Book Review: “We’re Going Home”

Review We're Going Home
“We’re Going Home: A Story of Life and Death”
By Cynthia Thayer
Islandport Press, 2023
235 pages, paperback, $18.95

Cynthia Thayer and her late husband, Bill, are two of the early MOFGA members who helped to shape Downeast Maine’s organic farm community. They have been two of the faces at the Common Ground Country Fair: Cynthia in the Wednesday Spinners tent, Bill giving hayrides in a wagon pulled by his team of Haflinger horses. They built a farm in Downeast Maine and they built a community. “We’re Going Home,” Thayer’s fourth book, is the beautifully written story of building that life and of the untimely laying of Bill to rest.

At first, I was reluctant to read this book. I was afraid I would cry the entire way through it. It is the Thayers’ personal tale, but it could be the tale of so many of Maine’s early homesteaders who are aging, whose faces are absent from the Fair, whose memorial trees grow tall around the Common Ground fairgrounds. But Cynthia balances their story brilliantly by alternating the chapters between her and Bill’s beginnings, building their life and farm, and Bill’s mysterious accident and eventual death. The prose flows easily and the pages turn quickly. I wept hard but laughed even harder. Lessons of resilience weave through the tears and lightness.

They were two people from the city, who came to Maine, cleared land, and farmed for over 40 years. They had hundreds of apprentices, many of whom now live and farm in Downeast Maine. They built their community through respectful relationships. They had children, they had tragedies, they had animals and a farmstand, and grew vegetables, fiber, and value-added foods. They had art and music and laughter. They cultivated resilience. As they aged, they found young folk to transition towards the running of their farm. Then they had Bill’s accident. And the tale of his end days. And Cynthia’s moving forward with the rest of her life. 

Interspersed with chapters on taming the land, music, apprentices, the Wednesday Spinners naked calendar, the loss of their granddaughter, the burning of their barn, and the community that rallied around them to help rebuild, is the tale of Bill’s death and the two weeks navigating the medical system before his return to the farm to die. Found on the side of the road, the horses and his glasses missing, barely a mark on him, Bill is taken to the hospital. The circumstances of his death remain a mystery, despite many efforts to figure them out.

Thayer tells of navigating the medical system, the hopes for rehabilitation, and the slow realization that Bill will not be going to physical therapy, and that he will not be recovering at all. They bring Bill home to die with dignity. People come to say goodbye. Then very close friends come to prepare his body, to bury him in a simple handmade coffin, in his work clothes. They come to celebrate his life.

What an honor, to build a life, and a nurturing community and to have that community surround you, to say goodbye, and to lay you in the very ground that you cleared and worked so lovingly. Over 400 people attended his memorial service. Many came to the farm to celebrate his life. Those closest to him laid him in the ground. The ground he and Cynthia cleared. The ground they farmed together. Surrounded by the people they love. Pioneers, leading the way.

– Roberta Bailey, Vassalboro, Maine

This review was originally published in the winter 2024 issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener. Browse the archives for free content on organic agriculture and sustainable living practices.

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