In three mystery series and short stories, Susan
Oleksiw explores the clash between the traditional and modern: in India in the
Anita Ray series, with an Indian-American photographer living at her aunt's
tourist hotel; in a New England town with Chief Joe Silva; and on a New England
farm with Felicity O'Brien, healer and farmer. Susan's short stories have
appeared in numerous anthologies, and her nonfiction appears in A Reader's Guide to the Classic British Mystery (1988) and The Oxford Companion to
Crime and Mystery Writing (1999). Learn
more about Susan and her books at her website.
Building Tall Tree Farm
In Below the Tree Line, Felicity O'Brien takes over the family farm
when her father can no longer manage. When I began developing the idea for this
series, I didn't have a specific farm in mind but as the research and writing
progressed, I drew on the dairy farm where I was born (and left at a young age)
and the one my parents bought after my father retired. These helped me with
specific details and layout, but they were not enough to build an entirely new
one.
I considered a neighbor's
farm, which had an envious view across fields and a brook. A farm across the
street from where my parents lived for thirty years gave me another idea, and a
very small farm, less than ten acres, in a nearby town suggested the advantages
of compactness. By the time I was finished, and had written half of the first
mystery, Felicity's farm was as alive as any of the trees in my front yard. I
sketched out my idea of this new setting, sighting the house and barn, gardens
and hayfield, and driveway. The view from the house mattered, as well as the
distance from the road, where she could set up her farm stand. Once I started
added detail upon detail, it was hard to stop. Tall Tree Farm is now five
hundred acres of mostly forest, with a vegetable garden, farm stand, hay field,
paddock for sheep, and outbuildings.
Ideas for Tall Tree Farm
came randomly, as often happens, so I set up a Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/susanoleksiw/tall-tree-farm/
page just for the farm. Here
I could post images that attracted me, inspired a story idea, or just fleshed
out aspects of the farm I might have to consider in the future. When I was
thinking about what kind of cat Felicity would have, I gravitated to the
snowshoe because we had a dear one who died. In the end I decided on a calico
cat, and named her Miss Anthropy.
It was too easy to get
distracted by images of tools, and I posted lots of photos of pitchforks, all
different designs for different purposes. The same can be said of rakes. When I came across the importance of a certain kind of fork, according to anarchaeologist in England, I stopped to learn about the craft of making them. After that I
inspected the handles of all sorts of tools, looking for the preferred hickory
and the rarest of rare, the pitchfork made from a single sapling in France by
the same family for the last several hundred years.
Anyone who has lived in or
visited New England is familiar with the image of the old barn during the
autumn season, with gold and red leaves bursting out of the forest and turning
magical a structure that anyone else would tear down. I couldn't omit
photographs of autumn on a farm.
But where did Felicity fit
into the total farming community? In 1974 Massachusetts had 4,497 farms; in
2012 the state had 7,755 (in 1997 the state adjusted how farms were counted, and
the numbers jumped, but not enough to account for the entire increase). But
farms got smaller. In 1974, the average size of a farm was 130 acres. In 2012,
the average size was 107 acres for hay, and 67 acres average overall. Today 22%
of farms make hay. Overall, the total land under cultivation declined from 601,734
acres in 1974 to 523,517 in 2012.
Felicity's struggles with
making her farm a success fit right into contemporary life. She has several income
streams, as we now say, many of them thin, and some that dry up in the summer,
but she soldiers on. Like the farms that inspired Tall Tree Farm, the profit margin may be thin but the work is richly
rewarding.
Craeft: An Inquiry into the
Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alex Langlands
Below the Tree Line
In the Massachusetts countryside, family secrets run
deep...but an outside threat could uproot them all.
Felicity O'Brien hopes the
warning shot fired from her porch is enough to scare off the intruder who's
been snooping around her family's Massachusetts farm. Days later, when two
young women are found dead nearby, Felicity can't figure out how the deaths are
related, and even her inherited healing touch isn't enough to ease the
community's pain over the tragic loss.
Felicity does know that
somebody wants something bad enough to kill for it, but all she has is the
neglected property her parents passed down to her. Joining forces with her
friend Jeremy Colson, Felicity tries to uncover the truth and save herself and
her land from those who are capable of unthinkable harm.
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Thank you for inviting me to your blog, Lois. I'm delighted to be here.
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