...for discerning weeders Supplement July, 2012 Recently, our own Laurie Mackey handed me several sheets of paper. On these was a copy of a talk that her niece, Georgia, gave to the Pittsfield (Mass) Garden Club. After asking Laurie what all of this was about, she told me that Georgia had worked at the Hancock Shaker Village as part of the Community Supported Agriculture program. Georgia actually ended up blogging during her time at the Village and her talk contains excerpts from her blog. Laurie wanted to share this unique perspective and I heartily agreed. The pictures are of the Village itself and are from either off of their web-site or from other locations on the web. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.
ry, and I had done a bit of reading about the Shakers even before applying for the job. I’d even come up with a plot for my next novel centered around Shaker life at the turn of the twentieth century. So I was pleased at the chance to spend a little time breathing in the essence of the place—even if I didn’t have to wear the historically accurate and uncomfortable garb of a bona-fide costumed interpreter. What I didn’t realize was that my work would call on me to become an interpreter between the past and present; to find in my cultivations some of the many threads that tied our “Community” agriculture endeavor to the larger, more highstakes efforts of the Village’s original inhabitants. These conjunctions—between the agricultural and spiritual aims of midnineteenth century utopians and the trials and tribulations of our modern CSA—were in part what prompted me to write a weekly blog for shareholders. Those articles were half owner’s manual, half musing offered in the hopes that our shareholders could partake more fully of this unique experience as well. I’d like to share a few of those blogs with you. The first has to do with a familiar theme among gardeners: acceptance and optimism in the face of climatological, biological and temporal forces. It’s from A Welcome:
The Shakers were by no means the first to invent even the idea that physical labor might provide a means to holy communion. But they were certainly on to something. As all of you are gardeners, you’ll know the feeling. Gardeners and theologians throughout the centuries have found a common ground between cultivation of the soil and cultivation of the soul. Since humans first figured out how to favor banana trees over brambles and so bring forth delight and livelihood from chaos, the stoop laborer has contemplated the union between earth and the heavens. Last year, I was lucky enough to land a job helping create the newest endeavor at Hancock Shaker Village: a Community Supported Agriculture program which would help promote the village, provide a market for some of the historic crops grown in the demonstration beds, and maybe—just maybe—bring in a little of the extra income any non-profit always needs. The idea of a CSA is simple: find customers to pay the costs of a growing season up front in return for a regular share of the farm’s produce. In our case, this CSA had a twist, offering mostly heritage Shaker crops. Because we would be gardening at a museum site, we also attempted to keep the gardens as scenic and the techniques as low-impact and non-anachronistic as possible. Admittedly, my expertise is far more in the area of food-fromdirt than in Shaker custom. I’ve always been interested in histo-
A Welcome The Best Laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley... Robert Burns penned his famous poem from the other end of the harvest cycle, standing in a cut grain field where a mouse was busily trying to salvage what was intended to be her secure home in the coming months. But here in the yet-to-be-harvested field of the Hancock Village CSA, we can relate. Beds of well-tilled soil, cover-cropped and liberally composted, seemed the perfect palette back in February, when the seed orders began to arrive. Silver 1
Princess corn, Shaker heritage Large Red tomatoes, Detroit Dark Red beets and so many more tantalizing harvests-to-be in bulging paper packets awaited, it seemed only spring’s warmth was needed to transform into a bountiful crop. Farming is the perfect place to comprehend the innocent futility of “best laid plans.” It has been a wet, cold spring. The tiller couldn’t do much in the soggy soil. The sun refused to warm the earth, and plantings were delayed. We on the farm grew used to dressing in layers, with the inevitable raincoat and boots completing every outfit. Projected planting dates came and went—as did nibbling voles and corn-hungry crows. And when, at last, the sun arrived, it came with a heat that dried out the first peppers and tiny lettuce seedlings so quickly that for days we hauled hose like so many firefighters in training. Then there was the hail and the bolt of lightning that hit the nearby poultry house chimney... And yet, somehow, we have all arrived. There is an early abundance of fat radishes, a sunny patch of ripening chamomile for tea, an abundance of marigolds, rows of tender lettuce. For days, talk in the garden has centered around the first CSA pickup. We are as excited as, we hope, you are. We’re also a little nervous. How will our best-laid, much altered plans hold up as we prepare the first of a long season’s bounty? And so, with the first flush of pride and a salting of nerves, we welcome you to the start of what we all hope to be a yearly tradition: The Hancock Shaker Village CSA. As you plant your gift of marigolds and enjoy your first tender salad, we hope you will feel like a part of this beautiful place, as well as of the great trend to healthy eating, food security, tradition, sustainability...and patience in the face of Best Laid Plans. The next excerpt speaks to an experience rather unique to a museum-based garden. During open hours, our activities had to be mindful of the historical atmosphere the village, as a whole, was trying to create. Avoiding “anachronism” had its trials, and its possibilities. This is from Weeding and the Luddite:
used to be done?’ A few months later, CSA gardener Becky Rushford laughed about what is really part of the same consideration. ‘This is probably the activity that first got people to invent tools,’ she mused, ‘But sometimes I still get surprised by just how well a hoe works!’ Just as gardening is an ancient practice, the same tools still do provide well for most of its activities. A few levers and wedges allow us to dig holes, remove dandelion roots, cultivate rows, create furrows and clip wayward stems. There are variations, of course. Of the five or six styles of cultivation tools in the garden shed, each gardener has a favorite. The stirrup hoe makes short work of weeds in the long-cultivated, rock-free areas. A traditional hoe chops weeds and lifts plenty of soil around potatoes. A three-tined cultivator breaks through the dry crust and combs out the lumps. Whoever gets in early usually appropriates a particularly useful triangular hand weeder or one of the two trowels, which, of a collection of six, are well designed and sharp enough to deal with HSV’s concrete dirt. Some tools double as artifacts or reproductions of Shaker equipment. The back breaking wheeled cultivators make us wonder what the soil here was like in ages past. More pleasing, our small assortment of baskets make great all-purpose totes, and the wooden barrows are agile over both hard ground and soft. And when it comes to accessories, the Shakers sure designed a serviceable sun hat. There are changes. The rototiller makes up for a shortage of field hands. A tropical tree, neem, produces the organic pesticide we use to ward off potato beetles and other crop devourers. The rows of white spun-bonded Remay do a better job of letting sun in and keeping bugs out than the sacking, old sheets or individual bell jars once did. (Such innovations are in keeping with the Shaker way, which did not shun modernity when it provided a practical, elegant solution in the service of their labor. Brother Arnold of the Sabbath Day Lake Community uses not only Remay, but plastic.) Museum or working farm, stoop labor is still stoop labor, whatever the era. It provides us with a (sometimes achy) reminder of the human effort required of most people worldwide to put food on the table. But gardening the ‘old fashioned’ way—hands in the dirt and shoulder to the wheel— also affords the best view of what is both miraculous and beyond the gardener’s powers to control. The ground cracks, and the sunflower seed planted many days ago lifts its two seed leaves, still clasped in the striped husk, to meet the sun. We pull out tools exactly like those used by Shakers, by sharecroppers, by pioneers and pilgrims, and do their same task: keeping the weeds at bay and the water abundant, warding off the insects and generally clearing the way for the growth and fruiting. Yes, we garden ‘old style,’ because that way still accomplishes the same ancient aims, even in a modern world: coaxing food from dirt. And on the most ordinary of days
Weeding and the Luddite This spring’s Baby Animals at the Village brought a large number of school groups through the gardens on their way to the barn. Despite the lure of calves audible in the distance they lingered, excited to find mint the source of ‘that toothpaste smell,’ to see how gigantic rhubarb can get and to learn the surprising uses of dandelions. But their most frequently asked question was an unexpected one: ‘Are you gardening this way to show how it 2
the work itself still offers the same opportunity it did for Hancock’s Shakers a century ago: to find the connection between lowly labor and lofty thoughts, whatever one’s denomination— another thing no technological advance will ever alter.
ple testing ground upon which convents, monasteries and utopian communities try their spiritual mettle. Interestingly, in recreating a small part of the farming activity that filled former inhabitants’ days and supplied their tables, the HSV CSA program has also created what must be very like a smaller version of the struggles the Shakers faced and conquered in living communally. Gardening, being part creative and part scientific, is a pursuit that fosters firm convictions. ‘The way my grandmother always did it...’ ‘The way I’ve been doing it for fifty years...’ ‘What Cornell says...’ are the foundation of arguments with many right answers. (Our own, we feel, being the ‘best.’) Add unknowns like changes in the weather and machinery malfunctions, and making the right decision seems more critical than ever. Utopia? Not unless each of us is able to stop, breathe, look hard at our own ego and be open to new ways. Call that good team skills of spirituality, it remains a necessary part of the workday if the crop is to get picked on time, the next row seeded or the potatoes brought in ahead of the storm. It is also a challenge the Shakers struggled with. While we tend to portray them as perfected, orderly or even saintly, there is evidence not only in our emulation but in their historical recordings that these struggles were part of their lives. In 1847, a frustrated Brother noted, ‘...There has not been one cart load added by way of composting since I left it. And now there is a terrible commotion; meeting after meeting is being held about how the garden shall be dunged...But I have no wish to speak light of leading members though I positively know there is no need of such confusion in the House of the Lord...’ In the days surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the question of getting along with those of differing opinions is more crucial than ever. Whether our borders are the walls of our home, the outlying cubicles at the office, the political bounds of our nation or the community of globalized society, we still face a question the Shakers—and other utopians—tried to resolve: How can we move through the day-to-day cooperatively and harmoniously with our neighbor and his differing ways? Brother Arnold, who continues to make this question part of his life’s work at the last remaining shaker community, offers a stunningly simple answer. ‘You don’t have to like anyone. But you have to love everyone.’ It’s not always as grand a task as it sounds. But it gets the corn picked and the final crop of lettuce sown with cheer and goodwill here in utopia.
‘Community Support’ means more, for us, than providing vegetables to non-farmers in the local area. Admittedly, much of the labor on our less than two acres of garden would have been child’s play in contrast to the efforts the large-scale agriculture the original inhabitants required: haying, harvesting grain, growing and processing commercial quantities of medicinal herbs. Child labor laws being what they are, we have given this labor over to paid adults: volunteers, college kids pulled off their duties in the barn; the tireless and meticulous crew from Berkshire ARC; the strong-backed laborers from Soldier On, and Yours Truly. There is, as there was, plenty of labor to go around. And such labor, perhaps because of its simplicity, allows personality to emerge. Who is a stoic? Who listens to directions? Who can be trusted to pull the whole weed, not just the green top? It was a study in much the same kind of group dynamic the Shakers must have struggled with and grown from on a daily basis. This excerpt comes from Getting Along, Making Peace: Getting Along, Making Peace Utopia: It’s closer than you think declared the billboard. I was preparing an acerbic witticism when I realized that image below these giant words of optimism was familiar: the round stone barn I pass and re-pass daily since beginning my first season at Hancock Shaker Village. A rapid response of mixed emotions made me hold my tongue. It had been a hard week: rainfall, wet soil, vulnerable seedlings and a migraine combined with the usual disputes and interpersonal difficulties that arise in any job where visions differ among people of deep commitment. Utopia? Yeah, right, my weary self said. But that self could not ignore the welling of pride I also felt at that representation of a place I have come to feel grateful for in so many ways, Yes, I answered myself, close indeed. It is never easy to get along perfectly with everyone all the time, no matter the situation. But bring a group of mostly unrelated people together, ask them to voluntarily share the same living quarters and workday, allow them to excise their creativity and personal initiative, yet function harmoniously for the good of the group...That challenge is the real, if seemingly sim3
When you are wheeling a wooden wheelbarrow, people stop and look. If that wheelbarrow is laden with 80-plus warty, yellow squashes, people are apt to point as well, to snap pictures, to ask questions. It is also likely that, unless you quiet your mind and feel the movement of the barrow with your body and mind, you’re liable to embarrass yourself when you reach that divot where the boardwalk meets the grass. Having my every move (or blunder) on display made the labor different. Much of the gardening we did at the village allowed us to become part of a living picture for thousands of visitors. Was I a Shaker? Many of them even asked. No, I replied— merely a Shaker admirer who loves to garden and supports a family. In other words, a particular permutation of all those who come to work at this place because, to varying degrees, they love its spirit and need a paying job. But wheeling that beautifully designed wooden barrow, or taking a moment to look up and see the summer mist rise over a pigeon-flown morning sky, who was to say the labors of my paid employ weren’t starting to blur into something else entirely?
For more information on the Hancock Shaker Village, visit http://www.hancockshakervillage.org/ This village began in the late 1780s. The Round Stone Barn was erected in 1826. Due to the decline of the Shaker population, what was left of the property was sold in 1960 and is now a living history museum. There is only one active Shaker community left today. The Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village located in New Gloucester, Maine. Visit http://www.shaker.lib.me.us/about.html and find out more about this unique place.
We hope you have enjoyed this special supplement to The Compost Pile. If you have unique stories, articles, ideas, be sure to send them along! Thank you again to Laurie for sharing her niece's writings with us.
Margaret Stewart—Editor The Foundation for the Gator
Shari Farrell, Karen Harper, and Linda Meyers—Co-editors
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Nation.....An equal opportunity institution.