On the Saturday night before Obama's inauguration, over 100 people showed up at the Red Barn at Hampshire College to celebrate the new presidential regime and dance to a band known as the No-Nos. The event was hosted by several farms, including Brookfield, an Amherst-based farm, which has the distinction of being the third CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) farm in the country. It has over 500 members and distributes food year round.
Dan Kaplan, Brookfield's farm manager, is lead singer for the No-Nos. The evening's set list of "I Can See Clearly Now, the Rain Has Gone," a happy birthday tribute to Martin Luther King and "Super Freak" whipped a crowd of over 100 into a frenzy of dancing, drinking and celebrating with strangers. There was a great sense of joy in the barn on that freezing night.? Kids danced together holding hands and people were wearing the kind of clothing saved for showing off their true selves.
By the end of? "I Can See Clearly Now, the Rain has Gone," a life-sized cardboard effigy of George Bush was batted about like a pi?ata and then fell to the ground. People were hugging and tearing up, and not just because it was so cold out and they had to walk to cars parked way up the road in Hadley, practically to Atkins Farms.??
Earlier in the day, a gathering took place at Worcester's Technical Vocational School, where cars and trucks overran the school's parking lot and parked on snowbanks, it was that crowded. NOFA (Northeastern Organic Farmers' Association) welcomed members for its 22nd Annual Winter Conference featuring informational displays, workshops and a keynote speaker. In attendance were fans of farms and farm owners, all with hand-written name tags. There were couples, a woman with a standard poodle guide dog named Charlie, several nursing moms, kids and women knitting. Lunch was potluck. It was unlike conferences held in hotel ball rooms with printed name tags where corporate spokespeople reply that they are "sticking to their knitting" when asked about their growth plans for business.
"Sticking to the knitting" is business-speak for keeping your head down and your mouth shut in times of competition. But at the NOFA conference it was all about growth. Perhaps farmers are in the ascendancy. In the Wall Street Journal and other publications, an activist group calling itself Eat the View is getting lots of attention for its request that the new administration take the initiative to plant food in the gardens of the White House, as did Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.?
The keynote speaker, Eliot Coleman, held forth on the topic "Small Farms are the Soul of Organics." As an author of many books, designer of farming implements and owner of Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine, Coleman is a proponent of? organic farming. The notion that a man is completely free of the tyranny of the other man once he can find provide sustenance for himself and his family was the thrust of his speech. He celebrated the importance of land ownership, observed that the fall of the Roman Empire was due in part to a land grab and decried dependence on oil-based fertilizers.
Coleman spoke for around 40 minutes before holding an all-day workshop on four-season growing. He discussed the benefits of avoiding commercial fertilizer by having livestock do the job and showed several slides, one of which [pictured, left] shows a hen house attached to a movable greenhouse. The idea behind movable structures is to maintain the integrity of the soil and extend the growing season. Plants can get started in the ground at the end of summer, for example, and then benefit from the cover and warmth of the greenhouse once the frost comes. With the wandering hen house, fertilizer-producing poultry goes along for the ride. The movable greenhouses are sold on the Four Season Farm website.
He concluded with a comment made by Barbara Kingsolver, author of best seller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which depicts her experience living for a year on a farm in West Virginia. Critics praise Kingsolver's books about people but call her books about farming "irrelevant," according to the author. Coleman spoke of the deal Kingsolver wants to make with her critics: "I will go without a movie and a book and a play for a week and you go without food. After the week is up, let's talk."
Market News
Elmer's, a little joint in an old general store in Ashfield that serves diners on a somewhat erratic schedule but features excellent breakfasts all week long, is a favorite among hilltown denizens and their families. A colorful collection of characters are in charge of the goings-on, and Elmer's has become one of two go-to places to watch and revel in televised political events. The other place is Blue House Cafe in Haydenville, where many presidential debates were aired last year. This month Elmer's hosted an Inauguration Ball at the town hall, preceded by an elegant dinner for carnivores and vegans at Elmer's Restaurant. Elmer's also hosted an all-day inauguration party. The combination restaurant/general store sells and serves local yogurt and meats from an area farm that breeds heirloom pigs.
Restaurant Buzz
Local Burger restaurant, housed in Northampton's own Flatiron Building on Main Street, is only several months old and has grass-fed beef burgers from Easthampton on the menu as well as traditional burgers. As a bonus, the fries are hand-cut. Local Burger is open till 3 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays (10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday), just around the time the effects of a hard-cider drinking binge wear off.
