Greenhorns

by Paula Manalo

  I looked up to see our neighbor Allen sauntering down the farm road. I knew him in the limited sense that his family owned the property next door; his cows were always busting through the fence onto my mom’s pasture; he worked part time as a logger; he drove an old white F250; and his nephew, whom I’d always avoided on the school bus, liked to shoot peepers in the wet pasture swales each spring. Allen was in uniform that day: a shredded hickory shirt, a pair of suspenders holding up his ankle-length jeans, and some battered leather logging boots. He smelled of sweat, chain-saw exhaust, and Copenhagen.

  “Looks like you need some water on that there field,” he said, squinting into the afternoon blaze.

  Did I ever.

  “You got any need for some aluminum irrigation pipes?”

  My heart jumped. “You have some to sell?”

  “No. But I got some you can have.”

  The next morning Allen picked me up in his F250, towing a forty-foot pipe trailer. We spent the day pulling forty-foot irrigation pipes out of a blackberry thicket, from under a towering woodrat nest. He’d brought a one-inch pipe tap to rethread the corroded sprinkler outlets, and by mid-afternoon we had twenty workable pipes on the trailer.

  Back at the farm, Allen helped me shoulder the pipe out onto the field. We hooked it up, turned the valve, and watched as a thousand leaks sprang at each pipe joint where the brittle gaskets were failing to seal. It was enough, though. Just enough pressure, enough water, enough mercy to save my ass that spring.

  Fast-forward three years and the farm is thriving, with a hundred CSA members, a waiting list, and new gaskets in all the hand line. Allen comes to all our potlucks and farm softball games. I drop pints of strawberries and bags of potatoes — the only vegetable he likes — at his doorstep. I’m a new mother, juggling springtime madness that now includes a two-month-old baby and this book project. Meanwhile, we’ve outgrown our twenty-by-forty-foot propagation greenhouse, so I’ve decided to add on another twenty-odd feet. I’m pondering how to get the holes augered, the legs set in concrete, the ribs put up, the plastic stretched, the end walls built — all with a baby in the front pack.

  Enter Tom, one of our founding CSA members, who throws himself into the project. He is retired and has been offering his help for two years, ever since he became a member of the farm. His refrain every week when I see him at the CSA pickup: “If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.” I have hesitated to ask, because I haven’t known how to ask; have been too shy or proud to ask; maybe I don’t want to ask for too much.

  Suddenly, though, I’m in a place where I truly need help. Tom brings his tractor to the farm to auger the holes, and hauls every sixty-pound bag of concrete from the truck. Every day for five days he arrives with all of the tools we need, and together with my family we have a modern-day barn-raising of sorts. In less than a week, there’s a new greenhouse, Tom has become a regular at lunchtime, and baby Cleo is cooing at him like he’s Grandpa.

  Old neighbors. New community. And one little farm in the middle of it all.

  — Zoë Bradbury

  The Farmers’ Table

  * * *

  BY SAMANTHA LAMB

  In yonder meadow, in the small farming town of Hobart, Oklahoma, lives farmer, writer, lover of picnics, and photographer Samantha Joelle Honey Lamb. She milks her cow, tends to her gardens, and creates art on a farm fondly called Early Bird Acres.

  * * *

  “Yes, that’s how to permanently remove a tree stump, Lavern. Just put a tire around it, chip a deep hole in the center of it, put some gasoline in there, and burn the dang thing out.”

  This is what I hear coming from the long, sixteen-person table at the front of the diner in my new-to-me, but well-known by most, town of Hobart. It’s a tiny nook in the wheat plains of Oklahoma. It’s a happy and warm town, so the diner is appropriately named the Kozy Diner. It’s the only breakfast place in a long way from the farm I live on and call Early Bird Acres. But this morning I’m not thinking about the raised beds I need to build or the twenty or so packages I need to bundle and ship. I’m thinking about how much I want to sit at the very lacquered and solid cedar farmers’ table.

  Nobody would look at me, a twenty-five-year-old girl who wears her hair in Dutch braids, and think “farmer.” I do wear vintage gingham dresses and drive an old white Ford pickup around town. I do blast bluegrass music out its windows and try to convince random townsfolk of the importance of their baked goods being made with fresh ground wheatberries. But not a single one of those old farmers had ever looked at me as anyone near a farmer, and I don’t blame them. Mostly I just come off as pastoral or bucolic. I’ve adopted the nickname “Swiss Miss,” which is whispered as I pass by. Once I yodeled for their satisfaction.

  When looking at careers, I always knew I wanted to be a farmer, so I decided to try to conquer the world first through art and then save up money for my own homestead. Once I finished college, I moved my dog, Harold, and myself to one of the family farms just outside of Hobart (which locally is pronounced Hobert). But the one person I needed most in this time of transition was no longer there. My grandfather, whom I lovingly named my dog after, was my inspiration for farming and bringing the local soil back into people’s homes. The way he talked about the land was something of Sweet and Light. He taught me to see everything — from self-sufficiency to the small green sprouts emerging from the soil — in a way that captured my dreams and guided my actions.

  * * *

  The Kozy Diner eclipsed my homestead breakfast time by having the farmers table, and with it an invaluable amount of information.

  * * *

  The old men at that table had no idea that each one of them took on qualities of my grandpa as they spoke about good rain and tomato worms.

  I didn’t need to eat at the Kozy Diner. I had a whole mess of eggs, fresh spinach, and various other garden items right in my very house. I had a lifetime supply of coffee in my cottage kitchen cabinets, thanks to my friends back in Oklahoma City. But the Kozy Diner eclipsed my homestead breakfast time by having the farmers table, and with it an invaluable amount of information. I wanted to ask them “Where can I buy local seed? What’s a natural way to treat the mites on my chickens? Who sells raw milk around here, or, better yet, who’s selling good and healthy Ayrshire cows?” Alas, I didn’t have the courage to simply walk in and sit at the table of elderly farmers in their overalls and well-worn suspenders.

  One morning, after losing two of my chickens, possibly to coyotes, I finally mustered the courage to talk to the table. Not only was I distressed about finding just parts of the Rhode Island Reds, but I was also losing faith in myself as a farmer. What I didn’t realize then was that communication with the outside, knowledgeable world was essential. Not just something I wanted, it was something I needed. Even my grandfather had to learn from his elders.

  The previous week I had heard them discussing the coyote problem, and I thought this would be the perfect in. I wore my favorite cream-and-brown gingham dress, which, yes, twirled, and brought in some eggs for the waitresses. The giving of eggs was something I did out of nervousness. I had a habit of giving a dozen eggs to anybody I intended on meeting. The chickens were a perfect way to break the ice.

  There was only one problem when I walked in: The table was full. With courage that came maybe from three cups of coffee or perhaps the warm smiles on the farmers’ faces, I created my own place by adding a chair.

  “Hello, folks, my name is Samantha Lamb. I’m new in town and I have a coyote problem.”

  “You’re not that new, sweetheart. We’ve seen you coming in here the last three months and all you ever do is smile. Why did you never come over before?” a man I would come to know as Ernest said, as he slid me an empty ceramic mug. And then a man I would get to know as Parson poured me some Kozy Diner coffee.

  The men thought I was a character of sorts, possibly from the realm of Disney. They routinely asked if the mice had sung to me that morn or if the
birds helped me with my gardening. I informed them that the birds ate my strawberries. I was pleased and honored to find that they admired my fervor and dedication to my little farm, and they encouraged me with every tip and opinion. They might all have different opinions, but at least that gave me variety.

  As a whole, the table was something of a wonder. Among the sixteen or so men at the table, they had experienced almost everything when it comes to farm life. I no longer felt foolish for not properly latching the pasture gate and letting all but one cow (the one that was asleep) out onto the wheat, because more than half the people at the table had done the same thing. When I had a good season of produce, we rejoiced. When I found the long-anticipated baby cow stillborn in the pasture, they were there to tell me I wasn’t the only one, even though on some days I felt cursed. When I had to ask one of the men to come over to show me how to properly milk a goat, he did so without hesitation, even though there was a good deal of laughing. Also on that trip to my farm, he tried to demonstrate how to attach my donkey, Fred, to a plow, but all he got was an animal that preferred to nuzzle his pockets for apples rather than till the land.

  Nowadays, I don’t frequent the Kozy Diner as much as I used to, because life here at Early Bird Acres is very busy. I do still look to my farming friends for help, and ask them various questions about the garden and chickens, but now it’s from the comfort of my own dining room table, made of walnut. This is what happened when they discovered that this female farmer knew how to make a good pie, and was willing to feed any hungry farmer in exchange for a bit of good Grandpa advice.

  Buried Steel

  BY SARAHLEE LAWRENCE

  In Terrebonne, Oregon, Sarahlee Lawrence runs Rainshadow Organics. She has also started a farm school, called Plots to Plates, and is the author of River House.

  * * *

  I grew up on a hay farm in central Oregon. As an only child, I spent a lot of time with my horse and hauling hay for my dad. When I moved away to college, I had no intention of coming back. I became a river guide and let the river carry me around the globe. Somewhere along the line I realized I had become untethered. Like a balloon floating up out of a little girl’s hand, I looked back at the family farm with new perspective. With the realization that food is everything, Monsanto was everywhere I traveled, and my dad was ready to turn over the farm, I headed home.

  I don’t know what made me think I could start an organic-vegetable farm and CSA. I didn’t even eat vegetables. It had been ten years since I’d lived on the farm, our climate is notoriously difficult, and I had never planted a seed. Never mind that. I went wild with the seed catalogs, put a deer fence around two acres, buried a drip irrigation system, and built a great big greenhouse. At the end of March, it was time to “raise” the beds.

  The ground had dried up just enough and a friend and I set to the field with shovels in hand. After a couple of grueling days and twenty-nine thousand of the thirty thousand row feet still left to raise, it was clear we needed to work smarter.

  I live in a valley of farms — mostly hay and grain — that are on a much larger scale than my potential veggie patch. I’ve known my neighbors forever. Not much changes out here. The old farmers get older and we still get together every year for Christmas. Even though it had been a decade since I’d seen most of them, they took me back into the gritty fold as if I’d never left.

  In the case of the bed raising, I knew just who to talk to: Glenn Cooper. He’d been farming in the Lower Bridge Valley for half a century. Glenn lived four miles away, at the end of the road. I found him in his shop, full of old engines that he spent his spare time rebuilding. Once he’d built an entire car from random old parts. He called it the Cooper. I poked my head in the door.

  “Glenn?” I called out in my sweetest voice.

  He looked up from his work and stared at me through his big square glasses, pocked from running his welder. Glenn lived about as far out as you could get and was well known for shooting at trespassers on the gravel road beyond his gate. That is, if his dogs didn’t flatten their tires when they stopped briefly to consider the NO TRESPASSING sign. I was always a little scared of him, but he cracked down on the cheap cowboys in black Bailey hats who pilfered hay from our barn in the winter, and we appreciated that.

  “Katie said you needed a tool,” he said without any particular kindness.

  I had called ahead to warn him I was coming and had talked to his lady friend on the phone. “Sure do,” I said as I headed in. “Something to raise my beds.”

  “For those vegetables?” he asked. “They’re not likely to grow here, you know.”

  “I know,” I said, brushing that off. “I’m breaking myself trying to raise my rows.”

  “I know,” he replied, “I’ve seen you working at it.” Glenn put on his old greasy green trucker’s hat and his jean jacket. “I’ve got just what you need.” He stepped out of his shop into bright sun and opened the passenger door to my pickup. “It’s out in my junkyard.”

  Glenn’s “junkyard” was several acres of equipment parts and hunks of metal. We trolled around in low gear between the juniper trees and sagebrush, glancing out the windows at the riches.

  “Now, when I moved here forty-five years ago from northern California,” he said, “I had a couple of kids, five hundred head of cattle, and about five hundred bucks. I brought up two opposite plows that we could mount to a tool bar and hook to the three-point on one of my old tractors.” He rolled down the window and stuck his head out. “I’m pretty sure I set them together out here under a tree.”

  I raised an eyebrow and looked at Glenn, who was looking out the window. I didn’t really know what we were looking for and I couldn’t believe that anything that had been sitting for forty-five years could be of much use.

  * * *

  “I’ve got just what you need. It’s out in my junkyard.”

  * * *

  “Oh hey,” he hooted. “I think I see them. Just stop right there.”

  He dropped down out of the pickup and strode over to a big old juniper tree. I left the truck running and caught up.

  “Yup, here they are,” he said as he kicked at the steel. “They’re buried.”

  “Well, what do you think?” I kicked at them too, and they didn’t budge.

  “Back your truck over here and we’ll pull them out with the chain in the back.”

  Luckily I had a chain, which saved me much embarrassment. I still couldn’t believe we were going to do anything with these things, whatever they were, but I backed up the truck anyway. He hooked them up to the bumper and I eased forward, pulling the slack out of the chain. When he signaled to stop, I stepped out to take a look at what we’d unearthed.

  “They’re huge!” I exclaimed. Three feet long, scooped steel, clearly for moving dirt.

  Glenn didn’t react to my surprise. “Well, help me get them into the truck,” he said.

  We got our hands on the awkward things and hoisted them into the bed. We rolled back to his shop and he disappeared into the bowels of the building, only to emerge with a giant steel bar rigged to be hitched to the back end of a tractor. He went back in and then reappeared with a giant wrench and some solvent to clean up the plows and free the old bolts.

  We spent about an hour getting the plows on the tool bar and hooked to one of his many old tractors. Unexpectedly, he clambered up into the cab of the idling tractor, trundled over to a patch of bare ground, then came to a stop. He eased the plows into the dirt and I watched as Glenn’s rusty steel contraption sliced through the ground and folded it effortlessly together into perfect rows almost a foot tall.

  “Yee-haw!” I squealed, jumping up and down.

  He eased to a stop, dropped the RPMs on the tractor, and stepped down. I ran to him and threw my arms around his shoulders.

  “I love you, Glenn!”

  “I know,” he said stiffly, standing there trapped in my bear hug.

  “You can take the tractor,” he said tersely, then looked me
in the eye. “But leave your truck and bring it back as soon as you’re done.”

  It Takes a Village to Raise a Farm

  * * *

  BY JON PIANA

  A farmer, fermenter, and community activist in Barnard, Vermont, Jon Piana operates Fable Farm with his brother, Christopher. His guiding mission in life is to live within his means.

  * * *

  It was October, and we were buried in potatoes.

  It had all started the winter before. Our root cellar had already been stocked deep with seed potatoes from the prior season’s harvest, but we had been tempted by the mouthwatering descriptions that the authors of the Fedco seed catalog had cleverly written for each of their varieties.

  In midwinter we impulsively ordered more, which meant that by the time the spring dandelions showed their yellow crowns — telling us to get our taters in the ground — we were swimming in seed potatoes. Maybe we’d been guided by an innate survival instinct: Potatoes are meals in themselves, and in a land where winter settles in long and heavy enough to leave most life processes dormant, a potato crop is crucial to sustaining a local foodshed. Or maybe it was simply the promise of pleasure: Up against the cold, dark days of a Vermont winter, potato flesh moist with melted butter is a delectable comfort.

  No matter what, come October we had more potatoes in the ground than my brother, our two interns, and I could manage to harvest with just our hands before the snows came and the ground froze.