DUMMERSTON — I was raised on a 100-acre dairy farm in Ohio. I milked the cows before I walked two miles to school, and I milked the cows after I walked back again.
Way back, I'm part Indian. Her name was Mary Silverheels, and it was a traveling Methodist minister on horseback who married her. There's been a Mary in every generation since.
Frank was from Ohio, too. That's where we met. He was stationed here during the war, and he said if I wanted to marry him, I had to come out. I was 22; it was 1943.
When we moved here, people told us we'd never make a living from our farm. That was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. My mother liked aphorisms, and my motto is: Where there's a will, there's a way.
I worked right along with my husband. I can do everything he could do except drive a tractor - it's big, and I'm only five feet tall. I also cooked, kept house, raised four kids, and was a school bus driver for 27 years.
All four of our kids are college graduates, with honors. I'm proud of my kids.
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Farming is not an easy job, and it ain't a lucrative job.
What's the difference between a lawyer and a farmer? A lawyer is educated in law; a farmer, in the college of hard knocks. He's an electrician, a chemist, a carpenter, a mechanic, and he has to be almost a lawyer. And a diplomat.
I work seven days a week, and a lot of days are 12- or 14-hour days in the summertime. You can't get help. No one wants to work that hard.
I have the help of my son occasionally, and he's got a couple of daughters who like to help. I have a son-in-law that mows the lawn. But the backbone of the place is me.
In the winter, there's bookwork; income tax in February. March, there's sugaring, if we were still doing it, and getting ready for summer: seeds and plants. April, getting the land ready, deciding what you're going to plant and where. Of course, the first vegetable in is the fiddleheads, then the asparagus. All this time, I'm transplanting, potting, seeding, getting displays ready.
Strawberries start in June, and we pick for wholesale, retail, and jam. Raspberries come in July, and we pick them until it freezes. We grow five colors of raspberries, plus blackberries, blueberries, peaches, and sour cherries. You name the vegetable, and we've probably raised it and preserved it.
There's a sequence of planting: carrots and lettuce every six weeks. There's always weeds and watering.
Then along comes fall, and I start the paperwork, do the brochure, make two kinds of fruitcake for Christmas, make sure I've got the jams in. Then packaging orders and shoveling snow. No rest for the wicked.
And there's no air conditioning out in the fields. But it's not work if you love it.
There's nothing I like better than going down in the dirt and digging. Our boss is Mother Nature. I think God and Mother Nature are sort of hand-in-hand.
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Frank died last year; he got a brain tumor and went fast. He had no pain. When the Hospice nurse told us it would be 24 hours, I called the kids and the minister.
The minister said, “Frank, I'm going to sing your song now,” and then he sang “Crossing the Bar.” Frank knew what was going on. Five minutes after, he was gone with a smile on his face, at home and his kids around him. He died four days short of his 77th birthday.
I'm trying to carry on his dream, what we worked our whole lives together for. Our son hopes to carry on after I can't. He has a master's degree from Cornell in plant and soil science; his love is raspberries. But the farm couldn't support two families, so he works with computers.
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People don't want to pay for fresh food; they don't consider what goes into a pint of strawberries.
First, you got your land, and you pay taxes on it. You got to feed this land. You put a green crop down in the fall and Rototill it under in the spring.
Then you buy strawberry plants. Now, we're getting into labor. Plant those strawberry plants, and if old Mother Nature doesn't water them, put irrigation out.
You weed 'em and you weed 'em and you weed 'em. Take the blossoms off, the first year. Set the runners. Mulch in the fall, and hope and pray they'll survive the winter. You got all your money invested, but there ain't nothing coming back.
Next year, uncover them, and if Mother Nature doesn't water them, you water them. Then, you wait for the berries to ripen. Then you bend your back and pick them.
It's been a year before you get a cent of income, and that's if you can keep those beautiful white-tailed deer from coming along and eating them. People who don't like hunting never had their paycheck eaten by a deer.
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This is what I want to know: what's the country going to do when the workers are gone? How many people could go out and do what I do so they can have these good vegetables, fruits, and jams?
People make a big fuss about one little mammal or bird that's close to extinction, but how extinct is the farmer getting to be?
The little farmer, where the loving care of the earth comes from?