A New Crop of Farmers series (January 6-8, 2011)
Maybe the most positive trend I’ve seen since I began writing in-depth about agriculture, even before arriving at The Recorder, is the appreciation for local farms among consumers — and among young farmers themselves. A three-part series focused on Clarkdale, on Upinngil and Hager Brothers looked at how the next generation has returned to established farms in Franklin County. ‘We’re really lucky in what we have, that there’s that awareness and appreciation,” said Ben Clark. “Right now, I wouldn’t rather be anyplace else.”
DEERFIELD — Ben Clark loved climbing onto the boughs of the large, spreading trees and in the treehouse his father had built for him in one them. At 2, Clark and his sister, Betsey, watched their father clearing 10 acres of an overgrown pasture to put in a peach orchard, dangling their legs from the tail of a pickup while eating hot dogs grilled on the brush piles.
These, said the 32-year-old junior partner of Clarkdale Fruit Farms, were among his favorite memories of growing up on the Deerfield farm.
But he didn’t think he’d want to come back to the farm after college any more than his father, Tom, had wanted to return to the farm when he left for college. The family tradition had even deeper roots, with Tom’s father, Fred, rejecting a farming life as well.
Fred, who’d left to become a coal salesman in Shelburne, returned in 1946 to the farm his father, a physician named Webster Clark, had started in 1915 only after Webster announced he was retiring and offered “first refusal” rights to his son before selling it to a stranger.
Ben had helped his grandfather Fred load up apples for the Greenfield Farmers Market and then helped him sell there (although the boy wasn’t allowed to handle anything greater than a $5 bill). He was even less inclined to go into farming than his elders.
“I was a day student at Deerfield Academy, with kids from places like Greenwich, Conn., and New York,” said Clark. “I was jealous. Now, farming and growing your own food is an in’ thing. At the time, it was quaint. I wanted to go off and see other things.”
Encouraged by his parents — both of whom have fine arts degrees from Syracuse University — Ben Clark headed off to Wesleyan University, much more interested in architecture than in farming.
He’d started working on the farm breaking up cartons at age 8 or 9, together with his older sister, and then picking apples at 12 or 13, but he didn’t like chores like shoveling. And any enthusiasm he might have had was dampened after hearing his parents talk about the threats of hail, frost and drought seemingly year after year.
Clark still returned to work on the farm summers, just as he’d been doing through adolescence, and friends who came up to visit the farm “said it was cool,” he recalls. But he liked the freer environment at Wesleyan and liked living on his own. And he became more involved in theater lighting and backstage work, which he did after graduation for five years in Boston and Providence, R.I.
He was living in Providence and returned briefly when his grandfather died in 2005, re-emphasizing the story of how his grandfather and then father had both returned to the farm after rejecting it and wandering off.
“I was rethinking my life plan,” he recalls. “After college, people I met would ask, When are you going back? There was no pressure from my parents, but it had always been a fallback plan for me to come back to. I thought I would come back and do a year as a trial run.”
It was a tough adjustment when he returned in 2006, beginning with his 10-year Deerfield Academy reunion, the fact that he didn’t have friends his age who lived in the area and he’d just broken up with a girlfriend.
The toughest adjustment of all was going from a theater schedule — waking up bleary-eyed at 10 a.m. and sometimes working until midnight — to a farm routine that starts at 6 or so and can last well until dark.
But when he began selling at the Greenfield Farmers Market — the same setting where his grandfather’s interactions with the community had piqued his interest years earlier — Clark began making friends with farmers and vendors from his own generation.
Some of them, like Caroline Pam and Tim Wilcox of The Kitchen Garden in Sunderland, were first-generation farmers whose gravitation to agriculture seems to represent a new wave of the “back to the land” movement that drew Clark’s father back to the orchard in the early 1970s.
“It’s wonderful,” says 62-year-old Tom Clark of his son’s return to the 95-year-old operation. “For me and for him, the good thing is going away and getting a different perspective on stuff. It’s hard for anybody who’s coming into a second- or third-generation business to come in with expectations that you’re going to take over. I think that can be an albatross around your neck — the expectation that here’s the business your grandpa made, and you’re going to keep it going whether you like it or not.”
Tom Clark, who was involved in Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture when it first started up nearly 20 years ago, says it’s played a role in revitalizing farming to the point where there’s an appeal for young people to keep the land in production.
“Now agriculture is big, and (Ben) has friends his age with a similar perspective,” says the elder Clark, who’s also found a new connection by working side by side with his son. “It could be pretty lonely if you’re the only guy who’s 20 in a room full of 60-year-old farmers.”
Just as Tom Clark began expanding what had been Fred Clark’s McIntosh and Macoun varieties and shifted marketing away from wholesale to retailing, his son says he’s been able to make his own mark on the business as a co-manager transitioning to part owner.
Ben Clark has helped build the farm’s website as well as set up a Facebook page and introduce credit-card sales. The website has received heavy traffic during weekends this fall, he says, and was probably responsible for a sharp reduction in the number of people phoning for directions to the orchard.
The Clarks continue diversifying, with about 10 acres now planted in peaches and an increasing crop of plums, grapes, cherries and heritage varieties of apples and pears so that this fall, the farm could introduce two new kinds of cider.
“One of the things that’s really solidified me being here is that I know I’m carrying on a tradition, farming the same land,” said Ben Clark, who’s been approached by older generations of customers as “Tommy’s boy,” some of whom say they remember doing business at Clarkdale when his grandfather ran it. “It’s about stewardship and hoping my children will be farming the same land.”
The challenges are still there, he said, pointing out that the heavy frost last spring cost Clarkdale about 30 percent of its crop. They’re thinking of adding to the farm’s sprinkler system and have a new irrigation system to protect against drought on the 40-acre farm.
But when part of the crop was damaged by hail last year, he says, it helped to know the farm has a supportive customer base that could appreciate that the damage was just cosmetic.
“We’re really lucky in what we have, that there’s that awareness and appreciation,” he says. “Right now, I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.” – RICHIE DAVIS