Legacy

The two farms near tiny Colfax, Illinois were in our family for decades and as such figured in our history. We are not a family of farmers. We didn’t work the land; we only owned the corn and soybean farms our grandfather, the town undertaker, bought cheap in the early 1940’s. Still, the farms were our family legacy, the last tangible connection to our Illinois roots.

“You’ll always have the land,” my mother told my sister and me with an obvious sense of pride that she had something of value to pass on to us. It was a comforting thought, that no matter what, there was a safe place for us.

My mother and her sister inherited the farms in the late 50’s. With tenant farmers installed, my mother became the long-distance farm manager, first from Chicago, then from California. A homemaker, she seemed ill equipped to be a farm manager, but she blossomed in the role. She learned about soil, seed and crop rotation, grain bins, combines and the commodities market. Amazing everyone, she developed an uncanny sense for the best time to sell the crops, and the family dubbed her the Soybean Queen in honor of her farm management prowess.

As kids, my sister, four cousins and I cared nothing about the farms. Our Colfax was the brick house in town where our mothers grew up. We all came together there in the summers – my aunt and cousins driving from Iowa, my mother, sister and I from Chicago. We kids explored the attic and swayed on the porch swing until we almost threw up. We chased each other up and down the grand central staircase, flicked box elder bugs off the sunroom windowsills and played checkers on the cool concrete floor of the screened-in backyard summerhouse. Colfax was the place where we were all one family once a year.

Then the six of us were off to college and getting married and having children. Colfax faded into memory. We had no relatives left there and strangers owned the brick house. As if a farmer had blown seeds into the wind, we scattered all over the world, taking root in Iowa and North Carolina and Seattle and Denver and California and Australia, growing our own families. We had little in common anymore.

First my aunt died, then my mother, and we had to decide what to do with the farms. The cousins wanted to sell them. My sister and I made the case for keeping them - our roots are there, we said. But it was complicated. We were all so distant from the land, physically and emotionally, our lives so diverse. With all our children, there were now so many more heirs to consider. Finally, a tax problem compelled us to hold the land for ten more years. In compromise, we all agreed to sell after that.

Management fell to me, but I didn’t have my mother’s knack for it. I was busy with my family and a business. I stressed and waffled on when to sell the crops. What did I know about such things? I couldn’t even find Colfax when I went for the annual visit, always getting lost amid identical fields of corn and soybeans, until miraculously the Colfax water tower would rise up on the horizon like Brigadoon in the mist. But when I stood on our land and talked to our farmer about our crops, I felt like I was home.

Finally, it was time to sell, and I thought I was ready to let go, ready for the money to be in my bank account, ready to be free.

It was March when my sister and I met our farm manager at the Colfax farm one last time. We talked about price and terms and methods of sale, settling on the best way to market the property. I had driven right to the farm without getting lost, which struck me as ironic. Just as we were letting the farms go, I’d figured out how to get there.

Afterward, we stopped by the brick house in town. It was for sale and looked worn out. Climbing the front steps to the porch we’d played on as kids, we knocked on the door, hoping to be able to go inside. A dirty lace curtain rustled at the dining room window, but no one answered the door. We looked around at the porch’s peeling paint and rotten floorboards, before giving up and driving the 150 miles back to Chicago in silence.

By Christmas we had sold the farms, and everyone was pleased with the deal. I was glad it was done, glad to have the money. But when I opened the envelope and pulled out the substantial check for my share, I felt an overwhelming sadness. As I looked at that check, held it in my hands, I thought how flimsy it felt. It couldn’t compare to the solid promise of the land that had been our family legacy. The land that kept us all connected, the land that nurtured my mother’s talents and confidence, the land she said we’d always have – that land was gone. And even though I knew we’d done what needed doing, I cried for our family’s loss.

Copyright 2010 by Liz Zuercher