Sarah Holcomb

My father grew up on a farm bordering the Guadalupe river in Seguin, Texas, 70 miles south of my family’s home in the Austin suburbs. It’s not his farm, really, as he’s quick to remind me. His mother, the daughter of German immigrants, grew up on the same land, which her father used for crops and cattle. After her own parents had passed away, my grandmom, a schoolteacher and single mom, moved back and brought up her two sons in the house her father built. Growing up, I knew it as “the farm” — a favorite subject for stories my dad told my sister and me. Stories about the goats he raised, which he showed off and sold off at 4-H competitions. Stories about a skunk in the cornfields that sprayed him so badly he had to have multiple tomato baths, or the skunk under his closet that soaked all his clothes in a stench that wouldn’t seem to wash out.

My dad is an accountant, and he’s good at it. Very good, actually. He’s exactly the kind of person you would want managing your finances. Doesn’t miss a detail. Knows all the rules and follows them to the letter. He keeps track of a company’s taxes with the same care he applies to just about everything. He trims back the old oak trees at just the right angle, keeps the grass neatly cropped, always has an eye on the gas tank, never speeds, checks his vision on an eye chart, checks in with his daughters frequently, and checks back on his childhood home to make sure everything is just as it should be.

Periodically he’d take all of us to go scope out the farm. In the fall, we’d spend at least a full day or two bent over beneath the trees, picking pecans, and head home with pounds on pounds of nuts. Then we’d set up shop on beach towels in the living room: my dad cracking them open, my sister, mom, and I scraping out the shells. Few things make my dad more excited than a new useful “toy” or tool for the farm, like a top-of-the-line nutcracker. Or “snake guards” to protect our shins. Later on, a riding lawn mower. And most recently, a ATV to ride around the property.

We gave the ATV a whirl last December, when the four of us were all together for Christmas and drove out to the farm one Saturday. My parents have been heading to the farm a lot lately. After years of renting out the place, my dad and his brother have decided to renovate it and spend more time out there themselves. My parents gave me the house tour: there’s new paint, restored floors, and it’s slowly being furnished. My mom brought paintings and curtains to put up. I trailed along, bringing my camera to capture what I could. I had forgotten how big and blue the Texas sky is, the how wide open the land, and the odd, yet endearing, layout of the house. I was learning to see it in new ways, too, through my father’s eyes, imagining what the place looked like a generation ago.

A place can reveal a great deal about a person, especially when you see a person in their place. The farm brings out a certain joy in my dad, who is always eager for an adventure around the property. Following my father around the farm—inspecting the house, barrelling over the grounds in the ATV, swinging over barbed wire, and looking out at the Guadalupe, it sometimes felt like I was staring into his portrait. So I’ve pulled a few photos from that day as a sort of tribute to a quiet man who always cares about getting it right, whether or not anyone cares to notice. Happy Father’s Day.