CHAPTER SIX

CRESSET FARM

Joan wrote a book about our first nine months on Cresset farm but it was pretty sanitized. For Joan, writing allowed her to leave the hard times behind and remember the good. She put her heart and soul into the farm and loved the land but if you read between the lines, it was rough. It was primitive, it was hard work and all the money went into the farm. As she had little knowledge of farming, it was hard for her to have much input so she just followed my ideas. While we were in Camphill, we had saved twenty- eight thousand dollars, which really was not enough to buy a farm with the cows and equipment. Our borrowing institution was Farmers Home Administration, which really worked with us, giving us a hundred thousand dollar thirty-year mortgage at three percent on the farm and a forty thousand dollar seven-year loan for our cattle and machinery. The monthly payments on these loans put a lot of pressure on our budget and did not leave much margin for error.
We did have our hundred and ten acres of good soil but the barn was run down and the dwelling was a big old upstate farm house with no insulation. In the winter it could get so cold that peas soaking over night in water in the kitchen would freeze. Looking back, I could never do that to my wife and children again but it was also a wonderful time. I still feel that that was my best time, even if on some levels it failed. As a young man of twenty-eight, it was wonderful to put my heart and soul into developing the farm. After two years, we were able to buy neighboring land with one hundred and twenty acres. This made it possible to grow all our own feed which was important to me, being part of the Biodynamic model. Soon after that I took a course in homestead cheese making, and we were able to build a cheese house where we made Gouda cheese. We called the farm Cresset Farm. A cresset is a vessel that holds precious oils and we felt that the farm was like a container where special things could happen.
Although Joan was raised in the suburbs of Long Island and was used to having people around and a high standard of living, she was willing to follow me in my dream, be part of the back-to-the-earth movement and raise our family. She was not raised as a farm girl and never did learn how to do some things like driving a tractor, but she was indispensible in other ways. I remember the day our neighbor came driving into our yard and needed my tractor moved so that he could get out to the back. He just assumed that Joan could move it and a look of amazement came over his face when Joan informed him she didn’t know how to start it. Back in the eighties, most wives on family farms could take their turn sitting on the tractor doing chores like raking the hay. But Joan did much more than that. She created the feeling around the house and yard that made it nice to be around. She created community for us. She had a social skill that made people feel at home and wanted.
I have so many special memories. In the summer, after a hard day of making hay, we would all go down to Long Point State Park on Cayuga Lake. At that time it was still undeveloped and there would be few people. It was wonderful to relax, play with the children, swim in the cool water and then have a picnic dinner and talk as the sun went down. By then we had Eve and Dave, and they would sit happily on our laps as the evening became quiet and dusk changed to night.
Joan, being a born teacher, would tell endless stories to the children and knew all kinds of games that kept them busy on long winter days when it was too cold to go outside. In the summer, when there was field work to do, David would enjoy coming out with me on the tractor. After lunch, Joan would happily give me David and promise to get him soon. I knew that the tractor would lull David to sleep after ten minutes or so, but this didn’t bother Joan. He would be sitting in my lap, and after about ten minutes fall asleep. For the rest of the time I would have to hang onto him and prop his head up so it wouldn’t flop around. All the while, I would need one hand free to steer the tractor and lift and drop the implement at the end and beginning of each row. Meanwhile Joan would be enjoying her free time from motherhood and delay her promised return. After lunch, it was nap time for the children and often it was my job to make sure they didn’t play while falling asleep. I would lie on the floor and sometimes I would fall asleep before the children. They would notice and creep out only to be caught by their mother who would also scold me for failing my duty.
We would have festivals at special times and invite friends or later, after Joan started teaching again, the families from her class would visit. People love visiting farms that are still on a human scale and stanchion barns, where the cows are tied and handled on a daily bases, are cozy places to be. For children, it is especially nice when at milking time your teacher or her farmer husband can help you wash a cow’s udder and then squeeze the milk out of the teat. When we started to make cheese we had cheese festivals. One year, we had about seven hundred people visit on one day alone, with cars parked up and down the road. We had a seven-thousand-pound cheese vat and usually made about five hundred pounds of cheese every second day. For the festival, we made cheese in the afternoon so people could see the process and outside we had clowns and musicians entertaining. We kept the cows inside and everything was spick and span. We also had two teams of horses pulling hay wagons for people to ride on, going out to the back of the farm. The timing was just right. It was a beautiful fall day, with all the trees in full autumn color. Especially nice for us was watching Dave, who was four, sitting next to the driver, content as could be for the duration of the festival. For us, the festival was a financial success, as the community found out about our cheese house and we had many repeat customers over the years.
But life was also difficult. We were very cash-strapped and it was hard to sell our cheese. We had forty-five cows and had enough milk to make five hundred pounds of cheese every second day. This was in the early eighties when there was a huge surplus of milk and no milk companies would take on new customers. So we had to keep making cheese, filling our aging room, yet had no money coming in. In addition, as the value of the dollar was high, I could not compete against the imported Gouda cheeses. Imported cheese was coming in at a dollar eighty a pound and I had to sell my cheese at two twenty five or it was better to sell milk. It was just impossible then to wholesale cheese without losing money.
Worse, New York Agriculture and Markets was giving me a hard time. Farming is very regulated and everything has to be inspected and approved, including labeling. Ag and Markets was telling me I could not call my cheese “organic,” as all cheese is organic. This was very upsetting, as organic was what was setting my cheese apart from the competition. This was when organic was just coming into vogue but official standards were not yet in place. Officialdom can be very intimidating so I went to my lawyer who advised me that my farm was worth less than the cost of suing Ag and Markets but I should talk to my local assembly man Steve, who happened to be head of the assembly Ag committee. Steve knew that Ag and Markets had been asked, two years previously, to come up with organic standards but had not bothered about them. Steve kindly inquired where the standards were for organic cheese so I could understand their ruling. One week later I got a letter saying I could call my cheese organic but in future please talk directly to Ag and Markets. Yes, it always feels good to beat the system.
It was difficult to always be depending on interns to get the work done and also share our home with them. It was especially hard in winter. Our sole source of warmth was our wood stove in the living room. The bedrooms upstairs could often get below freezing so we would crowd around the stove to keep warm. A family with two young children and a couple of interns in their twenties was not always very compatible. Getting up in the mornings at four-thirty to milk the cows was especially painful. I would get up without turning the lights on so as not to wake Joan. All the clothing was set out in a special order, long johns first, with the tops still inside the shirt and sweater all ready to be pulled over the head without twisting up and then the bottoms and jeans and socks. Dressing was very quick. Downstairs the woodstove would be stocked up and coveralls put on. The insulated boot liners were always left underneath the stove so the feet were warm and dry. Once in the barn, it was warm as the cows’ bodies and breathing kept the barn above freezing.
I had so much to learn about winters in Upstate New York. In the fall when it was wet, we would make ruts in the lanes when we hauled the corn in from the fields or took out the manure. Then in the winter, the ruts would fill with water and freeze. When it is cold the cows are in the barn most of the time and the gutters behind the cows have to be cleaned on a daily bases. Cows make enough manure to fill a manure spreader every day and it has to be hauled out to compost piles before it freezes. That first year there were many a day that my tractor got stuck in the frozen ruts and I had to go out with a pick and break the ice up. A couple of years later I was able to buy a four-wheel-drive tractor that solved that problem.
With all this hard work and financial pressure, I lost my vision of why I was farming. I was working eighty or ninety hours a week just to get the work done and forgetting about the spiritual side of life. I was just slogging it out to prove that I could make it. This was not enough support for Joan. In the Christian Community wedding ceremony, the priest turns to the man and states:
Walter, shine before Joan
With the light
Which the Risen One
Let’s shine in your spirit

He then turns to the women and states
Joan, follow Walter
In the light
Which the Risen One
Let’s shine in your soul

Joan felt that I was not embodying the spirit light that she needed to be able to follow and therefore she wanted to leave. This was devastating to me and I did not know what to do. I loved Joan and the children and could not imagine life without them. The farm would have been empty without them but I only knew how to farm and could not imagine myself providing the family with what they needed without a farm. I tried to be supportive of her needs. Her parents visited and they went apartment hunting with Joan in Ithaca. Joan applied for Waldorf teaching positions on the East Coast. I remember one night in February, leaving Joan in Boston for a job interview; I was driving through snow storms with Eve and Dave in the back. We couldn’t leave Boston until six at night, as that was when the snow ploughs finally cleared the roads and I had promised my intern I would try to get back for the morning milking. It was still snowing a bit and I remember driving all night on the Massachusetts Turnpike and New York Thruway wedged between tractor trailer trucks with the snow coming at the windshield. We tried stopping for a rest but it was too cold and we could not afford a motel. Years later, Eve told me she never fell asleep and all they knew was that Mom and Dad were changing their lives. We did get home in time for me to put my children to bed and go out and milk. I struggled on while Joan tried to find the right place for her and the children. After I wrote this chapter I asked Eve if she had any memories of those times and she wrote back as a thirty year old women.
Hi Pops,

It is so nice to read your story and bring back memories from that time. Your writing is beautiful. I have lots of memories from our time at Cresset farm. One of my best memories is of Christmas on the farm. I remember going out with you and Dave to pick out and cut down a Christmas tree on Christmas eve, and then hanging popcorn strings and apples on the tree with mom, along with our other ornaments (those gold cymbals and candles). I remember how we went out to the barn and sang to the cows and I remember singing around the tree and telling stories during the holy nights. I remember Christmas quite well in that old house. I remember the fire being lit in the stove near the tree.
I also remember the festivals on the farm and how fun it was to have all those people come visit the farm. I remember times when we had babysitters, and I was always so sad and upset when you left (when I was real young). A lot of my memories are actually around traumatic experiences, like when mom got in that car accident and red paint spilt on me and scared her. I remember playing with Laurie and Jordan and Russell too (and I remember when he died). I remember the auction of the farm and that mom had a splitting headache when it was over and was lying on the couch upstairs in the addition that we added onto the house. I have a memory of seeing a ghost (or some spirit) walking thru my room one early morning and I remember our intern Daren. I could go on with lots more memories but I'll talk to you about them if you want. Anyway, loved reading your chapter..
Around this time of great sadness and uncertainty, I received a great gift that sustained me and changed my life. I had just gone to bed and Joan was still downstairs when a mighty Being entered the room. This Being radiated light and love and communicated to me that I was completely loved and accepted just the way I was. I knew that I had this unbelievable companion that would never leave or stop believing in my goodness. After a while, the Being was gone and I was left in tears of gratitude. I knew that whatever happened, and however painful it was, things would be all right. Somehow this experience changed me so that I could again be the light that Joan needed to experience shining before her. I don’t think much happened outwardly and I still had to work incredibly hard to keep the farm going. Yet I knew that all creation was perfect and loved to an extent unimaginable to us.

Since we first moved to our farm, Joan had been helping to start a Waldorf school in Ithaca, about thirty miles away. When Dave turned three, she started to teach the kindergarten class. The commute was long but she loved the teaching and meeting more people. Then the school had to change location and the commute was over an hour each way. Joan and the children had long days and would come home really tired. We were still struggling with finances on the farm and I felt we were spinning our wheels and going nowhere. With all the hard physical work, my sciatic nerve was bothering me and causing me to limp. Finally, after seven years, we decided to sell the farm. At that time, in 1985, the dairy industry was in disarray and our two neighbors were also going through bankruptcy and having auctions. The investment in our cheese house had no resale value and with the depressed value of dairy farms, Farmers Home Administration said they would buy back all our land and assets for one dollar and forgive all our loans. We were allowed to keep our car and about ten thousand dollars worth of cheese that we sold over the next few months. I was able to sell all the cheese equipment which I then had to deliver to Wisconsin. I still remember shutting the door to the U Haul truck, before driving out, thinking that I was closing the door to all my dreams. It is strange how I thought I was selling the farm for the good of the family but years later Joan said she loved it there and would have stayed.