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AgriCulture: Is That All There Is?
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
Why is it these days I think of our farm as being situated on a great plateau when actually most of it is situated on what the locals here call a “hog back?” The hog backs, the great hump-like land formations in our part of Germantown close to the Hudson River are what give the countryside its distinctive undulating quality. Indeed traveling east/west on Lasher Avenue has something of the feel of a roller coaster. The deep depressions between the hog backs are, of course, called “hog troughs” in local parlance. Our house, barn, outbuildings, gardens and best pastures are on the well drained hog back, while the damp, soggy hog trough, fittingly, is where the piggeries are.
So why, you ask, has our farm become a “plateau,” if even only metaphorically? It has now been over ten years that we have been in the process of remaking a derelict property (that had been on the road to becoming a subdivision) into a working farm. Each time we started something, whether it be a sheep herd, raising turkeys, chickens, guinea fowl, geese, and ducks, or developing a piggery and beef cattle herd, we entered on a kind of journey that lacked the clear view and vistas of a plateau, but instead was more in the nature of a narrow winding road moving through dense forests. We had so much to learn. There were many twists and turns going up hills and down that sometimes we really didn’t know where we were going. There were even a few dead ends. Not that we have now entirely found our way, and, certainly, not that we have learned everything we need to know, but we have come out, at last, onto a plateau.
People laughed when, in answer to their queries about how we learned to do what we were doing, we replied that “…we tried to keep a chapter ahead.” They thought we were joking or being self deprecating. But our flip remark was not far from the truth. Not only did we have a great deal to absorb about animal husbandry and horticulture but we also had to find our way towards building a customer base and developing a marketing plan. And, importantly, we had to evolve a farm focus: which for us has been not only producing naturally-grown food in a sustainable way but also breeding animals that help to preserve endangered heritage breeds of livestock.
While the journey up hill and down dale has not been an easy one,I am beginning to realize it may have been easier than life on the plateau. There is a certain excitement in moving into hitherto unknown areas, an exhilaration in the process of discovery, a satisfaction in seeing things dramatically move forward. There is a kind of perpetual adrenaline that fuels the whole experience.
In contrast, life on the plateau, for the most part, consists of sustaining and refining what we have achieved. We cannot go much farther since we have reached the limitations of our resources. Our just-under-forty acres have been stretched as far they can go. And since both of us also maintain businesses on the side, the time, energy and financial subsidy we can contribute have also been stretched to the limit.
Obviously, creating something is one thing; sustaining it is quite something else. I am reminded of a saying I heard when I lived in Turkey years ago. On seeing a modern showplace of a building that had been built just a few years before already showing signs of serious deterioration, my Turkish friends would jokingly quote a Turkish proverb: “Start like a Turk, but finish like a German.” It was an accurate observation, and recognized a real cultural difference. The Turks do rush into things with an intense energy and enthusiasm, but then something, maybe arising out of the Muslim belief in the transitory nature of human life, seems to kick in, and they do not preserve and maintain what so enthusiastically they built. And we all know about the Germans.
But the proverb captures not only a cultural difference; it also offers an insight into the general human condition. I guess, for us, since we made the mistake of starting like a Turk, we now have no choice but to finish like a German. —Peter Davies
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Posted by Rural Intelligence on 02/27/11 at 10:32 AM • Permalink
