Rural Banter

Author: ERICA GOODMAN

Delany Construction Corporation, specializing in heavy machinery and highway maintenance, is on strike, and the inhabitants of Goodman Road are silently smiling. The pause in construction is a minor disturbance compared to the refusal of New York City transit employees to work or the umpires' strike suffered by Major League Baseball in the not-so-distant past. And yet the halted activity of the hard-hat donning members of Delany has spread a sigh of relief through the valley.

As avid readers of this column might recall, a large chunk of property from the dairy farmed owned by my family for generations was sold last fall to Adirondack Golden Goal (AGG), a company that plans to use the land for a youth soccer camp. And so, for the past year and a half, bulldozers and dump trucks have torn through the former hay fields and forever altered the landscape.

The family understands that the deal with the soccer camp is a good one for my uncles, who are not getting any younger. Yet it should be no surprise that I, along with my family members, prefer the serenity and whimsicality of the pastoral landscape over the static rigidity of concrete buildings and artificial turf fields.

Now, as the only hum of diesel engines is from tractors tilling the soil to add life rather than to rip up of the earth, my family is silently celebrating and praying that the negotiations between Delany and AGG will be worked out slowly. The scenery has changed before this time, and will continue to do so into the future. It is the history of the land to mold and evolve, erode and create. But the land is more than property, it is home. No member of our family has ever made his or her permanent residence outside of the rural countryside. The changes that have formerly taken place were enacted by the whims of nature or the hands of a farmer. In selling that capability away, the roots of our home have been torn up.

Although the loss of the land tears me apart, it also makes me realize the importance of home, of having a place or a group of individuals who have helped shape you into the person you've become. Sometimes as we travel the globe trying to find ourselves, we forget that the core of who we are was created long ago. The farm on Goodman Road has been the site of home for generations of hardworking individuals. As the contractors battle the camp directors for proper funding, my family has taken the extra time to sanctify the place. Home will, for just a little while longer, remain intact.