Memories of the Farm Map
by Katherine Nutt
Title
Memories of the Farm Map
Artist
Katherine Nutt
Medium
Drawing - Micron Pen
Description
Day 228 of the One Year Challenge
August 16, 2022
Memory of the Farm Map. Can’t remember it very accurately but it’s as much as I could think of. Only lived here 4 years. Moved when I was 14.
The Cursed Farm
“Oh thank God you’re leaving, it’s cursed you know!”
A friend of Mom’s stated when she told her she had sold the farm. Looking back it was easy to believe. Most recently my Grandfather, Mom’s dad, had suffered a fatal heart attack there. He was only there to help after my father died when his hand was stuck in a burning bailer and was killed from the smoke inhalation. The catholic funeral was not an open casket. Well before I was born my Dad’s father had also passed there, but it was Dad’s mother, who was still living, that the psychic friend said, was the reason behind the continuous misfortune. Besides the deaths, there were accidents and a fire that took out all the buildings except the old house and the new house. The old house was where my grandmother had lived from the time she was first married, and had many of her 9 children. She had to leave the farm to live in town against her will. She also wanted her second youngest son to inherit the farm, but my Dad had purchased it from his father. Then after she had begun to hope my Dad would never have a family, he went and got married (in his LATE Thirties!) and had children of his own. It looked like Danny, the second youngest son, would never have the property and it was all my mother’s fault. It was Mom who would get hurt or react poorly to bad grain dust when she had to go into that old house. We only lived there a few years and my memories are faint. I was 10 when we moved there and fourteen when we left.
I do remember the clear night sky and the myriad of stars that filled it.
I remember the long walk from the school bus when the rarely tended road to get to our house was so muddy they wouldn’t drive down it. Once I collected 10 frogs in my lunch box on that walk home.
I remember hiding on the porch of the old house, waiting for an ornery bull to lose interest in my presence.
I remember sitting in the field and feeling one with nature admiring the bark of the paper birch trees.
I remember the time Mom, Tim and I were in the muskeg picking berries and were driven away by weird little bees that would sting over and over. We had dropped our buckets in our escape, and Dad returned later that day with a long stick to retrieve the berries, despite having a deathly allergy to bee stings. Wild low bush blueberries are that good.
I remember the tree near the pond next to the new house getting struck by lightning and the flames being immediately extinguished by the torrential downpour of the storm.
I remember the owl flying so close over my head as I walked down the drive way on a silent winter night.
I remember it being a sad lonely time, stunned from the heavy losses of a parent and a grandparent within a year. Not that I had a choice or saw it that way at the time, but when that place was sold and we moved far away, it was the beginning of a new beginning. A release from ancestral karma. Even Uncle Danny would eventually acquire ownership of the homestead land. Our troubles weren’t over. We’d have new troubles to contend with, and the scars would always be there, but we had broken ties with the curse, and at least that chapter was done.
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August 16th, 2022
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