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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Wisdom by the Spadeful

By ANNE RAVER
Published: June 2, 2005

AMAGANSETT, N.Y.

A FEW weeks ago, Scott Chaskey, poet and farmer, was hunkered down in his 
favorite garlic field to get out of a chilly wind blowing off the ocean. 
The sand was warm between the perfectly tilled rows of green garlic stalks, 
mulched with a soft blanket of shredded leaves. Mr. Chaskey calls them 
"green sail masts," and so they were, all 20,000 of them, sailing down this 
two-acre field.

Since 1990, Mr. Chaskey has directed the plowing and planting at Quail 
Hill, a community farm in north Amagansett. And now he has written about 
his experiences, from growing garlic, his favorite food, to growing a 
community - of earthworms, bees, birds, foxes and humans - all connected to 
the earth.

"This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm," published in April by 
Viking, is an elegy to the land and to the creatures who inhabit it. It is 
all about rebuilding the connections that have been lost, over time, as the 
family farm has given way to industrialized agriculture and real estate 
development. (At Quail Hill, farmers use a chisel plow to loosen the earth, 
and plant 3,000 pounds of seed potatoes by hand. And Mr. Chaskey veers 
wide, with his plow, if a fox family has burrowed into the field.)

The book is also a gardener's bible, packed with practical knowledge that 
often runs counter to conventional wisdom (garlic, for instance, does 
better out here if it is planted in late October, not August), as well as 
insights into subtler and more difficult arts, like protecting land from 
the pressure to develop, or fostering an awareness that soil holds the key 
to plant health.

This particular soil, for instance, was enriched with more than 25 tons of 
compost per acre, a month or so before garlic-planting time. "You don't 
want to put down compost the day before you plant," said Mr. Chaskey, whose 
worn herringbone cap and white beard put him somewhere between Walt Whitman 
and Edgar Wallis, the spry, 80-something gardener who taught him how to 
wield a long-handled spade in the cliff meadows of Cornwall, England. The 
two spent many hours putting down compost with a quick turn of the spade. 
"Edgar would say, 'You turn 'em over rough,' " Mr. Chaskey said. " 'You 
want the wind and rain to work on the soil.' That's how you get the 
structure that plants want to grow in."

Gardeners, he said, could put a good four inches of compost down on their 
gardens in fall. And rock powder, too, which Mr. Chaskey works in with the 
compost, to add trace minerals lost through hundreds of years of growing 
corn and potatoes. He favors a brand called Azomite, "the A to Z of 
minerals," available through Fedco (www.fedcoseeds.com), a goldmine of 
gardening supplies based in Waterville, Me.

A native of upstate New York, Mr. Chaskey, 55, first learned the secrets of 
the soil double-digging vegetable gardens in England while studying poetry 
and writing at Oxford University. There he met his wife, Megan, who was 
also studying poetry. They moved to the little fishing village of 
Mousehole, at the very tip of Cornwall, where he gardened high above the 
crashing sea.

They came to Amagansett in 1989, where a group of 10 families, including 
Ms. Chaskey's mother and stepfather, had started one of the first community 
supported agriculture projects, known as C.S.A.'s, in which participants 
share labor and costs.

At first, the fledgling farmers led a Gypsy-like existence, moving from one 
borrowed plot to another, but in 1990 they formed a rare partnership with 
the Peconic Land Trust. The trust had just received 20 acres of farmland 
from an Amagansett landowner, who later donated her entire 220-acre 
property to the trust. The community farmers needed a permanent home, so 
Quail Hill Farm was born.

In a community farm, members buy shares - $690 for a family, or $355 for an 
individual at Quail Hill - to pay for seeds, fertilizer and supplies. 
Members there harvest about 225 varieties of organic vegetables, herbs, 
flowers and raspberries twice a week during the growing season. They agree 
to accept crop failures due to weather, insects, disease or deer. "It's all 
about sharing the risk with the farmer," Mr. Chaskey said.

Fifteen years later, Mr. Cha

The article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/garden/02cutt.html?