
Blalock Farm
Bluebird Meadows
Maple Spring Gardens
Elysian Fields Farm
Wild Hare Farm
Philoxenia Farm
Capt. John S. Pope Farm


Striking is the variety! Ok- you southerners might say "yah, it's just that ya'll yankees are so bland that you can't think to name your farm after anythin' more than a green hill".
Or, is it that the landscape up here is just more impactful--in the harsh, rock-strewn, insistant way?
If we are moved by the landscape's character to it's 'rightful' name, this is a viable occurance anywhere. For in the long heat of a N.C. summer, nothing is more beautiful than the subtle rise and fall of the land at dawn, when mist skirts the forests and the coo-koo bird calls rain. So, when the humidity of the day creeps into the farmer's brain down there, they come up with names like Philoxenia Farm (which means hospitality...but still.)
Ha ha! just teasing! But it's all good to think about!!! And then: well, how does the landscape inform my character? Is there a psycho-speak word for projecting personality onto landscape, or vice-versa? I'll spare you this tangent. Back to the farm, Two Mountain Farm:

garlic

potatoes











larkspur



gotta love drip!












trellis ahoy!
it's a plastic party!










I can't tell you how many inquiries I get a day (thousands!) regarding my employees here on the farm. "how many do you have?" they ask. "how much do you pay them?" and "are they happy?"
Well, here are a few. I'll be sure to put others in their limelight in posts to come.

This is a great shot of Ms. Bukket, as she preps a bed to be planted with tomatoes.


And this is Mister, who is still becoming accoustomed to the arduous work regiment on the farm. He regularly files complaints of abuse, neglegt, and low pay.
But we love him anyway.


Ya'll come back now!