Sheila of Dell Farmstead

Actually my neighbor Sheila of Dell Farmstead started her cheesemaking workshop at 9 am! Fortunately, she included a beautiful lunch in the day’s schedule. By the end of the day we had made: chevre, a goat cheese; 30 minute mozzarella; feta; cheddar; creme fraiche, soft goat cheese, and a Tomme unique to Dell Farmstead.

Curds and When

We learned that all cheese begins with separating the curds from the whey – with the help of additives like citric acid, and starter cultures including rennet that are different for each type of cheese. Animal rennet is extracted from the 4th stomach of a calf, but vegetarians can use a rennet made from plants like thistle flowers and stinging nettles. We also learned that whey, the liquid that is left after the milk solids are removed is considered a pollutant. That means it cannot go down the drain into a septic system or sewer system. Sheila feeds the whey to her hens or dumps it on her garden where it does no harm.

Heating the milk

The very first step is to warm the milk. How hot it needs to be and for how long depends on the type of cheese being made. A cheese thermometer is vital because it gives small increments. All utensils were stainless steel and very clean. No oil or soap residue can be left behind.

Ricotta?

When the whey has been totally drained, the curds can look like this. I’m not sure if this is the ricotta or the chevre. Both look very similar.

We didn’t make any cajeta which is a Mexican caramel made from goat milk, but Sheila had some ready for us to sample. She also made dark chocolate covered goat milk truffles which you can see us tasting, while one devoted member of the group was deputed to keep his eye on the thermometer.

Luncheon Table

The truffles did not ruin our appetites. We sat down to a wonderful lunch of paillards of chicken with a creme fraiche (that we made)  sauce over rice and a lovely green salad. Sustaining.

Feta Cheese - almost

Feta cheese is not really feta until it has been brined.  for three days.

30 minute mozzarella

I couldn’t believe it only takes 30 minutes to make mozzarella. It uses the magic of a microwave, and some taffy-pulling technique.  Most of the cheese we made used commercial milk, but only Guida and Our Family Farms milk because these two are only pasturized, not ULTRA pasturized which would have killed every single bacteria. You need bacteria, good bacteria, to make cheese.

Cheese Cave

We only made one cheese that will end up in Sheila’s ‘cave’ which made use of an old cistern in her basement. She lives in an old farmhouse.  Many of the cheese recipes we used are in Ricky Carroll’s book Home Cheese Making. Ricky is known as the Cheese Queen and everything you need to make cheese is available through her website. Sheila took Ricky’s workshop nearly 30 years ago – and has been making cheese ever since.

Hoegger’s Farmyard is another company that sells cheese making equipment online.

If you’d like information about a cheesemaking workshop contact Sheila at  sheila@thedell.com. Oh, by the way – we all got to take some cheese home with us.

PS – Don’t forget that tomorrow, Saturday, Jan. 14 is the great Winterfare in Northampton. Fresh produce, workshops, soup cafe, and lots of fun all around.

Jim Barry

When I drove down the Greenfield Community College driveway last Saturday I passed ‘my tree,’ a weeping cherry that I donated when I left the College in 1989. I reveled in its good health, parked my car and walked towards the steps. A head popped out of the Sloan Theater door, calling to tell me I could take the elevator up. I called back, “No, no. Step to health. Step to health,” ever my motto as I was always up and down those stairs in my days with Continuing Education. A man right on my heels, asked me if I thought they were just being friendly or was the offer a reference to – and here he brushed his balding, white haired head and made me laugh. I had exactly the same thought, although I had a little more white hair.

My white haired companion turned out to be Jim Barry, Regional Coordinator, Green Communities Division, Western Region, Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources who gave a great talk about what the state is doing in the areas of energy and the environment. His talk made me very happy that I live in Massachusetts. Although more remains to be done.

Shelly Beck

We trailed after a young woman in red to the front steps and met Shelly Beck. She represented Enterprise Farm and gave a presentation about the farm in the “How Can We Scale Up Our Food System?” workshop. These were just two of the ways that the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee found to inform and inspire an energetic group of area residents who were stepping up to action in a whole variety of ways.

I could not attend all the workshops at the Creating Greenfield’s Future: Our Food, Economy and Future conference, and was sorry to miss Youth as Change Makers where young people from the Seeds of Solidarity SOL (Seeds of Leadership) Garden in Orange shared their experiences, or Let’s Divorce the ‘Sick Care’ System that was about finding ways for us to take more responsibility for our health.  There were business workshops and the opportunity to spend more time with Ben Hewitt, author of “The Town that Food Saved,” who gave a thoughtful and engaging keynote speech.

It was the growing, processing and distribution of food that was of most interest to me on Saturday. Margaret Christie of CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) led a discussion that made clear the challenges of our area, rich in land and skill as it is.

The first challenge is to find more ways to put potential new farmers in touch with people who have land available for farming. Start up costs for farming are considerable, especially land. It made me think that although Heath is not an ideal location in many ways, I would love to have some of our acreage under cultivation. I am definitely going to explore some of those linking resources beginning with local land trusts.

The second challenge is the need for more agricultural infrastructure. I know this from my own experience raising pigs and chickens for meat. Over the years we have been here the availability of slaughter houses has decreased – even as more people are interested in raising their own meat, and farmers are seeing a good local market.

Also if more food is produced here, we need more ways to process it to give farmers a year round income, not just during the growing season. That means freezing capabilities and cold storage.

I cannot begin to cover everything discussed, but the CISA report Scaling Up Local Food is available and downloadable on their website, www.buylocalfood.org.

In the afternoon, after a great lunch, I attended the Food Security: A Household Approach workshop. Eveline MacDougal talked about founding the Pleasant Street Community Garden and the benefits that go way beyond growing some vegetables, Jay Lord brought us up to date on Just Roots, the town’s new Community Garden space, Wendy Marsden gave advice about preserving our own harvests in a variety of ways, and Kimberly Walker-Goncalves gave an informative and amusing talk about raising chickens in town.

There are any number of people in town who might be happy to know that it is perfectly legal to have ten or fewer chickens in your backyard. Since I assume that anyone raising a backyard flock is more interested in eggs and the cheerfulness of the chickens, they don’t even have to worry about the lack of poultry slaughtering facilities.

Chickens are cheerful, domestic and productive. At least that is the way I have always thought of them. They are not much trouble, although as Goncalves pointed out, even in town you have to be aware of predators, not only neighborhood dogs but foxes and raccoons. I would add the caveat that you will not save any money, but the eggs will be unlike store eggs, and you’ll enjoy the chickens’ company.

Pigs are not quite as picturesque as a mixed flocked of silver laced wyandottes, barred rocks, and buff orpingtons, but it is legal to have two pigs in your backyard in Greenfield. And remember you must have at least two pigs in order for them to thrive. They are social animals and need a companion, and a little competition at the food trough.

Ben Hewitt

I left the conference to the rousing rhythms of Echo Uganda, but the words that were ringing in my ears were those of Ben Hewitt. “I want more than sustainable agriculture. I want restorative agriculture. Agriculture that restores our health, restores our soil and environment, restores our economy and restores our community.”

Thank you Greening Greenfield for an inspiring day.

Between the Rows   November 12, 2011

Readers often have favorite authors and are not content with reading the author’s books. They want to know where and how the  author lived, what made them the writer, the person they were, what influenced them and what supported them. In recent years, after a tough beginning, I have come to enjoy Eudora Welty’s books. I confess it took listening to an audio book of her stories including “Why I Live at the P.O.” and heard those southern cadences spoken that I was finally able to read and appreciate her fond understanding and delineation of a world that had seemed so foreign to me.

During the past year I attended a concert performance of a one act opera written by Alice Parker of Hawley based on Welty’s book “The Ponder Heart,” read a biography of Elizabeth Lawrence, another southern gardener who was a friend of Welty’s and her mother Chestina, and most recently met Jane Roy Brown of Conway, who, with co-author Susan Haltom, has written “One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place.” That book, illustrated not only with gorgeous photographs of the restored garden, but family photos as well, has sent me back to re-read Welty’s wonderful stories filled with unforgettable characters.

Jane Roy Brown found her way to writing and to gardening slowly. It was during a period of unemployment years ago that she took a job working as a gardener in a private garden that she found she loved working with plants. “The work spoke to me. While working with rocks I thought of the Japanese gardens I had visited two years before,” she said. That job led to the beginning of nine years of classes at the Radcliffe Seminars (now the Landscape Institute at the Arnold Arboretum) earning a certificate in landscape design history.

At the same time she was working as a journalist in many different fields, but has specialized for some time in travel journalism, often collaborating with her photographer husband Bill Regan. In 2004 she was invited to the opening of the newly restored Welty garden where she met Susan Haltom, who had worked with Eudora Welty in her last years, and oversaw the renovation. Since Brown is a knowledgeable gardener as well as a writer, she and Haltom soon found a lot of common ground. “We just clicked,” Brown said.

Photo courtesy of Bill Regan

Brown said that Eudora Welty gave Haltom exclusive permission to write about the garden, but because she was not a professional writer she proposed that the two of them work together. “We wrote a proposal and that was a valuable task because it allowed us to get out our ideas. It was a safe place to make mistakes while we got to know each other. Mostly we worked long distance by phone at this stage,” Brown said.

“The University of Mississippi was interested in doing the book right away, and then our work really began,” Brown said. “Susan is a visual person and a big picture thinker. I’m more interested in detail and exploring the historical context.”

Haltom had access to Eudora Welty’s letters and her mother’s garden journals, and both Haltom and Brown had garden magazines of the period to help illustrate the aesthetics and practices of the time. Chestina was an avid and skilled gardener; the garden she created in Jackson, Mississippi is an example of what the typical residential garden in the south looked like in the first half of the twentieth century. Though the garden had been overgrown and the lines were lost, Haltom was able use almost archeological methods to find and reveal the beds and paths of the original garden. Though she traveled widely Welty made the house on Pinehurst Street her home all her life. She always thought of the garden as “Chestina’s garden” even after her death, and exhorted Haltom not to make the garden anything more than it was during her mother’s lifetime.

The story of Chestina’s garden is also the story of a remarkable progressive woman who lived at a time when work outside the home was discouraged, but who found ways to engage with other women and the community, to keep learning, and to support her daughter Eudora in her desire for a different kind of life.

Brown has shown that the story of a garden is also a story of a particular time and place, of social movements and important personal events, both joyful and sad.

Readers of Welty’s works will be familiar with the way gardens and flowers appear in her work and it is clear that the garden inspired Welty and refreshed her spirit and imagination. It is fitting that the restoration of the garden was completed before the restoration of the house which she bequeathed to the State of Mississippi and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

In addition to working on this book, Brown has projects closer to home serving as the Director of Educational Outreach at the Library of American Landscape History which has its office in Amherst. This non-profit organization produces beautiful books like “Silent City on a Hill: Picturesque Landscapes of  Memory and Boston’s Mount Auburn Cemetery” and a new reprint of “Design in the Little Garden” by Fletcher Steele who designed the gardens at Naumkeag in Stockbridge.

Talking with Brown I thought of the way the garden path leads to paths into history, art and culture. Brown has also strolled those wandering paths, personally and professionally, and to the benefit of us readers who will open “One Writer’s Garden.”

Between the Rows   November 5, 2011

One Writer's Garden by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown

Eudora Welty has been much on my mind these last months. First there was a performance of the one act opera composed by Alice Parker based on Welty’s The Ponder Heart, and then I read a biography of Elizabeth Lawrence who was a friend of Welty’s, and then my book club read One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty. All of that is topped off with the publication of One Writer’s Garden written by Susan Haltom who researched and oversaw the restoration of the garden, and Conway’s Jane Roy Brown, journalist and garden historian, whose writing is familiar to many of us.

This beautiful book published by the University of Mississippi tells the story not only of Eudora and her mother Chestina who designed the garden, but of the life and culture of the early to mid-twentieth century and how a garden reflected that culture.  Jane Roy Brown will be at Pages in Conway on Sunday, October 23, from noon til 2 pm, talking about the book and signing on request. The book will be available at local bookstores.

I’ll be writing more about Jane Roy Brown and her book soon. Keep watching.

Melanie and Ray Poudrier

Gardens are planned, grow and develop over time as dependably as any single plant. Ray and Melanie Poudrier’s garden could be said to have begun when Ray’s father bought land in Hawley in 1942.

Ray’s father joined his mother and their brood of thirteen children on Hawley summer weekends to see the latest developments. The family grew a vegetable garden, had an orchard and a blueberry patch. They even rented a cow for the summer to have milk for all those children. What they did not have was electricity or running water.

They didn’t have a car during the week either, which meant when a few extra supplies were needed, Ray’s mother would leave a note for the mail carrier to give  Avery’s General Store, and the next day necessities would be delivered along with the mail and a bill. “We weren’t the only ones depending on the mail and Avery’s either,” Ray said when I visited for a tour of the gardens. “I often saw other bags of groceries in the back of the mail car.”

Happily, when Ray met Melanie and they prepared to marry, she was as up for Hawley adventures as Ray. As newly weds they began building their vacation house. “It was always exciting,” Melanie said as she recounted stories of bathing in a frigid spring fed pond after a day’s work.

Ray explained that because Melanie is so slim and petite, she is the one who could fit into tight spaces, like a well, or next to the house foundation to apply tar before the land was graded. That vacation house became their permanent home in 1981.

Heaths, heathers, stone and shed

The house was snuggled into the woods which they both loved, but when they decided to put up solar panels in the mid-1980s trees had to come down. “That opened up a whole new world,” Melanie said. Vegetable and flower gardens were shifted around and now the sunny land in front of the house is filled with extensive ornamental beds that can be admired from the house in every season.

The gardens include a whole array of perennials, but once they discovered the heaths and heathers they fell in love. Heaths and heathers both belong to the Ericaceae family, but they each have there own genus, Erica and Calluna. They are similar in that they are both evergreen shrubs, some very low, some growing to a height of three feet, some are upright, and some are very spready. The Poudrier’s sunny garden has the kind of poor acid soil that all that heaths and heathers enjoy.

“There is so much variation in the texture and color of the foliage,” Ray said. As we walked through the garden this was clear as we saw gray-green foliage, golden foliage that was bright even on that showery day, dark green and light green foliage and even foliage that was an autumnal shade of red all year long.

Calluna 'Allegro'

Heaths and heathers also produce flowers at different times of the year depending on the cultivar, but bloom begins very early in the spring and continues through the summer. Many bloom in various shades of pink and lavender, but there are also white varieties. “During its bloom season a plant can be a beautiful cloud of color,” Melanie said. Melanie added that some nurseries will tell you to shear back the plants in the fall to remove spent flowers and keep the plants neat, but she never did that. “The flowers just disappear,” she said.

Melanie does not mulch the plants either, because she said the voles were a worse problem than weeds. Mulch provides good nesting spaces for the voles who love to eat the heaths, although they don’t bother the heathers.

All their plants have been bought locally and they have found a good range of varieties. Many people don’t pay much attention to the color of or season of the flowers, but concentrate on the form and color of the foliage that provides interest in the winter garden. “You get a lot of bang for your buck,” Melanie said talking about the pleasure they enjoy all year long.

The Poudriers have included other plants whose foliage contrasts with the heaths and heathers. There are alliums with tall thin oniony foliage, European ginger with its low shiny leathery round leaves, and creeping savory, a perennial, which resembles the evergreens and produces white flowers.

Hawley Crowsfoot Schist

As varied as they are, the heaths and heathers are only half the beauty of the garden beds. The other half is provided by the magnificent stones that Ray has moved into place to provide a framework and structure for the plants. He is especially proud of a large slab of Hawley’s unique crow’s foot schist he has placed among the heathers.

Ray has worked with stones from the site for many years, building stone walls that mark the cultivated domestic landscape, an artistically arranged stoneworks around an ornamental pool, and a rock garden that includes not a single plant. Ray smiled when he said he wanted to build a garden for Melanie that would never need weeding.

Perhaps the best of all worlds they have found is stones with heaths and heathers.

Between the Rows  October 8, 2011

There was nothing photogenic about our chores this glorious autumn weekend – mowing, weeding, cutting back – so I’ll concentrate on an exploration of another Heath henhouse.  Joey built, overbuilt he said, this 10×12 foot henhouse for his ten hens. You can see he has a lot of help! He read a lot and looked at a lot of henhouses, and talked to a lot of people before he built his. The forethought shows. His luck shows too. He found the little stairway at the town dump. He said it is attached to the henhouse with only three or  four screws.  The building itself is built on skids, much like Bob’s, which I wrote about here. Joey said he built it on skids because he wasn’t sure where he wanted to put it permanently.

Joey wanted the children to be able to collect the eggs without going into the chicken space so he set aside this part of the chicken house for storage and copied Sheila’s system which I wrote about here.

The front of the egg boxes looks like a cabinet with a slanted top that keeps the chickens from roosting on it. The chickens enter this space from the opening on the left.

The flat part of the cabinet can be lifted and hooked up to make it easy to clean the egg boxes. The row of boxes is not nailed down. The row can be removed entirely making it very easy to shake out and clean. This is a great idea.

Joey thought a lot about the cleaning out process. This clean out door with a latch near the floor on the inside opens  to a door on the outside.

The reason for the second door is too keep out critters who have been known to open latches.  When this door opens all any critter will see is a blank wall.  On clean out day, Joey is outside with the cart and the kids sweep out all the bedding. They do a terrific job, Joey said. He then vacuums out all the cobwebs and they all put down more shavings.

One of the most unique elements of Joey’s henhouse, and one I am  going to add to mine, is this oystershell dispenser. It is made of two lengths of PVC pipe with a cut back PVC elbow on the end and fastened to the wall with ordinary brackets. He just pours crushed oyster shell into the pipe and the chickens take it as they wish. And Joey says they really like it and it goes very fast. He uses these in the winter when the chickens do not get the necessary grit from pecking around in the  soil. The oystershell provides grit all winter long, in addition to providing calcium for strong eggshells.

Fortunately Joey has a good crew of chicken wranglers. Only one more henhouse in my series. Keep watching.

Erica - Heath

Yesterday, in the rain, I visted the gardens of Melanie and Ray Poudrier and paid special attention to their collection of heaths and heathers. These two evergreen shrubby plants are often mentioned together in the same breath, but I never really knew how to tell them apart until Melanie made me look at the foliage closely. Heaths and heathers are both members of the Ericaceae family, but heath of the genus Erica has needle-like foliage.

Calluna - heather

The foliage of genus Calluna or heather is quite different with scale leaves that remind me of cedar foliage.  Heath and heather foliage comes in a range of colors from deep to bright green, grayed green, golden or even red. You will be hearing more about this garden soon.

The Authors Tent

The Conway Festival of the Hills is a grand autumnal event in our region. This year I got to share tent space with other authors like Marie Betts Bartlett (left in blue) who brought her book The (true) Story of The Little Yellow Trolley Car and Heidi Stemple (right oogling the baby. Heidi is the daughter of and co-author with Jane Yolen of many books, true, mysterious and delicious.  In the center is Jessica, owner of The World Eye Bookstore who was running the cash register.

David Costello, author and illustrator

David Costello was at the table too, with his new book Little Pig, and his ink and brush. Because of the constant rain we did have a few quieter moments which gave David time to make special drawings, in consultation with some younger readers. This area is so rich in fine authors and illustrators that a whole new roster took the afternoon signing session: Holly Hobbie, John Crowley, Peter Jeswald, and editor of Morning Song, Susan Todd.

Holly Hobbie is well known for her Toot and Puddle series of books, but I love her new books about Fanny. John and Peter write for adults. Crowley takes us to worlds fantastic and real in his novels, while Jeswald is a good man to have a round the house and garden with non-fiction books from Taunton Press and Storey Publishing.

Susan Todd, along with Carol Purington, edited the poetry anthology Morning Song: Poems for New Parents that I wrote about here.

The Little Yellow Trolley Car

I’ve even given a copy of this to my great-granddaughter Bella so she’ll know a little piece of our local history. The book is a delight.

I Can Help

I bought this for my younger great granddaughter, Lola, because even at two she must be learning that there are ways she can help.

Barefoot Book of Dance Stories

I got this signed for Bella but I might wait a year or two before giving it to her. She is always twirling and dancing, but the stories of other cultures and their dances might be even more entrancing for a slightly older girl.

Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep

This is a charming bedtime book with whimsical illustrations of all kinds of animals that hibernate in winter.

I was thrilled that so many people came to have books signed for their children, making sure we knew that they were already reading to them, every day, even if they were only three months old. That is the perfect time to begin, and contemplate years of happy Reading Aloud.

Crops of writers help us grow crops of readers. Very important.

Little Big House Gallery

Artist Glenn Ridler says his Little Big House is a major work of his career, playfully and artfully shifting proportions to build his living space and the Little Big House Gallery. The house is set amid beautiful gardens that were the setting for his daughter’s wedding in June.

Little Big House shed

I have known Glenn and his wife Christine Baronas for many years, but I do not often get to visit up on their Shelburne hill.  A shed I had not seen before provides an excellent space for enjoying the garden.

A garden lit by the setting New England sun last Friday is as artful as anyone could desire. But it is a fleeting beauty.

Little Big House Gallery - Bridge of Flowers exhibit

The beauties of the Bridge of Flowers were captured more permanently by a group of artists including Fred Burrington and Walter Cudnohufsky. It is this exhibit that brought me up to Patten Hill, picturesque in its own right, to enjoy the visions that many artists have created of Shelburne Falls’ Bridge of Flowers. Some of the paintings had been sold even before I left the opening. The exhibit will continue until October 28. Gallery Hours are Saturday and Sunday from 1-4 pm. The drive to and from the Little Big House Gallery alone is worth the trip on an autumnal afternoon.

Paul Hicks

Paul Hicks has been farming in Charlemont just about since the day he was born 54 years ago, following in his father’s and grandfather’s steps. Now grandsons Tucker and Brody (aged four and two) are out in the barn and advising their father on how to drive the oxen. Of course, the farm has changed over the years.

Paul’s father Richard and his uncle Walter had dairy herds. My husband and I got to know them because they brought their heifers up to our fields for summer pasture. We loved watching them checking on the heifers every week or so, calling out to them to give them a bit of grain so they would remain familiar. They’d laugh as the heifers ran toward them for their treat. “Why are you so wild? Why are you so wild?” they’d ask as they rubbed their faces and slapped their flanks.

Richard is gone now and so is most of the dairy herd, but Paul still has eight milkers and he raises bull calves for four months and then sells them throughout New England to be trained as oxen. Paul has also been selling vegetables at a small farm stand right on Route 2 for the past few years, but this year there is a new reason to stop at the Hicks farm – a corn maze.

“We have a family farm and it has to support the family,” Hicks said. “We drove past a corn maze in Vermont last year and started thinking that there was nothing like that out here on Route 2 and thought it was something we might try.”

After a little research, the cornfield was planted this spring, along with an extra big field of pumpkins. The experiment had begun with a lot of help from Paul’s sons, Ryan and Gary and their wives Jess and Shannon. Sister Joanne MacLean helped with set up; she and her husband Bob, in their hats as Friends of the Charlemont Fairgrounds, will be on hand at a concession selling hamburgers, hot dogs and soda.

In spite of Irene and all the rain the cornfield has not been damaged; the maze opened on Labor Day weekend as scheduled. Traffic to the maize started slow, but they were busy on Sunday. Hicks said that people have even begun buying pumpkins.

This Friday, September 16, between 5-8 PM and Saturday between 8-11 AM entries for the Scarecrow Contest are being accepted at the maze.

Friday, September 16 is also the date of the first Flashlight Friday. “The maze is a totally different experience at night,” Hicks said. Other Flashlight Fridays are scheduled for October 7 and 21.

In addition to maneuvering through the maze and maybe buying a pumpkin, families with young children will also have a chance to visit with the chickens, the goats, a baby calf, and a miniature donkey at the petting zoo. Tucker and Brody will be selling grain for the animals. Farmers start work young!

I have become quite fascinated by the whole idea of ‘agri-tourism’ and what it can mean to small farms, and to the tourists. I like to think children in our area know that eggs come from chickens, milk comes from cows and that potatoes grow under the ground while tomatoes grow out in the sun, but on his TV series the famous chef Jamie Oliver proved that many urban and suburban children do not know these things. Agri-tourism can be as much an educational event as a recreational treat.

About three years ago two of my daughters invited us to visit a big farm in their neighborhood in the eastern part of the state. The farm offered wagon rides, pick your own apples, pick your own flowers, choose your own pumpkin, and a barn store full of farm made jams and relishes, maple syrup and even bags of kettle corn. I passed on the kettle corn but the grandchildren had a great time even though they were too old for the hay bale maze set up for the very young set. However, as I recall, all the children really enjoyed walking on top of all those circling hay bales.

Farmers need to find new ways of making their farm pay, and we all need reminders of how important good farms are to our well-being and health. Agri-tourism benefits us all.

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Scarecrow Contest Rules. Entry fee is $5 for each entry. Only one entry per person in each of the three categories: traditional, scariest and funniest. Set up for the contest will be Friday, September 16 between 5-8 PM and Saturday morning between 8-11 AM. Judging will be done during the week by popular vote. Winners will be announced Saturday, September 24, and scarecrows must be taken away on Sunday the 25^th and Monday the 26^th.  There will be cash prizes! For more information call 625-2623.

Next Saturday, September 17 is also the date of the Sunflower Contest co-sponsored by The Recorder and the Greenfield Garden Club, held at the Energy Park on Miles Street in conjunction with the John Putnam Fiddlers Reunion. How did your sunflowers grow this year? Tall? Multiflowered? Bring your entry to the Energy Park on Miles Street between noon and 2 PM. The contest is divided into two groups:  15 and younger and 16 and older. The categories are tallest, most blooms on one plant, heaviest head, largest head and best arrangement, which must contain mostly sunflowers. Additionally, judges reserve the right to create a special category should that prove necessary. Winners will be announced from The Station in the park, once the judging is complete. Contest winners get bragging rights, a nifty ribbon and a bag of local apples. Everyone who enters gets their picture in the following week’s Life & Times section. ###

Between the Rows  September 10, 2011