Boy, 12, has a passion for farming

By Laura Clark

Published: September 3, 2008

Slideshow: At Home on the Farm

Carter Bowen drove a rusting pickup with a burned-out clutch down the gravel road. He sat up straight and forward so his camouflage boots could reach the pedals.

As the truck bumped over the Allwood farm, Carter kept up a running commentary about working and playing in western Amherst County.

One minute he’d tell a lively story about how the neighbor boy let a horse loose and got in trouble, and then he’d point to the field where he killed groundhogs. Their tunnels could cause a life-threatening injury to the cows, he explained.

“I kind of feel bad for them. They’re just doing what they do,” Carter said.

He parked the truck near a two-story house that perches on the crest of a hill and bend in the road on Virginia 635. It’s a white house with green shutters that since 1950 has doubled as home and store for Eleanor and Warren Davis.

Eleanor, 88, and Warren, 90, have watched Carter since he was little. He’s 12 and beyond babysitting now, but Carter still comes down nearly every day. This is a kid who’d rather feed the cows with Warren than sleep over at a friend’s house. Or have a Coke with Eleanor and flip the fuel switch when someone pulls up to get gas. Some would say he has an old soul. Carter would say he just likes it there.

Inside, the steady hum of coolers muffled footfalls on the wood-planked floor. Eleanor, or Baba to Carter, warned him not to tell Granddaddy about the swollen black eye he got from a wild grounder playing baseball.

“He’ll just worry,” she said. “Warren just worships that boy. He really does.”

When a nurse arrived, Eleanor went into the living quarters, leaving Carter to mind the store. Warren shuffled in and settled in a wheelchair next to the cast-iron stove. In a few minutes, he dozed off.

Carter jumped off the counter. Eyes shining above freckled cheeks, he crouched behind Warren’s chair and tapped his legs with a walking stick. Warren awoke, and asked who was messing with him.

“It’s just me, Granddaddy,” he said.

“Carter, don’t you leave me,” Warren said a short time later, when it was time for his physical therapy.

Carter assured him he wouldn’t forget that he had to help Warren feed the dog and cats on the farm, and check on the cows. He has been tagging along with Warren since he could walk.

As Carter grew, so did his attachment to Baba and Granddaddy. That’s true, too, for their grandson and Carter’s godfather, Scott Adams – and for the 400-acre farm stretching beyond the store.

When an illness put Warren in the hospital for several days a while back, Carter came and stayed the night with Eleanor. He’s done the same with Warren, when Eleanor has been in the hospital. In the summer, he eats breakfast with the couple and their grandson. After classes begin at James River Day School, he’ll often come over to help with chores when he gets home.

“Every Saturday, when I’m off school, I’ll come down here and Baba will fix us breakfast,” Carter said. “I’m going to have to say, it’s the best down here. Mom still fixes good food and everything, but Baba’s is the best.

“Granddaddy, I’ll take him out to the barn because he can’t see real well,” he said.

Besides feeding the dog and cats, sometimes Carter and Warren will fill the creek feeders and salt rigs for the cows. Even before Warren slowed down, he and Carter were inseparable.

“When I was, I think 6, I started wanting a calf,” Carter said. “Granddaddy gave me a calf. Ever since then, I’ve really just been going more and more farther with cattle.”

That first calf was Ellie. She lives at Carter’s, about a quarter-mile away, and at Allwood Acres when they’re trying to breed her.

“Him and Granddaddy, they’ve been real close over the years,” Scott said. “I can just remember him riding his bike down here, ‘bout to die to show him that calf Ellie just had.”

Ellie has given Carter a calf nearly every year. Scott worried about the first time Carter sold a calf because he would play with it like a pet.

“After he got that check, it was all over with,” Scott said. “He never said anything else about that calf. Plus he knew, within three or four months, he was going to have another one if she had good luck.”

Ellie, who Scott described as “the spoildest cow,” was Carter’s first responsibility on the farm. After learning to drive the truck, just around the farm, at age 10, Carter also started to help mend fences and round up the cattle. And he loves the stock market, with all the cattle for sale and farmers milling around.

There are more things he knows how to do from watching Scott, but for safety he’ll have to wait a few years.

“He wants to start raking hay,” Scott said. “I guess that will be his next project, but you know, his legs aren’t long enough to reach the pedals on the tractor yet.”

Carter’s mom Cindy is a teacher, and his dad Biff is a jeweler. Love of the outdoors came from them, but they are not farmers. Through the Davis’s and Scott, Carter has developed a tie to the Allwood community that sometimes surprises Cindy. She said when the Bowen family goes on vacation, Carter starts to get agitated after about three days, homesick for the farm, Baba and Granddaddy. So he’ll have to call and check in.

“With Carter, we see him wanting to give up other things just to be here with us,” Scott said. “He might have a friend that wants him to spend the day, and you’ll hear him say, ‘I don’t want to go over there, I want to do what ya’ll are going to do.’”

Carter loves baseball and snowboarding. He went hunting for the first time last season, and fed his family his first deer. Cindy said she doesn’t think Carter will grow out of farming like he grew out of wearing cowboy boots with every outfit in every season, as he did for three years. This and a desire to preserve the land prompted the Bowen’s to buy an old 50-acre homestead down the road from their house on Slapp Creek Road.

“I think he would love to have a farm up there one day,” Cindy said. “That would be like a dream for him. He found this passion on his own. He’s embraced it, and I don’t want him to lose it.”

But as fun as farming is for Carter, it’s not an easy livelihood. Scott and Cindy are realistic when they talk to Carter about how hard it is, and emphasize college first. Carter hears Warren and other farmers who come through the store talk about the weather, the price of feed, the going rate for cows.

“You could practically give him this farm, and everything on it, and it would still be hard to make it. I guess you just got to like to do it,” Scott said. “It’s just a good way of life. I’m not saying it can’t be done, because it can. It’s not all about the dollars. It’s a lot of stories to be told.

“I guess that’s what life is all about, good stories and good people that we’re around.”

This summer’s drought has dried up Slapp Creek, which runs through Allwood Acres. One afternoon, Carter helped Scott carry a 100-gallon water tub to a pasture for about nine cows and one of the farm’s bulls. The brown bull stood down the fencerow, bawling in frustration at some heifers in another field.

Carter climbed over the fence and called Ellie over. Her calf stood back as Carter cooed and patted her black face and flanks. Ellie got first dibs on the fresh water, stubbornly keeping her head in the trough as Carter dragged it several feet.

“You and Granddaddy, you’re going to have to water them every day,” Scott said.

Carter just grunted in reply, busy hugging on Ellie. He didn’t seem to mind an added responsibility. As Warren says, “You just can’t hardly hook him up wrong on the farm.”