"A lot of hard work back in them days. Used to take 12 men to bring in a crop. Now one machine does everything," said Whitlock, clad in a blue plaid shirt and camouflage suspenders. In fact, the Wrights have long leased their acreage to the Spry Brothers Inc., a large farming outfit.
Whitlock fed his household on the deer he hunted and on the bounty he and Elizabeth grew in their vast one-acre garden: sugar corn, lima beans, beets, tomatoes, squash. He hunted with his children and, more recently, with his developmentally challenged grandson, Colton, a gregarious 18-year-old.
After decades of farming, hunting, trapping and rambling, he knows every corner of the land. Don Wright, who owns a furniture company in North Carolina and plans to keep visiting Whitlock, said: "Joe could walk across a marsh that only Joe Whitlock and God could walk across. You'd sink up to your armpits."
Whitlock says that other than a few creaks, he still feels good. He gets out and about, on foot in black Reebok sneakers and on the road in his Ford F150 pickup.
His memory is clear. Bouncing along in the Toyota, Wright asked about a cluster of stones. "That used to be a peach house," Whitlock answered. "When they wasn't packin' peaches, they used to kill hogs in there."
Whitlock's mind is a catalog of anecdotes from this place. Like that nighttime raccoon hunting expedition when his brother-in-law climbed a tree in pursuit of one raccoon, only to break a branch and tumble to the ground.
Or the time in 1946 when he went hunting with his foreman, "Mr. Jack Hussfelt." Whitlock's job was to steer the buck they were tracking to where Hussfelt lay in wait. But when the deer emerged and headed for Whitlock, the farmhand fired.
Hussfelt, hearing the gunshot, shouted, "Which way'd he go?"
"Down," came Whitlock's reply.
So much has changed. The farm went from livestock to cash-crop cultivation. After Jeanne Wright, Stanchfield's widow, died in 2001, her son Arthur lived there for a time. But in recent years the Wrights have been visitors to their own farm, some from Kent County, some from out of state. Whitlock himself gave way to Joe Jr., a retired teacher who mows the grass and does other chores three days a week.
More change is coming. The state has yet to spell out the public's future access to the farm, which will likely offer kayaking, trails and some hunting.
What is certain is that Joe Whitlock will stay on the farm as long as he is able. He'll still rise at 4 a.m., eat Cheerios mixed with Raisin Bran for breakfast, see what's in the Cecil Whig. He'll wait for his grown daughter to drop off her school-age daughters, Haley and Sarah, and then see them off on the school bus.
He'll still have his bean soup for lunch and his midday nap, spend time with Colton, his grandson. He'll get out on the farm, too, and be glad it's still there even if the Wrights aren't.
scott.calvert@baltsun.com
