Fixed down

A lot of people reach a point when they want to change jobs, lifestyles and locations.

Logan and Heather Ward took that a step further. In 2001, they decided to change centuries.

“We weren’t survivalists, re-enactors or religious fanatics,” recalls Logan Ward, who will be signing copies of his book, “See You in 100 Years,” at Givens Books on Feb. 28. “We were what I guess you would call ‘normal.’”

But “disconnected,” in Ward’s words. He and Heather were living with their 1-year-old son Luther in New York City, “at the peak of the tech financial boom, where you heard stories about people going into restaurants and buying $5,000 bottles of wine with dinner.

“I was a freelance magazine writer, Heather worked for a non-profit and traveled a lot, and we hardly ever saw each other, except for a couple of hours at night. We really didn’t have much of a sense of community.”

Somehow, the idea hit them to return to 1900 and live a year without any of the modern conveniences.

“We just wanted to get out of the rat race,” Ward said.

So they traded the rat race for actual rats (a few appeared in their outhouse). They traded their Brooklyn apartment for 40 acres and an 1885-era farmhouse in Swoope, near Staunton. And they traded one kind of stress for another.

“It was hard at first,” Ward said. “There was so much to learn, and you get stressed about getting all your chores done.”

Meanwhile, the couple “fixed down” their farmhouse instead of fixing it up.

“We ripped out the electrical wires and the plumbing,” Ward recalled. “Our neighbors were too nice to say anything, but they used to come over and just sort of stare. Then, once they figured us out, they were very helpful in a lot of ways.”

The Wards soon discovered that they didn’t miss their TV set or their telephone or their Internet connection (“All that was kind of a relief,” Logan said). What they missed most was their old kitchen sink.

“We had to carry in all our water from the well and pour it into the sink,” Ward said, “and that wasn’t so bad. But with no drain, we then had to take it all out.”

There were other “What have we gotten ourselves into?” moments, most notably the day Belle, the horse, arrived.

“She was a Percheron draught horse,” Ward recalled, “and she was huge. I remember thinking, ‘Somebody is going to get hurt here.’ I’d never dealt with an animal larger than a golden retriever.”

Gradually, Ward and Belle came to an understanding, and she made herself useful for both farm work and transportation.

Logan Ward had experienced hardscrabble rural life before, as a post-college volunteer in western Kenya. This, however, was different.

“We had made a public commitment,” he said. “We sold pretty much everything we had to pay for it, and we couldn’t go back.”

Eventually, though, he and Heather found themselves adjusting to the seasonal rhythms of Swoope, population roughly 1,800.

“It helped our relationship a lot, after some early problems,” said Ward. “We hardly ever saw each other, and suddenly we were together 24/7. That was an adjustment, but ultimately we found that we liked it.”

After their year, the Wards put electricity and plumbing back in their farmhouse and lived there for three more years. They now have a house in Staunton.

“It was a positive experience, looking back,” Ward said. “I look at it as a multi-discipline graduate school program. And, I got a book out of it.”