the long road home

Forget the south of France; this well-traveled couple opts for life on an Ohio farm

by Seth Teter | Photos by Megan Nadolski & Galen Ludwick Harris

A scrappy little hound patrolled the driveway with suspicious excitement at the sign of a visitor. It was soon joined by a partner, curiously adorned with a knitted cape draped over its wiry gray fur.

Proving their suitability as the farm’s wardens, the dogs sent an alarm of alternating yips across the 93-acre property. Still, there was no movement inside the open barn. The nearby machine shed was silent. As a hard wind cut across the snowy vineyard, the front door on the brick house swung open.

“Come in, come in,” farm bureau member Warren Seymour charged urgently. He winced with the brief exposure to the chill. Seymour spoke in a lilting accent and his black sweater and tufted silver hair made him appear more of an artist than farmer. By now, he had spent more time outside of his native australia than in it, and today, he recalled the climate in his homeland with particular fondness.

“This last winter was a disaster for me,” he said. “We get cold winters but nothing like this.”

Described as a “serial expatriate,” Seymour has made his home in Italy, the British Isles and most recently the South of France. But something inside the former pilot and aviation entrepreneur was driving him to be closer to the land.

“As a kid, we were always in the bush. Something about the land gets in your blood,” he said.

Perhaps it was fate, then, that the woman he had met halfway around the world, and eventually married, had come from a place called Kidron, Ohio.

Home again
To say Kidron is merely a one-horse town would be a mistake. In fact, the 65-foot hitching post at a hardware store in this Wayne County Amish community can accommodate many more. A farm a few miles away proved the perfect place for Seymour to start a new life, to raise a daughter with his wife, Angela, and to reconnect with the land.

“It’s pretty isn’t it, when it’s sunny and snowy?” He said as his black pickup meandered up a hill overlooking the property. The farm, along with its legacy of corn, soybeans, cattle and hogs, had belonged to Angela’s grandfather. She had left Kidron to live abroad nearly two decades ago. The Seymours’ daughter is now the fifth generation on the land.

“I’m not a farmer. Far from it,” Seymour said, sitting at his dining room table.

As he spoke, an African Gray Parrot chattered to itself in a large iron cage in the adjacent kitchen. A log burned orange and black in the living room fireplace. The home was adorned with the trappings of a life of travels in far off places. An aboriginal painting by Seymour hung in a corner. A massive gold-framed mirror blocked an entire wall.

“My wife’s dream is to have this as a fiber farm,” he said. “My dream is to have a vineyard and winery.”

The Seymours have made impressive progress on that vision in the two years they’ve been here. Working with the nearby Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, they’ve established their first planting of grapes. It has Warren eager to return to the fields in the spring.

“It’s good for the soul,” he said. “You put your iPod on and walk down the rows. It’s pure escapism.”

On the advice of a friend, he also planted several acres of garlic. The large planting requires a special harvester to unearth the cloves when they ripen in the summer. A belt carries the plant up to a tray as the stem is separated from the bulb.

“It looks like a bloody ‘mad max’ machine,” as Seymour described it.

In the old cattle barn, the rich smell of hay lingered between hand hewn beams and stone walls. In one pen, the swollen belly of an alpaca undulated on the eve of birth. The farm has grown to include dozens of the animals, which are raised for their ultra-soft fiber.

Locally grown fiber
This is what gets Angela talking excitedly as she holds their 10-month-old daughter in her small Kidron fiber shop. The boutique shares the name of the farm, Longhedges Estate.

“If we could get a couple of yaks yet, I’d be really happy,” she whispered with a sly smile out of earshot of Warren.

Yak fiber is a favorite among knitters who increasingly demand natural products. Angela said many customers also want materials that were produced locally.

“They do ask that question and it is exciting to me,” she said.

Among the bundles of yarn and knitted clothing, a cabinet is divided into cubby holes stuffed with fluffy material. Each is labeled: camel, alpaca, corn, soy, yak, opossum and coco to name a few.

“(Knitters) can buy this type of thing on the Internet, but they can’t actually see the quality,” she said, a reason many travel to the store.

Settling in
The return to northeast Ohio was welcomed by Angela, who doesn’t find the weather as unpleasant as her husband.

“I like the four seasons,” she said. “He’s Australian through and through. He’d have two seasons if he could – hot and hot.”

But Warren is adapting to life on an Ohio farm. Coming from a region in Australia that once saw a seven-year drought, he now has five artesian springs on his land. He said the farm work has him feeling fitter today than he did 20 years ago. And both he and his wife marvel at the lack of crime in rural Ohio compared to Europe.

“In London, you were always watching over your back,” Angela said.

Warren has been equally impressed with the friendliness of the locals. In his pickup, he stopped next to three men chatting outside of the livestock auction barn. As he queried a neighboring farmer about rising crop prices, the bright inflection in his voice contrasted a relaxed rural drawl.

“You’re a millionaire mate,” Seymour said with playful astonishment after learning soybean prices had risen to $12 per bushel. “I’m going to come see you for a loan.”

The men laughed at the notion, and the farmer nodded knowingly toward Seymour. “No. You’re doing all right,” he replied.

The Long Road Home Student Activity for Language Arts - Grade 6