Our neighboring property has a large, hand-painted TRUMP sign on it. Its angle and location, though, makes it easy to miss as we drive by. We wonder if this reflects the owner\u2019s ambivalent politics. There isn\u2019t a dwelling on the property, so it is easy to not dwell on the people behind the sign. The area sports fewer Trump\/Pence signs than rural communities within second-home distance of New York City. Familiarity breeds contempt is my theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The owner of the TRUMP sign comes up our rutted driveway on his ATV one morning to introduce himself. We discuss our shared relationship with the hunter-farmer who goes 50-50 with him on the corn grown on his land. We discuss the stream that starts from two springs in our property and enters his through an impressive ravine. He volunteers that he collects the water at the bottom of the hill to clean his maple sap lines. We agree that in future we\u2019ll fight over that water. You know how many gallons of sap it takes to make a gallon of syrup? Forty, I say. Huh, you\u2019re smarter than you look, he says. Forty-three. He sees the garden beds I\u2019m making and comments this used to be a corn-growing farm. But did they take care of the land? I ask. Did they grow cover crops? Or did they extract the fertility and give up when it was no longer easy? Yes, that\u2019s what they did, he concedes. What was the corn for anyway? Soda? That\u2019s right, he says, and ethanol, the biggest scam ever foisted on the American public. I agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are invited to dinner at his family\u2019s house, which doesn\u2019t have a Trump\/Pence sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n