Farm life proves to be inspiring for Excellence in Arts Award winner

By RANDY CAPPS

The idea of leaving the hustle and bustle of the Northeast behind and trying out life on a farm is hardly new.

But the journey from New York City to Connecticut to a picturesque farm outside of Selma has been anything but standard for Evelyn Wool and her family.

In the process of learning how to raise goats and run a farm, Wool sharpened her writing and drawing abilities. It’s for her contributions in that area that she’s been named the 2022 Johnston Now Honors Excellence in Arts Award winner.

“With a lot of planning and intention, but also a little bit of right place, right time, good fortune,” she said of ending up in Johnston County. “We actually made the move after my husband was transferred down here by his company at the time. We had been talking about what we wanted to do in our next phase of life. We were done with the really cold, really disastrous weather situations, and we were thinking we’d like to try a different part of the country.

“I really love Johnston County. I feel like I came to a place where I could call home almost immediately. In setting up our farm we had no fences, no shelters, and my husband learned how to do some of the building things. Our neighbor behind us would see him working and come over with a giant backhoe and say, ‘Hey, can I help you push in fence posts?’ Just from that, ‘Hey, can I give you a hand? Welcome!’ It felt very comfortable that we were in the right place.”

That’s how the Wool Family Farm came to be. And, as it turns out, farm life provided plenty of artist inspiration.

“The farm has provided an endless supply of stories, and I’ve only scratched the surface of what I’ve actually been able to take the time to write down,” she said. “Right from the start, I had a bunch of encouragement from my friends and co-workers back up north. They said, you know, ‘We want to see what’s going on. Send us stories.’ So, one of the very first things I did was set up a magazine-style website (evelynwool.com) that people could see what we were doing. I had several crazy adventures right from the beginning. So, I started writing stories as best I could.”

Wool has always enjoyed writing, even if the lion’s share of her ability had to be channeled into a more structured format.

“I’ve really been writing my whole life,” she said. “I really enjoyed creative writing when I was in school. Then I decided to pursue what I thought would be kind of the best thing for me career wise, which was industrial engineering. With that, my creative writing went to formal, reportwriting style. And I was kind of in that mode for my entire career until we came down here. It was a challenge to get back into creative writing. It really was.”

She managed it, and thanks to a little help from the Johnston County Arts Council, she learned how to illustrate, too.

“A couple of my stories, I started thinking in the back of my mind, might make good children’s books,” she said. “But I didn’t really have any idea how to go about creating a children’s book. I didn’t want to just go and hire somebody to illustrate, not knowing if what I wanted to do was going to turn into anything. And I got introduced to the Arts Council artists early on. It was a goat friend, who had a friend who was on the council and said, ‘Hey, let me introduce you. I think these ladies do a weekly paint group, and I think you could go learn a thing or two.’

“I sat there for an entire year, and I sketched out some animals and said, 'This is what I’m thinking about doing; this is kind of my story. How do I do this?' They would give me little hints on how to draw things. We’d talk about colors and how to paint. The whole time I was thinking, ‘this is great, but it’s going to take me a lifetime to get good enough to turn this into a book.’ Finally, I was able to get to the point where I had enough sketches and I had my first story and I put them together.”

That story, “Mischievous Misty,” is also her favorite.

“The characters are based on me and my goat, Misty,” she said. “She was one of my first five goats, which was kind

of a crazy thing to do — five goats at one time. But Misty was always right by my side. Everything that happens in the book was exactly true in life. I just kind of strung together the events. The idea there was that Misty taught me how to pay attention and figure out how to fit my work, my chores, in with the goats so they would be happy and content and want to play with me, but not be getting in my way the whole time.”

Her granddaughter, Eve, has also been a good source of literary material. That’s how “Eve’s Big Day on the Farm” came to be.

“She’s so much fun,” she said. “She’s been coming to the farm since she was 6 months or so old, right after we got past the first couple of lockdown phases for COVID and we could visit a little more freely. She would come into

the goat yard with me, and we’d just kind of sit down and let the animals come around. She is really funny because she likes to do the work with the goats. She likes to watch the milking ... but she’s kind of arm’s length when it comes to the animals. She likes to look at them, but ‘don’t get too close to me.’”

Before COVID, Wool was able to visit area schools and share her stories with school children.

“That’s one area that I’m really passionate about is education,” she said. “I really thought that, at the very least, my books would be for my children and my grandchildren. If I’m able to share them with a wider audience, then all the better.”

To learn more about Wool’s book, or the Wool Family Farm, visit evelynwool.com or thewoolfamilyfarm.com.