Down on the Farm : Actor Raymond Burr Finds Equanimity in a Garden Well Tended, a Ditch Well Dug

“I spend a lot of time traveling. Too much, really. In the past year, I’ve traveled to Canada, Fiji, Hawaii, the Bahamas and Mexico and have crisscrossed the United States. But when I return to my 40-acre farm in Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Valley, where I grow everything from orchids to squash and raise sheep and chickens besides, the strain of being on the road begins to slip away.

The first thing I do when I get home is take a long walk around. There’s always something new to see. I check everything: how much water damage we’ve had if there’s been a heavy rain, how long the sheep’s wool has gotten, how the vegetable garden is doing. I wander into the orchard to check on the trees we’ve just planted and to look for any ripe persimmons, nectarines, guavas or figs on the more mature trees. On my way back to the kitchen, I pass under the arbor to find out whether the grapes have started to appear. I’m always amazed to think that these tiny things that look almost like ferns eventually turn into huge grapes. It’s lovely to see.

Watching things grow successfully, creating an environment for them in which they’ll do their very best, makes me very happy. When I was 12 years old and going to military school, I used to escape over the wall and spend the afternoon on a nearby hilltop, staring at a garden below. I’d never seen a more beautiful place. It seemed like a miracle.

After I’d been there three or four times, the woman who tended the garden (and who also had created it, I was to find out) looked straight at me and said, ‘Young man, I’ve left that gate over there unlocked. Come in and sit down.’

In the more than 50 years that we were friends, Laura Thayer was to have a tremendous influence on my life. She shared her love of plants (she considered them her children) with me and taught me to appreciate things that grow.

Before she died in 1982 at the age of 96, I named one of my orchid hybrids after her. It was a gorgeous creation that just fit her. The colors and shape of the orchid were right. It looked like Laura--beautiful.

Growing fruit and vegetables can be as rewarding as cultivating orchids. When I was growing up during the Depression, I had to plant a garden in order to keep our table going. We lived in a little cottage that was part of a subdivision that had never been filled up, so we had plenty of open land around us. We planted every kind of vegetable imaginable and raised chickens for eggs.

At that time, gardening was a necessity. Now it’s a luxury that makes cooking a true pleasure. When I make preserves, for example, I get a great sense of accomplishment from knowing that my jars of jam started with the tree I planted and were made with the fruit I picked.

Raising sheep also provides the gratification of being able to initiate a project and take it straight through to the creation of something very special. We have on the farm 30 sheep that produce beautiful wool. As a result of careful breeding, our fleeces span a range of about a dozen colors, including hues like taupe and apricot, and were awarded prizes at last year’s Sonoma County Fair. This year, we finally have enough sheep to produce a substantial amount of wool. Once it’s been cut, scoured, carded and spun, I plan to have it made into sweaters for friends and family and into rugs for my house.

I was only 13 when I first became involved in raising sheep. The Depression was still on and we needed money, so I left school to work on a ranch in New Mexico. The pay was 25 cents a day and all I could eat. For 14 months I mended fence, milked cows, helped with births of lambs and calves, and rode for miles, checking to make sure no animals were trapped in the range’s watering holes.

I came back home 80 pounds lighter, a foot taller and sunburned as dark as could be. Neither my mother nor my sister recognized me when I got off the train. It had not been an easy time, nor a particularly good one, but it ended up being a period of immense satisfaction.

There have been other times when I’ve had to settle for satisfaction rather than happiness. For a great deal of my life, however, I’ve been lucky enough to have both. Being able to work the land has had a lot to do with that. I enjoy hard work. There’s a certain satisfaction in digging a very good ditch, and there’s a great deal of satisfaction in digging a very good ditch that is put to very good use.” PRODUCED BY LINDEN GROSS