Salad Days

I went up to turn the water on at 5:30 am. This had become the usual routine. There hadn't been any rain for about three weeks. To say nothing of the August-like temperatures of high 90's in this first week of June. My vegetables, especially the salad greens, were surviving on a daily (and often nightly) dose of sprinkler and drip tape action. After making sure the potatoes were indeed getting a drink, i kept walking passed the deer fence to the edge of the woods. I stopped suddenly as i heard that familiar rustling of ground cover, not too far from where i stood. My heart beat faster and i tried to stay as still as possible. I knew they were there. One of them at least. As I stood there, filled with an excitement that never tires, waiting to catch a passing glimpse of the wood's most magical of creatures, i saw a white flash. I always seem to catch that first. The white tail of the Pennsylvania doe. Flickering upwards as they shift their bodies spasticaly, deciding if to run. They always run when spotted by a human. The question is how long will they tarry before leaping into action, stealthly and sleekly darting away from the outsider.

I had put the fence up because, like most vegetable growers, i did not want to see my potential profit eaten up by any of the various gourmands of the outdoor world. I even attached a low strand to deter groundhogs and racoons. For months now it had seemed to work. I thought of all this strategy as the does took their leave and i began to cut mesclun mix for the fifth week of the season. I'd be up over 20lbs if the stuff this week. Did they know what was just beyond their realm, waiting to be devoured just beyond two strands of easily passable rope fence? Had they touched their noses to the strands, as i had hoped, and gotten enough shock to create a different path around my acre? I cut and cut and figured i was lucky so far. Lucky to have had Kim to erect this light but sufficient boundary for my lettuces, mustards, and spinach. Lucky so far. But will they realize eventually that the strands are a mere 3 feet apart and only just over 4 feet high?

Kutztown Bloc Party with Total Quality Institute

It felt like Spring had finally sprung down on Main St. USA. Complete with a climbing wall and live music. I drank a chocolate shake and watched kids run around with painted faces. Oh, and some band spewed noisy, angsty, dissident garage rock that reminded me of The Minutemen or Television or The Talking Heads perhaps. The clouds hung low but spirits were up and the gray fuzzy back drop held community out there, on the ends of great tentacles, invisibly flapping from their origin in 1979 London or New York. A fabric affair sans leather. Or, so to speak.

May Day

Not really knowing the history of this holiday of yore, suffice it to say that I've seen the excellent and terrifying 1970's version of the film The Wicker Man and read enough Wiki entries about children dancing around the May pole to get the gist of it. So. . . guess that makes me somewhat of an expert on pre-christian European folk religion, right? C'mon, it's the information age. You don't have to know what you're talking about. Just say more. Oh, and definitely put it officially ONLINE!

To this newly solo, sole proprietor, on-his-own, little guy farmer, the first of May means that yesterday, the last day of April, not everything got done. Was it ever any different for any farmer anywhere, big or small? I've got a wee patch of vegetables that I'm calling Epic Acre Farm.

It's just that. About an acre on my home property that I figured I'd max out and produce for a market since I was planning on growing food here anyway. There are also some beautiful apple trees (morels!) that are in dire need (did I just say dire?) of pruning, a couple little pear trees that are in full, white flower bloom, and about an acre and a half of woods in addition to the "epic" acre of growing space.

Having gotten the "yard" mowed - that is, everything else green that doesn't constitute woods or grow space (thanks, Jen) - the beets and radish in the ground, the deer fence started, the trees cut or limbed outside the to-be-fenced area, earlier radishes hoed and covered and the last of firewood trees felled, most of what I wanted to accomplish in the last two days of April got done. Now it's May. Oh joy. Oh more to do.

May 1st happens to have dawned on a partly sunny, beautifully cool, mid 50's morning here in the southeast of PA. But before I get to the block party downtown to check out my friends TQI, I've got to get the rest of those loose ends from yesterday tied up. It's Sunday, the old order neighbors I have would say a day for rest and church. But as a small farmer (I would use the term market gardener, but then, I guess I'm just stuck back in the 90's with Andrew W. Lee) I don't have the minions of extended family hands to pitch in throughout the long growing season's work load. No kids. No cousins. No Pop with endless acreage and know-how and tractors. Nope, just me and sometimes my partner to remember the details and hoe the rows. And of course, in my case, good neighbors that'll swing up the hill just in the nick of time (again those oh so solid old order people), between endless April showers, with their three bottom and plow the rest of my field.

And then there's the friend who is helping with the deer fence. And the other friend who helped log the first big tree I felled two weeks ago. And of course the former boss who called and said I'd never get those clods broken up if he didn't bring the tractor roto-tiller over on Sunday and. . . wow. I guess I'm not really alone in this endeavor after all. All these fine people, eager and willing to lend two hands. Whether out of friendship or a simple common interest in rural life and activity. Being outside. Seeing the dogwoods bloom in May. Spring movement. Awake again.

I'm gonna put beets up for winter in the cold cellar room anyway so why not grow a few extra to take to market? At least that's what I keep telling myself when I get that first taste of being a bit overwhelmed with my Epic Acre.

Shamans Among Us

What kind of musical artist creates a mood in sound? One might say that all art carries a mood and that surely all music too, speaks with a sensibility of some kind or other. But the artist that seeks to evoke a truly ambient sound that summons the spaces between soil and air, breath and life, water and sun, light and dark, frenzy and contentedness, or melancholy and ecstasy, reaches beyond the obvious. The obvious, spirited, foot stomping gaiety of an Irish jig or the back beat groove of rock n' roll, while commanding a listener to their crescendos, may lack the ethereal subtlety of sound art. Even when the art bleeds itself ever so closely to the brink of pop. Thanks, to an on and off again friend and long time acquaintance from up northeast PA way. Cheers to him and his lads who gave us a February Sunday of afternoon splendor in the city of brotherly love. Music to while away the hours and dream in deep beauty. All hail the Sun King. Long live Lewis and Clark.

I cruised down Rt. 76 along the Schuylkill, my soft mind buzzed from the previous night's pints and filled with local inspiration, and turned up the radio when I heard the familiar voice mention her guest, author Sherman Alexie. I had been thinking about this present digital age with its virtual creations and social networks for months and wanting to say something. But I kept coming back to a phrase from my youth. It was a bastardization of the Exploited's cry, facebook NOT punk! As the modern-day Native American prophet laughed and described himself as "politely arrogant" to the radio show host, I became energized and all ears. "We are animals. Could anyone imagine a pack of wolves living on the internet? Ha! Ha! Imagine trying to live on the internet! This can't be!" Spot on.

After the interview, the radio turned to another artist of letters. Is it Maya Angelou's deep well of humanness that makes her black voice so steady, clear, rye, classical, and intoxicating? Surely she has the wisdom of age if not also the ages in her smooth mountainous tones. The way she said the very word poetry. Stretched it out, as if over a calm sea. Lolling and rolling. Speaking of her people's month of remembrance and bringing to mind the standard slave hymn Roll Jordan Roll. An antique quality in the fragile cadence, every syllable enunciated and timed with rhythmic perfection. To you, deep woman. Shamaness. Truth giver. Let us always have time for reflective thought.

October Mystics

"A Vagabond Song" by the Canadian poet Bliss Carman.

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood--
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Faces of the Farm

Well, here we are. Autumn has descended in all its glory once again and nary a word of praise to that special day. September 21. The beginning of the cool down. The start of photographic evening light and contrasted cloudy days. Breaks of sun are stunning. The haze of summer's humid malaise has officially ended. Variety has returned to the farm's daily tasks. The nightshade mono-frenzy has been quieted, if only somewhat. And we persons have also been able to catch our breaths, reap the edible harvest, and raise our glasses high in the crisp autumn air. It's time again for heirloom winter squashes like the golden hubbard which dates back to colonial times in America. Time for the endless dishes of brussels sprouts, bacon, and apples. Time for pumpkin pies and apple quince pies and venison. Time for cardoons, if you have the patience to peel and wash and chop and peel and wash and chop and. . .really, who doesn't love a giant thistle!? Time for cider pressed locally, if you're so lucky. Time for chevre toppled high on fresh salad greens. Did you get that Claytonia and spinach seed in the ground yet? Time to get all that summer rain that never came. Yes, yes, we know. We need it. I'm not sure I need it putting a damper on my favorite month! Slow down food. Wait. Slow down fall. Let the leaves always be red, orange, and yellow. Let there be plenty of daylight hours but still a good full evening for revelry and reflection.

Halloween is on the nigh. Spirits are confused and scattered in the night breeze.



Faces from the farm are starting to look at once back to the season that has passed and adelante hacia que el futuro que viene! De repente!








There's a mystery in the air once again.

To eat or not to eat: Year three of Ouststanding in the Field at Eckerton Hill Farm

It was like black fly season in New Hampshire except that it wasn't flies that were hovering around everyone's faces and biting their arms as they picked cherry heirloom tomatoes.
It was gnats. Gnats that wouldn't go away until we got some rain. The fields were drying out quickly now as I looked up at Sasquatch's profile.

"I should have made that brace look like a penis," Eric said, remarking about the distracting black arm that held his newly created Big Foot likeness onto the hillside where tonight's "Outstanding in the Field" dinner would be held. We all rushed around after picking to clean up the farm as much as we still could before the 160 dinner guests arrived. We had to get that Hino truck loaded by 3. Hadn't that been what Tim said?










Who's gonna eat? Who's gonna get to go to "Oustanding in the Field?" Who benefits from the event anyways? Why would any farmer even participate? Who is Jim Denevan? How come the people who raised all the food aren't sitting down at the table? It seems crazy doesn't it: $180 for a plate of food and some wine? You mean it's not FOR your farm?


















All these questions that raise issues that seem to raise more questions surround the fine dining experience known as "Outstanding in the Field." Not to be confused with Out standing in a field of clover or tomatoes or corn or wheat. No, to be sure, the conceptual dinner highlights those unique farms and producers that have stood out in their communities as exceptional. An artisanal cheese maker who has succeeded in creating aged cheese exactly as it has been made for centuries in France or Italy. A tomato grower who has succeeded in raising the heirloom nightshade's reputation to that of the most refined grape varietal in Tuscany or Bordeaux. Those farmers who have turned hobbies into long reaching (or very short reaching!) businesses and then turned that experience into memoirs. Food is life. Life is food. Couple it with wine, sit outside to dine, bring the pea from the tomato twine strung vine to the
plate where it may swim in a locally caught smoked trout's brine.











































It's about the experience of sitting down with many at sunset, overlooking one of the participating farmer's fields--or a rooftop in Manhattan, or an ocean cliff--and delighting in some of the farmer's ornaments that now decorate the plate in front of you. Enjoying the conversation with those that have traveled from near and far, possibly getting a glimpse of what food prepared directly from the proverbial "back yard" or stable would taste like if you could produce it yourself. If you could join in the process of growing or milking or butchering your own sustenance.



For a somewhat hefty price tag (what people spend their money on is so relative?), this visceral taking-it-all-in experience on a farm is a connection to something ancient. And to its adherents it seems well worth every penny, however much storing up of those pennies has taken place in order to attend the event. A direct connection to the land and agricultural context from which their plate of food comes from.













































After loading the truck for market, some of us hung out in the old farmhouse kitchen with the crew from Bolete restaurant--Bethlehem, Pa--and tasted mini BLTs made with cornbread buns, heirloom tomatoes, sweet beet tartar and bacon. The tomato water with basil in little plastic shot cups, neatly lined in rows waiting to go out to all the paying guests. This was the authentic experience before the encore.

Those of us who had grown the tomatoes sampled pork belly stuffed in mini bell peppers before they left the workers' kitchen. This preamble melding of people who had produced the food and those who would shape it to creative levels of taste and appearance was a nice beginning to what would ultimately be a fine end-of-summer evening time had by all. The end to the means of long hard months, weeks, days, and hours of work. A summer finish line and autumn entrance inspired by Jim and his crew of merry pranksters who had also loved and labored long over their creation.