Cynthia and Bill Thayer were teachers in Massachusetts in the 1970s, Bill in special ed, Cynthia in English and theater. They were on their second marriages when they made a big life decision: They’d quit teaching and move Down East, both to be closer to Bill’s children and to take up farming.

On West Bay near Schoodic Point in Gouldsboro they found the farm they were seeking: “At the top of the hill was a ramshackle old gray house across from a huge barn covered in ugly pink shingles.” Over the next 40-plus years, they would shape this neglected place into a sustainable farm and their dream home.

Local review

“We’re Going Home – A True Story of Life and Death”

By Cynthia Thayer

Islandport Press, paperback.

$18.95

Cynthia Thayer’s memoir “We’re Going Home: A True Story of Life and Death” is not about farming, however. It’s about her husband. By 2019, Bill was 82 years old. Tall and lanky, with a gray beard, he lived in old clothes, loved working the land, loved animals, adored children, made friends easily, played music and was easing into old age gracefully.

But one afternoon he was found seriously injured in the middle of the road after he’d driven his team of two horses into the farm’s woodlot to haul out logs. An ambulance arrived. “He’s flailing his arms in the air, struggling against the ambulance team trying to get him onto the gurney.” “Bill, please, let them help you,” Cynthia pleaded. “Horses” was his response, his only concern being for Star and Andy, his two workhorses.

Fighting for his life, he was taken on a fog-delayed trip, first to the ER in Ellsworth, then to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, where he was placed in intensive care. “I ask questions, pretend I am totally in charge of everything,” the distraught Cynthia wrote later. “I sense that if I have even a small moment of weakness, I’ll break down.”

Having set that suspenseful scene, Cynthia spends the rest of the book alternating between relating Bill’s hospital ordeal and remembering their life on the farm. When they bought the land, they were in their late 30s, complete novices at farming but eager to learn. They read books, talked to their neighbors, gathered apples and berries to make cider, jams, jellies and applesauce to help see them through the long winters.

Bill cleared “acres of land almost singlehandedly,” Thayer writes. He worked “slowly and methodically” on the land, while Cynthia worked “fast and not always carefully” on the house. A weaver and skilled knitter, she also made clothing that she sold across New England.

At Darthia (a blend of Cynthia’s nicknames from Bill) Farm, they raised sheep, goats, ponies, horses, chickens and turkeys. After years of hard work they had enriched the soil with compost, lime and rock phosphate, which enabled them to grow all manner of organic vegetables. The farm became self-sufficient, with its own farm stand and even an online mail-order business. They succeeded so well, they could make trips to Paris and to the Caribbean.

Cynthia and Bill also invested in their community. Cynthia narrates that Bill became a selectman, chair of the local conservation district and played drums with his Front Porch Jazz Band. She herself organized a spinning group, directed the local theater productions, edited writing for her neighbors, and wrote three novels. In its 40-plus years, Darthia Farm trained over 200 apprentices, and hosted weddings, clam bakes and popular potluck concerts.

The community responded in kind. After a barn fire in 2012 that killed livestock and destroyed the barn, the community came to the Thayers’ rescue, with financial and material donations that helped them to rebuild. This Down East community was a tight web of personal bonds.

As Bill lay in the ICU, those bonds were flexed. Visitors converged. Couriers brought organic food from the farm for Cynthia and anyone else staying with her at the hospital as she watched over Bill during the extended vigil. Thousands of messages of concern and good wishes arrived.

For a while, Bill progressed. Cynthia was told he would go to rehab. But it didn’t happen that way. As the memoir draws to a close, Cynthia describes, in scenes heartbreaking yet heartwarming, how the couple’s supportive tribe transported Bill to Darthia Farm so he could die at home, on the land that he’d made productive, near the shore where he’d dug clams, surrounded by the people who loved him.

“We’re Going Home” lovingly conveys the fullness of life on Darthia Farm. The prose is brisk, the details poignant and the stories pulse with humor, humanity, intimacy – and grief. This slim memoir will make you wish that you had known farmer Bill Thayer.

Dewey Meteer is retired from being a career naval officer, an Early Childhood educator, a rugby coach and a road runner. He lives in Nobleboro.