The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.
- Henry Beston

This morning I told my wife about my plan to go into the backyard and split wood for use in our new wood stove. It is fall, not only in New England, and the nights are getting colder by the day. And there she stood, my little wife, tears starting to fill her eyes, wringing her hands, the little two-year-old clinging to her leg and watching Daddy with his big blue eyes.

“Is that really necessary, honey?” she asked, despair in her voice. “Isn’t that a bit drastic? You could hurt yourself.”

“A man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do, babe,” I said calmly. “I need to provide for my family.”

Well, in all truth, this is not how it happened. I can already hear my wife screaming “Bite me, pal!” when she reads this.

The truth is, this morning I went into my sixty-square-foot office, picked up my olive-green thermo-jacket and the green baseball hat indentifying me as Grumpy. We had bought it at Disneyworld some years ago. My wife had asked for a Prince Charming T-Shirt, but, amazingly, they didn’t have one. She settled for the I’m With Grumpy version.

There I stood, all dressed in green and equipped with my iPhone and earplugs.

“Don’t I look like the typical Greenfielder?” I asked my wife.

She looked at me briefly. “Almost,” she said. “The only thing missing are the rubber boots.”

“Oh, they’re waiting outside,” I told her.

“I will text you as soon as lunch is ready,” she said and turned away, probably to facebook all her friends, joking about her farmlife and that she had 9-1-1 on speed-dial.

Without jumping too far ahead, but I made it without major injuries, and I am looking forward to a warm and cozy evening, watching the flames flickering through the large glass door of the iron-cast wood stove. We had bought it last year in July when the heating oil prices were above five Dollars a gallon. We were happy to have found a handyman who would not only install the stove, but also take care of the bathroom ceiling that had collapsed while we were away for a business trip. I had paid the handyman 50% of the estimated total costs upfront, before he found out that he didn’t have the license to install a wood stove. Later I found out that, as a house owner, you don’t need a license in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Then he claimed he had endured an injury and that he was unable to give us a date when he would take care of the bathroom ceiling. It took almost a year and some major threatening to get our money back. The ceiling is still not repaired, but we found and hired a very capable specialist who did a great job installing the wood stove. The job was finished in January this year when the heating prices had fallen significantly, and we never came to try out the wood stove. The oil tank was and still is sufficiently filled, and we enjoyed a warm house for the rest of the cold season.

This winter, however, I swore we would save majorly by using our new wood stove. About two years ago, we had an oak tree cut from our property, because it grew only a few feet away from the house, and we actually preferred some sun light in the living room. Another oak tree simply collapsed during a major rain storm. It was polite enough to fall away from the house, but it did block the driveway and made it impossible to get the car out of the garage. That same day we had planned to see my in-laws, and we needed to cancel the visit. Oh, well.

So, here I was, armed with a maul and an iPhone, listening to Mick Fleetwood’s prefect drumming, wiggling my body to the rhythm, and loudly singing “I can still hear you saying, you would never break, never break the chain.” I would take a deep breath, close the eyes for a few seconds and concentrate. Then I would swiftly lift the mall and with a loud crush split the piece of wood in two, thinking that, next time, I should actually try to keep my eyes open.

Working on the more than three acres of our almost one-hundred-year-old farm is the perfect workout, and it teaches you to respect every farmer who gets up every single morning to work the land. I personally have only time after business hours or on the weekends, and even then, there are occasionally other, more important tasks that need my attention, a two-year-old being one of them. Another benefit of farm work is that it provides you a ton of time for meditation, and today, during my wood-cutting adventure, I had enough time at hand to think about the CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) people of Greenfield, Massachusetts. My wife and I moved here about eight years ago, and it has been been an adventure since. We hardly watch any comedy shows on TV, we actually live in one.

Let me take you on a little detour to describe life in Greenfield, Massachusetts:
Many years ago, while still living in Germany, I learned the story of a small village somewhere in the  countryside of England. The town council had determined they were in dire need of a new town hall. The old town hall, after being used for centuries, was not only in poor structural condition, but it also lacked the comforts of modern life we are so accustomed to, such as proper bathroom facilities.

The small size of the community also dictated that every villager demanded to be heard when it came to important decisions like building a new town hall. It does not come as a surprise that the population was divided into two camps, one opposing a new town hall, and the other approving it. The proponents emphasized the need for a safe and clean administrative building, while the opponents were either emotionally attached to the existing, old town hall, or were concerned about the financing of the project.

The town council, as divided as the rest of the population, finally came up with a decision that was intended to satisfy everybody:

1. The decision was made to build a new town hall.
2. The old town hall was to remain untouched, until the construction of the new town hall was finished.
3. The material of the old town hall (bricks, posts, shingles, etc.) was to be used to erect the new town hall.

While the story of this little village puts a smile on your face, you wouldn’t expect it to be true, unless, of course, you live in New England. Who could imagine that you can live in an American equivalent of Leonard Wibberly’s Duchy of Grand Fenwick, or even that a Chevy Chase movie like Funny Farm was not based on mere fantasy, but careful observation.

To put it in a nut-shell, the town of Greenfield (population 17,000+) is mentally, and in many cases visibly, stuck in the 1950s. The typical Greenfielder (i.e. born and raised in Greenfield) is emphatically opposed to any changes that would interfere with his established lifestyle, even if it means hanging on to sub-standards, for instance, in medical care and fighting modern intrusions such as a big-box store.

In contrast, there is opposition to the Greenfielder’s lifestyle in form of more progressive Non-Greenfielders, who moved to town within the last 40 – 50 years, and who maintain an open mind to improvements that the rest of the United States already enjoys.

However, the line between Greenfielders and Non-Greenfielders is not as clear-cut these days, and there have been defections from one side to the other.

It is impossible to describe the Greenfielder in only few words. The Greenfielder, at his heart, is a communist in so far that everybody is equal – with equal voting rights – but with a few ones more equal than the rest. Political decisions, including votes and elections, are made by a very active, aggressive minority in the form of “If you are not with us, you are against the system, and that is not allowed.” – Politburo comes to mind. So, the Greenfielder is kind of a Soviet communist. In addition, there is the fight against every intrusion of modern life improvements, almost to the degree of the Amish people.

In all consequence, the Greenfielders are a Soviet-Communist-Amish people.

While I am per definition a Non-Greenfielder, I am nothing short of ecstatic about recent developments. In a stunning move, the Greenfielder has managed to get one of their own elected as mayor. The new mayor promised in public to learn his job while on the job, and he has already made some fine mistakes. For instance, he missed a timeline to prevent the building of a $250,000,000 wood-burning bio-plant specifically designed to suffocate the entire population. Well, he still has a chance to prevent the coming of the devil in form of a WalMart.

I am looking forward to all future twists and turns that will change my life to resemble that of the people of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

If you have comments, or similar experiences, please feel free to post them right here on my blog by responding to this article.