Life Under Our Feet – and Fruit Over Our Heads

There is life under our feet. I have talked about living soil from time to time, but in his New York Times essay yesterday  Jim Robbins says that “One-third of living organisims live in  soil. But we know littel about them.” Well, of course I know about worms and  bugs and the mycellium that I can see, and I know the soil is full of microbes, but to think that one-third of ALL living organisims live in the soil is mind boggling. Research is going on about all this life and some of it is going on in Central Park.

“A teaspoon of soil may have billions of microbes divided among 5,000 types, thousands of species of fungi  and protozoa, nematodes, mites and a couple of termite species. How these and other pieces fit together is still largely a mystery.” What a revelation! It makes it clearer to me that it is really important to garden organically, putting food, as in compost, into the soil to feed all those organisims., and helping to maintain a healthy system.

The Sunday New York Times  also included a story by Patricia Leigh Brown talked about ‘fruit activists’  who are “using fruit to reclaim public land and expand ideas of art.” It seem apprpropriate to me that both these articles appeared on Mother’s Day, when we should also celebrate Mother Earth and think about the riches she showers upon us, and what we owe to her in gratitude and responsibility to care for and share those gifts.

The life under our feet, and the fruit over our heads are all gifts! Celebrate every day.

A is for Apple – A to Z Blogger Challenge

Clarkdale prizewinning apples at the Franklin County Fair

A is for Apple and I found 36 varieties of Apples with names that begin with A right here.  I’ve known about the Arkansas Black and the Arlington Pippin but that was the end of it for me. But there is also the Ambrosia apple, a modern Canadian apple similar to the Golden Pelicious, the American Summer Pearmain Apple, very juicy, the Autumn Gold apple, better than Golden Delicious and obvously, many many more!

I became interested in old apple varieties when I became a regular at my local orchards, Clarkdale in Deerfield and Apex in Shelburne. They have Northern Spy, Gravensteins, Winesaps and many more. I like to buy a bag of ‘pie mix’, several varieties of apple because my applie pie guru, Susan Chadwick, told me the secret of her fabulous pies is different varieties in one pie.

Taste, Memory by David Buchanan

Of course, I am not the only one who is interested in old apples. David Buchanan wrote Taste, Memory about old apples, and other old fruit and vegetable varieties that have been forgotten – almost. Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors and Why They Matter takes us on David’s journey from the Slow Foods Movement to the farms and orchards of Maine where he now lives.

On this journey he met John Bunker in Maine, a man who really knows his apples. He goes hunting for old apples and has written his own book about apple hunting in the orchards of Maine Not Far From the Tree. He is a man of passion with a great sense of humor and great taste buds. I wrote about his visit to Apex Orchard with David Buchanan here

There’s a lot to know about apples like the reason Johnny Appleseed (born not far away in Leominster, Massachusetts, a town also known as the Plastic City) planted apples was because everyone drank cider in those days. And usually not sweet cider. Hard cider! And hard apple cider is another trend in our area. West County Cider in our neighborhood is a great outfit and make wonderful cider including varietals (just like wine) like Baldwin and Redfield, a pink cider made from Redfield apples that have red flesh.

Yes, there is a lot to know about apples. And a blog post is simply not long enough. Think of all the apples that begin with letters besides A.  As part of the A to Z challenge I will be posting everyday this month because although there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, I will be adding/publishing Between the Rows every Sunday so there will be 30 posts in a row.

A big  shout out and thank you to Arlee Bird who  invented A to Z Challenge.

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Taste, Memory by David Buchanan

David Buchanan

David Buchanan and I met at the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD)  reunion in September where he gave a six minute talk about what he had been doing since he graduated in 2000. He talked as fast as he could, and I listened as fast as I could, but I was glad I could slow the journey when I received a copy of his new book Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter.

Buchanan’s book chronicles the last 20 years of his wanderings from Pullman,  Washington state with its USDA Western Regional Plant Introduction Station and its genebank, to Maine where he met characters like John Bunker who has an orchard with over 300 varieties of antique/heritage apples and an apple CSA. Even all those years ago in Washington he was interested in ‘preserving disappearing agricultural traditions” and Taste, Memory relates the questions he asked himself about whether agricultural diversity is relevant in “our modern world of supermarkets, giant tractors, and irrigated megafarms? What role can the individual play? . . . How do we summon the energy and will to keep this bounty alive?” As his journey has led him across the country he has found some answers.

As suggested by the title of his book it is taste and flavor that have guided him He became involved with the Slow Food Movement and helped found the Portland, Maine chapter of Slow Food. He now serves on its national Ark of Taste Biodiversity Committee, which evaluates and helps preserve endangered heritage foods from around the country. Slow Food is about more than cooking from scratch, which is what I thought it was. Briefly, Slow Food is a formal organization whose aim begins with encouraging the enjoyment of locally and sustainably grown food, maintaining biodiversity, and caring for the land that food grows on so it will be healthy for future generations. There is more, of course, and much more than simply roasting my own chicken and making my own blueberry muffins without a mix.

The book is filled with personal connections to other individuals and organizations like the Seed Savers Exchange .  In fact, in the mid nineties he spent a year working with the Austrian counterpart to the Seed Savers Exchange, where he produced seeds to maintain the thousands of vegetables and grains in their collection.

Taste, Memory by David Buchanan

Taste, Memory is the kind of book that I end up reading to my husband while he is trying to read the newspaper at breakfast, or in the evening when he is trying to read the paper he never got through in the morning. I can’t stop myself from reading sections like that about Turkey winter wheat, an old wheat that grows to six feet tall – just like the heritage wheats I have seen Eli Rogosa grow in Colrain. Both Rogosa and Buchanan see the importance of grains that require less irrigation and petroleum based fertilizers.

This book, with its tales of exciting searches for heritage apples, Buchanan’s own inventiveness, and cooperation between various groups of people and organizations, presents a wonderful vision of how our food system can shift. It is possible for us to eat better, for biodiversity to be protected, and for farmers and market gardeners to make a reasonable living.

Buchanan did put his CSLD experiences to good use including landscape design with a focus on urban parks, native habitat restoration, agricultural sites, community gardens, and multi-use trails. Past projects include lead designs for redevelopment of the 25 city parks of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and a master plan for multi-use trails on the 4000-acre former Fort Devens in Devens, Massachusetts.

He has finally ended his wanderings and bought a small farm in Pownal, Maine, about 20 miles from Portland. “I’m planning expanded orchards there and a cider house, to produce small batches of hard cider. I’ll run it as a conservation center, a permanent place to collect and experiment with rare foods.

“I love Maine, and particularly the Portland area, for its vibrant and creative food scene. This is the best place to eat, and work in a specialty food business, that I’ve ever found,” Buchanan said.

His book is beautiful and compelling, inspiring all of us to think about our meals, and our gardening from a slightly different angle, that can be fun and delicious while doing good work. He quotes his friend Polly Tooker who often says, “You’ve got to eat it to save it.”

David Buchanan is coming our way to celebrate Cider Days, November 4-5, with John Bunker, the heritage apple man who was featured in the October issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Buchanan and Bunker will be talking about identifying and conserving heritage apples at the Deerfield Community Center on Saturday, November 4 from 10 am – noon. On Sunday they will have a heritage apple tasting and discussion which requires a ticket.

Lots of other events, most free. There is an amateur hard cider making competition, The Bittersharps, the Heirlooms, and the Macs – Learning How to Taste the Apples in your Hard Cider with author/educator Robert J. Heiss, given twice on Saturday (once before each session of the Cider Salon) at the PVMA Teachers’ Center (10 Memorial St) in Old Deerfield, tasting dried apple varieties at Apex Orchards, food and apples at the Shelburne Buckland Community Center, cooking and tasting apples at Clarkdale Fruit Farm and much more. For full information about all programs go to http://www.ciderday.org

Between the Rows  October 27, 2012

The ABCs of Heritage Apples, and Others

Apex Farm Store

A is for Apple, but if we look at heritage apples we can march right through the alphabet. Baldwin, Cox’s Orange Pippin, (Old) Delicious, Esopus Spitzenberg, Golden Russet, and on through to Northern Spy, Roxbury Russet, Stayman Winesap and Westfield Seek-No-Farther.

The Roxbury Russet and Westfield Seek-No-Farther remind us that some apples had a very local fame and audience before they spread to wider fields. In fact, Roxbury Russet was the first named apple in Massachusetts.

Even though we think of apples as a quintessential American fruit, apples originated in southeastern Asia, Kazakhstan and Turkey thousands of years ago. There are over 7000 cultivars, but you don’t usually get any sense of how many apples are grown, even now, if your only experience with apples is from the supermarket.

Fortunately we live in an area where apples thrive, and where we have a number of small orchards selling a much wider variety of apples – and cider. Last week I visited Apex in Shelburne, Barkley’s in Heath and Clarkdale in Deerfield and my husband is looking forward to apples cooked sweet and savory as well as the healthful apple a day eaten out of hand. I never get tired of apples and my father said no meal was complete without his apple for dessert.

Fuji apples

Tom Clark of Clarkdale Fruit Farm said there are still Baldwin and Northern Spy trees on his farm that his grandfather planted. He said that Baldwins were an important New England apple. At the turn of the 20^th century Colrain had more Baldwin apple trees than any other town in the state. The apples came out of Colrain on the trolley, then to the train in Shelburne Falls, and then to Boston where they were shipped to England. It was the Baldwin’s keeping qualities that made this possible. “Of course, this might just be a local legend,” Clark said. But it does seem possible.

In the 1930s there were winters so severe that most of the Baldwin trees were killed. It was the new Macintosh apple that took its place. This apple has a tender skin and doesn’t keep as well, but refrigerated transportation was becoming available so keeping quality wasn’t as important.

Clark grows a range of heritage apples along with the newer varieties like Honey Crisp, but he said that he liked Baldwins, and that a “ripe russet is nice.” He did say that Americans in general liked pretty red apples but that the Jonagold apple, a cross between the Jonathan and Golden Delicious is the most planted apple in Germany and France. He has heard “that Americans buy with their eyes, and Europeans buy with their mouths.”

There is a new interest among foodies for cider, soft and hard, but Clarkdale Fruit Farm has been making cider for 50 years. Many of these old apple varieties make especially good cider. My friend Alan Nichols planted a cider orchard quite a number of years ago and those apples are in demand again as the new owner of the orchard is making his own cider,

Alan Nichols’ brother Lew wrote a book, Cider: Making, Using and Enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider, with Annie Proulx back in 1980 which is still available. Nichols and Proulx suggest a long list of cider apples for New England that includes Baldwin, Cortland, Esopus Spitzenberg (Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple), Gravenstein, Jonathan, Fameuse, Roxbury Russet and Stayman Winesap among others.

Cider is such a fashionable drink right now that we celebrate locally with Cider Days, scheduled this year for November 3 and 4. This event will take place at a number of locations in Greenfield, Deerfield, and Shelburne. You can find a full schedule of tastings, apple butter making, a locavore harvest supper and more on the website www.ciderday.org.

Apex Orchard in Shelburne also grows a wide range from Baldwins, Spitzenbergs, Macouns and Fuji as well as Reine de Pomme and Ashmead Kernel that they grow for West County Cider.

I cannot say I was surprised to see that West County Cider’s Redfield was a featured recommendation in the November issue of Martha Stewart’s Living. West County Cider makes several varietal hard ciders, which only use a single apple variety, like Redfield as well as a Heritage Blend Cider. Many chefs are now thinking about pairing a cider with a particular dish, the way wines have been paired in the past.

Apex Orchard cooler

I was talking to Sarah Davenport at Apex Orchard and she said she liked Macoun and Fuji apples, but it was hard to choose a favorite.

Tim Smith of Apex refused to limit himself to one favorite apple. He said he liked them all, but he said his grandfather, Lyndon Peck had a favorite – the large Pound Sweet. “He had a baked Pound Sweet with his breakfast every morning from late September until March,” Smith said.

I am so happy to have all these apply choices. Sue Chadwick, who had a huge collection of heritage apples in Buckland when I was librarian there, told me the secret to her famous apple pies was using several apple varieties. I start with Northern Spy because there is an old saying “For the best pie, use Northern Spy.” Other good pie apples are Roxbury Russet, Baldwin, Granny Smith, Jonagold, Golden Delicious and the new Honeycrisp.

I also just learned that Cornell University sells apples from their experimental orchards in vending machines on campus. Those smart university people appreciate the importance of an apple a day!

Between the Rows   October 20, 2012

Berries are the Best

Berries are the best. They are delicious summer fruits, especially when they are picked right off the bush and brought in for a morning bowl of cereal, a beautiful fruit tart, or a pot of jam. They are easy for the gardener because they are perennial plants and require little fussing over the years of their life.

In Heath we pay a lot of attention to blueberries. One section of town is called Burnt Hill because the hillside is covered with lowbush blueberries. A traditional method of controlling many weeds and insects is by burning the blueberry fields after harvest every few years.

There are many who are passionate about lowbush blueberries and think they are far superior in taste than highbush blueberries. My taste buds are not that refined and so one of the first crops we planted in 1980, our first spring in Heath, was a collection of eight highbush blueberry plants from Miller Nurseries. Blueberries need at least two varieties for cross pollination. This can also give you a longer harvest season by choosing early and mid-season varieties.

Within three years we were starting to get a harvest. I did not keep very good records at the time so I cannot attest to how much of a harvest. However, one of the benefits of berries is that they do not need much time before you are picking the fruits of your very limited labors. I can tell you that we are still getting a good harvest from those bushes. Blueberries are also considerate and do not need picking every day to avoid mold. They hang ripely on the bush waiting until the gardener has time.

I should say we get a good harvest if we beat the birds and critters to it. The first few years we netted each bush individually. Sometimes I decorated the nets with foil flash tape to scare away the birds. Then the bushes got too big to manage that efficiently. We finally built a PVC pipe cage around a single line of five of the bushes and lay bird netting over that. I wish we had designed the blueberry patch with a cage in mind right from the beginning, but we learn as we go.

I did not prepare the soil of that first blueberry planting. I knew that blueberries required acid soil and my assumption (correct) was that Heath had sufficiently acid soil. I was lucky to also have soil that drained well.

When I planted red raspberries several years ago, we did rototill the bed and I sprinkled a little compost, lime, rock phosphate and greensand in a totally unscientific manner. However, if there is a general rule to spread a little 10-10-10 fertilizer on a new berry patch, I figured I accomplished the same thing organically. I also remembered my old Greenfield neighbor, John Zon, who had a beautifully productive raspberry patch and he said he did nothing but mulch with fallen leaves in the autumn.

This time I bought my raspberry bushes from Nourse Farms, the excellent nursery we have right in our own backyard. There is no problem with finding a sunny site at the End of the Road, and I am lucky that with the exception of the Sunken Garden, the soil drains well. A sunny well drained site is all that raspberries require.

Blueberries need a little occasional pruning out of dead branches over time, but raspberries need to have the old canes that have already fruited taken out every year. It is also a good idea to prune out any spindly canes. You want the largest sturdiest canes to produce the best crop.

It is also a good idea to provide wire supports for a raspberry row, to provide support over the course of the year. I also find supports a way of maintaining a straight row. New shoots will come out into the path between rows and they need to be pruned out.

I occasionally throw a little compost along the rows, but remembering Mr. Zon, I mulch between the rows and find the bushes do well. I want to mention that raspberries do not need netting. For the most part birds are totally uninterested in them.

Two years ago I planted black raspberry bushes, again from Nourse Farms.

My first harvest last year ripened while I was away and was very poor because the berries dried up on the canes. At the same time the canes were bending over and the some of the tips were rooting where they touched the soil. It was making a mess in the garden. But I thought that was the only way they renewed themselves and left the mess and went looking for advice.

This year I belatedly found the advice about pruning black raspberries. I waded into all the bent over and rooted canes and pruned them out. I then cut back all the new canes that also were growing straight up to a height of about three feet to encourage growth of lateral fruiting branches.

However, after harvesting only a quart or two of small black raspberries, the rest of the berries were drying up into hard little balls. What was this recurrent problem?

I called the experts at Nourse and got a simple answer. They recommend two inches of water a week for black raspberries. It will take some thought and work to arrange that if we have another droughty summer. Wish me luck

Between the Rows –  August 18, 2012

Apple Blossom Time

Sargent crabapple

I hope this photo give some sense of the amazing bloom of the Sargent crabapple. It is  not 15 feet tall, but it is at least 15 feet wide and was planted about 15 years ago. It thrives in the Sunken Garden even though it is very wet in the spring.  It is now in full flower – almost a single tree-sized blossom at this point.

This apple tree, name unknown, produces apples but they are not the best apples I’ve ever eaten. I do use them in apple sauce and apple pie as part of the mix.  The tree usually takes a beating from the plow when it makes the turn in front of the house.

These apple blossoms are on  the Liberty semi dwarf tree in the ‘orchard’. All apple blossoms are so lovely. I hope they were open long enough to get pollinated.  Some of our trees are beginning to leaf out.  The grass looks as though we had a big wedding today.

Black Knot on My Plum

It’s been raining for almost a week. This means the conditions are good for the spread of black knot.

Plum tree with black knot

We have slowly been removing the plum trees from our orchard and the time has come to take down the last tree.  I loved the occasional harvests of Stanley plums which I mostly canned, but I think we will just content ourselves with the three semi-dwarf apple trees.

Black knot gall

This gall, one of several, is about 6 inches long and a little more than an inch in diameter.  I don’t know how this disease got a toe hold because there are no wild trees in the vicinity, but obviously once disease began, it has continued to spread.  The first galls can be quite small and difficult to see, but they don’t take long to grow. We have cut out and burned the galls as they appeared, but we never succeeded in eradication. Over time the tree weakens, the gall grows, and there is no cure but removal of the tree.

Apple blossom

We will remove and mourn the plum tree, but I will concentrate on the apple trees that are just beginning to bloom.

Fall’s Fruitfullness

Lots of people in Heath have an old apple tree or two. Sometimes the apples aren’t beautiful, but they certainly can make good eating. I’ve been using the generous harvest from this unnamed tree to make apple sauce and apple butter.

Apple butter and apple sauce (L-R)

French toast with apple butter or apple sauce makes an easy  and nutritious breakfast.

Black walnuts in their hulls

My neighbor called me to say he and his wife had collected three big buckets of black walnuts from their two back yard trees. They had never gotten a harvest like this. Usually the squirrels got what nuts there were. So, they didn’t know how to handle the nuts, but they knew they could stain hands badly.

Black walnuts hulled

I didn’t really know how to handle them either, but I knew it was hard work. I found out that Iowa State University had good directions, and slightly humorous, on their website. If you want to know what to do with your black walnuts, click here.

After putting on good rubber gloves and  three hours of splitting the hull, pulling out the shelled nut, and scraping away ‘stuff’, then washing the nuts, and setting them out to dry, my neighbor gave up. The other two buckets are up for grabs. Not for the squirrels.  In two or three weeks, when the nuts are dry they will get out their little sledge hammer and shell them. According to Iowa State University they can be kept in the freezer almost indefinitely.

Grapes climbing an old apple tree

The dark tangle is the grapevine, with many grape clusters, that is climbing an old apple tree. I can’t get a good photo but the grapes are climbing at least 15 feet or more up the tree.

Wild grape cluster

The grapes are not very big, although there are a lot of clusters within reach. They are not terribly sweet. Will that change if we get a hard frost this weekend?  And of course, there are the thick skins and big seeds.  What to do? What would you do?

That’s my Three for Thursday – apples, black walnuts and grapes.  To see more threes visit Cindy over at My Corner of Katy. Thanks for setting this up, Cindy.

Weeding, Mowing – and a Surprise

Stanley Plum

Mostly I just weeded, and weeded all weekend, while Henry mowed and mowed.  The big job we did, almost, was to take down this Stanley plum tree in our little ‘orchard’ next to the vegetable garden and rasberry patch. This tree has suffered over the years, most notably during the year we lived in Beijing and had renters;  their horses had a fondness for fruit tree bark.  The chain saw gave out before we got down the main trunks. We will enjoy the ‘sculpture’ until we get a new bar for the saw.

Plum black knot

The plum tree we took down was suffering from a severe case of black knot fungus.  There was no way to remove a few branches to clean up the tree and making it bear once more. Black knot is unmistakable and very ugly.  The knots will get bigger and bigger every year, and spread through out the tree, sapping its vitality until the tree is no longer productive. All I can do is keep a close eye on the remaining tree and cut out and burn any further knots.

Stanley plums

Fortunately we will be able to continue enjoying  self pollinating Stanley plums because our other tree is bearing. There is a bit of black knot on this tree, but I will  prune out the few affected branches.  Stanley plums are suseptible to black knot.  I don’t know where the original spores come from, possibly from wild cherry trees in  the area.

My compost pile

I had just gathered up and dumped the spent broccoli plants and last weeds for the day on our unlovely compost pile; Henry had put away the lawn mower and we were preparing to call it a day, when a little red Zipcar pulled up.  Usually when an unfamiliar car arrives at the End of the Road it is because the driver has made a wrong turn, but not this time.

Nick and Emily

The End of the Road was very familiar to Nick Griffin whose stepfather sold us the house in 1979.  He and his fiance Emily had been at a big wedding in Vermont and were so close to the vacation home of his youth that he could not resist trying to find it and see if he would remember any of the house or town after 30 years.  We gave him the tour, beginning with his old treehouse, which did have some renovations some number of years ago – and in need of more. It was fun to look at the changes in the house with them, describe the Fourth of July barn fire, talk about our first neighbor, Mabel Vreeland,  and reminisce about summer vacations and ski weekends with only a fireplace for heat. Brrrrr!  I like knowing about how previous owners enjoyed the house, and hearing about their fond memories.

Hurry to Hawley

Field of greens at Pen and Plow Farm

Who would not like to live on Pudding Hollow Road? It is clearly a road steeped in the history of Hawley, a town settled in 1760, and a unique pudding contest which took place in the late 1770s.  Farms and food have always been important parts of Hawley’s history and culture so I could not resist the opportunity to visit the newest farm and an old established garden, both on Pudding Hollow Road, and both a part of Hawley’s annual Artisan’s and Garden Tour which will be held on Saturday, July 10 from 10 am until 4 pm.

When you turn off Route 8A and cross over the new bridge you are on Pudding Hollow Road, Right across from the tiny town hall is the two year old Pen and Plow Farm, so called because the Velazquez family, Sheila, her son Jason and his wife have all been in the publishing/editorial business , but since early last spring have been turning their creative energies to sustainable farming.

Merlot lettuce at Pen and Plow farm

Sheila, who said she had farmed many years ago and has had varied careers since then, was delighted that her son gave her the nudge (push?) to go back into farming. The family found 21 acres, wooded and clear, with a year round stream. They have planted a large market garden, currently boasting ‘greens’ including reds like Merlot, Red Fire and Red Sails lettuces. These can be purchased among other places, at the new Charlemont Farmer’s Market held on Saturdays at the Hawlemont School.

In addition to the mangelwurzel (for animal feed) corn, squash, and other vegetable fields, they have two Scottish Highland Cows. “They are a good breed for the country,” Sheila said. “ They are hardy and eat brush, poison ivy and wild raspberries.”  I can see that would save on feed bills. They also have chickens and recently added a Jersey milk cow to their holdings.

Jason Velazquez

Jason took time out from his chores to show me how to sharpen and use a scythe, and to talk about his pleasure in being able to return to farming. “Values you learn in a rural childhood are applicable to many walks of life,” and this is one of the reasons he wanted to leave Boston and bring his wife and children to Hawley and to make a farm.

As he showed me all the projects, he explained that they want to learn to do more with less. “Everything we do is rooted in sustainability – what the land can sustain, and the amount of labor we can sustain as a family. We wan to provide our own food, but we plan to farm to a living. We have a commitment to being part of a community that sustains itself.”

As they move towards making a living on the farm they are paying attention to the vegetables that customers prefer. They also sell fresh eggs that have the brilliant yellow yolks that are typical of free range chickens.

Paul Cooper

Paul Cooper, retired neurosurgeon and serious cook, and his wife Leslie have been summering in Hawley since 1981, enjoying the magnificent views of the hills, and tending their gardens.

Cooper toured me around his hillside, showing me new fruit trees, apples, pears, a greengage plum, peaches, and quince. Several years ago they planted two copper beech trees which are still young, but already show signs that they will grow into majestic old trees. There is a special thanks due to people like the Coopers who plant trees that will not come into their noble maturity until they themselves are no longer walking the earth.

There are colorful flower gardens that Leslie tends, daylily borders, and pink honeysuckle vines, not an invasive variety. But Cooper’s favorite garden is the fenced vegetable garden which hints at his passion for cooking.  He grows several kinds of tomatoes, Big Boy, Sun Gold, Early Girl, Celebrity and Donna. Yukon Gold, Corolla and Kennebec potatoes, Fava beans, shallots, leeks, garlic, asparagus and eggplant, “but no peppers, because I hate them,” he said.

Mint is grown in its own circular garden where the lawn mower can keep it under control.  A small herb garden supplies much of the common herbs Cooper needs.

The lettuce was lush and Cooper sighed when he said, “It’s been a lettuce summer,” which is to say cool and damp.

Paul Cooper's lambs

Cooper hasn’t forgotten the main course, He also raises lambs – and he has a large collection of lamb recipes.

The blueberry, raspberry and red currant patches suggest that diners at his table do not leave until there has been a luscious dessert.  Maybe he will find one in The Pudding Hollow Cookbook, written by Tinky Weisblat, another Hawley resident.

Akebia covered pergola at the Cooper's

The Hawley tour includes visits to other farms, gardens and a lunch at one of Hawley’s Great Houses, also on Pudding Hollow Road.

This tour, A Collage of Arts and Gardens Throughout the Town of Hawley is sponsored by the Sons and Daughters of Hawley. Proceeds will help fund restoration of East Hawley Meeting House and the Grove Building. It is hoped that the new bathrooms in the Grove Building will be completed by tour day. For more information about tickets for the  tour call Cyndie Stetson 413- 339-4231.

Betweenthe Rows  June 26, 2010