Black gold

(Today's story was inspired by a visit to the M&A Farm and a conversation with Arnold Grant (the "A"; his wife of 58 years, Marilyn, being the M. It's another piece on our backyard farming learning curve that I'd like to rework for publication sometime in the nearish future, ideally sooner than later.)



An argument erupted in the car as my husband and I drove out to M&A Farms in Argyle, NY. We had made plans while chatting with Arnold Grant at the Saratoga Farmers Market to meet up at 10 a.m. He would show us his cows and baby calves, and his spectacular view, and we would return home with the hatchback of our Subaru filled with cow manure, as part of Jim's long-term project to turn sand into soil.
Only I had been up until 1 a.m. the night before reading the last of my student projects, writing my short story for May 13, and preparing notes for a presentation Friday on Bridging the (Gender) Gap in U.S. History courses. The night before, I had only slept six hours because I had been reading student projects, writing my short story for May 12, and preparing notes for a second presentation Friday called Live From D.C.: Teaching Obama's Inauguration. As someone who is fifty years old and physically quite active, six hours of sleep is simply not enough.
I rose this morning at 8 a.m., hoping to squeeze in notes for my third presentation that I am slated to do Friday. This one is for a health and wellness fair being organized by my college, Empire State College, on setting fitness goals and making healthy eating and physical activity an integral part of college life. I was particularly excited about this presentation because I have always wanted to delve into the topic, and writing out the notes for the talk seemed like a perfect way to start the day.

Until the clock ticked toward 9:40 a.m. and it became obvious that we would not make it to the M&A Farm until close to 11.
"How much money do you have?" my husband asked.
"About two dollars," I responded.
"Goddammit," he yelled at me. "Why don't you have more?"
The outburst upset me. Fact of the matter is, we almost always are cash-poor, and I had left my wallet at home the day before. And even if I hadn't left my wallet at home, chances are I wouldn't have remembered to visit an ATM to pick up cash. And even if I had remembered, chances are that the bank account wouldn't have held much cash.
"We'll just stop at the bank," he grumbled. "Why do you always do this to me?"
"Do what?" I growled, suddenly on the defensive.
"Don't bother with the bank," I said. "We'll stop at a Stewart's en route."
"Don't worry," I added. "I'm on it."
"You're on it?"
"Yeah, I've got grades, writing, an appointment with a student. It's all under control. We'll deal with it."
"What you mean is that you've got everything under control but your support for me."
That comment made me really mad. At a stoplight, I opened the door. A gas station was just across the street. "I'll get money," I barked. "Just pull in."

Simmering with rage, I approached the ATM and withdrew $40. The remaining balance in the checking account was $55. The money for the mortgage, due in two days, was sitting in the savings account with a few extra dollars to spare. Could we make it to payday, seven days away, on $55 and change?
In the car, driving toward the farm, my husband continued to vent his frustration.
"I'm sorry I couldn't get going faster this morning," I said. "I was really tired. I had to sleep."
"If sleep is so important, why are you wasting time on useless things, like trying to do 750 words and a short story every month?"
I burst into tears. "God, fucking dammit! Doing these things is good for me! It's helping me not drink. Do you get that? Can't you get that? I'm trying not to drink!"
The tears intensified the pounding in my head. Having wisdom teeth removed a month ago should not continue to be hurting. But the pain comes and goes. Some days worse than others.
I called Arnold's cell phone and told him we were running late. He laughed and said he'd see us when we arrived.

The next few miles passed in silence. We drove out of Saratoga and into the country. As Lake Street evolved into Highway 29, increasingly familiar fields of hay, straw, and apple trees began to fill the landscape. As the stress of small-city streets stretched into open country, the tension in the car seemed to dissipate, as well.
Hours later, I would realize that I wasn't crying over the traumas of trying to quit drinking. That task actually had gotten easier. What was causing me to cry was the chord my husband struck when he called my latest efforts to prove myself a writer "useless things."
A litany of memories poured back:
"You've always got your nose in a book; you'll never amount to anything."
"You'll never be a journalist; you're always going to be mediocre."
"You don't have the gift for writing. All you've got is drive and persistence."
"Why are you bothering with that senseless stuff when there's work to do."
"You would be able to pay your bills if you took your head out of the clouds."
My husband's soothing voice broke my reverie. "I'm sorry I lost my temper," he said. "I just hate always being late."
"It's okay," I said. "I should have remembered that grades were due at midnight when we made the plans. I know that that night is always going to be a late one."


From Highway 29, we merged onto U.S. 32 and then Route 4 north. Following the Hudson River, we began to wind into a valley surrounded by mountains, the foothills of the Adirondacks.
M&A Farm is located off Route 4, more or less equidistant between two towns that to a city dweller would seem virtually uninhabited: Argyle and Fort Edward. There's an Amtrak station in Fort Edward, and a former stage coach route in Argyle. Both towns are on maps and have descriptions in Wikipedia that enable them to hold onto some kind of an identity in an era of GPS and globalism. But what really gives the towns their identity is their base of farmers. Within about an eight-mile radius are Arnold and his wife Marilyn at M&A, from whom we buy beef and pork sausages; Dave and Liza Porter at Homestead Artisans from whom we have gotten goat meat, chickens (live and processed), and a half-pig upon which we feasted for a year; Bob and Mary Pratt of Elihu Farms from whom we get lamb and occasionally mutton; and the Ellsworths, from whom we buy straw and one-hundred pound bags of feed for our chickens. These farmers have been our entree into a world that environmentalists increasingly describe as green, slow-food, and sustainable.

Arnold will celebrate his 78th birthday in late November 2013. You wouldn't know it if you watched him hoist a pitchfork or a shovel. As we pulled up to his farm, we saw him sitting with an assistant on a ledge against his barn. His farm has been in his family for 200 years.
"Let me show you some beauties," he said, with a grin.
He led us into the barn and toward a large, round white plastic structure that vaguely resembed a yurt. Our visits to other farms over the past two years had helped us understand that this was a brooder for baby chicks.
Inside the brooder, heating bulbs shone on a set of baby chicks, six or seven days old. An unseasonal frost the night before had surprised all of us, and the chicks were huddled together to keep warm.
"Now for some uglies," he said. He took us to a larger brooder, where three-week-old chickens were much more active, scuttling across the run space and eating feed. In about another month, those chicks would be meat, sold at the farmers market and prized highly for their taste. Arnold told us that a single chicken eats about 12 pounds of feed from birth to slaughter.
Outside the barn, a row of pigs -- large, noisy, and decidedly smelly -- greeted us from their pens. My husband cooed over their beauty, but to me, these pigs were decidedly ugly. But we had learned from another farmer -- Mike Kilpatrick -- that pigs are highly sustainable creatures if you're trying to turn land overgrown with weeds into agricultural tracts. They snort, root, and dig -- and do the work of turning and tilling soil for you. In the process, they rid the land of plant-unfriendly pests. "And," Mike declared enthusiastically, "When they become meat, they taste so good."
Arnold chuckled, and pointed to the pig in a pen closest to the road. "That one's leaving us today. This one's next in line."
Next, it was time to see the cows and their baby calves. We piled into a pick-up truck and headed across the road and up a dirt road to a grassy mound. As we drove up the hill, Arnold pointed out the house he was born in, and said that the family farm was for sale. This surprised us because we knew farming ran in the family, but he noted that his daughter already had a farm where she was raising sheep and lambs primarily for their wool and that his granddaughter Abbey who sells breakfast sandwiches made with his meat at the weekly farmers market also had her own farm with her boyfriend.
"Wouldn't it be nice to keep the farm in the family?" Jim asked.
"Yeah, she'd love it if I gave it to her," Arnold said. "But she's not going to buy it."
The cows are mostly a Black Angus breed that Arnold raises for meat. Shortly after moving to Saratoga, we tried the beef being sold by several of the market farmers and decided we liked his best. Looking at where the cows reside nine months out of the year, we started to understand why. They roam over a wide swathe of hilly pasture chewing grass and the hay that Arnold throws down the hills at them periodically. They birth calves with little assistance from the farmer, and the calves grow up largely independently of the farmer who calls them his. They gaze at mountains, bask in sunshine, and when the weather gets windy, migrate or are herded over to a more sheltered area near a stream.
"They've got the life, I tell you," Arnold said.
To which Jim replied, "Arnold, can I be one of your cows?"
As the farm tour ended, it was time for the business at hand. We drove back down to the barn and backed the Subaru against a heap of cow manure that Arnold had pulled out for us. With a pitchfork first and then later a shovel, Jim scooped heapfuls of the "black gold" into heavy plastic bags.
"I expect to see your vegetable gardens start to boom," Arnold said.


Visiting M&A as well as so many of the other homes of the farmers whom we've met in our area of New York offers vast lessons in sustainability. Nothing goes to waste, and everything serves a purpose. Old bread crumbs feed the hens at Homestead Artisans; eggshells and whey from goats' milk go to the pigs. The manure from the goats, the chickens, and the cows is amply spread over grazed over pastures to help the land replenish its natural nutrients and re-seed. I have yet to see a trash pickup service, dumpster, or a landfill around these farms.  Such amenities are simply not necessary in a place where there is nothing to dispose.
What does a fight with one's spouse have to do with Arnold? Perhaps it's a sign of the tensions wrought by capitalism, one of which is the rigidities of time. The subtext of the fight was all about time -- we were late because we didn't wake up early enough; we were tense because we didn't have the time to do the things we love; I was stressed because all the time I put into my work never could seem to yield enough money to pay the bills on time.
When we asked Arnold what we could pay him for his cow manure, he shook his head. "You do so much for us," he said, "It's yours as you need it." We drove home with one load and came back a couple hours later for a second. Jim will return for a third load tomorrow. In all, we'll have a half-ton of cow manure, black gold for the garden, a naturally produced item whose value in so many ways is laden by the friendship and warmth borne of interdependence. It is, in a sense, material that is priceless.