Greenhorns

by Paula Manalo

  There were still plenty of other challenges to adjust to, though. Farming without chemicals in the South can be a losing battle, between the weeds and bugs that’ll take over in no time if you let them. In my first season, you could find me kicking my way through the Johnson grass to find my watermelons. Really annoying. The heat of the summer is something that can stop you in your tracks. Many times during the really hot days, I feel like I get some type of runner’s high from the heat and my body just kinda starts to tingle and I really feel like I’ve smoked a pound of pot. You don’t realize how hot you are until you take a break for a second. You feel like you started the day weighing one-eighty but then sweat away ten pounds. Also, there aren’t many cool swimming holes around here; they’re all shallow, snake-infested swamps.

  The other challenge is that pesticide drift is a way of life. Seems like we all just grew up around it and never really thought too much about it. But it became a huge deal for me — and a very real moment in starting my farm — when I was sprayed by a crop duster. On both sides of my farm, there are large soybean fields. I know the guy who farms that land and when I returned home I had a conversation with him about how I was farming without the use of chemicals and that I’d like him to take all precautions necessary to avoid contaminating my fields. That seemed to be working fine, but apparently he forgot to mention it to the crop-duster company.

  I was out weeding my carrots one morning when I noticed the sound of the crop-duster getting louder and louder. You can hear them coming and within twenty seconds they’re on you. They fly all around here but this time he was getting way too close. I froze and didn’t know what to do. Then the plane started spraying the field to the north of me. He wasn’t right on top of me yet but I was pretty sure he was on his way. And sure enough, the bombardment started. I actually tried to keep my cool and keep weeding, but when I felt the chemicals touch my body, I freaked out. It was pretty horrible, such a helpless feeling. I had been working so hard on my farm and they came and contaminated it in less than five minutes.

  I had a camera in my truck so I ran and grabbed it and started taking pictures of the plane. I think I also threw my hoe or rake up in the air at the guy. I got up on my truck, flailing my arms and giving him the “what are you doing!” look. And before I knew it, he was gone and all my hard work felt tainted. It seemed like it was all for naught.

  I was outraged and ready to get some vengeance. The first thing I did was call the farmer and freak out on him. I was ready to protest and call the paper and sue everyone involved and pretty much just shame these folks in front of the community.

  But of course that’s really not the best way to solve problems. The farmer gave a genuine apology. He also said that it was only a fungicide and suggested that maybe it could help. And although I was still very angry, I realized that he truly believed it could help in some way. As much as I wanted to yell at him, I had to stand back and hear him. I’m starting to realize that many folks around here think that if it’s not an herbicide, then there shouldn’t be a problem.

  Same thing went for the crop-duster company. I called and sure enough, having grown up in this small town, I knew the manager. I think we went to kindergarten and were in Scouts together. After I explained my situation to him, he too apologized and said he didn’t know that I was there and that it wouldn’t happen again. I want to believe him but I still freeze with panic every time I hear that crop duster.

  As far as I can tell, the crop dusting didn’t affect my health or any of my crops. To hold them accountable, I got in touch with the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) in Little Rock. Now I have someone to call if they ever do it again. The farmer lets me know whenever they might be spraying. He makes sure the wind is blowing away from my farm. And the crop-duster manager has agreed to come stand in my field with me the next time they spray near me.

  A huge lesson from the whole ordeal was learning how to communicate with folks here at home. It seems like you can get a lot accomplished by educating folks and informing them about why we farm the way we do. And if we aren’t all on the same page, as farmers we still need to respect each other. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking folks are “bad,” but really, everyone is just trying to make a living. Farming is a hard business no matter how you do it. My brother is probably the hardest worker I know. For at least eight months a year he’s out there working his thirty-five hundred acres from sunup to sundown. He has mouths to feed and bills to pay and this is how he can do it. And as long as they aren’t affecting my business, small as it may be, then that’s a first step in becoming a part of this community of farmers.

  Odd as it sounds, it feels good to be here farming the way I am, because I’m not surrounded by other small organic farms. I’m out here alone, but I have my family’s support and my community’s support and they’re seeing by my example that there are other ways to farm. I’m in the process of becoming certified organic, mainly so I can better enforce a no-spray policy around my farm. But also it’s a great feeling to be here getting a new way of farming started.

  I’m now in my third season of farming here, grateful and proud for what I have. I was able to follow a natural path that led right back to where it all began. I’m living in the house that I grew up in and haven’t had a second thought about my decision to move back. Being here means I get to create a sustainable farm in the middle of big industrial ag, and I can be a pioneer in the local food scene. I sell at several markets and have also gotten to know some great chefs who are excited to have my produce on their menu. The CSA is growing among local families and friends, and the pickup (which is at my parents’ house and staffed by my mom) is when we all catch up on what everyone’s kids are up to or share a pickling recipe or a squash casserole.

  My neighbor, Mr. Reynolds, and I see each other almost every day. I’ve known him all my life and grew up with his kids; now it’s nice to be back outside around him. He retired the same year I moved back, so he’s always out mowing his lawn or working on one of his tractors. We meet at the fence and talk about what crops I’m growing, what our other neighbors are up to, and what to do about these pesky crop-dusters.

  Cross-Pollination

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  BY LIZ GRAZNAK

  A native of Columbia, Missouri, Liz Graznak’s love of gardening is the result of time spent with her grandparents as a child. She discovered CSA farms in grad school, and, after interning and working with other farmers, she moved back to Missouri. She’s living her dream of growing beautiful, healthy food for a community of people who share her enthusiasm and commitment to a local food system.

  * * *

  The summer I started my CSA farm, it rained twenty inches over the yearly average. Experienced growers jokingly said I was lucky to have challenging conditions in my first year because subsequent years would be easier by comparison. Though my bottomland at Happy Hollow Farm was saturated, and some of the organically grown vegetables I’d planted early in the season drowned, the tomatoes thrived. Most other gardeners in this mid-Missouri rural area lost their tomato crops to rot and disease, so my success didn’t go unnoticed in the local community, particularly by my neighbor J.T. Cassil, whose family (which has been in the area since 1870) used to own my farm.

  For most of his adult life, J.T. was a dairy farmer. At seventy, he still raises cattle and bales hay on the farm adjacent to mine. He drives a Jamestown school bus and has safely transported three generations of students to and from school each day. Now that he’s retired, J.T. enjoys driving the students across the state for ball games, concerts, and field trips and sharing those experiences with them. He delivers gravel to folks in the neighborhood who need their roads improved or building foundations set. He’s an enthusiastic banjo player in a gospel band; he’s naturally talented and plays mostly by ear.

  My partner, Katie, and I knew little about the Jamestown community three years ago when we moved to Happy Hollow Farm from Columbia, a university town of a hundred thousand just a forty-fi
ve-minute drive away. We discovered that our new community consisted of many local families, like the Cassils, who’ve lived and farmed here for more than a hundred years.

  As soon as we got settled, I made a concerted effort to get to know my new neighbors. One of the first things we did was visit J.T. and his wife, Mary, with what turned out to be a terrible homemade cherry pie. J.T. and Mary were very gracious about the chewy crust. Mary suggested that lard would improve the flakiness and told us that their lard comes from hogs they butcher. That evening, not only did I learn that the best piecrusts are made with lard, but I was also reminded that the best friendships are forged by sharing experiences and spending time together.

  * * *

  Even though our mutual admiration grew rapidly, J.T. was often perplexed by my new-to-him farming practices.

  * * *

  I felt an immediate affinity with J.T. because he reminds me of my grandfather. His tough-love, hardworking attitude is one I was raised with and have come to embrace. When Katie is traveling, J.T. checks in on me and Mary brings over food, knowing that I have little time to cook. Last spring J.T., his cousin, and his two sons helped me cut down three huge locust trees along the side of our shared road and hauled them to the building site of my new barn. He introduced Katie and me to his friends at a local Labor Day picnic and at a church dinner, opening doors for us into our new community. He helped me change the tire on my old manure spreader, a life-threatening job if not done properly, and two months later gave me an advertisement for a newer, less dangerous machine. A week seldom goes by that I don’t see J.T.; usually he’s stopping in to see if I need anything, but sometimes it’s just to say hello.

  Even though our mutual admiration grew rapidly, J.T. was often perplexed by my new-to-him farming practices. Why was he helping me unroll large round hay bales over sod for what I was calling “permanent beds” where the first tomato crop would be planted? Why did I wait to put out my tomato plants until late May when everyone else sets out theirs earlier, aiming for tomatoes by the Fourth of July?

  Farmers in this area traditionally raise corn, soybeans, and cattle while holding off-farm jobs to supplement their income. Most also use conventional growing methods, spraying synthetic fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides throughout the year. Organic farming is considered unconventional, “hippie-esque,” and not economically feasible. Most local residents consider the type of farming I’m doing to be truck farming, the old term for selling produce out of the back of a pickup, and are unfamiliar with the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), in which the public pays the farmer in advance of the growing season for a share of the farm’s weekly harvest, and shares some of the risk that farming entails.

  In the spring, J.T. and Mary helped me put in almost three hundred tomato plants, taking some of the greenhouse-grown young plants for their own garden. As the tomatoes grew, we were all impressed with the lush green foliage and their ever-increasing size. As summer wore on and the rain continued, my tomato plants thrived while most other gardeners were losing theirs to blight and having poor fruit development on the vine. Once harvest began, there were so many tomatoes that J.T. again brought his cousin and son over to help pick, and Mary canned thirty quarts for Katie and me.

  The twenty members of my first-year CSA received six varieties of tomatoes, and a few bought extras to can. My tomato harvest was abundant, but I had plenty of problems with other vegetables because of the cold spring and wet conditions over the summer. The potato and onion plantings were failures. I lost two of the early broccoli plantings, and most of the summer cucurbits and crucifers suffered from too much water and not enough heat for good fruit set. Though I was initially disappointed that I didn’t get the fifty CSA memberships I’d hoped for, it turned out well enough, considering the adverse growing conditions, my inexperience with the new bottomland, and first-year projects we undertook: a greenhouse, a modified timber-frame barn, a walk-in cooler, and polytunnel funded in part by the new organic farmer cost-share program through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

  In my second year on the farm, I grew a wider range of vegetables in hopes of keeping the weekly CSA boxes diverse and interesting throughout the twenty-five-week growing season. With all of the tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, cucumbers, and squash I grew, there were more than a hundred varieties of vegetables that found their way into the weekly shares. Some were new to my members, such as escarole, tatsoi, fennel, ‘Hakurei’ turnips, celeriac, and what turned out to be J.T.’s favorite discovery, kohlrabi.

  J.T. and Mary were surprised by the variety in the produce I grew. They seemed impressed by my ability to do most of the farming by myself, and by the end of the summer they attributed my success, especially with the tomatoes, to my organic practices of using mulch and compost. In October, for the first time, J.T. unrolled hay onto his garden in preparation for next year’s season. Over the winter, J.T. and Mary’s soil will be protected and the earthworms will rise to the surface, loosening and adding organic matter to it. As the mulch decomposes, nutrients will be added back into the soil, and if all goes well, J.T. and Mary will have a bumper crop of tomatoes.

  The cross-pollination taking place between J.T. and me fulfills one of my major goals in life: to meet and befriend new and different people. It’s one of the reasons I decided to start a CSA. I wanted to grow healthy, chemical-free food for people, and to forge wonderful friendships and a support network to aid my farming journey. Even though J.T. and I do encounter certain limits to our relationship — J.T. didn’t attend Katie’s and my commitment ceremony and despite his invitation I choose not to attend his church — our friendship remains strong because it is based on respect for each other, for hard work, for caring for the land, and for nurturing family and friends.

  Over the past two years, our rural farm community of old and now new farmers has grown and thrived. As J.T. often says to his neighbors, “Any two women who work as hard as they do are okay in my book.”

  Coming Full Circle: The Conservatism of the Agrarian Left

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  BY VINCE BOOTH

  After farming in Nevada City, Vince Booth returned to the familiar clime of eastern Washington. He grows and pickles for Booth Brine Co., a live-cultured pickling operation, in Walla Walla.

  * * *

  In fall 2009, two fellow farmers and I attended our district’s town hall meeting about healthcare reform. As you may recall, the national debate at that time was so feverish that people were brandishing rifles and biting one another. The meeting we attended was theatrical when not a battlefield. By the end of it, my understanding of the divide between the American left and the right moved from my head to my viscera.

  We farm in the Sierra foothills sixty miles northeast of Sacramento, in the old mining town of Nevada City, California. We grow vegetables for the local market and a four-season diet including meat, dairy, grains, and beans for ourselves and a small community. If you were to visit Nevada City, you would see that it has the characteristics of a liberal hot spot: a thriving co-op, organic restaurants, a farmers’ market, a thoroughly protected river, a community radio station of thirty-one years, and more yoga studios and little schools than you could shake a stick at. Even so, this is only a narrow part of the region’s culture.

  The nearby town of Rough and Ready seceded from the Union in 1850. It rejoined three months later, but the spirit that initiated the split has its modern manifestations. At the small, friendly, and professional butcher shop where we take our bacon and hams to get cured, a sign on the door boldly proclaims I’LL KEEP MY GUNS, FREEDOM, AND MONEY. YOU CAN KEEP THE “CHANGE.” In step with the rest of inland California, Nevada County consistently elects Republican representatives. In 2008, we banded together, focused on the family, and by a margin of three votes “defended” marriage. The county lines were drawn in the shape of a Derringer. It’s a region in which you can get your chakras aligned on the way to the shooting range. But no one does
that, and that’s the point.

  Our district’s town hall meeting fell on a hot and dry day in early September. We wanted to look like upstanding citizens, so the three of us cleaned up, trimmed our beards, and put on some decent clothes. We arrived twenty minutes early. The large venue was already approaching capacity and rang with animated exchanges. We found seats in a sea of red shirts and star-spangled accessories. I sat beside a woman who, after we had settled in a bit, looked me over and said in a tone so disdainful that I thought she had to be joking, “You look like a liberal.”

  I responded hesitantly and through a weak laugh, “Yes, I suppose I am.” She let out a disgusted harrumph and moved to the next seat over.

  I had to defend myself and my alleged liberalism from such immediate and damning disdain. My disbelief at her contempt quickly became anger and I soon found myself threatening to slap her. (She was the lunatic; she!) She proudly offered her cheek, disparaging liberals for always being victims. I groaned.

  After five minutes of this — “Barack and all his czars. What more evidence do you need?” — our vehemence wore us out. I asked the woman if she kept a garden. She did, out of concern for Big Brother. Did I? Yes, because of my concerns for health and food security. Oh. We both let out a great exhale. This other person isn’t a complete lunatic.