The Farmer and the Witch

Among witches, there is a tradition of keeping a grimoire, a personal book of magical secrets and spells that can be tucked into blankets for safekeeping during hasty escapes or passed on to daughters upon death. Unfortunately, as a first-generation Witch descended from Baptists, Margaret had no such wisdom passed along to her and no experience of grimoires. There were rumours of a great-great-aunt who had told fortunes and performed in vaudeville wearing snakes draped around her neck, but alas, no books or anything of “that sort” had filtered through the spiritual sanitizing of the born-again generations.

Margaret liked writing in books. She had been keeping one journal or another since childhood, and in recent years, she assigned distinct books to her multiple interests - one for keeping track of professional courses she took, one for planning rituals, one for the workshops she planned to host someday, one for her favourite poems and quotes, one for business. They had different covers and shapes so she could tell them apart and know their purpose in an instant. So when she met the farmer, obviously a new book was needed.

She never expected to fall in love with a farmer. Growing up in the city had left her lacking even the fundamentals of farming knowledge, such as the difference between hay and straw. And although the omens did not predict a romantic outcome, she decided to use her powers of intention and focus to make it work. “So mote it be,” as the witches say.

The farmer always had a story to tell. His stories cast a spell on her, and early on in their time together, while in bed, she would ask him to tell her a story and his tales were so lovely and natural that she didn’t want him to stop. When she first spotted the little black book at the bookshop, it called out to her as a place for him to record his thoughts. On the first page, she inscribed one of her favourite magical poems as an inspiration to his creativity. “Let my worship be in the soul that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals!”

His eyes were the colour of the earth while hers were the colour of the sky. Margaret could never decide if this meant they were destined to be complimentary or forever incomprehensible to one another. She enjoyed the mystery of that, and the unfamiliarity of his world. She fell in love with the mud and the pond and the comfort of escaping the “modern” world. She was curious about the rusty old machines and the stories that went along with them - what did a thrasher do, and how did a discbine work better than a haybine? Why did the maple sap stop flowing just when the spring peepers started peeping?

And so Margaret blossomed on the farm and enjoyed playing the farmer’s wife despite any formal commitments. Everything was a new adventure. She learned how to cook a Thanksgiving meal for 20 people, complete with stuffing, gravy and homemade pies. She soaked in all the richness of life that her Baptist upbringing had declared “sinful”; dusty dirt-biking, hillbilly hockey and drunken shenanigans around a syrup-boiling fire were a wonder. She was given opportunities to drive 4-wheelers and rescue baby calves in muddy bogs, and all the while, the steady beat of the farmer’s heart gave her a place to rest her head and call home.

Margaret had always been a wandering type of Witch, never staying still for very long. It started in childhood when poverty and flights of fancy moved her family from house to house every few years. She had had her “first day of school” at least 7 times. As an adult, the wandering became more intense with adventures further afield - Europe, Africa, Hawaii. Desert canyons and mysterious rivers beckoned, with the moon a constant companion in whatever tent, hostel or train station she happened to be sleeping. For a while, she even had her own gypsy caravan, a little camper that she filled with friends and lovers and, eventually, a baby. So wandering was a familiar joy.

But wherever she went, her favourite people were the down-to-earth types, people who had treeplanted or grew up in the country and carried with them a refreshing lack of pretense. She had never quite figured out how to navigate the complicated niceties of “civilized” folk. Margaret preferred friendly people who smiled and said hello on the street, or chatted at the supermarket with other strangers because of some kinship in their eyes, that twinkling recognition of a mutual humanity. Perhaps this affinity was due to their connection to the Earth, a foundation for their way of being, knowing oneself as a child of the Earth.

The farm gave her a place to plant her own roots that she’d never before had time to grow, not even realizing that she might be missing something so fundamental. These roots started to push out of her feet into the dark, comforting soil that held her, grounding and connecting Margaret ever-deeper with the Earth as the years passed, reaching down and down, pulling up the energy from the Earth and building her strength and power as a woman. As a Witch. Every time she planted in the garden or walked in the forest, her roots grew further and stronger.

In the time since it was bought, however, the little black book sat empty and the farmer’s work was never done. So Margaret started to fill it up herself, writing down the successes of the farm so that, one day, he might see what they had accomplished together and feel more free to pursue the visions she imagined living with him, the ones he declared that he wanted to do if only he had more time or money. If she helped to take some of the weight off his shoulders, perhaps then he would have time and energy to take her on a holiday or listen to her dreams. So she documented the calves born, the syrup jarred, the hay cut, the money she brought to help keep the farm going, season by season.

One day she realized that while she’d been so busy playing the farmer’s wife, she hadn’t noticed that the farmer was already married to two others: his job and the farm. He kept getting busier and more tired with each passing year, and she was losing patience with his steady predictable pace. What had once been a comfort now became monotony.

The thing about witches is that they are connected to both the Earth and the Sky. Once Margaret had established a deep attachment to the Earth, she was ready to spread her wings and launch into relationship with a more vast expanse. Conversations with the farmer became difficult to sustain; inspiring words, poems, and chants that took her into the cosmos just seemed to mystify and confuse him. She could barely vocalize her thoughts without him changing the subject to something the cows needed or how his boss was being an ass again.

Margaret was finally discovering her magic - a magic interconnected with other people and the mystery of life with all its preciousness and grace. She wanted to share and dance and celebrate while she still had breath in her, not suffer and endure seemingly endless hardship. She saw suffering as an illusion, while the farmer seemed to see it as reality. Whenever she pointed to other realms of possibility, he scoffed and put his shoulder further to the grindstone.

As her power grew, so did her discontent. But where could she go? She had no money to venture out into the world alone, having put everything into the farm for so long. One winter’s night, Margaret became so desperate that she decided to perform a ritual. Ripping three pages from the farm’s black book, she wrote her vision on each sheet, creating a spell for abundance and freedom: “Show me the way out, and provide the resources to help me.” Since it was a full moon night, she buried one of the pages in the snow, set another on fire in the woodstove, and placed the third under her pillow. Then she waited.

Before the next month’s moon was full, a letter from Boston arrived. Unknown to Margaret, her fortune-telling great-great-aunt was not just a rumour - she had recently passed away with a small estate which was being divided among her remote relatives, including Margaret. A certified cheque for $20,000 was included in the letter from the executor of the estate. For Margaret, this was proof that magic really could be passed along between generations, and she wept with gratitude.

After packing her bags and tucking the third spell page into the envelope from Boston, Margaret took the black book from the farmer’s desk and wrote one last entry: “Thank you for everything. I wish you joy, satisfaction and love. Blessed be.” Then she stepped out into the late afternoon sun, poised on the brink of possibility and prepared to soar.