Sounds of the Country

                Ah, the sounds of the country. Ain’t nothing like it. The peaceful, serene…

                I seem to have awoken from a daydream, I guess. I’ll begin anew. Ah, the sounds of the country…

                Well, I have to pause here as well. If what is being termed “country” is a residentially enclosed parcel of land merely five miles removed from the county seat of a county that neighbors the major metropolitan center of the state, all the while being only a few miles removed, or to put it differently, to lie directly beneath the landing airspace of incoming jets and other aircraft to the local airport only a few miles away, can be considered “country”, than Nev-R-Dun Farm is guilty as charged! And while I would normally apologize for such an elongated sentence as the one above, I do not, because the changes in at least the words significantly override the redundancy of the “sounds of the country” to be described below.

                To begin, there are two parcels of land that will be the basis of this entry. The first is the aforementioned main parcel, that of Nev-R-Dun Farm itself. The second is a parcel of rented ground a few miles away in an area known as Silver Run. This second parcel was rented to expand our farming venture, but alas, did not turn out as planned… and for more than a couple of reasons, only a few of which will be touched on here. The main issue is probably my bad luck when it comes to rented land. Yet again, time and effort was invested in a parcel that ended up being sold to an outside source… in this case, one of the sound makers! It seems appropriate to start here.

                Silver Run, for the most part is a less than a mile run of land along MD97 north of the city of Westminster as it runs northwest towards Pennsylvania, and eventually, Gettysburg of Civil War fame. It is very small. “If you blink you will miss it” is an appropriate cliché. Anyhow, we rented a parcel of land directly behind some of the houses along MD97 and beside an old and long unused factory lot with a number of buildings on it. I will repeat that the factory buildings had been unused for a long time. I cannot even remember how long. Has it been ten years? Maybe that is an exaggeration, albeit an unintentional one, since I truly do not remember. Anyway, it was a long time.

                So, we tilled up some land, put up a deer fence, etc., all the while enjoying the peaceful calm surroundings. To be sure, MD97 was only a couple of hundred feet away, but the residential houses blocked the traffic noise fairly well. One was left to listen to the birds in the neighboring trees…

                That did not last long. A couple of months later, a company moved into the neighboring factory lot and set up a salvage yard! The peaceful country sounds went from “tweet, tweet, tweet” to “CRASH!... beep…beep…beep…SLAM!...beep…beep…beep…’Okay, brother drive up on the scale”… beep…beep…beep…” And that ruckus went on all day! Actually, it stopped around 5pm, but still, it sure felt like all day. Even when the din had dissipated, it still seemed to wring in your ears, or at least your memory. Ah, the sounds of the country…

                Luckily for me, I had grown quite accustomed to some of those sounds, namely large diesel machinery. (The “beep…beep…beep…” is the sound those vehicles make when moving in reverse, but of course you knew that. It appears I have digressed…) Over on the main parcel, the actual address of Nev-R-Dun Farm, the season started out normally. One learns to block out the air travel, of which there really is not a whole lot. Plane engine sounds are a little like television ads, annoying, but ultimately harmless. So the robins made their appearance, as did the cardinals, and eventually the catbirds, and of course the mockingbirds, you can’t forget the mocking birds… “RUMBLE…beep…beep…beep…”

                What the…? Loud diesel engine sounds intruded the airspace… from the neighbor’s property!  A large backhoe, along with a couple of other vehicles began excavating something. Ugh, I thought, there goes the peacefulness! And all day long, I got to listen to quite a symphony… of that large backhoe scraping the ground… then the “beep…beep…beep…” of reverse… then the dumping of the bucket…and other sounds from vehicles that could not be seen… Somehow it felt as though my occupation had changed from organic farmer to industrial construction worker! And it went on all day long! Okay, they actually stopped a little before 5pm. But then one of the neighbors got home and decided to do some work with the backhoe as well… Good grief! Give it a rest already!

                Somehow, by the time I arrived at the farm the next day, the sounds of those blasted vehicles had been forgotten, only to be refreshed instantly by that constant commotion. I remember wondering at that point, just how long was their job going to last? I thought in terms of money, as in, how long could they afford to pay one or two or three men to operate those machines eight hours a day. Actually afford is probably not the proper term. How long would they be willing to pay…?

                The answer: months. Whatever they were doing, it was of GREAT importance. And it did not even stop on the weekends. Every… EVERY day the sounds of those accursed machines flooded the valley. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Watching paint dry, or ice melt, all the while having someone scratch their nails on a chalk board… it was something like that… for months on end…

                To explain a little more on the torture those noises truly were, the vicinity of their origin was near the back side of the Nev-R-Dun Farm property, which means the back porch area… where the salad is washed. I have mentioned a number of times how dreadful the salad washing procedure can be, especially in November, when it tends to be quite cold. The process requires the sorting of lettuce leaves in water bins, which can take 5 or 6 hours to accomplish. In November… well, I mentioned that before, your hands get quite numb. But to sort the salad with that constant ruckus! To pause again, the multitude of hours of the, normally, peaceful sounds of nature drunk in while washing the lettuce is quite soothing, and it allows for me to ruminate on a myriad of things, for example, what do I write next for Tales of Idyllia, or how am I ever going to pay the mortgage? However, when an orchestra of heavy machinery permeates the area, peaceful is anything but the definition.

                Eventually, after months, sometime in the fall, the heavy machinery went away. One morning, I started to harvest some crops when I stopped, looked around, and realized those blasted unnatural sounds of the country had vanished. And they had completely! Soon another orchestra could be heard, the native birds were no longer over powered by the angry boom box of diesel engines! At last… at long last, the peaceful serenity had returned. The evil beasts had departed for ever… I hope…