Valley of the Moon. Melanie Gideon
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“But what if somebody isn’t suited for the particular kind of work they want to do?”
“There’s always some way they can contribute. If you tell a man he’s useless, he becomes useless.”
Yes. And if you tell a woman she’s only good enough to clean up people’s dirty plates, she’ll always be cleaning up people’s dirty plates, I thought.
“How many crews are there?” I asked.
“Garden, fields, orchard, brambles, animals, building, medical, domestic, kitchen, winery, and school,” he rattled off. “There’s also the herb garden, but that is Martha’s domain—she works alone.”
“Brambles?”
“Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, too, even though they’re not technically a bramble. The bramble crew is mostly children, who end up eating practically everything they harvest. But it’s a fine first job for them. They have to learn how to pick around the thorns.”
“How many people live here?”
“Two hundred and seventy-eight: 55 children, 223 adults.”
“And you can produce enough food to feed you all?”
“More than enough. In fact, since the fog, we’ve let some fields and gardens go fallow.”
He led me into a large two-story building. “This is the workshop, the building crew’s home base, although most of them are out on the grounds this time of day.”
The workshop was cavernous. Tucked into the corner was a blacksmith station. Every kind of tool imaginable was neatly hung or stacked against the back wall. There was even a horse mill.
Maybe Greengage was a living-history museum, like Old Sturbridge Village or Colonial Williamsburg, where the employees were paid to dress up and stay in character no matter what.
A man sanded a plank at one of the tables. It looked like he was putting together a tiny house.
“Magnusson!” Joseph called out.
The man stalked across the workshop floor. He was an intimidating figure; he towered over Joseph. His hair was white-blond, his eyes cornflower blue.
He stared at me, clicking his massive jaw.
“For God’s sake, don’t be a cretin. Be polite and say hello,” said Joseph.
“Hello,” he grunted.
“What are you building? A house for elves?” I said nervously.
Magnusson rolled his eyes.
“A privy,” said Joseph.
A privy. Right. No flush toilets here.
“Sorry,” I said, then cringed. Act normal, Lux; they’re just people. I was surprised how badly I wanted them all to like me.
“What do you mill?” I asked.
Magnusson walked away without a word, done with me and my ridiculous questions.
“Grain,” answered Joseph. “Oats. Wheat and corn.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. “I’m sorry. I live in San Francisco. I don’t know how you do things on a farm.”
“That’s fine. I love talking about what we do.” He led me out of the workshop.
“I’m afraid I made a bad impression on your friend.”
“Magnusson is a Swede,” he said, as if that explained everything.
We walked past pretty little cottages and two dormitories. On our way to the schoolhouse, Joseph told me they didn’t keep to a regular school year. When the children were needed to help with a harvest, school let out. When the community work was done, school was back in session again.
The schoolhouse was empty today. Written on the chalkboard was a Walt Whitman quote.
Now I see the secret of making the best persons: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Sun streamed through the windows and birdsong filled the air. How I would love for Benno to go to school in a room like this. How I would have loved to have gone to a school like this. Against my better judgment, my spirits soared.
“Whitman is Martha’s patron saint,” Joseph said.
“Did you and Martha meet here on the farm?”
“We met at a lecture on cross-pollination methods for corn.”
Was he serious? He didn’t crack a smile. Yes, apparently he was serious.
“Is she from California?”
“She’s from Topeka, Kansas. A farmer’s daughter.”
He told me how Martha had been raised by her Scottish grandmother, a feisty old woman who ate bacon sandwiches, befriended the Kiowa, rode bareback, and practiced herbal medicine, as had her mother, and her mother before her. It was this grandmother who made sure Martha knew her digitalis from her purple coneflower, this grandmother who transformed her into a gifted herbalist.
“Martha’s a midwife as well,” he said.
“Wow. So she takes care of everybody?” Two-hundred-something people? That was a lot of responsibility.
“We have a physician here, too. Dr. Kilgallon, better known as Friar. They have an agreement. If it bleeds or is broken, it goes to Friar. Everything else goes to Martha.”
“So she treats people with what—tinctures?” I’d seen the row of tinctures at the co-op. I’d always been intrigued, but I was doubtful they’d work as well as Tums or Tylenol.
“Not just tinctures. She makes eye sponges and wine cordials, fever pastes, catarrh snuffs, blister treatments. But more often than not, her prescription is simple. Chop wood. Eat a beefsteak. Kiss your children,” he said.
“That works?”
“You’d be surprised. Never underestimate the power of having somebody pay attention to you.”
I wanted a Martha in my life.
He took me to the wine cave. Past the hay shed and the chicken coop, the sheep barn and the horse barn. We climbed into the hills and he proudly showed me one of the four springhouses on the property. Then he proceeded to give me a long lecture on gravity-propelled irrigation systems while we gazed down upon the farm, which was set in the bowl of the valley, a verdant paradise.
I was enchanted. My chest ached with longing. There was something here that was familiar, that I’d been missing but I hadn’t had any idea I’d been missing until this man had shown it to me.
“Well, if you have to be trapped, this is the place you’d want to be,” I said.
His face transformed into a mask of incredulity. “Good God.” He quickly walked away, leaving me to follow.
It was exhausting, trying to act normal around her when what I really wanted to do was ply her with questions. Instead she plied me with questions—clearly she’d never spent time on a working farm. Still, she was not a prissy woman. She didn’t hold her breath in the pigsty, or shudder when she learned she would have to relieve herself in a privy. I could see she was fit. Her hands were red and rough like Martha’s; she used them to make a living.
“Where in San Francisco do you reside?” I asked.
“Noe Valley.”
“Where