To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Homestead] Wisdom by the Spadeful
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 06:58:35 -0700
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.