Johnny, you're too bad

"Do you have a sawzall?"

"Uh. . . a what?"

I immediately pictured the thing in my head, but of course, having never used one, doubted whether or not I was thinking of the right power tool.

"Like, not one of the circular saws, but a long, skinny thing?"

"Yeah, you'll probably want one for the wall."

It was a typical market Saturday where I'd gotten back from NYC around 8 instead of the planned 6 and, of course, had other plans that were slowly getting pushed to the back burner because of the extra long trip home. I'd hit my head for the third or fourth time on the rusty metal swing door on the back of the truck and figured I'd better get a tetanus shot on the way home. Just to be on the safe side. Plus my wife and boss were insisting. There had been all that blood.

Jonathan K. Slingluff was en route to Kutztown as I waited at the Emergi-Center in Allentown. He was gonna stop for gas and would probably get to to town right around the same time as me. Cool. We'd still make Home Depot by 9 pm. But wait, Sears came first.

The plan was to go to Reading and buy all the manly power tools my Visa would hold in under an hour. Being a new home owner, these were required purchases that I had put off shelling out the cash for too long. Having always rented, the hundreds of dollars I'd kept wanting to spend (c'mon, I am a guy after all) on power drills, saws, etc. always seemed a little less important than whatever other expenses loomed on the horizon. I could always borrow those things, right? Not any more. With ownership comes, well, more f*%^ing ownership!

Sunday morning came fast and after the first cup of coffee, John said, "You forgot to charge the battery." I'm a dipshit. Surprise, surprise. In my slacker defense, I thought, I had worked a 15 hour day, split my head open, and tried to sit at the bar for two, head hanging in my beer as my wife and friend of 16 years chatted. "I knew I forgot something," I replied to Johnny.

At the house there were three major goals we wanted to accomplish. Sand the floors upstairs. That was Prudencio's job. I knew that was a given. Prude could not fail.

Then there was the taking down of the kitchen cabinets and countertops. Most important in my mind was the Wall. Get that damn wall down. Fifties tightness be gone. We were gonna open that kitchen up. All modern and shit. Bring the OM. Bring the Zen. Clear the rubble and let Slingluff Home Improvement get IT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!


He went to town. The little firecracker that could and could and could some more. Having grown up with a father who was a graduate of Williamson Trade School, most of his teen years had some kind of carpentry know-how going in one way or another. We always just thought of each other as punks and skaters, but old Johnny was handy too. Painting, carpentry, framing, hanging art. You name it, the guy can do it. I count myself lucky to have had him as a friend for so long. This is to say nothing of the other binds we've made over the years.


Two years ago this month he realized his life long dream of opening an art gallery in the city. The Slingluff Gallery, which started out as Studio 2728, sits right next to the M Room in Fishtown/Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, Pa. John and his wife Leigh always get some of the freshest young artists in the nation to show at their space. Today, however, it was all biz art. Art to bring the house a new vision. Art to open up the place and create a living space. Thanks, Johnny. "You know you're running and a scrubbing and a shootin' and a lootin' and you're too bad."

In the heat of May

Between the hail, 30 degree nights, and 90 degree days, May has luckily ended on more of a blessed than a cursed note. Having harvested more than any Spring on record at the farm, the just-enough-rain for the month followed by dry, warm days fulfilled all expectations for Spring and got our minds away from that cloudy, not-too-distant memory of week long rains and late blight from last season.





Whooooooa now. Just wait one minute there, buckaroo.






Don't go getting all confident in the weather just yet. Wasn't it just last week that Tianna was sending out those apocalyptic warnings of "Late blight already in PA! Take action now before its too LATE!" Or something like that. Even James, who one doesn't have to take on faith the man's faith, knowing the guy is an old order Mennonite, laughingly told me that it all seemed a little premature. All this doomsday talk of late blight again this year. "If we keep having days like this," he said with the utmost ease and leisure, "any late blight will just be dying anyways." If only the rest of us had the rock of ages on which to rely. Surely it's just as good to have James Weaver to rely on?





He knew that 80-90 degree sunny days would stifle that nasty plague of potatoes and tomatoes.

And so just like that May has passed and June is upon us. The two week heat wave has lifted as of today and a glorious wind is brushing through the hardwoods making them sing that swooshing sound. What an evening when the haze is lifted and the clear blue pre-summer sky is lit by a dusk sun. All Nature's silhouettes to be seen clearly again as if September was being foreshadowed. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. There are still more peas, fava beans, carrots, beets, new potatoes, kales, swiss chard, radish, green onions, head lettuce, mesclun, broccoli, kohlrabi, and pac choi to pick.








All is early this year. Cold and wet be gone. Let us have the sun and just enough rain. Sans hail thank you very much. Let our fenced in 2 acres thrive. Oh my gosh, the customers will keep saying, how do you have all this already!?

When you're all in

Even people that have no real experience or knowledge of farming would probably, if given a few minutes to ponder the subject, come round to the notion that its generally a risky business. I've had the adage quoted to me on more than one occasion, "So. . . uh. . .that means. . .you're job is dependent on the weather?" This is usually said with a wavering
lack of confidence that could be interpreted as slightly sympathetic. It doesn't matter if it's a friend of 12 years or my father-in-law. The same sentiment prevails. In my mind they're


thinking, "Man, sure glad that's not my job." To be sure, I do believe that the romantic notion of a yeoman farmer, out there every day, communing with Mother Nature (yes, that is there too) is also in most people's minds when I tell them what I do. But most of what they know about organic agriculture comes from some vague pop-culture notions of some hippy, back-to-the-land movement. There's a chasm between the reality "on the ground" (cliche I know) of a farm business and the latest New York Times example of a trendy sustainable ag. education/ non-profit farm. Of course there are those exceptional people who have spent time on a farm or who grew up on one. For those people the oft quoted phrase, "nothing so unpredictable as the weather," really hits home.



In southeast Pa the safe date to plant anything not hardy enough to weather a frost, be it light frost or hard frost, is after May 17. So of course the farmer I work for has chartered his own traditional ritual of planting the first batch of that most famous of all night shades sometime around April 25. To my memory, its been as early as April 18 and as late as early May during one of those soggy Springs that leave us scrambling to get out in the field. Oh to be tied down to the planting schedule of all those OTHER people!!!!!!!!! Bah,
humbug!














And so here we are again on April 24 planting the first of 4 rounds of tomatoes. Nacho, Prudencio, Tim and I headed out after first battling with an unwilling PTO attachment into the newest of fields already packed with lush green clover that had been heavily composted and seeded the year before. Big wide swaths of green bush just charging upwards toward the sky, the perfectly round heads at the top shaded a slightly softer mint green color in their middles. The forecast was for plenty of sun today which we were assured would change in the afternoon when it was supposed to cloud up bringing rain in late evening. "Ah maybe they'll all just freeze tonight and I'll finally get out of all this," the farmer grumbled.

It was a mainstay of the early Spring attitude. A kind of hard worn cynical defense mechanism against the daunting season's tasks that lie ahead. It was all so big and overwhelming now, this farming thing. So stressful. Why were we doing this again? But the push in Spring was what got you back, at least in part. The awakening of all natural things again. The rain and sun. The energy of warmer
nights and almost hot afternoons.









Things had expanded at the farm, little by little, as was the case for every other year. This season had already seen the construction of a second greenhouse, the welcoming of two baby goats and a mother (doe) goat, a walk-in refrigeration unit, and an 8 ft. high deer fence that enclosed almost 2 acres.




The problem was that we still didn't have everything located at this epicenter. There was still way too much shuttling back and forth over the 14 miles between two other locations. There's that stress again. Who knew farming meant trucking?

"This place is starting to look like a real farm," the farmer said as we surveyed the nearly 60 acres spread out in front of the tractor that we rode on to reach the tomato field.



I had to agree. When you plant peas March 5 and over 5,000 tomato plants before May 1, the looming risk is both reviving and unsettling. Yet as always, after such a long winter's slow down, a kind of weight is lifted and it feels like time to move again.

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.