CHAPTER EIGHT

WASHING WINDOWS, GROWING VEGETABLES, BAKING BREAD AND BACK TO FARMING


The farm that belonged to the Waldorf School had been bought by Mr. Marin, the founder of Sunoco Oil, back in the thirties. He had hoped that it would be a model Biodynamic farm and school but it didn’t work out that way. Instead a Waldorf school was started and the farm was run conventionally for many years. A few years previous to my arrival, the management had changed and a group of young farmers had been running the farm along Biodynamic lines. The situation was perfect for us. There was a Waldorf school for the children, and in the future, Joan would be able to teach when a position became available. There was a school farm program in place and classes would come to the barn to help with chores. The farm had many beautiful places to walk so we invited the school families to visit whenever they wanted. We created some wonderful festivals. In the spring, we had a farm blessing based on Rogan’s Day. This was the day the early settlers blessed their land and asked for good crops that year. We had the children pull an old horse-drawn one bottom plough through the garden with a long rope while we all sang. We then placed a loaf of bread made from last year’s wheat in the furrow, covered it with soil and asked for a good harvest that year. We finished the day with a hay ride around the farm.
We were able to help start a Community Supported Garden (CSA) on the farm and integrated it into the farm organism by giving them cow manure and including the gardeners in some of the farm decision-making. Between the farm store, which we had just started, the CSA and the opportunity to enjoy the animals and land, for those members of the school community who wanted it, there was a real opportunity to feel connected to the land.
When we arrived, the farm was showing a financial deficit and the faculty and board were trying to find ways to eliminate the loss to the school. Already construction had been started for a farm store and a milk bottling and yogurt plant. As the farm was on Seven Stars Road, we changed the name to Seven Stars Farm and the yogurt was sold as Seven Stars Yogurt, which is now marketed successfully nationwide, certified as Biodynamic. I also put together a proposal whereby the farm business could be run and owned separately from the school as a for-profit business. The school board thought it was a wonderful proposal but the other farmer was against the whole idea of separating farm and school. A host of political shenanigans ensued and it became apparent that it would be years before any real change would happen. I would be stuck working with a difficult partner and Joan wanted to go back to Ithaca where she was offered a teaching position. After a year we headed back to Ithaca. This time it was Joan who had the job and we assumed I would find my way.
We rented a house in Ithaca while we looked for a place to buy. It was obvious that I was going to have to change my profession but I wasn’t sure what and I had no skills apart from farming. I did a bit of carpentry but that ran out. Joan’s teaching job could hardly support us and we were getting pretty low on our resources so I took a job with a cleaning company. I think it was during this time that I learned humility. Cleaning movie theatres and frat houses was the pits. However I did learn how I could make good money by cleaning windows and having my own contracts and, after six months, I started my own business. Sparkle Cleaning specialized in window cleaning. I also had a crew that cleaned a Hoyts movie complex and some office buildings. I was used to milking cows on Christmas Day but cleaning sixteen movie theatres on Christmas Day sure didn’t have the heart that the cows had.
It took us a year to find a place to buy. It was out in the country with twenty good acres all set up to grow vegetables. It even had a renovated house on it, just the right size for our family. I learned how to grow vegetables and after another year phased out my cleaning business. The trouble with growing vegetables in Upstate New York is that the winters are long and during these months there is not much income. I decided I would bake bread in the winters. I had read an article about building simple wood-fired brick ovens so I went to a weekend workshop where they were building one and also apprenticed at a bakery in Kansas where they were using one. I went home and built my oven with an eight-by-six-foot hearth where I could bake sixty loaves at a time and do seven batches before the heat ran out. I made mainly traditional European sour dough breads. The outside would have a nice crust but the inside would be soft and chewy. . My first few batches were a little on the flat side but I soon got the hang of it and soon it was considered the best bread in Ithaca. I had good markets in Ithaca and I was soon at my max baking up to nine hundred loaves a week. Fridays were my big day. I could sell a couple of hundred loaves at the Farmers Market and the rest sold at Green Star Cooperative. On bake days I would even deliver bread to the coop. right after the bread came out of the oven. The whole store would fill with the smell of fresh baked bread and it would soon be gone. My bread was successful and made a lot more money than the vegetables, so I gave up on them.

Eve and Dave were growing up and were passionate about riding horses. We couldn’t afford well-trained horses so we bought two young horses that they worked on and trained after school. We bought an old horse trailer and once a week we would load up the horses and go to riding lessons. During the summer, we would spend Sundays at horse shows. Eve and Dave were good but, as they got older, we couldn’t afford the professionally-trained horses that they were competing against. It was a nice way for me to be with my kids but by tenth grade we decided to stop and they got into team sports at school. It was nice to have a bit of extra money from the bakery, that didn’t have to go into farm improvements. One summer, we closed the bakery down for a month and vacationed in Europe. We rented a car, visited friends and camped. We started in Amsterdam and then worked our way through Germany and Austria and down to Italy and back up through France to Holland. I think Italy was our highlight. We camped outside Venice on one of the beach campsites and took the ferry into Venice where we spent two days walking around the city and taking a Gondola ride. On the beach, we encountered our first topless bathers which was especially interesting to Dave, being fourteen. Florence was wonderful with all the museums and architecture, although the camp ground was not so great. However the breakfast, fresh baguettes and coffee with the view over Florence made up for the rest. Here the kids encountered their first toilet that was a hole on a concrete pad. Another summer we went out west for a month, rafted down the Colorado River and camped and hiked at some of the national parks.
All this time I was still holding onto my dream of getting back into dairy farming. I felt that I had missed my life’s calling and secretly wished that I would die of some illness. I wasn’t depressed and I didn’t tell people but I just felt that making eight or nine hundred loaves of bread a week, even if they were the best, was not what I was meant to be doing. Joan was happy but when I told her how I felt, she accepted my needs. I do believe we create our own reality and during those years I had to struggle with finding out who I was.
Christopher and Martina Mann, leaders in Biodynamic circles, were looking for a Biodynamic farmer to lease some of their land in East Troy, Wisconsin. I visited several times and, after much heart searching, I decided to move again. We had been on our farm for seven years and Joan felt very much at home there and did not want to leave. This reminded me that, when I first got to America, I remembered going to a Biodynamic conference and meeting an old man. He was disappointed in his life and angry at his family for not letting him follow his dream when he was younger. He had owned a farm and, when they hit hard times, had to sell out. He had joined a dry cleaning business and then bought it, doing well. His dream had been to get back into farming but his family wouldn’t let him. Now he felt that his life had been wasted. I think Joan knew that I would be that person if she didn’t encourage me to take on this new challenge. Eve was already at college and Dave was going to graduate from high school that June, so this was a good time to move. I had to leave in March to get the farm ready for spring and Joan followed after Dave graduated in late June.