The Bucolic Plague

  Then we turned our attention back to our tree. After wrestling it inside, it became apparent just how spindly and sparse the top ten feet of our giant tree was. There weren’t nearly enough branches on which to hang our ’round-the-world collection of ornaments. This tree couldn’t hold an ornament collection of an agoraphobe.

  There was no silver or gold lining to this tree. It was ugly. Even Cindy Lou Hoo wouldn’t have missed this one. While I probably could’ve lived with it, Brent, with his Martha Stewart mind-set, would have grown to hate it more and more each day. By Christmas morning he probably would have set it on fire.

  “Brent?”

  “What.” His demeanor was utterly deflated.

  “Get your jacket.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  After ten years together, I knew exactly how he was feeling. About the only time Brent gets in a real funk is when he feels as if he’s wasted his time. The day was nearly over and we had nothing to show for it. No tree. No garlands. No goat milk hot chocolate memories.

  “Just let’s go,” I said, pulling warm jackets for both of us out of the hallway closet. “And wear real boots this time.”

  An hour later, Brent and I were chewing Quarter Pounders and sipping hot chocolate in the McDonald’s parking lot with a perfectly proportioned, unnaturally green, lush Walmart Christmas tree tied to the roof of the truck.

  “Merry Christmas, Grinch,” I said.

  He leaned over and kissed me with French fry–salty lips.

  I’ve always thought that one of the signs of true adulthood is when you realize that you spend each Christmas trying to relive childhood memories that never really happened in the first place.

  But that first Christmas at the Beekman taught me otherwise. It lived up to every sappy holiday commercial ever produced. Both Brent and I had two full weeks off of work, and we spent each day as if we were living in a Macy’s holiday display window. We bought ice skates for our pond, toboggans for the steepest hay field, and made snow forts in the glacier-size drifts by the far woods. We cooked pies and cookies with fruit from our cellar, and made snow cream from the new snow that seemed to tumble down fresh every night. We drove around the village to look at Christmas light displays, and lay down in the hay with the goats to take naps whenever we felt like it. In short, we had everything and nothing to do, and we did all and none of it.

  While we’re both close to our families, it also felt wonderful not to have to travel during the holidays. We decided that we deserved to start some of our own Christmas traditions. We were growing bored in our roles of eccentric gay uncles who swooped in from the big city with exotic presents that nobody really wanted, and who complained about having to go to church.

  Luckily for us, Sharon Springs readily embraced us in its own traditions. For a town that looks long dead to people who quickly pass through it, it had a social calendar that rivaled the Upper East Side’s. Doug and Garth invited us to their annual Christmas Eve buffet, complete with silver chafing dishes and hired waiters. Garth’s mother comes into town each year for the sole purpose of making guests the most potent margaritas north of Tijuana. Margaritas may not be the first drink one thinks of when listing holiday cocktails, but Garth’s mom makes sure it’s the last thought running through everyone’s brain on Christmas Eve.

  It seemed as if everyone in the village turned out for Doug and Garth’s party, and they all treated us as if we’d lived in the village forever. With the winter so brutal, the village used every possible communal occasion to catch up on local gossip. It was always entertaining to hear about Brent’s and my life from outside sources. It had been rumored that we were buying up land all over town. And that we were going to buy all of Main Street and turn it into something called “Marthaville.” Naturally we had to squelch new rumors that Martha would be joining us at the Beekman for Christmas.

  At midnight, as he did every year, Doug donned a pair of footie pajamas and recited “’Twas the night before Christmas” to all of the guests before everyone stumbled home, full of holiday margarita spirits.

  The next morning, Michelle hosted her annual extravagant Christmas Day brunch. The exact same group of villagers, except this time hungover, drove up the long icy driveway to her stone mansion at the top of a hill overlooking the valley. We’d been especially excited about Michelle’s party, since we’d been hearing about her legendary Christmas punch concoction since we’d arrived in town. It was called, simply, “pink stuff.” No one quite knew exactly what was in it, but it was assumed to be some sort of 7Up, sherbet, and marshmallow concoction. The legend goes that no matter how much of the pink glob was served up, the mass regenerated itself in the punch bowl so that it always appeared full. Some people have even theorized that it is simply put in the freezer and reused each year.

  Holiday traditions like those explained exactly why Sharon Springs seemed to be the perfect island for misfit toys and eccentric gay uncles.

  By New Year’s Eve, both Brent and I had practically forgotten all about our parallel lives in the city. We decided to stay at the Beekman by ourselves and celebrate by opening the first bottle of hard apple cider made from our own apples. It had been brewing in the basement since we picked the apples on our one-year anniversary of finding Sharon Springs.

  As we waited for midnight, Brent remembered to go online to check the holiday train schedule. We both needed to be back early to prepare for 9 A.M. meetings on the second.

  “Let’s open some champagne,” I suggested, while he searched the timetable.

  “It’s not midnight yet.”

  “So what? I’ve always been a trendsetter.”

  While he was busy entering our credit card information on the Amtrak site, I poured us two glasses. Except that we didn’t have any wineglasses at the Beekman yet, so I improvised with two small jelly jars left over from our canning adventures.

  “Here’s to my favorite year so far,” I said handing him his glass.

  “To William Beekman,” he added.

  “And Farmer John.”

  “And Sharon Springs.”

  “And the goats, turkeys, and cabaret roosters.”

  “And the full root cellar.”

  “Mary and all the ghosts.”

  “And the zombie flies.”

  “Really?” Brent said. “The flies?”

  “Hey, as a wise woman once said: you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the facts of life.”

  “To the facts of life!” Brent echoed. We ching our jars and take a sip.

  “Do you want to hear my New Year’s resolution?” I asked Brent over his shoulder.

  “It’s not midnight yet.”

  “So what? I’ve always been a trendsetter.”

  “Go on.”

  “My New Year’s resolution is to be in this exact same place next New Year’s,” I said.

  “Well of course,” Brent said, clicking the BUY NOW button for the 4:35 Empire express train for the following afternoon. “Where else would we be?”

  “No, I mean I want to be here permanently.” Brent didn’t say anything, so I continued. “If next year is just as good as this year, I want to take our Christmas bonuses, quit advertising, sell the city apartment, pay off this mortgage, and move here full time. I want to become a farmer.”

  “You already are a farmer.”

  “I mean a real farmer.”

  “That’s a pretty major resolution.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “It’s Oprah’s fault.”

  “Of course,” Brent answered facetiously.

  “Look, I didn’t even realize what was missing from my life until we bought this place. But this last year has been one of the best years of my life. It’s been unpredictably, exhaustingly, satisfyingly my Best Life. I just can’t face spending the rest of my life behind a desk selling dish soap to Middle America. Hell, I want to be Middle America.”

  Brent was quiet again. I wondered if the same thought had
ever even occurred to him.

  “I think that’s probably something we should decide together,” he finally said.

  “We already did,” I said. “You just haven’t realized it yet.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Guess what?” Brent asked, calling me in my office from his. “Martha really liked it.”

  “She did?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I had just sold a rebranding campaign to the agency’s newest and largest account—an airline that was about to emerge from bankruptcy with nothing much going for it but a new logo and uniforms. I’d been so busy during my first week back in the city that I couldn’t even remember if there was something I was supposed to remember.

  “She especially loved that it didn’t smell,” he continued.

  I wracked my brain trying to remember something about Martha that didn’t smell.

  “And she loved the packaging…the logo you designed.” It finally came to me: the soap.

  In a moment of last-minute holiday inspiration, we’d decided that our Christmas gift to Martha this past holiday would be homemade soap, made from the milk of the Beekman goats. We’d contacted John’s buyer, Deb, and asked her to teach us how to make some. She helped us pour and cure dozens of small guest bars, which we handed out to our friends and associates—each one stamped with a new logo we’d created for the Beekman.

  Although I was dubious at first, I have to admit I was surprised at how well the soap had turned out. Having failed chemistry both in high school and college, I didn’t have much confidence that I could combine the milk, lye, and hot oils into anything other than a raging fireball.

  “That’s great,” I said proudly. I knew our present probably blew away any other homemade gifts she had gotten. Between landing the airline account and getting on Martha’s good graces, we already had a good start on what were sure to be record-setting bonuses for next Christmas. We were one step closer to a life of pastoral bliss.

  “So,” Brent continued, “can you make the 4:45 train this afternoon?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Bring your laptop,” Brent said. “I have an idea I want to run by you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing much,” Brent said. “Just your New Year’s resolution come true.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Well, don’t get too excited,” Brent said, tempering my enthusiasm. “It’s just an idea. And it’ll be a lot of work.”

  “As a closet farmer,” I said, “I’m not afraid of work.”

  “Just bring your computer.”

  “Do farmers use computers?”

  “Well, we will.”

  As we settled into our seats on the train, I could tell that Brent was eager to download his brainstorm. Since he’s usually so composed, even the slightest bit of excitement reads on his face like the sun shining on new snowfall.

  “So what’s the big idea?” I asked.

  “It’s just a thought,” Brent said. “We still need to really think it through.”

  “I can’t start thinking till you start talking.”

  “Well, you know how you said you wanted to become a real farmer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We both know that most farms don’t make enough money to break even.”

  It was true. Small farms all around us were going out of business each month. The Penny Savior was full of classified ads for farm equipment auctions. Small farmers simply couldn’t compete with the huge factory farms of the Midwest.

  “We’ll be different,” I said, not having the first idea why.

  “Right,” Brent said. “That’s where Martha comes in.”

  “She’s going to back us?”

  “No,” Brent said. “Well, yes. Sort of. Martha liked the soap so much that she thought I should do a segment on the show about the benefits of milk soap on the skin. And she wants us to make some more to give away to the studio audience.”

  “Oprah gives away cars, and Martha gives away soap,” I said. “She’s cheaper than I thought.”

  Brent frowned. He hated when I made fun of Martha, even in jest.

  “Martha also thought it would be cute to bring in a few baby goats,” Brent continued, ignoring me.

  “Okay,” I said, not sure where he was heading.

  “Most companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for product placement on Martha’s show. I get to go on for free.”

  “But you’re on the show all the time.”

  “Not with something to sell,” Brent said.

  “We’re going to sell baby goats on TV?” I asked. “That seems a little sordid.”

  “No.” Brent sighed. “We’re going to start a line of artisanal beauty products.”

  “We’re going to become a soap farm!” I said excitedly, finally getting it.

  “Exactly,” Brent said.

  It was a brilliant idea. And it just might work. Farmer John had been mentioning that he might have to send some goats to auction if he couldn’t find an additional buyer for his milk. And soap maker Deb wanted to move into a larger store on the village Main Street, but was worried whether she could afford the rent. And Doug and Garth could use official Martha-approved soap in the hotel. And we’d heard the Sharon Springs post office was in danger of being shut down for lack of volume. Suddenly I realized that if we started a mail-order company, we wouldn’t just be selling a few bars of soap; we’d be helping to put Sharon Springs back on the map. (Almost literally—many of our houseguests had had trouble finding us since Sharon Springs wasn’t in their GPS systems.)

  “This is how I’m going to get out of advertising!” I announced.

  “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Brent cautioned. “It’s just a start. Not many people get rich off of soap.”

  “Try telling that to Mr. Unilever.”

  Brent rolled his eyes. “It takes a lot of soap to make up for a six-figure salary. We’d have to build it into a larger brand. It’s still a long shot.”

  I knew he was just testing me. He wanted to make sure that I really meant what I’d said about becoming a full-time farmer. I did, wholeheartedly. I could go from selling soap commercials to selling actual soap. Finally I’d be doing something real. No more endless business meetings about target demographics and brand attributes. No more filling in time sheets and arguing over font sizes.

  I’d be free.

  My Best Life seemed right around the corner.

  But I also wanted to be sure that he too had the same level of conviction. I decided to play my own trump card.

  “Well, you know, if you don’t think you can pull it off…”

  It was the Donald Trump card, actually. With Brent’s dual degrees, Martha Stewart perfectionism, and—to be frank—outsize ego, Brent couldn’t stand when his skills were doubted.

  “Oh, I can make it happen,” Brent said, defensively. “Just get out your laptop.”

  By the time we reached Albany, Brent already had the beginnings of a business plan sketched out. The company would be more than just an online mail-order catalog. We’d model ourselves after Martha in a way. We’d have a Web site, but it wouldn’t just sell soap; we’d also have articles, slideshows, and videos sharing all of the lessons we’d learned during our first year in the country. There’d be sections on gardening and on raising animals, and recipes using our produce. We’d help people rediscover lost arts like canning and making hard apple cider. We’d met and admired so many regional craftspeople who had no market for items that we knew urban dwellers would pay through the nose for. We could help them sell their creations through our site.

  Just as my office colleagues were intrigued to hear stories about my shadow life as a farmer, maybe there were people all over the world who were looking for someone to show them the path toward the simple life.

  We were forced to stay inside for the duration of the weekend; a massive snowstorm squalled outside for forty-eight hours. But it didn’t bother us at all. We huddled over the kit
chen table with the fireplace roaring, and brainstormed business ideas and brand concepts. By Sunday evening, just about the only thing we lacked was a name.

  “Maybe something with the word ‘goat’ in it,” I suggested as we continued our discussion on the Sunday-night train trip back into the city.

  “Nah,” Brent said. “As the brand grows, we’ll have to sell things that don’t use goat milk.”

  “We could name it after ourselves, like Martha,” I said.

  “There are two of us,” Brent said. “How would that work?”

  “I don’t know. A combination of our names? Brosh? Jent?”

  We went back and forth for the entire ride home, tossing out bad puns and turns of phrase. It wasn’t until we were pulling into Penn Station when the obvious occurred to us.

  “What about ‘Beekman’?” I asked.

  “Makes sense,” Brent said. “But it’s a little vague.”

  “Beekman Farm? Beekman Mansion?” I offered.

  “Too boring,” Brent said. “We need something kinda stylish, otherwise we’ll seem like any other homespun mom-and-pop company.”

  He was right. We’d be a pop-and-pop enterprise. People would expect us to be a little chic.

  “What are some other fashion-y names?” Brent asked.

  I went through every fashion brand I could think of. Most of them were people’s names: Tommy Hilfiger, Dolce & Gabanna, Vera Wang. Some were foreign sounding: Anthropologie, Adidas, Oilily. I moved on to perfumes: Poison, Envy, White Diamonds, Chanel No. 5.

  “Hey,” I said, perking up in the backseat of the cab as we were pulling up outside our apartment building. “How about ‘Beekman 1802’?”

  The farm and mansion were built in 1802.

  Brent mulled it over a moment.

  “Not bad,” he said. “I think we just started a soap farm.”

  Book 2