thick moon rough goat

Autumn Meditation

2011-11-13T10:24:00.002-08:00

All hail the mighty Red Oak! Thank him for his long lasting units of heat. All HAIL!

Soil Amending

2011-11-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

The first rule for producing healthy vegetable plants is to feed the soil. Read any organic or naturally grown manual on raising veg and this golden rule will be right there at the beginning. The soil needs to be amended just as the body needs replenishing of organic matter. For all the micro nutrients, organisms, and structure of the soil to remain strong, some inputs by the grower is unavoidable. In the fall most growers, at some point or another, add limestone to raise pH and calcium levels. This need be done only every 3 years in most circumstances. Having never added anything but organic matter to my soil, the pH is significantly lower than I would like. Horse manure will grow the soil's body and nitrogen content but to raise the pH it'll need calcitic lime or something similar. I chose aragonite which I have been told is roughly 3 times stronger than the lime and helps to add even more calcium. Like anything in growing it's to a certain degree an experiment. The reaction time of lime or aragonite is supposed to be around 6 months. I'll see in the spring if my veg grows better and my soil structure seems improved.

The Meat Puppets

2011-11-04T08:47:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to the sonic circus revelry. Conjuring up all that is guitar laden and desert washed.

Folk Hero

2011-11-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Where did the Summer go?

2011-10-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

It's raining. Again. It's raining. . .er. . .again.

For those of us in the growing community (no, not OWSers--vegetable producers) it may seem that summer never happened at all. Or if it was back there in August, it came without sun for half of its annual reign. Today is another humid, wet, sticky, August. . .wait. . .it's October!?. . .day in the good old growing season of 2011. Surely a victor over the last wettest of the 2000's, 2006.

And surely by a long shot. Two hurricanes and many thunderstorms later, the tropical summer fatigue has now invaded even the autumn. Stealing my favorite season's cool lucidity and replacing it with dank mugginess. Bah. Humbug.

For what it's worth, let us look back on some of those few sunny days of July and August and remember that before the rains came we thought we'd headed into a down right drought of a summer season.

Ah but such is the fickle weather and her daughter Nina! Thank you summer for your Cercospora and for your theft of the second half of the tomato season and lastly your mildewed blankets that ended the lives of many a winter squash and harvest pumpkin. Be gone and don't come wafting through next year!

Art in Tamaqua, PA

2011-06-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

John O' Hara leans heavily on the town of Tamaqua, in the coal region of northern Pennsylvania, for the literary backdrop of his novels. While never surpassing his use of the fictional Gibbsville aka. Pottsville, "Taqua" looks like a miniature version of Pottsville. With an old train station at the center of town and a red brick flat iron building just off to the right of the convergence of rt 209, rt 309, and Broad St., the town is an atypically historical one. Indeed, as one drives through town its almost as if all the buildings, parks, and churches are life-size train set models.

A bunch of us drove up to Tamaqua from Berks and Schuylkill Counties to celebrate the work of our scene's much beloved 'patriarch' at his gallery opening on Friday night. He had told us many anecdotes of Tamaqua's St. Patty's parades and night time haunts. It's plethora of gin joints, speak easies, and old time neighborhood bars that hadn't really changed since Prohibition ended. But this night wasn't centered on spirits of that sort as much as on the art work of three generations of the Rimm family. Hailing from Hometown, a small suburb of Tamaqua, Mr. Rimm Sr. and his wife, their two sons, and, if only represented in her bright orange paintings, one granddaughter, were all in attendance. We strolled around the gallery in among the wooden blue fishes, priests, naked women, and suns, that hung in the form of 'dream' mobiles. The sculptures seemed like they could only have been made by this particular artist. Having known him for years I could see his whole personality in the objects. This is folk art, I thought. Icons of Michael Rimm's mindscape. On the walls were black and white photos of street chess players in Reading, Pa. Old trucks and fall foliage montages with trains on sky high tracks passing through the leaves. Couples sharing laughs and moods in the night. Life shots of the region.

In the back room were most of this family communing together, their heritage oozing from their bodies in smiles and good conversation. I spoke with the elder Rimm about last deer season and the most perfect buck I had ever seen. The delicious flavors of halushki, macaroni salad, angel food cupcakes filled with white icing, and ham sandwhiches to wash down with red wine. Everything so simply laid out for the guests with the subtle care that seemed so much a family affair. We were partaking of this cultural line. Soaking it all up in the old Polish, Ukrainian, Catholic coal town that time may have forgotten if it weren't for the arts that now had to supplant industry for the peoples' life blood.

Salad Days

2011-06-10T04:18:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-01T07:01:00.001-07:00

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

2011-02-23T21:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-10-19T04:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

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.

Tomato Saga

2010-07-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

It's more like a rush-in than an ease-in situation. Every year the workers secretly pine and dread that gushing forth of small, medium, and large love apples. Red ones, purple ones, green ones (with yellow stripes), brown ones (with orange stripes), pink ones, peach fuzz ones and so on through the long list of heirloom tomatoes that have been planted, hoed, mulched, staked and strung by the end of July. Many hands to make them thrive. Enough water, but not too much. Shudder to think of it. Too much rain. No, no, no that just won't do. C'mon Universe. Send us a line. A small thread to pull us through the faintest crack in the void. Let us get through just one more season with our tiny speck of purpose. Our tomato agenda. Open up just one more of the billions of energy fissures and give us our three months.

Hot. Dry. Disease free. And so many. Another year in the saga that continues to demand, deplete, yet somehow (the sun also rises. . . and how it does) replenish?, the energy of the Sun to all the hands that are painstakingly on deck. This is an all volunteer army mind you. There are no horror stories of bonded workers, indebted and unable to free themselves from tyrant Florida orange growers. This farm pays way better than that, the picker and packer may remind themselves in the 95 degree heat and humidity while groveling over the soil, searching at the bottom of an Black Prince plant to discover the ripe brown fruit wating to be picked just inches from the ground. What is the essential call? Or rather, what is the drive that keeps some of the these humans reporting for tomato duty year after year? Is it familia? The big picture perhaps? Adventure for the seasonal, just- out- of- college agri-Cultural dreamer? What a difference a day makes they say. But what difference is there in the entire month of July when all the days run together in a haze of sun, sweat, mashed tomato juice, green-to-black tar under the nails, slow frenzy, frantic sameness, long push, Mack truck, highway without rest. Pick em', pack em', get em' to the market on time. Small scale farming in a giant way. A Green Giant slicer way to be exact.

Get on Your Knees

2010-07-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

There are all kinds of ways to fight weeds on an organic or sustainable farm. There's the plant cover crops year after year suppression method. There's the fight 'em when you can (hopefully with tractor cultivation!) method. There's the get 'em before they get you method which usually involves cultivating (fancy word for weeding) by hand. And then there's the combination of all three which is most common. Any way you shake it, if chemical weed killers are not an option, you're gonna get on your knees at some point in the growing season. I mean down on all fours, hands and knees, low and crude, in the soil. . . ummm. . .yeah. . . dirt.

But how else could one really get the feeling of communing with the earth, right? What better way to get to know your mother. And that's why all the people who farm 'close to the earth' do it, right? Just another season, living outside, breathing in the fresh air, busting your ass! But really, it's mostly just the month of June that makes you submit in such an elemental fashion. I'll always remember watching the film Malcolm X by Spike Lee. Denzel Washington, who plays X in the film, is told by his mentor in prison, "To become a true Muslim, you have to submit." Farming is like Islam: one has to submit. I'm not even sure that's where I got the line that I say jokingly from time to time, no doubt unintentionally making some that hear it cringe, but there's something there that rings true when I think about the practice of old fashioned farming. Farming is like Islam, or some kind of orthodox religion. And June is unique in that no other month demands more of your most basic physical and mental submission. This is not a job. It's a lifestyle. It can break you with its repetition and seeming mindlessness, but also build your intimate acquaintance with the machine that is your body by forcing that machine into all kinds of repetitive contortions. And once you become aware of the ends and not just the means, the project's or day's goal, and not just its immediate sense of "damn I'm tired," things start to make some kind of sense. The big picture unfolds. Is weeding spiritual? Depends on who you ask.

Of course June isn't just hand weeding tomatoes for hours on end. There are also the days of harvesting those peaking peas, perfect first week black raspberries, new potatoes, and fava beans by the bushel. All varieties of religious experience await the field hand when sweating through a balmy 80 degree late morning or sleepily enjoying a rare September-like evening's crystal clear twilight and calming cool temperature. While the last of the carrots, beets, and lettuce are picked, the zucchini is pouring off the plants and the first cherry tomatoes are promising both sun-drenched flavor and some much needed income for the farm. The tension of all those resources gushing like an oil spill, feverishly paced like heat through a winter's open window, will start to ebb as the tide turns and red will, with any luck at all, with many seasons to prove it so, fade to black.

As I carefully picked the black raspberries, trying to minimize the itchy scratches being left on my forearms, and to pick efficiently as possible (read: fast!), I thought about so much and so little at the same time. I talked voraciously with Prudencio about his experience picking in Watsonville, CA. 'por contracto' and how when he first picked the coveted fruit, he picked an entire quart before being reprimanded by his superior. 'Que estas haciendo!?' she had said when she saw that he was picking the berries in full ripeness. Why would anyone do otherwise? In Watsonville, however, the blacks are picked red so they can withstand the miles and miles of traveling to any of their many destinations across the country. How could such a delicate fruit that at any moment will squish between one's fingers ever survive the hard road to a supermarket shelf if it had actually been picked ripe? They could only be picked that way, with that backyard freshness, to be sold the very next day. The only thing better than having your own home grown food is to have it grown and picked and brought to you just the way it would be if you had picked it yourself. That's the taste of June. That's what it takes to get to the market on time. Itching, sweating, down in the dirt. But that's soil with a capital S to those of us who know it.

Johnny, you're too bad

2010-06-13T07:26:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-06-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-05T06:51:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-23T19:06:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-23T19:04:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-12-15T19:09:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-09T07:21:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Wild Mexicans and Summer Evenings

2009-08-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

Just as we all thought summer would never rear its hazy head, mid August arrived with gusto and heat. Monday after Monday now Coogan and I drove the two hours to NYC in the dark with the night temperature never having dropped below its muggy 75 degree calm. I was beginning to feel like a tomato soldier. A trucker keeping trucker's hours. Rising at 3am three days a week to get the fruits to market week after week had finally begun to take its toll on my faculties. Days blended. There were no such things as weekends. What was a weekend?

Once in the truck, we conversed over the two hour drive to Union Square in Manhattan about the boss, the other interns, the tomato blight and all other manner of farm topics that had been on our minds this past month. He had gotten little sleep again because the Mexican crew had "brought the party back from Reading," as he often put it. He'd been up since 2am. At least I had gotten my usual five to six hours after a much needed shorter day of packing yesterday morning. The weathermen had promised yet another sultry Monday in New York with the always and ever lasting chance of a shower. Indeed, where had the summer gone? It seemed to have vanished. That is until this last two weeks. It had stored all its ferocity for months and had come charging in like a tenement fire, raging over the damp hills of Pennsylvania, creating dreamy, glowing horizons at night and oppressive washed out days.

We set up the stand and by 10 am the forecast had come true. New York was hot again. All the tomatoes were displayed neatly in ordered rows across the table with the cherry tomatoes at the left end of the front table. The Wild Mexicans, the name Tim had given the tiny red currant tomatoes that sold as Matt's Wild and Sweet 100's in many seed catalogues, were given special attention and much needed room to shine. We'd never sell many of those on a Monday, I mused. Too slow. Although, Mondays had been good thus far. We'll see I thought.

Unlike the other Mondays this year, today held a kind of prize at the end of the day. If we could be relatively sold out by 3:30 this afternoon, we could pack everything up in a hurry and rush back to the new farm where Organic Gardening magazine was setting up a photo shoot for an article by Dan to be published next summer. More importantly, famed chef Alex Lee was coming all the way from Long Island to add some tasty dishes to our Monday night Potluck tradition. Annie would meet us at 4 sharp and we'd hit the road to be out of the tunnel and on 78 well in time to reach the farm by sevenish. It would be close. One could never really plan anything for certain this time of year. There was really only one commitment. The tomatoes demanded submission. They wanted acceptance of their cult. Initiation to the tribe was non-negotiable. This was always the month that seemed to last forever.

Casey had gone to take a break in the park. I told him not to sweat it because I was an old pro and could run the Monday stand alone if need be. Of course this thinking was always deflated when three or four customers all swarmed at once and at the same time a couple of restaurant workers showed up to pick up their orders. This never failed. Today was no different.

The young Latino hipster from Otto showed up as I was scurrying to make change for two customers. "Just give me a minute," I said with a half smile. "Yeah, yeah, no problem. It's all good," he replied. He was always like that. Cool. No big deal. He had big chunky gold glasses a la Puffy Combs or Elvis and always dressed the semi-hip hop urban way with every detail in place. He didn't look the restaurant part to me and made my haggard farm/punk dress seem hillbilly to say the least. His face was straight out of a 70's children's TV show. A comic book set of mariachi teeth and big brown eyes with a smile on his face that reminded me of one of the characters on the Fat Albert cartoons. Always the most polite and friendly of customers. Every time.

As he stood next to me half on his cell and half looking at the invoice I was spastically scratching down for him, he whispered a few inches from my head, "Yo, I think that's Chelsea Clinton!?" It took a second or two for me to register this. All I could focus on was the other customers waiting. And him waiting. And everyone waiting on me to get it together. This was New York. You had to hustle. It wasn't slow-as-molasses, do-it-when-you-get-to-it Pennsylvania. Move the product so you can move it all! That was the game here. Even at the fairly mellow Monday farmer's market. "Huh?," I grunted as I half turned around to look at the woman, only one of three waiting, standing just in front of the Wild Mexicans and looking at her Blackberry. She had already made her selection of two half-pint cherry tomatoes which were placed just so at the edge of the table in front of her. "Just a minute," I said to everyone this time. "I'll be right with you." At first glance I wouldn't have recognized the woman if she had not been pointed out. This surprised me even more than the fact that she was there in the flesh, apparently with no Secret Service or entourage at all. I had always been the one to recognize the famous customers when they visited the farm stand. If you wanted to blend in to the crowd though, leave your personae behind, there was no better place than New York City.

The three of us pulled into the farm in Lobachsville at just about half past seven. Not bad, I thought. The photo hubbub would have ended and we could start on the food and maybe some cold beer. The light all around had turned to evening oranges, purples, and blues. The vista surrounding the farm seemed to have an endless quality as I surveyed the chile and tomato field and terraced grass and oat fields that enveloped the out buildings of the grounds. "You guys are lucky to be driving at this time of day. It's the best time to ride around," Annie had said as we winded down and through New Smithville's fairy-book-like nooks and crannies, meeting up with Fleur de Lys farm on our left. "Yeah," I replied. "It's all fuzzy and glowing." I looked in amazement yet again at the intense green trees spotting the sides of the road and the many shades of yellow light casting shadows on and bathing the hillside cornfields. Wasn't this the first and last redeeming quality of the automobile? Sunday drives on summer evenings in the country?

Our Potluck Mondays had come to a halt throughout July mainly because nobody had time for them. The tomato harvest was upon us at Eckerton Hill and Dave and Tianna were busy with their ag jobs and responsibilities. Everyone was traveling a lot for work these days. It was nice to finally have a farm dinner again. What a way to end a long market day! The very often tedious and arduous planting and harvesting means had finally started producing this most serene of all ends. To sit at the table and enjoy the food. To relax finally under the summer veil of sunset and then moon and stars. To indulge in Alex's hopped up, tweaked out version of mole sauce with spare ribs, Kate's stone fruit tart, a cold Stoudt's ESB, tomato salad with basil and cheese, Maria's bean and cheese enchiladas and all the many other delectable squash, corn, bean and grain tastes arrayed out before us. Ahhhhhh. If only for its position to me as the lowly seasonal precursor to Autumn, these last most heated summer days and nights were truly sublime.

Alex and Tim converse among the bhut jolokia and fatali peppers.

Amana Orange

2009-08-13T08:20:00.000-07:00

To the Oxheart of all Oxhearts. The sweet, dense, acidic heart of the Universe. That fruit containing all secrets and kingdoms. That heavy symbol hanging so heavy and low on the vine. Almost two pounds of dense flesh, the color of mango fruit! The brother and cousin and father and mother and sister of Verna Orange and Persimmon? Lush! Behold it amends the scripture and sends the message:

I am the wind that blows o'er the sea;
I am the wave of the deep.
I am the bull of seven battles;
I am the eagle on the rock;
I am a tear in the sun;
I am the fairest of plants;
I am the boar for courage;
I am a salmon in the water;
I am a lake in the plain;
I am the word of knowledge;
I am the head of the battle-dealing spear;
I am the god who fashions fire in the head.

I am the TOMATO.

The peak of August is at hand everyone. Go to the market and find your fruits.

All photos by Wayne Miller tmrg. Celtic myth passage from Joseph Campbell's "Myths to Live By." Said to be quoted from Amairgen, chief poet of the Goidelic Celts.

Late Blight: Spray 'em or Bust!

2009-08-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

It wasn't the first time it happened. Truth be told, it was a fairly common yearly occurrence except that it had come two months early this year. It wasn't referred to as late blight for nothing. This particular fungus, that could ravage an entire field of tomatoes, potatoes, or whatever other solanaceous crop it fell onto, was supposed to rear its ugly head right about the end of an average tomato season. The last time I saw it was in the third week of September, 2006. Within two weeks it had claimed the last 5,000 (yeah that's right--5,000) tomato plants. Untold profits sifting into the wet, gray sky like fireflies rising suddenly, in a gentle swarm, from their low hiding spaces in an empty field. Invisible spores with the strength of a Grecian regiment. No evil intent, mind you. But just as ferocious all the same. That year we cut our losses and let it do its thing. The bulk of the tomato crop had been harvested and the crop had been cashed.

"We're just trying to get a handle on how some of the farmers here at the Greenmarket are being affected by the blight," said the Time magazine journalist inquisitively. "How have you dealt with the problem and what has the effect been on your business?," she asked me. Wow, I thought. Late blight has caught the attention of a national publication. Was it the fact that there was such a rise in the number of certified organic farmers in the past few years? Certainly this had to be a big part of their interest. The farm I co-managed had never even applied for certification. For too many reasons to mention, it just didn't make sense. While this year we had grown all of our spring and summer crops in the organic/natural manner we always had, we were forced to spray fungicide on our tomatoes. People often talk about sustainable agriculture. It's ironic, though, that when the word sustainable is mentioned, it rarely refers to being financially sustainable. I guess viable would be a better word in this context. Still, it seems to be a little known fact outside the world of "sustainable agriculture" speak that most organic farmers, certified or not, are lucky if they break even financially each year, much less make a profit. Why does this tie into discussions of locally grown, organically grown, certified organic, naturally grown, etc.? Because while it may not be the first issue or notion that comes to mind when the topic arises, it may be the biggest elephant in the room.

"We aren't certified organic. We never have been and our farm has been able to exist almost solely on the sale of tomatoes. There wasn't any way that we could survive this year without the use of some kind of conventional (read: chemical) spray being used on some of our tomatoes," I replied to the journalist. A viable business is not without some bottom line somewhere. "If I couldn't spray my plants I'd be out of business," the owner of our farm said to the latest wondering chef. The conversation naturally put the farmer somewhat on the defensive as he anxiously explained how an entire 15 year savings had been put on the line to purchase a farm last fall. It had become time to stop renting and letting the cash crop be obliterated so soon afterward was not an option. Buying the farm was also none too soon. To date, we haven't seen any disease on the new field's somewhat virginal soil which may simply be a result of not having been planted with tomatoes for decades, if ever. Tomatoes almost always thrive in new soil because all the many diseases that affect them are not yet established in the soil. Assuming the soil is favorable otherwise, that is.

"Do you have anything smaller?" asked Nelson, a recent NYU grad who was interested in farming and who had been working at our market stand now for about a month. This after he had just asked me for twenties to make change for Uma Thurman who was standing in front of him. I had stepped over to Tim to get the twenty dollar bills I was short on so early in the morning. We were both looking at each other knowingly, but all I could think was that the glasses she had on were not that flattering. It turned out that neither Nelson or Tim had known who she was, even though Tim had sort of whispered to me, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, "Who, who is that? Is she famous?" It wasn't like it was the first time she had bought our tomatoes. Lucky for us she didn't ask the dreaded, "Are they organic, are they sprayed?"

But what of the hundreds of farmers all through the mid-atlantic and northeast region of the country who are putting high hopes into selling the most popular of all August's acidic fruits? The farmers that truck into New York's Greenmarket from "upstate," as is the label for all farms north of and including the Catskills and beyond. The summer that gave rain and then more rain and then just kept on raining, week to week, month to month. The summer in which July was on schedule to be the second coolest on record for New York City. Sure they could sell their zucchini, eggplant, peppers, and corn but what had weight like a tomato? What could draw a price to match Whole Foods' $5.95/lb. for the next six to eight weeks? When we put a 1lb. Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomato on the scale at our stand and the price reads $5.50 or a rare $6.00 for one tomato it's something to behold. As John McPhee might say, that's a fruit that, even if only for a very short season, "gives good weight."

Night Shades part. 3

2009-06-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Studio 2728--Girard Ave. Philadelphia,PA

We took the rhubarb, asparagus, and kale out of the trunk and walked across Girard Ave. to the entrance of the Studio. It was still early. Like 6pm. The shows always started at six but no one ever got there until around 7. At least that’s how it usually went at Studio 2728. But tonight was special. It was to be the first big deal night for Jon and Leigh. Everyone assumed for one reason or another, whether it was the old adage “sex sells,” or the rising status of the erotic photographer, that this show would draw the biggest crowd the place had seen thus far.

By eight o’clock there were more tattooed women than I’d ever seen in one place milling inside the gallery and outside on the sidewalk. Models that had worked with the artist I guessed. The story went that he was now being hired to fly all over the world to shoot women in his erotic photographic style. Originally working and based in Baltimore, MD, he now lived on a “farm” in one of those mid western corn states. Iowa was it? I couldn’t remember but he definitely brought the crowd. Skip had been irritated with this guy because at six o’clock, when the doors were supposed to open, the photographer and his assistant were still hanging art. Apparently he had some anxiety issues and was sucking down Mt. Dews all day. I thought the whole scene was comical. Here you had this fairly typical hipster looking guy sporting big ass gold-rimmed Elvis glasses nervously floating around the gallery ordering his assistant to various tasks in an almost whispering, raspy voice while back in Jon and Leigh’s bedroom was his quiet, sly looking girlfriend putting on heavy movie-star eye makeup with Skip’s cat snoozing on the futon. To his credit, I got the sense that this photographer was only as much of a primadonna as it might take to push him from cult star status to something more. It was all too LA yet in a fairly endearing, low-fi kind of DIY-for-porn-star way. The energy was there. That great city, art-scene energy vibe that can be sometimes hard to find out in the country where I live. Not to mention the amazing looking people in all their hipster attire. Flaunting style just to do it.

What a juxtaposed weekend. To think I had spent the morning at a Mennonite farm learning about companion planting in the garden. By ten that night a crew of us headed over to the Barbary Club for the after- gallery party. We had heard some friends of the artist would be spinning reggae and soul records there . I had been skeptical about this part of the night’s events at first but was amazed to find the dimly-lit, dingy bar slammed with people getting down to classic 60’s soul and yes! reggae. I had never been to the Barbary before but felt right at home immediately. It felt like London. I should say it felt like what I imagined a hard-hitting reggae club in London to be like. And what would any London club worth its salt be without a few skinheads dancing solo to the chorus, “I’m a sufferer, a sufferer, a sufferer.”

All photos by Wayne Miller thickmoonroughgoat!

Wild Persimmon Farm Journal

2009-05-14T13:57:00.001-07:00

It was Dan's idea. He wanted to start a new New Farm. A magazine/website/community that would start on-line but then take physical shape in the form of a working farm that provides local food and education to the surrounding community and beyond. This is where Tim Stark and Dave Wilson came in. Tim already had the farm and was indeed starting a "new" one up above the Oley valley on a piece of land that had been in the Angstadt family for generations. Dan and Tim being friends as well as writers, things finally boiled down to organizing winter dinners which were partly to get the ball rolling on Dan's project but also to provide a weary farmer/writer with some respit from the winter blues. We could all use that. All of us who put our very souls deep into the earth of work for many months only to be stopped cold when the first flurries fall from a sunless sky.

Dave Wilson had been the main agricultural researcher at Rodale and was interested in continuing his various cover crop projects on new ground. Eventually a group formed which was roughly composed of these three persons as well as a jewelry maker and fabulous cook named Tess, the co-manager from Tim's farm (Eckerton Hill Farm) Wayne, Tianna, a sustainable extension agent from Penn State, and Kim, a person Tim and Wayne knew with seemingly endless talents for fixing, creating, and building up everything from people to engines to bees to garden beds . There too, at those first dinners was Genevieve, another writer with her pulse on the sustainable ag movement coupled with hands-on farming experience and soon to be graduate student at Columbia University. And on occasion Chris, another ex-Rodale man whose expertise were graphics and web design.

Still in the process of figuring out how and when and what to do with all the talents and ideas of all these minds, Wild Persimmon Farm Journal (so- named for the Persimmon trees that stand just yards away from the old Angstadt house) is at its beginning stages and like any organization worth its best idea, is a community of people. Slowly growing. Hoping, in this case, to serve as an example of how community can be found in the food grown and raised in one's own back yard. The cliche of you are what you eat comes to mind as well as all the many trends such as farm-to-table restaurants, farm-to-city, buy-fresh-buy-local, localvore etc. now circulating and overlapping the larger green movement(s). Are they all valid or even sustainable? Only time will tell. It does seem like its time to bring real food back to the table and create some semblance of culture that starts as it once did, down on the farm.

All content including photos and video by Wayne Miller.

First fruits

2009-05-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

There is just too much to write and talk and think about. My thoughts are scattered like dandelion seeds in the afternoon. It's time to just start listing things. Line them up. Broadcast the thoughts you dunce. Grow it and then eat it you fools.

We'd been growing since February and as of the second and third weeks in April had been harvesting 7 different varieties of heirloom radishes, asparagus, tyee and bordeaux spinach, mesclun, and rhubarb. Up on top of the world at the new farm in Lobachsville Dave and Tim had seeded all manners of cover crops including red, white, and yellow clover, peas and oats, and various grasses. We were also now in the business of growing interns at a rate of two for the spring and one more to come that will make a grand total of three extra humans to help us this summer and fall.

There was all the ripping and tearing and nashing to be done at the 1780's stone farmhouse. All the carpets out. New steps to last a life time. Washing away of all metal, glass, cardboard and tin excesses. There had to be moments to stare at the green. So many first things. On Saturday the 9th of May the first fruits would be taken to New York for Lucy to write about. Don't blink. We all had to eat every other Monday. How much rhubarb could one person consume?

On Mother's Day it was way past the second and third weeks of April wasn't it? Waaaaaaaaay past. Catch up. The lines had been drawn up like California vegetable rows. There was now all of the above, go back up there and see that you missed the Tyee!, and romaine, butterhead, red oak, tango, speckled, lolla rosa lettuce heads, bright lights swiss chard, red russian kale, la cinato tuscan kale, baby pac choi, ruby streaks mustard greens, and over heated fired up gone to yellow seedzzzzzzzzzzies broccoli raab. Gobs of the big leaves and the poor men. Eat it. Eat all of it!

Night shades pt. 2

2009-05-04T20:49:00.000-07:00

Bowers

Kate and I walked up to the garden plot in front of the big stone farmhouse at 9:47 am. We were 17 minutes late and James Weaver was already speaking quickly, captivating the group of 20 or so on-lookers who had come to learn about raised bed gardening. The first weekend of May had turned out chilly and gray with a refreshingly soft mist in the air. A much appreciated reprieve from the unseasonable 90 degree days earlier in that week.

James made a few more comments on the morning's topic which lead me to believe we had missed some kind of a greenhouse tour at the beginning of the session. He then introduced a rugged, wirey looking man of about 30 years as Seth. "His is the new way of gardening," James said enthusiastically. "Of course its really the oooooold way, but we're seeing it more and more again today." He was describing the now 100's of years old style of gardening known as raised bed or intensive inter-planting/companion gardening that would be the focus of his "brother's," as he called Seth, portion of the workshop.

Seth got right into explaining how he had set up the three 4ft. by 8ft. beds that bordered one side of the square garden plot. His accent was definitely southern and Kate remarked that he must be from Louisiana. She along with Casey, who were interning at the farm this year, had come along that morning to pick up some gardening know how but also to discover the great operation that was Meadow View Farm. I remembered that this space was formerly used by James's wife Alma for growing flowers to be cut and then sold. Now it would be a model for large scale vegetable gardening. It was immaculately layed out into about 12 slightly different shaped beds seperated by neatly carved rows all leading to a circular center bed. Each area planned for a different family of vegetable. The pathways perfectly sculpted and mulched.

Seth moved slowly down along his three bed presentation answering questions and giving insights through smiles and a somewhat self-deprecating manner. I noticed how clear and straightforward he spoke. How directly he looked at the person he was addressing. Like James, he loved to talk. He said all this was just plain fun for him and that he was indeed learning himself. "Can you just plant spinach then right down in the middle of the sttttrawwwwbuuuries?," asked a serious looking woman with a flower patterned dress and a refined, mild accent that sounded possibly Indian. "Oh yes, for me the texture and color of the garden is just as important as the rotation of vegetables. You can go so many ways with your layout. We know that spinach and strawberries are good to plant with each other," Seth responded. I kept thinking the way he moved his arms and adjusted his worn John Deere cap was so typical of a guy I might see at a Phish show but that the southern accent was altogether original and through off any stereotype. His energy was seemingly never ending. I wondered if he'd still have it when he reached James's age which was somewhere in the mid-50's. But then again, would any of us?

Night shades of Pennsylvania (A weekend in four parts)

2009-05-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

Part 1 -- Lancaster

"Surf's up!" screamed the legendary aging punker Mike Watt. Standing strong, going on 50 yrs. old (or already there?!), on Lancaster's famed Chameleon stage, gray haired and flannel shirt adorned, he twisted his fingers and arms as he banged the bass guitar into submission in perfect time with his two band mates who frantically tried to keep up. They were soon pouring with sweat, the drummer pounding and the guitarist chopping frenetic, dissident, high treble chords. This is why I came tonight. This is history living in front of me.

The Missing Men played a blistering 45 min. set in front of an all too tame crowd of mostly 20 somethings who I surmised were most likely at the show to see the more famed but also aging alternative rockers of the band Dinosaur Jr. The place was packed and hot. As I drank two and then three bottles of the Champagne of Beers, the music started to hit me and the fire in my belly started to burn. My whole body craved some dancing time. Its not going to happen in this place, I thought. Oh well, this is a truly amazing scene anyways.

After a long interlude of changing amp heads Dinosaur Jr. finally took the stage. Next to me stood Art Difuria of Philly's Photon Band and a couple friends of his who I could tell had been big fans of Jay and the boys since way back. I was psyched because the second song they played was one from the late 80's. I remembered first hearing it at my friend Skip's house as we watched the G & S skate video Footage. Dinosaur was one of those many bands whose music I knew only a fraction of and even less of the song titles. The songs I knew I loved. We were all singing lyrics into the air by now and at one point I yelled to Art's friend, "C'mon man, split the middle!" He was a bigger guy with shaggy blonde hair and a friendly face underneath the short trimmed beard. His wife was standing next to us as well. "Right on," he said. The two of us plunged heads down up through the crowd of people til' we broke it up pretty well and ended up, dancing and shoving, just about in front of Jay Mascis's big round belly and silver hair. Before coming to the show I had been told by more than one person how loud they were live. Everyone was right. Thanks to James, I had ear plugs in.

Standing just outside the bathroom, waiting for Jen so we could leave the club, James came running up to me and was exclaimed, "Dude! I've been hanging out back stage with Watt the whole Dinosaur set!" How was I not surprised? If there was one fan of The Minutemen who would try as many times as it took to get back stage to meet Mike it was James. And to think he hadn't known that I had invited him specifically because The Missing Men were opening the show. He's relentless I thought. Awesome. We headed back stage passed security which was by now just one guy who really could care less if two more people got by him to meet some old rocker he never heard of. As we entered the dingy room there stood the real leader of this escapade, standing not too far from the band's cooler and smiling like he always is, with that long curly brown hair, denim jacket, and Pottsville accent that never gets old . "Jen, how are ya? Wayne, he said reaching for my hand, good to see ya." "Yeah man," I said, great to see you Billy." We found out quickly that the band was hanging out outside at their van so we shuffled out there but to no avail. They had skipped out. We said our goodbyes and headed out the front entrance and James, good old James, thought it best to run around back one more time and see if they were still there. He was like a little kid, gleefully talking rapid fire about what a night, what a night, and holding on tight to that signed t-shirt like it was a golden Wonka ticket. As we rounded the building we saw the van just pulling out of its space, Mike Watt at the wheel, the guitarist shouting goodbye at us from the passenger side. We all yelled back. There they went. Still in the van after all these years. I thought back to the last words Mike said as his set ended just hours before, holding his bass high in the air and looking up towards the kids in the balcony, "Start a band!!!!!"

All photos and video by Wayne Miller. TMRG, zopocofilms on that.

Late April

2009-04-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

If it keeps raining at night we'll never get the first 5000 in the ground. I kept rummaging this around in my brain, shuffling the line back and forth and all around like a loose thread in the breeze. "I could talk film all day," he said. "Yeah me too," I responded. The conversation went from Jarmusch to No Country for Old Men to Wes Anderson to Cronenberg. "Somehow the music just doesn't fit, the score doesn't quite go with some of the scenes in Bottle Rocket," he said. That brought me back from the tomatoes but not out of the soil. I continued to stare at the young Arcadia broccoli plants in the ground in front of me and kept scraping at the tiny green Lamb's-quarters weeds with my slender hoe. This was the 3rd or 4th straight hour of "cultivation" today. "Yeah," he said. I've been in the zone for about an hour and a half now.

The meatloaf and the shofar

2009-04-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

I hadn’t seen Jim in some time and thought it was going to be good to reconnect with him that day at the small Pennsylvania hall where we would be doing some “pro-bono” video work for the local chapter of the anti-sludge movement. His wife Colleen had asked me to do this knowing that I, along with two close friends, run a small DIY film fest every summer. She thought I might want to get in on the action. I wasn’t that educated about all the issues surrounding the use of humanure but apparently it had become quite commonly used these days as a cheap fertilizer on Pennsylvania’s many farm fields and, I suspected, an even cheaper way for Jersey to shit on my beautiful state yet again. Literally.

After the presentations had ended and Jim and I had both packed up our equipment I was on my way out the door when Jim stopped me and invited me to come to dinner at his house that night. Cool I thought. That would be great. I told him I’d check with Jen and most likely we’d see him around six. Earlier that morning, just before the farmers from Georgia started to tell their stories of sludge havoc, I heard him mentioning to his wife Colleen about a meatloaf. Wow, I thought, it was going to be a good time at the Stolz house tonight. Being as the only time I get home-made meatloaf is when my mother makes it for me, which is maybe once a year, the word alone is one of those words that won’t often get missed by my ears. It sits back there in my subconscious waiting to be caught again out in the conscious world.

When we arrived at the house Colleen was scurrying around the kitchen carrying a bowl of fresh spinach greens and ordering various commands to her youngest son who’s birthday it was that day. I had known her eldest son for about 8 years now but we rarely saw each other so were not on real familiar terms. He was going through the awkwardness of his early teen years but was extremely intelligent and of an independent mind. He was much like his parents. They had raised the two boys all the while pursuing advanced degrees from Lehigh University. As Jen and I offered to help it became quite apparent that there was no need. We simply watched as the well-oiled system in this warm home naturally moved along. This was a team in action. There was real chemistry in the interaction and love in this kitchen.

Jim had for years been working with mentally challenged adults but I was surprised to see him arrive at the door with two of his clients for dinner. All told there were now eight of us in the kitchen. The two sons sporadically left the kitchen and bounded up the stairs. Upon returning downstairs the eldest did his duty to throw the younger Denny around a bit in the living room. Denny shrieked with laughter and kept coming back for more torment. Down on the massive floor pillow and then back up again and then down again. We stood next to the sink and watched as Colleen put the finishing touches on her dessert and Jim introduced us to the two distinguished dinner guests. Both men looked more than disheveled but had big smiles going and eager, if a bit anxious, eyes sparkling as they surveyed the familiar grounds. The older fellow, named Jimmy, grasping his worn hat in one hand and thrusting his other out to shake mine looked directly at me and said through a white bearded grin, “I’m Jimmy!” “Not to be confused with Jim Stolz! Although he’s alright that Jim Stolz. He. . . .he’s alright Jim Stolz.” “Wayne,” I blurted. I’ll have to keep it loud and clear with this guy I thought. He’s not going to miss a beat. Harry stared apprehensively at the two of us and Jim (the Stolz this time) said, “Are you hungry Harry? Well say hello to Wayne and his wife Jen. Go ahead.” Harry came right up then and said hello, his eyes glancing nervously to the floor. His face was red from the cold outside. He had a healthy girth about him but was younger than my 35 years I suspected and liked to keep his distance.

As we sat at the table making small talk Colleen set the main focus of the meal in front of us. I felt like a kid again as I gazed at the huge amount of meat. The sixty something Jimmy sat squeezed in next to me looking like a sailor with his white beard and blue knit cap. “Colleen,” he said, “You always make the best food.” This meatloaf was a first for me. It had bacon strips all across the top. Everyone shouted out how important the bacon was. “Mmmmm bacon,” murmured Andy. Ooooooooh yeah, I thought. “Anyone want a beer?” Jim asked. Jim was good for a fresh draft of something tasty he kept on tap at all times. Harry, having gotten just about all the way through a 22oz. bottle of Moxy cola said definitively, “Yes Jim. Yes. A beer for me too.” Harry had finally settled down after going through what seemed like 5 trips outside for a cigarette. This was the life. Meatloaf, asparagus, spinach salad, and Denver chocolate cake. Colleen said that the chocolate cake, which was really much more like a mousse/fudge/liquid brownie topped with fresh cream, was her mom’s recipe. After the first-bite oohs and aahs were exchanged and I had finished my second mouthful I wondered if I’d make it through the rest of the heaping bowlful she had served up. This was the kind of gourmet chocolate dessert that would be served in tiny little shot glasses if eaten in one of New York’s finest eateries. How could we possibly finish entire bowls of it? So rich and so good.

Just about at the end of the meal Jim asked Denny if he wanted to see what Harry had brought to show him for his birthday. Until this time I hadn’t really thought about the cap this husky fellow had been sporting all along. It was a multi-colored knitted skull cap that accentuated perfectly his smiling mildly whiskered red face and intense brown eyes. A yarmulke! I thought. That’s what it is. Denny was intrigued with the big gym bag that Harry hoisted onto the dinner table but having just turned six that day, was easily distracted as well. Harry proceeded to pull two large objects from the bag, each with just a simple one-word description. First was what looked to be an extremely old book. It was in tatters to be exact. The second was an enormous horn! What the hell is that I thought!? “This is the Jewish Holy book, the Torah,” Harry said looking directly across the table at Denny. “And this is a shofar.” I had never seen a shofar (ram's horn) before but it was truly a wild, ancient looking thing that just made the moment so absurd and beautiful there was nothing anyone could say. It was like Harry had abruptly transformed himself from the fidgeting uncomfortable guest to an intensely focused teacher when showing the objects to the young boy. He could sense that Denny’s attention was not all there. “You’ll learn more about this when you get older. Jim can explain it to you when you get older,” he kept repeating softly.

All You Pirates

2009-04-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

"There's a dark carnation and a wrinkle in the road. . . "

Goodnight sweet Tweet.

Lyric from the song "Shake the Chandelier" by the Gourds. Photo of life circle taken by tmrgoat 2009 in Lancaster, Pa.

Leaving Winter

2009-03-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

I tried to leave Winter on the morning of March 13. Friday the 13th to be exact. I drove the 13 miles to the new farm's location anticipating my first ride on the Case tractor since 2007. It was a fun tractor to drive. It was over 40 years old and somewhat unpredictable, kind of like the boss. But it was such a pleasing machine to look at and hear and operate. Jen had said when I took her for a short ride on it that it was so "nice."
Walking up to where Tim was already working I glanced over the 57 acres and marveled again at the sheer size of it all. It was like a bowl. Three grand hillsides enclosing you. Each hill with its own tree line softly closing in the entire property. Off to the right and down the truck path stood the giant Ash tree. It was the cornerstone of the property. It stood there looking worn and old but sturdy, being the diameter of several persons.

I got onto the tractor and headed out with the first load of composted mushroom soil. This was after having the New Idea spreader loaded by Tim who was seated in the New Holland trake-dah (read: Pennsylvania Dutch tractor). The controls slowly came back to me. Raising and lowering the bucket, the PTO, the brakes that didn't really work, the start position on the stick shift. Winter laid her grips right into my face with a brisk steady breeze. Being less than 30 degrees outside, the thought of Spring wasn't a thought at all. Thankfully the sun was starting to break through the haze of thick gray clouds and I knew it would be a warm day in about an hour. Well, almost warm.

We rode and rode and rode all day. The sod never got soft as we thought it surely would by noon or one o' clock. One quick stop for Bob's roast beef sandwiches at around 2 was the only break we took. There's a kind of fire in the belly that stirs in these first weeks of March. A frantic, spastic, deep energy that cries, "Let me out!" The ground began to look covered after about 6 hours of steady blanketing. First in long passes down the field, then crossing over these in an attempt to fill in the gaps. Ron showed up at about 10am, his son following with another spreader filled with cow manure. During a pause in the action Tim filled both spreaders and Ron, the dairy farmer and neighbor of the new farm said to me, "Tim worries a lot it seems. I don't think we'll remind him it's Friday the 13th." "No," I said, "And I don't think we should talk about the full moon last night either!" Was it full last night? I remembered it looking pretty near as I stared at it just before going inside the Fire Company.

*****

Lilly had kept sheep, goats, and a caramel colored ram that could have been mistaken for a lion for about three years now. She has fifteen that shuffle around together on the 12 acre hillside piece of land. They have names like Cinder and Hershey and Mr. Fox and a perfectly round shaped, salt and pepper wool covered girl called Minikin who has onyx colored, smooth, ancient looking curved horns. The Shepherdess took such pride in getting them all together and explaining to those of us with no knowledge of these animals all their distinct habits and needs. Today they would get vaccinated and have their hooves trimmed and cleaned. "There is so much on the to-do list but these two things are in the A category and must get done today," Lilly said.

The sheep as a group are quite attentive, it turns out. However, one by one they are all uniquely skittish and are likely to scatter at the slightest movement by a human. Like any animals, they come running at the sight or smell or sound of food! Yet they know immediately when they are trying to be coerced into a group movement. The goat of the herd is brave and high spirited as he comes up to you and licks your hand, wondering if the treats will soon return. He is dressed in a highly prized cashmere wool coat that is grey, white, black, brown, and all shades in between and loves to be brushed. He looks calmly at one human face after another as if to say, "Yes, thank you all so much for coming. I am the famed Caaaaaaashmere goat. You will no doubt notice my beauty and stature. Eh hem. . . .let me see if you still have pretzels in that pocket and if I might just taste but one more."

Ruth was inside the barn bay all by herself as I worked the door with Tom. Lilly waited by the small entrance coaching Ruth on to how to ease one more of the sheep to her strong hands. From there it was onto the platform to receive the season's vaccines and tlc. Five sheep rounding the small bay inside, the Cashmere goat shoving one of the sheep with his horns, the distraction of the tasty hay bale and the Shepherdess calling from the entrance made for a swirling, door banging circus. Without fail each animal eventually came running out into Lilly's hands horns first or flailing vertically in Ruth's hands. "Shut the door!" one of the women would say as Tom and I would scramble to shut the heavy barn door without squishing one of the other sheep that was, at the same time, breaking fast for freedom.

We took a break and had a taste of Ian's homemade sour red wine. I thought of how much Lilly would have to do in the next month with it now being birthing season. How could she possibly have done any of this alone? She had. She complained that it was always a struggle for her lower back at those times. Wrestling with 15 animals that weighed around 200 pounds each was definitely a bear of a way to start Spring but also so worth it, it seemed. Every one of the sheep having its own personality behind those strange, staring, mythical, stoic eyes. All the colors mixing together and waddling around you and pushing at each other and baaaaing the deepest guttural whines. Theirs were the hooves of Iceland. Of old times. Of the Winter that strove to to have its full term.

Photo of sheep by Lelayna Klein, proprietor of Lillian's farm in Kempton,Pa.

The Doctor and the Nurse

2009-02-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

I arrived around 5:30 am and to my surprise their son was awake. He stepped outside the door onto the driveway and said with a sleepy grin, "Hey guy how are ya?" "Good, good," I said. This was our usual greeting I had realized over the past week of working together. If you could call it work. We spent some hours organizing mini digital video tapes and he was definitely getting some editing work done but there were also many intermittent pool tournaments and runs to Subway or the castle. "Right on time!" the doctor said. "Yeah well, I try," I answered as enthusiastically as I could at that hour. Wanting to please the old man and his wife.

As we headed down the road for the Philadelphia airport the talk was small and mostly amounted to comments about the amazing number of cars on the road so early in the morning. I was confused when the doctor directed me to bear left at the intersection in Shillington instead of heading towards the turnpike. He must be going to take 422, I thought. That was all well and good except that an hour from now the rush would be in full swing and we would be bumper to bumper with the growing number of commuters heading to the city. Finally the conversation picked up as my mind drifted to the many times I had taken this route including the one last week to the very same destination.

"Wayne," the man declared with a comfortable steadfastness in his voice, "When we came up here years ago I used to go hunting at Tulpehocken Farms. There was only one red light from Sinking Spring to the Farms. It was all farms. No Penn State Berks, no Berkshire Mall." "Must have been in the 70's?" I said. "Well yeah, well no that would have been 1968," chimed in the nurse from the back seat. They spoke with authority and ease about all this. Their knowledge and tone was so different than mine. Than my generation. Or maybe it was just my tribe of artists and craftsmen. So wobbly and indecisive about everything were we. So assured and congenial and matter of fact were they. It was soothing to talk to this couple. They carried the assurance of 52 years of marriage with them. They carried over 25 years as missionary doctor and nurse in Africa. They had raised five kids. Who was I?

The conversation did not turn to literature but I couldn't help thinking of that other great man from Shillington who had just passed the day before. He too had no doubt driven this route from rural Pennsylvania to the city of Philadelphia. Certainly his literary characters had. Was he not in many ways of the same mold? Was not too, the other John of literary fame who had written so beautifully of the relationships between women and men in his native Pottsville, PA. John Updike had passed unexpectedly from lung cancer at the age of 77. Doctor J was now 78 and his wife a few years his junior. How amazing were these people. In less than an hour they would be on a plane to Beijing and then to Hong Kong and then to their final destination of Zambia! What will I be doing at 78 years of age!?

At the Seipstown Grange we had eaten lunch made by many of the master gardeners from Northhampton and Lehigh County. We were there to hear Tim read about groundhogs and tomatoes. "So Updike died," I said to Tim. I said that I had recalled an NPR piece the day before where one of the hosts claimed that John O'Hara had written about small town Pennsylvania first but that John Updike had surely done it better. This was a matter of taste and subjectivity wasn't it? "Well," Tim paused, "Updike was a better writer than John O'Hara." I had to disagree. When had John Updike analyzed so acutely the psyche of a woman whose marriage was on the verge of being compromised? Where in all his many books was the female character that could measure up to John O'Hara's description of the mind of Caroline Walker Engish? It didn't exist. At least not in my limited readings of "The Poorhouse Fair" and "Rabbit Run." Surely this great American writer of 77 years had been the more literary of writers but the better writer? I didn't think so.

As we pulled up to the curb of the United Airways International terminal, Doctor J smiled and said in a kind of friendly growl, "Man, I can't wait to tell that ticket lady we're going to China!" I humored his remark and smiled as well. These were great people. Later that day there son would express his worry for his father who had just gotten passed a bout of bronchitis. Maybe it was too much to be going back to Africa again for so long and at their ages? But this is the only way they would have it. This particular child of the doctor and the nurse had been known to weave words together quite lyrically himself. The lyrics of his song about Reading, Pa crept into my head:

Run rabbit ruuuuuuuuun, into the sun
Move move awaaaaaaaaay, forget about yesterday hey hey.

Winter Feasting

2009-01-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

Charles Bronson was on the television. Everyone took turns cutting into the old tough guy and I was surprised how much he looked like Enrique. It must be the mustache I thought. "No, its his whole face, his expression," Jen said. "He reeeeeally does look like Enrique!," Sara cackled loudly. Then she exclaimed gleefully, (or maybe it was Dan?) "Its Dutch Wish!" This got the whole crowd of 12 roaring as they waited in TV purgatory land to see the Pittsburgh Steelers crush the San Diego Chargers in the second round of the playoffs. "Dutch Wish" of course was the re-interpretation of the title of Charles Bronson's famous movie Death Wish. "So you're into Jesus huh?," Bronson said while pointing his pistol at the young gangster. "You're gonna meet him soon."

Everyone had eaten their fill of Tweet's lamb stew and after several rounds of hotty tawdy's (thats Jameson, lemon, honey, and hot water) we all settled in for the Sunday's max and relax phase of football watching. Today was special. On this winter day both Pennsylvania football teams were defending their not-so-stellar records in the playoffs. Until the lamb stew, I had been feasting on some potato and leek soup the week before and now had a pot of borscht sitting half full in my refrigerator. The borscht was such a beautiful soup. Such a deep red color and simple sweet flavor making one feel charged and healthy after a warm bowl of it. Like a straight shot of vitamin C to the blood stream.

The Monday evening before it had been Tim's grand dinner of mushroom gravy over winter vegetables and mashed potatoes completed by a stout london broil cut of beef from Stutzman's Pasture's Pride farm. Those rutabagas and turnips and carrots with all their bitter hearts. And not the least was the salad made from Bordeaux spinach and bull's blood beets taken from the greenhouse topped with some blue cheese and a little balsamic vinegar. "And ramps!," everyone seemed to blurt out at once. "Well I'll have to try the salad if it has ramps," said Kim. These little cousins to onions might have been some of the only non-local ingredients to the meal but were still very much appreciated. These were the kind of vegetables that "foodies" would make such a fuss over. Tess reminded us that they were just peasant vegetables. If you could just explain to people what they were and what you do with them then everyone could easily enjoy them. Thanks to Tess, this dinner for eight which seemed somewhat spread about the kitchen and slightly array came together beautifully. And the three layer chocolate mousse! Oh man!

Back in the living room the second game of the day, Pittsburgh vs. San Diego, was winding down as Tweet said for the last time that evening, "Its all over." Some of those attending being die hard sports fans but others just appreciating the warmth of the fireplace, the lamb, the good cheer, and the eclectic community in this small part of Pennsylvania. Whether serious football followers or not, we are all fans of the keystone state. Everyone agreed that it was just too damn cold for those boys from California to be playing this far east today. The snow that had squalled in the first quarter was now barely visible on the field. "How do you feel about them now Steihl?" someone asked Mark again. "Well, I'm less uneasy now, but then, I'm always kind of uneasy," he replied with a half grin.

Big City

2009-01-02T10:32:00.000-08:00

Back in 89’ the punks hung out in malls. We had our metropolis too. It was called Big City. The inside was a fantastical maze of shops that mostly sold things we’d never admit we wanted and didn't have the money to buy anyways. The Limited, Benetton, Spencer Gifts. To be sure, some of the soccer kids at school would be stocking up via their parents cards for the back-to-school fashion show. But I never understood why all the girls wore Treetorn tennis sneakers and most of the soccer player guys wore L.L. Bean rugby shirts. The outside of the mall presented an open field of pavement for any of us who dared go skating there at night. No security at night. But you had to stay clear of the hessian kids and their monster trucks that would chase you around until you were pitted against a wall somewhere, the headlights glaring in your 14 yr. old face, scared to death. At Big City you’d see the skins and their skin chicks, hippies, acid dealing 15 yr. olds, and what seemed to be a lot of cops. Everywhere you looked it seemed like there were two more cops. Course it was probably just your imagination. Just whatever you had gotten into and had no business being “into.”

Mark and Lou and Bill and I went there on a Saturday night. The food court was where everyone congregated. Coming into this place from outside was truly like walking into Willie Wonka land. A Mecca filled with hundreds of people, mostly teens. We haphazardly picked a table to sit at. We didn’t know much. Just took it all in. My three friends seemed distant yet they sat just across from me at the circular school-cafeteria-style table. Bill talked about a road bike he was just dying to have. He was the picture of innocence. A healthy, geeky, happy, somewhat cartoon looking kid. So much youth and naivete in those brown eyes. But he wasn’t exactly one of the rest of us. He did not ride a skateboard.

“I think I’ll get a Trek, he said, they make these amazing huge frames that weigh like nothing!” The nervous energy of the place was high. He gleefully expounded on the bike and I looked at the cops again imagining that they were looking at me as well. There was Brian across the way. Kids talked about him all the time. Was he really dealing that stuff? Did he really have sheets of it on hand? He was only a sophomore. High school had gotten nuts and we were only in the first year of it. Brian’s massive tye-dye shirt wouldn’t protect him from the rocky future that lay ahead. The uncertainty seemed to be ever looming, as strong and inevitable as the Lancaster county winds. He’d get caught soon enough. It made me fear my own situation a bit. I looked at Mark and anxiously said, “We should get outta here soon.” The more I looked at the neon pink food signs for Chinese, Mexican, and pizza the more my mind raced and the sweat built on my hands and brow. It seemed as though all the sound in the room was muted. There was a low buzz. Everything was disconnected. Time to move.

“Holy shit!” Lou said after being silent for more than a half hour. “What is it man!?” I said. “Look there on the escalator, that dude is trying to get up through those cops!” “Damn,” I thought, why hadn’t we just left? It was hard to see what was really going on over there but the tall, lanky skinhead was holding what looked like a small knife and one of the police men was trying to restrain him. He would make it though. He would bust through them and head up the stairs running for a second chance at the night.

I remember hearing something about the knife incident later that school year. To me it was just par for the course. All of the skins were on the edge. They were older guys/gals. You just didn’t fuck with them no matter what. But then, none of us knew any of them personally. They were way too far out of our circle. That is until Mike and Joel came onto the scene. But even then we thought it was just a mistake, a phase. Things were always like that then. There were so many mistakes, so many phases.

A myth of our own

2008-12-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

We pulled into the driveway and Eric said, "Welcome to psychedelic land." My thoughts were on the beef stew that I knew had been cooking for hours on the stove. The night was cold. This night would give its all to prevent the great Sun from returning to its rightful place.

The people said their greetings and gifts were exchanged by a few as others ate and talked. There were 15 persons present all told. Christmas cookies seemed to be everywhere. The wood stove gently worked its magic, keeping us warm from the December air outside. It was the Solstice. The house was "off the grid" and thus, powered only by this black stove and the Sun. The people were, in their various ways, "off the grid" as well.

Behind the house Sean and Tara had built a ring three levels deep made of pine boughs and adorned with quartz stones and sea shells. The path between the ring lead to a stump atop which lay an ice sculpture of sorts with a large white candle in its center. Once assembled outside the boughs, one at a time each person entered the Solstice path placing each step with care, trying to stay off the sacred ornaments, until they had finally reached the center. The wind chill made the night temperature feel much colder than the actual temperature of 18 degrees F. As usual, my feet were the first to cry out to me, "get back to that stove, get inside, this will take hours." The wind would not yield quietly to the Sun this night.

Many candles having been blown out and re-lit the ceremony was slowly fulfilled and we stared for as long as our extremities would allow at the shining center representing all energy and life giving power in the universe. The tea candles of each individual flickered, struggling to stay lit, drawing their fire from the center as we humans would continue to do all the days to come. The stars in that frigid night held their places. This was not their time to shine.

My feet numb and the ceremony over I didn't linger long before heading for the warm house again. I had internalized nature's vistas many times before and thus, making it my religion, understood that it needed my perception and further reflection on it to truly bask in its glory. It needed us. For who else would appreciate its beauty?

A couple of days later, driving back from hiking alongside a rushing, rhododendron-lined creek, Eric commented as we saw the Sun in its waning hours, "I feel privileged to see this, look at the light, its crazy, everything is purple!"

To Our Lady of the Wood

2008-12-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

He had taken deathlife the day before in the mid-morning hours. This time had not been the usual day-long marathon of past seasons. He wanted to suffer, he said to me, "for the craft." But in just two days and 9 hours of shivering cold he had taken two female deathlifes. This time the suffering would come after the hunt.

When I arrived she was hung from the tree by her two front legs. Her head fell back lifeless now. The brown, white, and black coat that had sheltered her from these cold winter days was now stripped. I could see only the remnants of the fur around her four ankles and hooves. Deathlife was white bone and bright red flesh. The muscles had frozen from hanging outside in the frigid night air of early December. Her coat lay draped over the blue metal summer chair that sat just to the right of her body.

He commented on the amount of fat stretching across her back. "She must have been eating really well," he said. "Yeah, corn and soybeans are everywhere," I responded. How many fields had this deathlife known? What dreams had she conjured in the minds of those that had been lucky enough to see her and pondered at that moment, or in a later reflection, the magic of her beauty? And too, how many had glanced without even the slightest reverence for the creature they had just witnessed? How many times had she lept and bounded through stream and over rock and wood? Such a mighty strength she had mastered in her muscular legs and back! Such keen eyes and ears.

"Look at the amazing black patch just behind her nose," he said. "She was such a beautiful girl." I could not stop looking at that head which now rested like some unknown thing on the bed of dead maple leaves on the ground. The eyes now lifeless as the sky above. Gray and clouded over. As I sturdied the frozen rib cage so that he could cut off the bottom right leg I noticed my hands start to burn with cold. This was only appropriate after all. It was the least I could suffer to be saved from death with this life.

Where the food comes from

2008-11-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

We headed out on Rt. 143 north to Mike's place tucked down against the other side of Hawk Mountain in Drehersville, Pa. He was there dressed in long underwear and tending to the woodstove at noon. We all commented on how nice the paint job was inside the living room and kitchen. He had painted the ceiling with a high gloss exterior white and the walls were the most calming green he could find. The place was brimming with warmth against the damp Thanksgiving Day outside. Mike said, "Yeah, lets go take a walk."

The three of us headed out into the woods behind the Airstream trailer. Following the train tracks we came to a good spot to head down into the small cluster of young pines. Mike's brother was visiting from West Virginia with his blond haired 4 year old who was displaying a rare shyness that her father said was not usually the case. I told Mike I had seen a full size Doe in this spot when I waited there to "see what i might see" last Monday morning at 6am. The old tractor part must have been sitting there for 20 years. None of us were sure exactly what part of the tractor it was. Something to do with harvesting for sure.

After tromping around the estate Jen and I headed back over the mountain to make our dinner. I had gone the 1/4 mile up the road to the farm earlier that morning and gotten some stored heirloom sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, tuscan kale, and bulls blood beets. The frozen turkey in the freezer was to wait until Saturday when it would make the trip with us up north to my mother's house. I put the white potato in the oven right away and then cut the baby brussels off the stock to clean them. Jen cleaned them while i cut up the dark green kale and got it braising in the pan. She then peeled the beets to reveal the deep blood-red streaks inside. "I should have gotten more from the greenhouse," I thought.

We took our plates to the living room and put in the film The Outlaw Josey Wales. As the massacre of the southern farming family took place in the first ten minutes I could already feel a kind of food coma overtake me. Josey wept while he let the words slip slowly from his grimaced face, squeezing the wooden cross he had made to mark the area where his son and wife were now buried, "The good lord giveth and the good lord taketh away."

What it means to be a skateboarder

2008-11-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

The skateboarder is a man or woman who knows no limits. There is a usual starting age but no stopping age after one begins to ride. A skateboarder is a rider. He/she knows what this means in all facets. To ride is to live. I repeat, to ride is to live. Harley Davidson has made millions off this slogan but they will have to excuse the borrowed expression just this once. The skateboarder is his or her own engine. The skateboarder sees all living, in part, as part of riding. This is both figurative and literal. Once on the board, all else is periphery. Landscape becomes blurred and clear at once. The soul that does not exist expounds. Speed is at the fore-frunt. The body is stationary and moving all at once above the wood and the wheels going faster and faster below the feet. The motion is life. The person becomes the Rider. The skateboarder feels the carve of a good ride. All small moments become one wave.

The skateboarder may break but will not bend. He/She may encounter severe pain and will love this and hate it. The hatred will come from an anxiety that seeps into the heart once the skater can see future limits that will be placed on their body's ability to skate. The injury is an unresolved, open-ended anticipation and fear. The love will flash in all power and beauty and endorphins and sweat and bone and blood and skin and hair as the pain is blocked and numbed just enough to be physically bearable and enjoyable. The skater has touched life again. The spontaneity and uncertainty has come roaring back once again. This can and does become an addiction for the skateboarder.

The skateboarder doesn't reach for Zen. The skateboarder is Zen. The skateboarder becomes Zen. The skateboarder has so much of the soul that is not there. The non-skateboarder will see this in pop-culture forms and be sickened, frightened, jealous, amazed or mute. The skateboarder's ride is always in the consciousness right in the back seat of their mind. The small seed that is regenerating all the time. The job or person or situation or sadness or accomplishment does not turn this off ever.

Photo by Richard Wacker who teaches art in Philadelphia.

Cardoons

2008-11-11T18:03:00.000-08:00

If you've ever seen an artichoke plant or any of its family growing you know that wild character it has with those strong, thick, spiked leaves jutting out in all directions surrounding like an army to protect its sacred heart. The cardoon is a relative of the artichoke. Today its precarious demeanor was even more off setting as it/they stood out in the 38 degree rainy late October day. After lifting drenched, icy agri-bon row covers off of multi-colored lettuce heads and cutting the first of the season's brussel sprouts, we used our red, frozen hands to try an attempt to extract the first cardoons. Their leaves, also armored with spiked edges, and much larger than their artichoke cousins made me wince every time my raw hands got too close to them. My wrist let me know as well that I wouldn't have her full support to squeeze those old hedge trimmer handles together and cut down the cardoon trunks. The wrist was recovering from a skateboarding fall 4 1/2 months prior to this day. The corner of my write one panged as I pushed the handles together just about as hard as i could to cut the cardoon trunk from the ground. Later I realized that I had been cutting too low and that I could have saved myself much effort in this endeavor but alas, that is the newness of farming. At some point I found my extremities too have become slightly accustomed to the cold and wet. We had eaten and braced for round two in the rain. She said, while digging soil to cover over radicchio that should have been covered two weeks before, " I don't think I can feel my hands anymore." I gripped the metal shovel and agreed, lumping some mix of mud and green foliage onto the edge of the cover. "Damn its cold," I thought. "Really fucking cold."It has been said that April is the cruelest month and I tend to agree, but when November weather hits in late October it makes one re think that notion.

The Mexicans call them Comotes

2008-11-11T17:05:00.000-08:00

Today was an October day. It started out with thick low gray cloud cover and by high noon the sun was blasting through Simpsons' white clouds. We all picked tomatoes during the morning and after a light snack, went right back at it. This time picking only the giant green under-ripe ones that we knew would ripen over the next week. They would not survive the expected frost that would come in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Eric and I then got potato forks and prepared to harvest heirloom sweet potatoes. After cutting the thick green and purple tendrils from these South American and Asian root vegetables, we proceeded to dig ever so carefully through the plush composted soil to discover the bulbous, vein-skinned, peach and white colored gems. So compact and filled with the magical denseness of life and sun and earth. So pushed. So smooth. Are the perfect green leaves medicinal we wondered? The root vegetable must contain all the magic and immensity of the universe in its ruddy wonderful shape.