We’ve sat for almost half an hour, a long time, I reckon, for Dori to stay still. She suggests we drive out and look at the new calf.

Howard Akers, grey haired and wiry, is a local man, smiling and quiet and as strong in his prime, one suspects, as Gabriel. Born up in the Blue Ridge near Hillsville, Virginia, he comes from hardy stock.

“My name, from way back in the German, means someone who works a field.” I looked it up. Our word “acre” originally designated the amount of land one man could plough in one day, and in early more fluid versions of English it was spelled “aker.” Later an “acre” became a specifically measured plot of land. Howard is proud to be an “aker” man. He is Dori’s farm partner, living in a neat single-wide a few minute’s drive from her part of PaPa’s family estate. The cows live on his patch of Soaring Eagle.

The brindle cow, Wendy, herself born on a cold day in January and nursed lovingly by Dori and Howard, calved on Tuesday. It’s Friday and mother and calf are doing fine, Wendy nosing the fence to get a slice of bread. Make that 20 slices. I try to feed her, to Dori and Howard’s great amusement. She can suck the bread out of my fingers far faster than I can push it through the opening in the fence.

Howard and Dori’s granddaughter Caitlin are working together on her 4-H project, a garden plot that Caitlin will till, sow and reap, with the benefit of his caring and experience. Howard is waiting for Caitlin to name the new calf. Caitlin is everybody’s bright spot. She and her mom live with Dori and Keith.

On the way home from Howard’s, Dori points out the cottage of PaPa’s brother and the new trailer belonging to son Joshua and his wife Melissa, home from a tour of active duty in the United States Coast Guard.  Joshua now serves in the Coast Guard Reserves and is subject to active recall if the need arises (one of their goats is named “Iraqi Freedom”). Dori’s mother-in-law also lives on the farm. Each member of the extended family has his or her own garden site.  Dori tells me that “Every spring, PaPa divides out the seed and we all plant with what he’s given us. It’s always interesting to see how the same seeds do in different soils.”

She gets me to stop just after we cross the lake. “I’m going to show you something most people don’t get to see.” Ever the pedagogue, as we approach a little glade in the woods Dori says, “What do you hear?”

“Running water, a brook, maybe.” It’s a stream, the spill-way for the dam that formed the lake. It’s also a small picturesque waterfall that can’t be seen by car. It was Dori’s mother’s meditation spot. After her death, PaPa heaved a huge stone out of the earth, squared it off and set it in place near the little hillside retreat. By hand he carved his wife’s name. The effort and the love can be seen in the straight, regular print painstakingly chiseled into the rock. I’ve been taking pictures all day, to serve as my reminders (I don’t take notes or use a recorder). But I don’t take a photo of the rock, sensing its personal vibration, so large and visible and yet discreet, a private symbol of devotion at the heart of the farm.

Dori and I agree that family is all. Living with her own, and knowing that she never has to leave Soaring Eagle, is Dori’s sustenance. Caitlin may have her rough patches in life but she will never lack a home or an understanding of how deep that goes.

So the question, when does a house become a homestead, has been answered for me. Dori has lived for years at Soaring Eagle, but only in the past few years has she been allowed to transform, one could almost say to “sanctify” what goes on under her roof. Thanks to PaPa’s decision, and her own absolute determination: An immovable object and an irresistible force.

I can’t hold back one question. Dori and Howard have extolled the strength of the old ways. “How do you reconcile the computer with the old ways?”

“Well, I like to think I can blend the old and the new.”

If anyone can pull that off, it’s Dori Fritzinger.

E. F. Schumacher mysteriously pronounced, “Eagles come in all shapes and sizes, but you will recognize them chiefly by their attitudes.” There’s a lot of attitude at Soaring Eagle Farm.  

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