Strawberry fields … forever
Toolbox
Published: July 6, 2009
My father went through a divorce back in 1966
oh no, don't get me wrong
it had nothing to do with my mother; it was that smelly herd of cows that had been vying for his attention for his first 50 years. All of a sudden, his mind was made up
no more milkin' on this farm.
I think he was open to just about anything but whatever it was had to support the acreage, which he loved, and the knowledge that the "milk check" would no longer appear in Friday's mailbox.
Enter strawberries.
Yup, strawberries seemed reasonable at the time but we soon found out that they caused more worry and care than a barn full of brucellosis. There was planting, fertilizing, weeding, setting runners, watering, mulching, picking (if we were lucky) and selling. Then there were the strawberry villains like nematodes, cut worms, root rot, leaf spot, deer, woodchucks, frost damage, tarnished plant bugs, cedar waxwings, and slugs as big and fat as the ripe strawberries they devoured. We were particularly cursed with soil that favored rocks, ledges and huge crops of witchgrass.
We raised strawberries for years, sometimes getting pretty good crops and other times total failures. Even on the good years, returns came more in the smiling faces of our customers than in dollars; our berries were tastier than others because of our farm's heavy, hilltop soil. On the bad years, some of the hardest work was just keeping the faces smiling
folks got downright despondent without their Morse Farm strawberries.
One year weeds and grass had declared such war on our two-acre field that we came up short of berries to sell. My father sought out replacement berries from a place similar to our own, one that would guarantee that "heavy hilltop" flavor. The answer came in the form of one Hezzy Somers, a farmer from West Barnet, who had a real "strawberry" attitude and, in my mind back then, the worst of both worlds. He managed to raise a few acres of the fussy fruit and milked a high butterfat herd of Jersey cows at the same time.
The rest of my story relies on 40-year-old memories.
A half dozen of us had piled into the bed of our pickup and ridden, in the rain, the 40 miles to Hezzy's farm. Although the Somers place looked like it walked right out of a "Vermont Life" magazine centerfold, all of that romance was lost on us pickers. We had come to pick a few hundred quarts for sales at Morse Farm and quickly settled into our task. Hezzy's rows were a mixture of deep green, straw color and luscious red. They yielded full quarts quickly compared to our "weed patch" back home and prodded by a modest per basket payment and my father's pledge of a treat on the way home, we filled our quota and headed back to East Montpelier by noon, drenched and stiff, but done for the day.
Hezzy's "ace in the hole" bailed us out of a few other bad strawberry years and through the process we got to know him quite well. We eventually stopped going up to Hezzy's and gave up growing strawberries ourselves.
Twenty years lapsed before I next saw him but one day at a farm auction somewhere in northern Vermont, I leaned against a fence beside an older man. Something about him looked familiar but when the small talk started, I knew from his West Barnet twang that I was talking to Hezzy Somers. We reminisced about the days our Morse gang picked berries in his fields and just before we parted, I asked him a special question:
"Hezzy" I said. "I always envied your ability to keep those perfect strawberry fields and milk cows at the same time
you must really love farming."
Hezzy Somers, wrinkled and stooped from a lifetime of farming, palmed his grizzled chin and went into deep thought. "Gosh," he said slowly and deliberately, "I think I like it
yup, I think I like it."
And that was all I got from the man who had spent a lifetime growing sweeter strawberries and producing creamier Jersey milk. One thing I know is that I didn't like strawberry farming when I was doing it. Strawberries, however, have a strange "hold" on folks. Every year, when June turns to July in central Vermont, I can smell strawberries in the air and picture pickers with red fingers and catches in their backs.
The nostalgia is alive and well
in my mind it'll always be "strawberry fields forever."
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