Farming Across
Generations
WRITTEN BY HIMANEE GUPTA-CARLSON PHOTOS BY JIM GUPTA-CARLSON
y husband Jim and I first visited Arnold Grant’s M&A Farm in 2013. As we drove out of Saratoga toward Washington County’s Durkeetown area, city streets gave way to lush, green rolling hills. It was mid-May and nature was bringing the landscape back to life. We arrived at Arnold’s farm and found him near the barn, sitting on a ledge.
M
Then, it was time to see the cows. This was dairy land, but Arnold like many owners of smaller farms had begun transitioning out of raising cows for milk in 1990. He was now tending a Black Angus herd for beef. Their furred skins glistened in the sun as they looked up at us in a pickup truck.
We were avid Saratoga Farmers Market shoppers and hopeful new farmers. We wanted to see where some of the meat we had been buying from local farmers was coming from. Arnold, then 77, showed us around.
They ignored him.
He introduced us first to his “beauties” – soft downy three-day-old chicks keeping warm under a heat lamp. The “uglies,” as he termed them, were next. They were fuller grown chickens and pigs, lovely in their own way and destined for their date with a butcher – “their one bad day.” “That one’s leaving us today,” Arnold said, gesturing to one of the pigs. “And that one,” pointing to another, “is next in line.” saratogaTODAYnewspaper.com
Arnold tried to hustle them toward us with a “ha Bessie, ha Bessie” chant. “Oh come on,” he implored the cows. “Don’t embarrass me. We have guests.” We took in the breathtaking beauty of the landscape as Arnold pointed out the house where he grew up in the 1930s and the home he built with his high school sweetheart Marilyn after their marriage. Arnold Grant is the eldest living member of a farming family that spans several generations. He, his daughter, and granddaughter are a piece of the patchwork community that has thrived in the Capitol Region for nearly nine decades. He and his wife Marilyn had two children. WINTER 2021 | SARATOGA FAMILY | 29
