Quabbin Road

We visited this house in Mallorytown in 2013.  It was not a typical build for this village or Ontario but this is the story behind it as told by David J. Wells in The History of Mallorytown – Fact, Folklore and Fiction. No ghosts here. Dr. Joseph Lane purchased two lots in the 1880’s for $800 and built this house in the Second Empire style modelled after a castle in France and opened his medical practice from the house in 1888. Dr. Lane died in 1912.

This was the move we were contemplating then.  So cliché.  Sell the condo in Mississauga and move to a small town.  Always the romantic, felt compelled to tour this mansion on 2/3 of an acre landing in our price range.

This was another instance of a beautiful old home with all the interior character remodelled out of it.  In fact, the top floor main bedroom took open concept to another level with unimpeded sight lines of the “ensuite” plumbing fixtures from every vantage point.  This was trending at the time according to this 2013 article in Slate.  https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/09/bathrooms-without-borders-the-end-of-privacy-at-home.html  

So. I am the eldest of ten siblings.  (Blended family.) Privacy was scarce. Privacy was a rare jackpot. A bathroom without borders had zero appeal. Privacy, I have learned since, is something I subconsciously seek wherever I am.

But that was not the final nail for Quabbin Road.  It was the neighbour’s land piled with a fair amount of domestic detritus along the property border. It was unapologetically messy. It brought out the Dutch in me. (My father was born in Wieringermeer and my mother in Groningen.)

On my corporate travels I have on occasion flown into Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and from the sky been wowed by the organization of the landscape.  Straight lines.  No obvious junk.

Is this a Dutch aesthetic or affliction?  Maybe a bit of both.

I wouldn’t say that my parents were obsessively neat but growing up on the old farm we were taught to clean the farm tools with sand and hang them in their perfectly assigned shed spots and there was trouble if we didn’t.

Yeah, I come by my preference for order honestly. And my being in messy surroundings makes for a messy mind and my thinking gets scrambled.  Lots of ideas but I have a hard time organizing them in a way that sticks.

While musing this I googled “tidy Dutch farms” thinking I might hit on something amusingly mildly derogatory or something extolling the virtues of such farms but landed on a page called The Farming Forum and found this hilarious post by someone called haulmblower from Staffordshire saying:

I’ve noticed …
Some farmers are very sentimental. They put granddad’s old tractor under a hedge and let it rust away.
If you say.’ Why don’t you put it in a shed and get it going?
They reply
Ooh! It’s not worth it.
‘Why don’t you scrap it then?
‘I can’t do that it was grandad’s’!!!

Some are lazy!
I’ve seen tractors in the middle of a farmyard surrounded by nettles.
‘Was that your grandad’s’?
‘Nah, the radiator leaks and I got fed up of topping it up’.

Then there are tidy farms. New buildings, tractors and what have you.
‘Didn’t you have a granddad’?
‘Yes, all his old shite is out of sight in that shed at the back’.

Now messy neighbours can be the best ones, don’t get me wrong. The chaps next door with the beat-up car wrecks parked around like fallen Jenga blocks can be the first to hop over to help with car trouble or a needed tool or handy hands.  Generalizing here but the untidy neighbours we have known have not been tight asses.

But l like looking out and surrounding myself with beauty and uncomplicated order.  Like a wild honeysuckle on a post or a rambling rose or a scrappy vegetable garden. It calms and inspires me in a way that a rusted-out station wagon with missing tires does not. The latter might nurture the soul of someone else but not me.

What brings Quabbin Road up?  Just looked at a nine-acre property that so nearly fits the bill. We have not ruled it out yet.

House is gorgeous with a great vibe.  Offices and outbuildings functional and at the ready so we could transition from our urban digs to rural ones without much career disruption while we slowly transition into our farming “retirement”.

But the back of the property was harshly exposed.  Horses on one side, hayfield on the other and a bit of a modern midden at the back.

We didn’t specifically ask for privacy and a neighbouring botanical garden in our requirements gathering. But I don’t know.  It is not exactly the picture of have in my head of the land we seek. 

Maybe that doesn’t exist.  Maybe we hold out for the property that ticks those two boxes or maybe we transform a property into one that does.  Hedgerows and Aspen thickets.

Or maybe, I curb a bit of my Dutch attribute for kempt and lean more enthusiastically into new neighbours and my spiced Gouda cheese obsession.