Cleaning Out

There is no setting on binoculars that works in the fog — everything in the distance remains indistinct, and that is fine.

Here, the low place, called Sagg Swamp, begins a nearly uninterrupted corridor of unbuilt-upon land: wetlands, ponds and kettleholes; the Long Pond Greenbelt runs for miles to the old harbor. Today, contained, the only fog is there. It rises up from the dark muck to smudge the damp foliage with its dreamy, silver light. So, above, as the crow flies, the air is tinted between gold and pink.

Fog is a reoccurring theme, because it reveals a sense of uncertainty, and it’s also part of Sagg’s weather patterns.

I have been seeing swallows all fall, much later than usual. Delayed migrants, storm swept, adaptive or merely opportunistic? A small group of tree swallows swirls behind my truck. It may be November, but my movement flushes insects into the air, and the birds know this. Everything has shifted, so why wouldn’t they?

Between the potato harvest and cutting corn, there was time to clean out a storage barn. And, somehow, that turned into cleaning out three. Depending what kind of 100- or 200-year-old family farm you have, you will have different kinds of equipment in your barns.

Farmers generationally understand that they cannot accurately predict what crops will make sense in the future, and so are hesitant to dispose of equipment. For this reason, we have four, four-row cultivators. We have four Reel Rains, enough irrigation equipment to water 400 acres. We have custom equipment, things my brother and father built over the span of 40 years. Things they’d designed to make the literal heavy lifting of farming less heavy.

And, of course, because we are also one of the last farms in Sagaponack, we have been “given” equipment from the surrounding farms. During barn clean-outs of their own, heirs brought things to us. Often enough, we’d do the favor of coming to get it. We’d hitch our trailer, load our forklift and travel up-street to pry open the doors of some doomed barn.

At first, these jobs felt like rescue missions. The memories are evidenced the deeper we go.

For four days, the forklift didn’t rest — every single thing was brought into the sunlight and analyzed. What is it for? Where did it come from? And will it ever have a use again? Does it have inherent value?

We check the current price of scrap metal. We remind each other of our own age and what, realistically speaking, we will have time for. We sort, organize and sweep. We make a whole section from things we want to sell.

One of the cultivators has barely been used; the dealership plate is still legible. I wonder if they are still in business — it’s been 25 years.

I call the number, hopeful: Maybe they are, and maybe they’ll buy it back.