The Greenfield Farmers’ Market this season included a vendor offering two categories for sale: succulent plants and ceramics.
With a table and beach umbrella — foregoing a canopy or stylized signage — David Henion displayed his wares without fanfare. Yet a cursory perusal revealed that this fellow knows his stuff: succulents of many shapes and sizes were picture-perfect, in shades of green tinged with hues of pinkish purple or reddish browns.
Henion notes that “all cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti,” and while he also grows non-succulents, he favors the lovely, exotic plants, growing them both from seed and by division; he has over a thousand plants at any given time.
Market passersby were drawn in by aloes, jades and cacti, only to find they couldn’t resist looking at and touching Henion’s elegant porcelain bowls and mugs. Some expressed amazement that one guy could do two things so very well.
Yet that’s not the half of it.
David Henion personifies cycles of creativity astonishing for just one person, and his output ranges far beyond ceramics and plants.
“Sculpting in marble is my first love,” said Henion. “It’s the art form I’ve done the longest.” He carves limestone, too, as well as wood. “Limestone is softer than marble, and it’s what makes up the cathedrals of Europe,” he explained.
Henion’s affinity for natural materials is also evident in garden beds he tends alongside his wife, Barbara Kline. The Leverett couple eat homegrown food nearly year-round, thanks to a hoop house and careful planning.
Growing up in Waterbury, Connecticut, Henion – the eldest of five – came of age “in a gritty city. Waterbury had brass factories and was pretty far from rural.” But Henion caught a glimpse through “an Irish neighbor who had a lot of children and maintained a garden.”
As a young adult, Henion moved to western Massachusetts with his first wife and lived in Goshen, where they raised animals and crops, providing nearly everything they needed. “We went to the store for toilet paper,” recalled Henion. “That’s about it. We had goats and chickens, and preserved food in an immense freezer.” Self-sufficiency extended to butchering their own animals.
Henion no longer eats a lot of meat. “I have no qualms about eating meat, since I’ve butchered my own. It’s not a moral question. Barbara and I just happen to be very vegetable heavy, though we’re happy to have a bit of everything. We eat beef about three times a year, pork about twice a year, and a bit of lamb. We do eat some poultry and fish.”
Henion and Kline grow vegetables in raised beds terraced into a hillside on their one-acre property. “Initially, I edged the beds with wood, but wood rots away. The beds grew wider and wider,” said Henion. “I no longer try to contain them.”
He says their soil is “incredibly rocky, not great for root crops,” but added that they fill beds in a hoop house with valley soil, and have benefited from “gorgeous black dirt” resulting from concerted composting.
The hoop house begins to see action each year around the first of March; before long the Henion-Kline kitchen greens up with spinach, lettuces, arugula, and mustard. Later, the hoop house hosts tomatoes, cukes and other vegetables, and eventually becomes home to fall root crops, including daikon and golden beets. All the while, greens keep pumping out.
“We have lettuce until January,” said Henion. “We no longer preserve food — we don’t really need to. We eat from our gardens for at least three seasons.” Other crops include zucchinis, peppers, cucumbers, “and wonderful basil.”
They grow fruits, too: “We have apples, pears, peaches, quince, grapes, goji berries and blueberries,” said Henion. “I’ve had a lemon tree for 40 years. We grow mostly organically, but cross the line to spray apples.”
Most years bring both successes and failures. “It’s good to diversify as a farmer,” said Henion. A hungry woodchuck proved a challenge in 2022. “We need electric fencing,” he said. “That’s one of my next projects.”
This year’s drought presented another considerable challenge: “Animals were so desperate for moisture, they completely stripped our fruit trees,” said Henion. “Chipmunks, squirrels, deer … they ate the fruit even before it was ripe, just to get some moisture.”
A mulberry tree is earmarked “for the creatures,” said Henion, “and feeds hummingbirds.”
Prodigious composting has included “coffee grounds we brought home from the bakery, along with eggshells, which provide calcium,” said Henion. “We composted citrus rinds after making fresh juice for our customers.”
Some readers may note that the name Henion sounds familiar. For 28 years, Henion and Kline operated The Henion Bakery in downtown Amherst, retiring in 2021.
“I always took the first shift,” said Henion of his longtime pre-dawn routine, “and Barbara came in later, closing up at the end of the day … We had seven employees but, for years, Barbara and I had to travel separately to visit family members.” In total, Henion and Kline have eight children and 10 grandchildren “living all over the U.S. and overseas.”
Throughout those busy decades, Henion cooked dinners on weeknights. “But Barbara cooked on weekends,” Henion hastened to add. “We’re both very good cooks.”
Henion studied at the Culinary Institute of America, beginning in 1970. “I was especially interested in baking,” he said. He worked at hotels and bakeries in Atlanta and Philadelphia, including an Italian bakery with a brick oven.
Moving to Amherst in 1979, Henion worked in a bakery for three years, then opened his own shop. He still bakes yeastless sourdough bread at home, “though I make an exception for yeasted challah.”
Henion says he’s been “lucky in business. I’ve had very good fortune.” It should come as no surprise that Henion dovetailed skills in various combinations, including selling succulent plants from the front window of the bakery. “I sold about 200 plants there over our final three years.”
Henion learned from his father — who ran an optician business — that it’s important to give back to the community. “In my dad’s case, it was joining the Lion’s Club. That wasn’t my style, but I found my outlet in joining the Leverett Crafts and Arts Center.” According to its website, LC&A has been home to a vibrant community of artists and artistic endeavors since 1966.
Housed in a former mill building, the center boasts two galleries and nearly 20 studios. Henion is president of the LC&A board and speaks passionately about its mission. “Nowadays, you find this kind of thing in many former mills,” said Henion. “But when Leverett Crafts and Arts started, it was such a big deal, the New York Times did a story on it.”
Freed from running a bakery, Henion and Kline now pursue their respective art forms — she’s a talented quilter and textile artist — and finally can travel together.
“We love camping, especially after discovering HipCamp (online). We spend about $25 per night to pitch our roomy tent at sites that aren’t crowded and offer varying degrees of comfort,” mused Henion. “Maybe we’ll have cell service? Maybe an outhouse or a picnic table?”
The key to camping, he said, is the new level of technology in inflatable mattresses. “They’re amazingly comfortable,” he said. “In the mornings, we wake up feeling rested and cycle along river roads, whether it’s in Vermont, near the Erie Canal, along the Cape, and in the Finger Lakes region.”
And when they return home, it’s back to the garden, the kitchen, and the studio — with expertise and joy.
Eveline MacDougall is the author of “Fiery Hope” and an artist, musician, teacher and mom. She enjoys hearing from readers: eveline@amandlachorus.org or P.O. Box 223, Greenfield MA 01302.