Good Contrivance Farm is an Oasis for Visiting Writers—and the Man Who Runs It

Ron Tanner, 71, is giving me a tour of Good Contrivance Farm, the six-acre writers retreat he operates out of historic Reisterstown. He passes what were once hen houses, pig pens, and stables that have now been retrofitted into assorted loft apartments, reading rooms, and workshop spaces. He shows me the garden and greenhouse, where he plants vegetables and flowers. He takes me into the main farmhouse that had to be completely gutted and renovated before becoming his home.

He shows me one barn that contains an elaborate drum kit—his own; Tanner plays in a band with his buddies called Amps 211 (it’s a Spinal Tap reference)—and explains that the barn is being used as a temporary practice space. He’s in the process of building a proper one—his latest big project.

Continuing the tour, he points out some massive trees (“I had an arborist here who said that’s the biggest crab apple tree he’s ever seen,” he says), grouses about weeds, and talks about all the work—woodwork, electrical, landscaping, plumbing—that went into making the farm hospitable to guests.

“How many people work here?” I ask.

He looks almost offended.

“Just me,” he replies.

Here are a few things you need to know about Tanner. Yes, he’s a 71-year-old writer, but he’s a robust 71. Think more Beat poet than pencil-necked geek who hasn’t seen the sun for days. Also, until he bought Good Contrivance in 2015, he had never been a farmer. His father did some farming as a young man before making an abrupt career turn to become an electrical engineer, but remained a DIY guy throughout his life, “so that’s where I got it from,” Tanner says.

Tanner considered becoming a horticulturalist but didn’t like all the science. In 1972, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the state where he grew up, where he majored in English and writing. After that, he moved to California, where he briefly made a living as a musician—but he got tired of the hustle. So he decided to focus on the writing. He was even accepted to the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

“Was that the inspiration for Good Contrivance?” I ask.

“No, I hated it,” he replies. (In short, he found the place to be status-obsessed and stressful—the opposite of the kind of nurturing and encouraging environment he tried to create for his creative writing students when he became a teacher.)

Despite that experience, he remained passionate about writing. He earned his PhD in creative writing at University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. In 1990, he landed at Loyola University, where he taught writing and eventually ran the department (he’s now retired). He loved teaching but he felt restless. He needed a project.

“Ron needs to have at least 10 major projects going at once to be happy and in his element,” says Lia Purpura, the poet and essayist who is a longtime friend and colleague (and frequent visiting writer at Good Contrivance).

“I don’t know how much sleep he gets, but it’s a lot less, it seems to me, than most of us require,” says the writer Michael Downs, who’s on the Good Contrivance board.

But before you can tell the story of Good Contrivance, you have to tell the story of a trashed frat house in Charles Village. And of the love of Tanner’s life, Jill Eicher.

He met Eicher in 1999 at an antique store where she worked part-time. He was immediately taken with the charming redhead behind the counter.

“We started bantering,” Tanner says. “She was very irreverent and playful and I liked that.”

He noticed that she was wrapping purchases in old copies of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Who’s the academic?” he asked.

“I am,” she said.

He was dating another woman at the time but he knew, immediately, that Eicher was going to be an important person in his life.

“We had fireworks,” he says.

Six months later, he called her and suggested she apply for an adjunct writing professor job at Loyola. She got the job and they began dating.

It was Eicher who wanted to buy the nearly condemned Johns Hopkins frat house in Charles Village. Like him, she had a passion for antiques and vintage books—and she loved old houses.

He had never done any sort of rehabbing, but he wanted to keep her happy. So he started doing research, reading all he could get his hands on (this was before the age of YouTube). He bought the “wreck” of a brownstone for $125,000.

“The frat kids had knocked out 30-some balusters from the staircase. They had left everything behind it.” There was graffiti on the walls. “Just to clean it out we filled three 30-yard dumpsters,” Tanner says.

Somehow, with lots of due diligence, patience, and Eicher’s help, Tanner brought the old brownstone back to life. It was gorgeous. Hardwood floors, stained-glass details in the windows, a new green-glass canopy over the doorway, a stately fireplace.

Tanner even wrote a humorous chronicle of their DIY adventures that also serves as a love letter to Eicher: From Animal House to Our House. In keeping with the home’s frat house spirit, Tanner and Eicher, who married in 2004, threw frequent parties there.

“There was music and more food than you could imagine,” says Purpura, who would attend the parties with her husband, the conductor Jed Gaylin. “It was like a really homey, Baltimore-infused salon, but completely unpretentious. And Jill always wore some amazing vintage dress and jewelry. And Ron, I think, really is happiest and most in his element when he is hosting a large amount of people at some kind of beautiful, art-inspired event.”

After living in the brownstone for 15 years, the “project” of renovating it was essentially finished. So, true to form, Tanner needed a new project.

“I was antsy,” he admits.

Tanner and Eicher used to take weekend trips to go antiquing and get away from the city. One day, on the way home from one of those trips, they found an abandoned farmhouse north of Westminster.

“I remember looking out at the horizon, seeing all these little houses and the checkerboard expanse of the farmland, just thinking, wow, this is so cool,” Tanner says. “And then I turned to Jill and said, ‘I will sell our house tomorrow if I can have this.’”

The words had just come out. “It was one of those things where I just knew I had to do this. Part of it was a late middle life crisis kind of thing,” he admits. “I needed one more big challenge.”

Eicher, always up for an adventure and sharing her husband’s restless spirit, agreed. But the abandoned farm was not for sale.

“It was zoned for industrial,” grumbles Tanner. The couple launched an extensive search and eventually found Good Contrivance Farm. Tanner liked the name—“contrivance” means ingenuity or invention. It had been a family farm for generations, with pigs, hens, and cows. It was in a state of some disrepair. In other words, right up Tanner’s alley.

In 2015, they bought it.

At first, they didn’t know what to do with it. They briefly considered making it a bird sanctuary. Meanwhile, Eicher, who was “good at grant writing and stuff,” according to Tanner, registered them as a nonprofit.

Soon an idea struck Tanner: He knew a lot of writers, and he was a writer. So yeah. Duh. Writers retreat. His friends were surprised, but hardly shocked.

“Ron dreams, and he dreams big,” says Downs.

“Ron makes things work,” adds Purpura, noting that Baltimore has nothing else like Good Contrivance. “It was really necessary.”

After a few years of intensive work, which was arduous, and redecorating, which was fun—Eicher and Tanner became regulars at salvage stores Second Chance and The Loading Dock—they were open for business. Tanner and Eicher lived in the main farmhouse (10 rooms!) and guests would stay in one of two living quarters—a loft-style apartment that can house up to four people in a barn or a quaint, bed-and-breakfast-style bedroom in the Hen House Cottage.

Everything was going exactly as Tanner dreamed it would. Until, five years ago, when Eicher was diagnosed with metastatic
breast cancer.

The farm operated through Eicher’s treatment (radiation and chemo) and through COVID (ironically, she never got the virus). And Eicher continued to live. It was grueling, for her and maybe even more so for Tanner, as is often the case with caregivers. She was in a terrible liminal state—too weak to lead a proper life (the cancer had spread to her bones; and she could barely eat) but too strong of spirt to let go.

In one of his blogs about her—Tanner keeps a blog about the farm, although he neglected it a lot when she was sick—he tells story that perfectly describes their dynamic: “One evening, while she was bent over the toilet, I called to her, joking: ‘I guess you don’t want the pizza I made?’ She called back: ‘Wrong, mister: I want my pizza, even if I puke it up!’ The girl’s got grit.”

“They were completely alive together,” Purpura says of Tanner and Eicher’s relationship. “They had such a great partnership. Their energies [matched], they were both up for an adventure all the time. And I think they found in each other these willing creative partners who would just do wild things together.”

In August of last year, Eicher died.

“Did you consider giving up the farm after that?” I ask Tanner.

“Where else would I go?” he replies.

Good Contrivance works in a few ways. Often, there are visiting writers—people with followings—who come for a two-week stay. The first week, they give a workshop and the second week they give what’s called a “craft talk,” where they might delve more deeply into a particular aspect of the writing craft. Both are open to the public, although the more hands-on workshop has a $200 fee.

The rest of the time, the visiting writers can just write. Upcoming guests include the poet and essayist Ross Gay and Jane Friedman, author of The Business of Being a Writer.

When they’re not otherwise occupied, regular folks—writers or not—can rent out either of the two living spaces and stay on the farm.

“It’s a special space,” says Tanner, who has dotted the property with benches and various nooks for writers. “They can escape the mundanity of their own existence and place themselves in a beautiful setting with no interruptions. And if you’re willing to spend the money to come out here, it revivifies people in a way that nothing else can. Because you’re dedicating yourself to this enterprise [of writing].”

Says Downs: “When you’re there, you’re not thinking about the deadline, you’re not thinking about the laundry. You’re in your own private world.”

The farm has continued to grow since Eicher’s death. Tanner assembled a board and now they do most of the decision-making Tanner still serves as founder, executive director, groundskeeper, visionary, decorator, and often baker of his famous chocolate-chip cookies. But he leaves a lot up to the board. He says he’s too busy maintaining the place to do all the administrative work.

I ask him how long he can keep this up—the carpentry, the groundskeeping, the renovation. You’re not getting any younger, I cautiously point out.

“I know!” he exclaims with mock (and genuine) indignation. That’s why he has the board, he explains. To help transition to Good Contrivance’s next phase, whenever that may come.

In the meantime, he basks in what he and Eicher built. He takes me into the Hen House Cottage, where a bulletin board is festooned with appreciative notes, poems, and drawings from past guests.

“I couldn’t stop writing in this magical place,” writes a woman named Monique.

“Thank you! I’ll miss the butterflies the most. Hope to have the good fortune to return,” writes Katie.

“Thank you for providing a space that let me breathe and sparked my imagination,” writes Melanie.

And one note reads, simply: “I’m glad you exist.”