I'm sure Peckham is doing humor. Right?
Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day? And didn't the NYT covered our madness too?
October 27, 2023
"The hoedown was to celebrate the closing of the harvest season and thrown by Shani Mink, 29, the flower farmer and D.J...."
"... and also a food-systems educator and advocate, and Peter Treiber Jr., 35, an artist and [grower of] things like bergamot and asparagus on Long Island’s North Fork, where the humble potato farms that once dominated the area are increasingly crowded out by vineyards and the weekend escapes of Manhattanites. Many of the farmers were Manhattanites who had escaped themselves. The oyster farmer, Will Peckham, 31, for example, left a job in corporate finance in the city to start West Robins Oyster Company, a mollusk farm in Peconic Bay about seven years ago. 'I thought it would be a really easy switch, because I had been through this super-grueling desk job in New York... I never knew how hard it could be.'... Sitting on a hay bale was Sara Hyman, 32, who left a job in human resources in 2017 in the city to work at Amber Waves. She seemed to be growing melancholy.... She’d fallen in love with the oyster farmer, Mr. Peckham, but found that with two farmers’ salaries, they were struggling to make ends meet on Long Island.
This was her last season on a farm, she said, for good.... She took solace that at least one-half of the couple would keep growing things: Mr. Peckham will remain farming his oysters."
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46 comments:
Long Island is expensive.
Hipster Farmers hardest hit.
She seemed to be growing melancholy.... She’d fallen in love with the oyster farmer, Mr. Peckham, but found that with two farmers’ salaries, they were struggling to make ends meet on Long Island.
I find this wording old-fashioned and surprisingly touching. "She'd fallen in love with the oyster farmer..."
I assume they're splitting up work-wise, but will still be a couple?
Green Acres was a TV comedy not an instruction video.
No. We didn't. When I was young I wanted to live in cities. Now I wish I had moved to Napa or Sonoma counties when I was younger and Napa and Sonoma were just getting going. Learned to farm, grow grapes, cultivate a great harvest to sell to great winemakers for a few years, and then learn to make great wines myself. As it turned out, I whine plenty, but have never spent a minute in a vineyard during harvest time. I'd still love to.
When I was growing up, the farmers were encouraging their kids to get city jobs. (It didn't take much encouraging.) Some kids stayed home long enough to inherit the farm since they loved the life, but had to marry someone with a city job. I grew up on a farm. I had no fantasies about what it was like to live on one, but I have always loved it.
Farming is quite possibly the world's most honorable profession. Feel good story of the day as far as I'm concerned.
These families and many others who are invested in a lifestyle change, I commend them. There's more to life than wearing the latest fashion, having the latest gadget, car, and a long list of other items some call necessities. The long hours, great sacrifice is a labor of love.
The two most important lessons I've learned over the years: know your land, know your limits. Knowing both saves costly mistakes, time, and energy.
I'm sure Peckham is doing humor. Right?
I guess. Next door to my parents VT gentleman's farm a young couple parked their tiny home and planted a few acres of...everything. They have developed a fair number of Instagram followers for their lovely and imaginative produce displays. My mom would see them out picking and text me that they were harvesting the runway models...
The grueling desk job had to be a joke; I think he was poking fun at himself for underestimating how hard it would be. The unexpected struggle is also a common refrain in Times back to the land stories. Young couple thinks it will be like Green Acres, but it's more like The Grapes of Wrath.
Althouse:
Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day? And didn't the NYT cover[ed] our madness too? - emphases mine
madness
1. extremely foolish, irrational, or reckless behavior:
"it is madness to allow children to roam around after dark"
. . a state of frenzied or chaotic activity:
"from about midnight to three in the morning it's absolute madness in here"
2. the state of having a serious mental health condition (not in technical use):
Madness? As someone who bought a farm, lived there for 20 and, after too old to do the maintenance, still lives in the adjacent (kinda) town, I find that declaration pretty pompous.
“two farmer’s salaries”. We have a fundamental misunderstanding from right there.
The Farm Prom of Little Nell
- Rafe
They are playing at being people they would normally hate and wish dead on principle. I just hope I live long enough to see them have to face Nemesis.
They reap what they sow.
My uncle used to say farming was a great way to end up with a small fortune.
“Unfortunately, though” he’d continue, “you have to start off with a large one.”
- Rafe
They betrayed their Green peers to go green.
I'm sure Peckham is doing humor. Right?
---------------------------------------
I suppose he is, but he's no Will Cuppy.
Blogger Rafe said...
The Farm Prom of Little Nell
I first read that as the farm porn of Little Nell
"One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears … of laughter."
Supposedly Oscar Wilde but perhaps not.
John Henry
I know some folks that would've stuck it out in farming if they knew about the salaries. Where do you apply for those, and do they offer benefits (health insurance, 401K) too? Or is that just a North Shore of Long Island thing?
"Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day?"
The difference likely being that those would-be agrarian utopians had no experience of anything. Eco-blather notwithstanding, this iteration probably knows they have to make a buck or go back to serving The Man.
It's easy to joke of the city folk gone rural but I'm going to make a counterpoint- Vermont attracts these urbanites and I believe many are doing an inspirational job. It's amazing how motivated one becomes when they see the wholesale prices of heirloom tomatoes and heritage hogs...and they have upped the food game with a smattering of Beard Award winners and multiple beers judged as best in the WORLD.
Good on them....
I think it's kind of cute...naive, but cute.
How many of us daydream about 'what if'?
At least these folks had the guts to try something new.
Good for them...
'No. We didn't. When I was young I wanted to live in cities. Now I wish I had moved to Napa or Sonoma counties when I was younger and Napa and Sonoma were just getting going. Learned to farm, grow grapes, cultivate a great harvest to sell to great winemakers for a few years, and then learn to make great wines myself. As it turned out, I whine plenty, but have never spent a minute in a vineyard during harvest time. I'd still love to.'
I know more than a bit about the grape-growing business.
If you got in early and made many correct decisions you might have done well.
These days, it's a tough gig competing against Silicon Valley money and folks who don't really care if they have down years.
I'm not suprised that he stayed and she's leaving. Women are usually the first ones to give up on the "Lets go back to land" "lets go back to nature" "lets go back to a small town". They miss the restaraunts, social life, and shops.
Of course "going back to the land" has never been easier. you now have amazon, the internet, cellphones, etc. not to mention, quick trips to the "big city" and foreign vacations.
Not like my Grandmother who had to make due with a radio and the weekly trip to a medium size town to see a movie or go dancing.
This Boomer never had the slightest interest in getting back to the dirt. My ancestors had fled the dirt, why would I go back?
Got to get back to the land
Set my soul free
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day?
Not all of us. All my uncles on my father’s side were farmers and most of my Dad’s sisters were married to farmers. It never crossed my mind that farming was anything other hard, physical, labor and fraught with risk. Good years could be very good, but years with bad weather could leave you with very tight belts.
Farming is hard work. And when it isn't hard work it's expensive. And sometimes it's both.
“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.” ― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again
"Farming is hard work. And when it isn't hard work it's expensive. And sometimes it's both."
What's the old line about being a farmer while trying to be prosperous? You'll work all your life so you can die rich.
Let's hear from farmgirl on this topic - is the bergamot crop doing well this year in the NEK?
I don't understand what the big deal is. Didn't Michael Bloomberg tell us how easy it is?
I am a small-town boomer who desired to own a farm and be productive. Did it and am still here."retired" now and not producing anything for sale.Not really getting the "madness" part of your comments.
Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day?
Yes, and we all moved to the Viroqua, WI area.
She’d fallen in love with the oyster farmer, Mr. Peckham, but found that with two farmers’ salaries, they were struggling to make ends meet on Long Island.
Farming is and of itself a lifestyle, which makes it incompatible with young progressive orthodoxy.
There are no farmers' meetup groups for a $6 cup of chai and a discussion of the benefits of soy milk.
No farmer is carving up their fields to spell out "Black Lives Matter" for low-flying aircraft.
None of them are driving their tractor chanting, "What do we want? The end of colonialism! When do we want it? Right now!"
And no part of farming incudes the concept of "cute shoes".
Ye, they're refugees from a Banana Republic. The store, I mean.
I'm talking to farmers everyday now. As harvest is winding down, the bounty is close to being measured, and the net is coming into focus. Mostly exceeding expectations, so farmers in this corner of world, are happy.
"Hoedown"
Checks Urban Dictionary.
Nope, not going there.
Crack, a good chunk of the U.S. Boomers and late boomers (like me) had parents and/or grandparents who had farms. I certainly spent enough time on my maternal grandfather's land to understand what tough work it was, even though now I look like a prototypical Silicon Valley denizen.
They should have grown pot.
All farming is hard work - though more from long hours if efficiently mechanized. But oyster farming is backbreaking. I suppose the wooden frames can be lifted mechanically, just haven’t seen it.
As for the economics, in Australia a viable family farm is where the wife is a nurse or teacher.
One of those long-ago Long Island potato farmers was Karol Yastrzemski, father of Boston Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski.
"Thompson missed all the people who care about art and history and bemoan destruction."
There are zero of those people re this statue, so he didn't miss anyone.
Stuff that could be considered art and history is always getting trashed all over America. A lot of the reason Althouse fusses on this blog is because sometimes some of this trashed trash has something to do with folks that tried to keep slavery in America: for example this statue or graves in her town.
I doubt Althouse would mind if someone incinerated a piece of the publicly funded art and buildings that she has said look terrible.
How can a law prof have such extreme inconsistencies of logic? And the pull of the inconsistency is to give props to slavery supporters. Sheesh!
iowan2 said...
"I'm talking to farmers everyday now. As harvest is winding down, the bounty is close to being measured, and the net is coming into focus. Mostly exceeding expectations, so farmers in this corner of world, are happy."
As long as their corn is more than 250 bu. per acre. They're making a profit. I was shocked to learn that a new combine is north of 500,000 $ and the real shocker is that the note is just for 5 years. I sue would want to do it.
Sure would not.......
Jaysus ya ijit.
This sounds like the plot of an Albert Brooks film.
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