The art of tending less

My favorite homestead I’ve ever visited was a 600-year-old farm at a quiet crossroads in west-central France. I lived there for a month in 2004, working part-time in exchange for food and board.

It was built over the centuries: only a small building was actually 600 years old, but the whole place felt ancient. The houses, barns and outbuildings were built around a large lawn. The walls of the buildings, with assistance from a few six-foot stone walls, created a walled courtyard, with only two gates to walk out to the road.

This cluster of buildings was nestled into a corner of the property, and exiting the courtyard through the barns would let you out in the fields, which covered the rest of the 40 acres. And almost all of that was owned by the animals. Many had free range on the fenced-in acreage, some had a smaller pasture, and the geese ruled the farm (and I was fairly afraid of them).

I always thought of the courtyard as the “people space,” and the rest of the land was for use and utility.

The people space was lovingly tended, with a well established perennial herb garden, fruit trees and a giant table for meals. Instead of penning the animals and tending all 40 acres, they tended a small piece and let the rest be functional but not decorated.

When we moved to our 20 acres, I was drunk on Tasha Tudor and Martha Stewart, and I tried to landscape all of it. It never worked. I could never weed or mow or fence enough of it. I lost countless fruit trees, berry bushes and decorative touches to the spreading meadow and its hungry herbivores.

Finally, last summer, my husband and I managed to cobble together the time, materials and enthusiasm to build a small yard, our own walled-in garden. While it won’t be around in 600 years, it is making us happy right now. There is a table for dinner and a comfortable chair for coffee-drinking. And while I have to make hard choices about what to plant in here, I can tend to it all in a morning, with time for an extra cup of coffee.

The scale feels cozy – we are at once immersed in nature and enclosed in a private space. I feel proud that I have created it and astonished that it took me this long to figure out a lesson I learned 25 years ago.

The goats gather at the gates and the chickens watch us eat dinner through the fence, making me feel like we are the ones penned up – and I feel pretty good about it. The only problem is that the cars are in their territory.