Remembering by Wendell Berry

said.
    â€œWell, drive them another round, if you want.”
    Andy drove them another round. This time, more at ease, he remembered something that as a child he had heard about, but now saw:
    Mat, his grandfather, as a little boy, was sitting on a board that Jack Beechum had nailed to his plowbeam to make him a seat. As Jack walked behind the plow, Mat sat on the beam, and they talked. They talked about the pair of mules that drew the plow, and about the plow and how it was running, but they talked too about everything that a small boy could think to ask about, who had nothing to do but look and think and ask, except maybe, up in the afternoon, go to the spring to bring back a fresh drink of water in the gourd.
    Was that a school? It was a school.
    Andy thought of his own young children, who had descended, in part, from that school on the plowbeam, and did not know it. The mares strode lightly with their burden, the birds sang, the furrow rolled off the
plow in a long, fluent motion, and a thrill grew in Andy at the recognition of something he wanted that he had forgotten.
    At the end of the round, this time, Isaac Troyer took back his team. Andy, feeling awkward, said, “Look, I have an interest in farming. I like what I see of your place. Would you mind if I stay around a while?”
    â€œOh, well,” Isaac said. “Oh, sure.”
    â€œWell, I thought I might like to walk around a little bit.”
    â€œOh, sure. That’s all right.”
    It was March, the air a little chilly, but the sun was warm. Andy walked along the creek to the end of the field, and then up along the fence through the band of woods on the steeper ground, the sprawled shadows of bare branches and the earliest flowers, and came out again on an upland, where he could see Isaac’s house and barn and outbuildings.
    He saw that the buildings were painted and in good repair. He saw the garden, newly worked and partly planted behind the house. He saw the martin boxes by the garden, and the small orchard with beehives under the trees. He saw fifteen guernsey cows and two more black mares in a pasture. He saw a stallion in a paddock beside the barn, and behind the barn a pen from which he could hear the sounds of pigs. He saw hens scratching in a poultry yard. Now and then he could hear the voices of children. On neighboring farms, he could see other teams plowing. He walked as with his father’s hand on his shoulder, and his father’s voice in his ear, saying, “Look! Look!” He walked and looked and thought and wondered, and then he walked back down to the field that Isaac was plowing.
    Isaac was unhitching the team. “Well, did you look around?”
    â€œI did.”
    â€œWell, is this the kind of farm you’re used to seeing?”
    â€œIt’s not quite the kind I’ve been looking at. Would you mind if I asked you some questions about it?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know.” He spoke, as before, out of some good cheer, some satisfaction, some confidence that Andy was having trouble accounting for.
    This was not one of the Premier Farmers that Tommy Netherbough held in such esteem. He was apparently less worried, for one thing. Andy thought of Meikelberger and his farm, a way of agriculture as abstract as
a graph or a statute or an airport. And he thought of Isaac’s place, which was, all of it, a home. It was a home to many lives, tame and wild, of which Isaac’s was only one, and was so meant. There was something — Andy was trying for words — something cordial or congenial or convivial about it. Whatever it was, it said that a man could live with trees and animals and a bending little tree-lined stream; he could live with neighbors.
    And with strangers who happened by, too, for Isaac had just said, “Would you want to come eat? We got plenty.”
    â€œI’d hate to impose on you.”
    Isaac smiled at him. “Maybe you won’t like what we got.