Vineland or New Beginnings

There's a term that floats around farming circles during early spring. Specifically, in the northeast, the term "mud auction" starts to roll off farmers' lips as well as adorn the front page of the Lancaster Farming News. This is by the end of March and all the way through long April weeks when the ground starts to thaw and the sky drops rain with more and more frequency. As one might denote by the second word of the phrase, spring is also time for auctions. Muddy ones. Of course nothing is as uncertain as the weather and anyone in PA knows that it may just as well be snowing as raining in March. Which would mean, most likely, on a cloudy day anyways, that the ground would still be frozen. And so it was when we traveled down past Philadelphia on rt. 676 and through south Jersey into the home of Jersey tomatoes and the flat-as-mid-west farm country known as Vineland.




Like anywhere else in the country today, farms are being sold faster than they are being started or staying put. Vineland, NJ would seem no different. Just minutes from long swaths of strip malls, gas stations, fast food joints, and gentleman's clubs with names like Kashmir, the landscape really starts to open up and greenhouses of all sizes and shape can be seen from the road. Some still in use, while others sit long abandoned. Landscaping operations and farms intermingled with Subway and local garages. Fewer and fewer houses dot the narrow roads that once would've been nothing more than country lanes leading back to great homesteads that soaked up the sun through the damp springs and hot summers, ripening the plum and beefsteak tomatoes and pushing the Genovese basil into green bushes. An abundance of produce that would easily quench the yens of all Philadelphians living in South Philly's Italian market and the surrounding newly blossoming suburbs from Conshohoken to Willow Grove.

Who knows when the Italians took over the rich soil of southern New Jersey. It had to be at least a hundred years by now. The auction on this day included any and all tools of the vegetable growing trade from tractors and tractor seeders to cultivators and transplanters, manure spreaders and mold board plows. As I stood next to the old (Italian?) farmer, I watched as he slowly dragged from his cigarette. He was listening to the auctioneer's streaming calls pleading with the crowd of 150 or more farmers and farm hands to please dig deep in their pockets for some of last year's hard earned profits. There was something about his casual stance and attentive demeanor that led me to believe that this had been his place. Had he no sons to replace him? Were they long gone from this life and onto law, medicine, graphic design, the city, bigger things and more profitable work? Hopefully he had just retired and decided to sell, I thought.



I kept scanning back and forth over the fleet of six Farm All and Ford tractors that had been neatly lined up in a row, waiting for some young upstart man or woman to take them out into the field and use them to ease some of the cultivating (read: weeding) burden that lay in the weeks and months ahead. With their belly mounts readied and small frames easily maneuverable between rows of broccoli, peppers, basil, corn, beans, or lettuces, their old age was not, as it may now be for the farmer who cherished them, a disadvantage. These were cultivating tractors. Pure and simple. Old American machines that aged like wine or cheese and only needed good upkeep and some grease to keep them running like it was still the age of the family farm. Across the parking lot were giant Case and International tractors that may have been used for bailing or plowing but these little red and blue guys had all the character in the lot.




The sea of faces stared, the bodies slowly swaying and sucking down hot chocolate and food truck soup to stave off the steady cold breeze, as each tractor had its 15 minutes. The speedy voice of the auctioneer coming through the bull horn, seemingly never taking a breath, ending each soliloquy with "Sooooooooooooooooooold. . . . for $7500 dollars."



This was the highlight of the the afternoon. Most of the farmers had waited it out through all the implements on the other side of the building, had lunch, and then moved over, slowly amassing around the line of antique tractors. This was it. Buy now or forever hold your arm down while the rest of you fidgets and squints and nervously anticipates the frenzy that's just beginning all over again, the same as last year, with frozen mud.


All copy and video copyright tmrg/wayne miller 2010.

Beautiful Reverberations at Global Libations

Off the street, in from the damp pre-Spring air, and into the warm coffee house. Just in time to catch the last short set of the acoustic version of the band La Overtoner. I got a water to drink. The Stouts I'd had were settling just fine now. The ten other bodies buzzed around me, some listening, some talking shop, some promoting style, some trying to contain the caffeine vibe pulsating through their minds and veins. I sat back. The haunting music lulled me. The lyrical ride was on. Reverb to be had. Sweet Stout and dark night. Three minute dreams. Hushed winter.

Everything CHussst (just) sitz

All about our fine southeast PA neck-of-the-woods, a good Dutchman might say, if he had a mind to, "everything chusst sitz." I guess you could say the same about any locale. If one spends enough time in the same place, the local dialect starts to seep into everyone's mind. The accent of all the Moravians, Mennonites, Amish, Dunkards, and Schwenkfelders of old and present combine in a slow, steady, narrative thread in my head, "Aye now, everything chuussst sitz."

The tractor just sits. The snow just sits. The ice just sits. The disc harrow just sits. The spreader just sits. The chisel plow and the mold board plow just sit. The people just sit. The grauuunt (ground) just sitzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.Or so it seems as the winter drags on day by day. Daylight is more now, but the calendar is there to remind us of the 25 more days of this still season. But at this time the mind wanders (if let to??) to places both near and far. Just as the humidity of summer brings that sense of place back to the skin, winter in southeastern Pennsylvania gives daily vistas and clear wide-open horizons that offer solace to an otherwise frantic life. In his book, "This Common Ground," Scott Chaskey reflects evenly throughout the seasons in a truly poetic (albeit overtly romantic) manner.

What is it that is meant by the words "spirit of place?" We certainly mean to describe a physical setting--a field, a valley, a row of trees, a pond-- but can we agree on what spirit is?

All these things we look at. What a difference each new season's light brings to their perception by us. Over time, taken into our very depths, reflected on, breathed out again, new dawns awake. New things come out of old. The things are us and we them. Soon enough, they won't chusst sit anymore.

Endless Winter

I gasped for breath, holding onto the board and slushing heavy footstep after heavy footstep, climbing the little farm hill that had transformed overnight into one gigantic, plush, white ocean. I couldn't remember this much snow falling since the blizzard of 96' when Carl and I had gotten stuck on the off-ramp at Trexlertown. Not believing the weatherman's forecast of up to 2ft. of snow, we had taken off in the little Ford Escort wagon from our college "homes" in the morning, destined to end up at my Aunt's house for family Christmas. This being the gathering of extended relatives a couple of weeks after December 25. By the time we got to my Aunt's house, 25 miles north of the Poconos and two hours and fifteen minutes north of Berks County, there was already 5 inches of heavy snow on the ground. "Yeah, the New York bunch called to cancel and hour or so ago," my Uncle said. Idiots, I thought. Why hadn't we called ahead?


That day ended in a Holiday Inn Bar, the hour striking midnight, January 7, 1996, my birthday. Today I was with another friend and neighbor, trudging through 2 feet of fresh white powder to get to the crest of a 10 acre field and make an attempt at descending it by snowboard. It might not be possible, I thought. Two feet of virgin powder with such a mellow incline. Having snowboarded for over 15 years, I knew that if nothing else, we would just have to carve out a line and keep going over it and over it until eventually, the path would widen and get packed down enough to gain whatever speed and carve the little slope could offer.




It was truly hard work at first. But the feeling of cold, fresh air, wind and sun after so many days physically cramped inside little apartments and mentally cramped in by the season's lack of sunshine, was unbeatable. It was just after 4pm and the sun had started to wane, leaving an orange-purple horizon and crystal clear sky directly above. Each time after hiking back up the field, trying to step into previously made tracks, feeling the sweat build on the brow, heaving for air for the first time in months, was incredible.





We were alive again! Out of the stale, heated air and into the rural wonderland. Unlike going to a commercial ski area these runs were earned. And the hill was all ours. Each ride a new striving for that soft, floating, bumpy feeling of gliding along the top few inches of air and water. Going for the first cut in the snow or just trying to keep standing while the nose of your board is constantly fighting to stay afloat of the fluff. Bring on the endless winter, I thought. We'll take every flake to be had.

Triticale and Clover and Hops! Oh, my!

We pulled up to the semi-circle of farmers that were standing, hands-in-pockets, at the back of the red pick-up truck. I rolled down the window as I surveyed the scene quickly, taking notice of the men dressed in the usual Carhartt jackets, black woven hats and blue full-body quilted work suits making small talk to each other. I bet none of these real farmers were former English majors, I thought. There was always this mild apprehension when coming to an event like that one on that first damp bone-chilling day of late November. The feeling that I wasn't really supposed to be there. I was the odd man out. The guy who hadn't grown up around tractors and tillers, hens and cows, silos and barns. And that they could surely pick one of "me" out of the crowd of "them." No matter how long I farmed I thought, it would most likely always be this way. Even if I donned a Carhartt jacket from time to time.

Throughout the hectic summer and fall I had kept hearing about various workshops through Tianna at the Sustainable Ag Extension, but couldn't seem to gather the interns together for any of these extra-curricular activities. We had managed to visit a friend's farm in Lancaster County a few weeks back and one up north, but that was about the extent of the intern field days. I was determined to make this cover crop demonstration whether the last intern was game or not. I needed this field day as much as he did. My knowledge of cover crops up to this point was a bunch of names without faces. "Triticale," Dave would explain at length, "is the combination of rye and wheat most commonly used in the 19th century. . . . ." And so it would go, with me remembering little of that T word except that it was a green manure like the other few that I was familiar with because we had been sowing them in the spring and fall for several years now. These dandies would set in thick, long, flowing root structures for feet and yards and sometimes miles to help keep the soil well-fed and aerated, holding it together like a tightly knit web of life and safeguarding it against heavy winds and rains that would threaten its all important top six inches.

Across the road were neatly planted swaths of cover crops ranging from the most widely used Aroostook Rye to another I hadn't heard of called Austrian Winter Peas and various mixtures of oats, hairy vetch and field peas. Most of the crops having been planted in mid to late August, the swaths were thick and green by this day, clearly having survived more than one decent frost. "It's real tough," said an older PA Dutch farmer who stood a couple feet from me. "It's darn tough to get this stuff in when you're growing corn and beans (soy) and waiting for that to go first." He was expressing what I figured was a very common concern among most of the farmers standing and watching as the Penn State men and women explained all the benefits of using covers. If you were growing mostly corn all summer, it would be near impossible to get most of these (except for the rye, of course) covers growing in the ground early enough to establish any of their benefits to your soil. Just about halfway through the lines of Crimson clover and Sorghum grass, one of the black hatted Mennonite farmers bolted out of the small crowd into a run up the road. Casey and I turned our heads to watch the young man make a path and soon noticed that his black buggy was on its side! "Did you see that happen?" I asked Casey. "Nah, nah I just figured something was up when he started running." "The horse must have got excited and jumped off the road for some reason?" Once it was established that things were fine we all had a chuckle as the man walked back into our fold. From then on it was mostly talk of Buckwheat, a seemingly agreed upon cheap alternative to some of the other covers being demonstrated. Not to slight the age-old Alfalfa grain as well, but I was already thinking that a day like this called for a grain of yet another color. My mind was on a trip to Pottsville, PA.

We couldn't see any evidence of a mist in the air on the little truck's windshield, but as soon as you got outside the steady breeze and damp chill that came with it made your mind a fool. It felt like that fall mist, nay, that soon-to-be-winter mist, was all around you. Upon parking up towards the top of Montanango St., I immediately scanned for the John O' Hara house. The navy blue placard with yellow script let me know right away that something historic and Pennsylvanian was in the vicinity. "Wow!," I exclaimed. "His house is practically right across the street from Yuengling!" Weird, I thought. I guess this is the street to have been on in Pottsville. I remembered the detailed descriptions of all the ethnic groups that congregated together on this long hill. It turned out that not much literary exaggeration was given to descriptions of the various wealthy homesteads. Many of the mansions of the town's elite still stood right here along with the convent and Catholic school up at the end of the line. The history in this street! I just kept looking up and down, up and down. Never one to rush, Casey took his time musing on the house itself and reading every word on the sign in front of it. The slim row home stood much like it must have for over 100 years. Three stories tall with original moldings and painted the most provincial of reds. A mix of the candy apple and fire engine colors.

On to the hops, I thought. Let's get to it. I've put 14 years of my life into this blessed county of Berks and never once stood inside the famed oldest brewery in America, Yuengling Brewery. All over the walls hung history. Memorabilia from five generations of the Yuengling family mingled with maps of Pottsville and the greater PA area. A surprising number of photos of professional sports players, many of them signed to various Yuengling family members, but most notably the eldest son now running the company.

There was a surprising number of attendees for the now famous tour gathering in the little bar next to the gift shop in the main building. I didn't think there'd be much of any crowd on a Thursday in the middle of the day. We were given the perfunctory speech about the history of old man Yuengling complete with the jokes about American Eagle Beer (Yuengling's first name) and how the owner had to sell ice cream (made across the street) to survive Prohibition. Once through the main floor's processing area, we were lead down into the most interesting part of the old factory. "The caverns are 4 blocks long and were used to store barrels of beer before shipping," she shouted over the noise of thousands of cans conveying along the track behind us. "If anyone doesn't feel comfortable taking this part of the tour, feel free to stay in the upstairs showroom!" Down we walked. Down and down into the dank underground of Pottsville. Dug out white tunnels covered in plaster and mortar stretched in front of us like secret forest entrances. Caves that were made to twist around the entire underground of the Yuengling factory which did indeed go on for most of the top of this Gibbsville hill (see Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara). People actually worked down here? Like the nearby anthracite mines of long ago, there was no outside light, no breeze down here. What a different time in the world.

Back upstairs in the warmth of the group and heat of the bar, some of the tourists made pleading jokes to have but just one more sample past the two allotted 8oz. plastic cups of beer. "Sorry," she said with a smile, "I can only give you two." I drank the Porter, which I always thought was their finest beer, and as the dark liquid teased me with its thick texture, I relished the day's events in my mind. Rich beer and rich soil. These were what it was all about. Good grains to make the earth give forth all its treasures.

Four Season Farm

He had a real look of consternation in his eyes. Or maybe it was just the way he squinted, one eye almost shut as I often do when the mid-day sun is shining all over the place, blinding and bathing everything at the same time. He was shorter than I had imagined, as well, and as he gave me a firm hand shake I asked him if he remembered meeting Tim Stark at Stone Barns a bunch of years back. "Oh yes!", he stated, still looking me straight in the eye. "That was good what he did ya know, the first thing to do is stay in business. I've never been certified organic!" He was referring to how our farm had resorted to using a chemical fungicide to combat the late blight that spread to all the tomato and many of the potato plants in the northeast this past summer. I got the impression right off that this guy didn't miss a beat. I only learned later that he was seventy years old. His energy reminded me of a Mennonite farmer friend back in Pennsylvania. Go go go go was the mantra and all they'd ever known. These guys were classics. "Little guys like you and me," as my uncle might say. Tons of energy and sprightly like more men were a century ago. Back when agriculture was still king and small stature was regarded as a good thing. Did a huge man ever make a good farmer? I'm sure Harry Truman or maybe Mark Twain must have had a word on the subject at one time or another?

Jen and I had made the 10-11 hour trip up to Maine mostly because I had arranged to visit Eliot Coleman's Four Season Farm. We also needed a little respite from our daily grinds and had had such a great time in Portland two years ago that we figured we'd try it again. This trip was turning out to be near perfect as well. Except of course for the nights when we caught a glimpse of the World Series and the Phillies who'd squandered almost every opportunity to clinch a second World Championship. And more importantly, to send those damn Yankees packing! Just as two years ago, the weather was fantastic. Slightly more seasonable than last October, the first days of November were hovering around 55 degree highs. Sunshine. Hardly a cloud as far as one could see. This is what it was like the day we finally made our way around the last bend of Weir Cove leading to Harborside, Maine and home of not only the farm but also the Good Life Center and Forest Farm, the last homestead of Helen and Scott Nearing.


I had arranged the visit through first connecting with Annie who is the food Forager for the Spotted Pig restaurant and later contacting her acquaintance Greg, the intern-turned-manager of the farm. This was a pretty big deal for me. Having farmed for more than 8 years now, I'd always had this visit in the back of my mind. What small farm grower wouldn't?! Eliot was it, man. He had written the bible of organic growing back in 1989. There wasn't many a farmer or enthusiast of micro-farming that didn't know about or have a well-worn copy of The New Organic Grower on their shelf. Coleman had become and is still today somewhat of an iconic figure of the movement and an all-around guru of the greenhouse/winter harvest technique of intensive bed farming.

After the perfunctory greetings upon arrival, I left Greg and his girlfriend Megan to their task of harvesting spinach and walked with Eliot over to his house which sat at the other side of the completely fenced-in property. Greg had told me that in the weeks just past, somewhere around 4 acres had been completely cleared so that Eliot and his wife Barbara (also an author and accomplished grower) could finally have animals.



This land and the roughly 2 acre vegetable farm in the center of the property were surrounded by the classic post and wire fence used on most small farms I've visited. One thing surprised me about the fence, though. At no section of the fence did I see it reaching more than six feet high. That would hardly keep out the most ambitious of Maine's deer population. I had seen eight foot fences on every other farm I had visited. Once near the house, the other visitors and workers kept Eliot engaged in conversation while Jen and I checked out the movable glass greenhouse that had just been slid to the left away from some hot chiles and green bell peppers.

This kind of greenhouse was just one of the innovations that Coleman was famous for. One could grow tomatoes in a high tunnel (unheated greenhouse) made of plastic or, like this one, glass, and then when the tomatoes (or whatever vegetable crop) finished producing, slide the house on its metal tracks over the next crop needing protection and added heat. We gleaned the last peppers from their plants for Greg to sell at market.

Looking out from the front of the house was a classic potage or kitchen garden lined with stone and edged on the right side with hanging grapes.










What this must have looked like just a month before the frost hit. It was still magical looking to me in the waning afternoon light. I caught tidbits of the conversation between the visiting chef from Michigan and Eliot as I picked the last red peppers from the ground. "I'm gonna put you guys to work!," he exclaimed. This was after a detailed description of the M____ bread he had eaten in. . . . Italy did he say? I wasn't sure. "Oh it's the best. You have to make it for your restaurant. It's the best bread I've ever tasted. Made with a special grain grown right in that part of Italy!"




I had told Greg in the emails throughout October that we would be happy to help out with whatever farm work they were doing at the time of our visit. He took me up on it and we proceeded to harvest one of the signature crops of Four Season Farm. Carrots! There must have been five or six beds of carrots in production, each one as neatly laid out as the next. Thirty inch wide by fifty foot long beds. The carrots would be harvested, washed, trimmed, and packed directly into the wooden boxes that gave them a rustic look of something classic, fresh and genuine. Before the carrots were harvested, though, we were treated to a delicious light lunch of hardy mustard greens and warm Charlotte potatoes tossed in a brown mustard vinaigrette.

Even before that, however, was the first job I got enlisted for. "Wayne," Megan's voice warily trailed off from inside the greenhouse, "Can you kill this vole?" Apparently, just as with any farm, even Eliot Coleman's farm had its share of pest problems. You wouldn't know by looking at all the perfectly manicured raised beds both in and out of the greenhouses that lurking underneath much of that rich, composted soil were more than a few little rodents scurrying to and fro to catch a big old bite out of the largest and most beautiful of all the carrots! Greg said that they must know which are the tastiest. Indeed all the biggest carrots that we'd later pull up were bitten into. How frustrating! This was a problem that would only be solved by attaining some much needed larger animals on the farm. Namely the feline kind. Voles or no voles, the carrots had that sweetest post-frost, late fall flavor. Not to mention the creamy texture of the Charlotte potatoes. Next to the classic fingerling or German Butterball varieties, these were some of the best potatoes I'd ever tasted.

I managed to make a clean kill of the little rodent that looked like a large gray field mouse with one strong downward smack of the shovel. Poor thing, I thought. But what could be done? There were LOTS of these poor things. We then ate our salads sitting on the grass outside Garfield, the largest greenhouse, and talked about Greg and Megan's former residences in New York and San Francisco. I couldn't help but think, both on the ride out to Harborside and at other moments during our time at the farm, how far from civilization this place felt. And apart from the sort of "out there" feeling I got, there was the practical question of how in the world could you market produce from here? Who would buy your stuff?

There was, except for a few neighbors, almost nobody for miles. The closest town, an hour from the farm, was Belfast with only 6,000 people. Could this really be viable for anyone but Eliot Coleman? But then again, thirty years prior when he decided to clear what looked to be at least 10 acres, which sat on more like 40 total, the goal was not just growing vegetables. It was homesteading.





The land had been sold from the Nearings to back-to-landers like Eliot for something near the $33/acre that they had paid for it in the seventies. Talk about no overhead. It was all laid out though, wasn't it? Just the consult the Book. The answers are all there. Eliot Coleman was not just a slick, organic-growing, trend-of-the-day, hands-off guru of a 60's movement. He was a bit of a practical genius. He had forged methods by trial and error day to day for over decades now. He would have already thought of the answers to any questions that I could possibly think of during my visit to his place that would not even last a full 24 hours. This was Eliot Coleman for god's sake!

For more pictures of Four Season Farm and The Good Life Center check out www.flickr.com/zopoco. All pics copyright of thickmoonroughgoat aka Wayne Miller 2009. Big thanks to Greg and Megan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

October

Finally! That most holy of all months has arrived. Autumn is born and re-born again! Many days having passed since that Sabbath day, the twenty first day of September. The day of the Equinox that, once lapsed, will ensure the sweetest of all seasons. The harvest will grace us all in the Northeast with its overwhelming Light, color, and beauty. Somewhere, in the annals of literature, the historian or the Transcendentalist scribe has written of the season that is now upon us as simply, "the most human of all seasons, in which the air is most clear, and clarity of thought, too, can flourish."

How and why else could a Quaker, a Roman Catholic (however lapsed he be), and a Seventh Day Adventist come to be gathered around southeastern Pennsylvania soil? How could they know that on this very day they'd be leaning in to harvest the golden and red bumpy-skinned, spaceship-shaped, Caribbean pepper pods? The seed of which had traveled thousands of miles from islands soaked with heavy, humid, sun-drenched air. Passed on from the hand of one West Indian woman to the farmer from the Keystone State at his stand in New York City. Women like Lydia who laughed again and again at my quips about her seasoned chicken's ability to give me good luck. Assuming she ever brought some of it for me to sample. "Da greeeeeeeeeeeen ones," she demanded in her north Trinidadian accent. "Bring me some of da green ones fah next Whidnesdaaaaay!," she repeated as I gawked at her gigantic turquoise-colored hoop earrings. Only half hearing her request. Big plastic accents to her strong chocolate colored face. She had me mesmerized as she walked away with her index finger pointing and shaking at me. That was the quality of the peppers. Magic. Even when grown far away from their place of origin.

Three interns, apprentices, workers, idealists yearning for that old Jeffersonian sense of the real and true that had been lost at the dawn of the virtual age. To capture again some old with the new. To find down in the soil and then up through fields and sky some sense of the magical quality in the real. Not somewhere else. Here. Now. Momentous and daily. Material culture was on the wane, was it not? Information abounded, did it not? We picked and picked. I could hear the whisper of centuries past yeoman plots riding by me on the fall breeze, the sun lighting all experience.

The bright green foliage of the pimientos shook and danced and prayed in waves. Their fruit softly knocking at each other like brushes on a snare head from a 60s ska tune as our hands delved in and around each plant to find and pluck their fruit. "Shh shh shh, clickle clickle, shuffle, shhh shhh." Ancestors of Lydia who may have passed awfully through Monticello while Thomas saved his precious vegetable seeds could now laugh with her while they sensed through time's eternal energy that "flave-ahhh," that "seeeasonin'" she'd mix into every dish she made.