Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [118]
Considering the social effects of farming, Hilary says, is more important as the suburbs spread. “You have people moving out by the bogs because it’s beautiful, then realizing that they didn’t know much about the reality of living beside a working farm.” Massachusetts is the nation’s third most densely populated state. And all that surrounding, supporting woodland is powerfully attractive to developers, its sandy soil being as well suited for septic systems as it is for cranberry vines (A. D. Makepeace, the biggest cranberry grower in the world, has begun developing housing on some of its land—Hilary says it’s now just a company, rather than a cranberry-growing company).
So though in my perfect world I’d love for all cranberries to be grown organically, the reality is that in southern Massachusetts the choice may not be between organic and conventional cranberry farming, but rather between housing developments and any cranberry farming at all. It’s not that cranberries would ever disappear from the country entirely; Wisconsin, unconstrained by small, irregular, ex-bog-iron bogs, is now the nation’s largest producer. But it’s a crop with deep historical and cultural roots in Massachusetts. Cranberry bogs aren’t just something worth keeping—they’re something worth keeping here. And, I realize, it doesn’t much matter to me how that’s done, especially given the strides IPM growers have made in reducing their chemical loads.
Talking to Hilary is frankly not very different from talking to Kristine; both obviously care deeply about the land and how best to care for it. What separates them is more the old question of purity versus pragmatism—do you effect better change by living the ideal or by trying to move the greatest number of people in a good direction? On the latter point, IPM has been hugely successful, with more than 80 percent of conventional growers giving up the old calendar-spraying system.
The Keeses have been successful, too; they’re a model for others who want to farm with as small an environmental footprint as possible. What’s more, the methods of pest and weed control developed by organic growers like them help to make IPM possible—there is, Hilary says, a constant and ongoing dialogue. But successful or not, it’s a wearing, wearying life; Robert and Kristine are thinking of putting their land on the market.
AFTER THANKSGIVING DINNER
A most excellent hash may be made thus: Pick meat off turkey bones, shred it in small bits, add dressing and pieces of light biscuit cut up fine, mix together and put into dripping-pan, pour over any gravy that was left, add water to thoroughly moisten but not enough to make it sloppy, place in a hot oven for twenty minutes, and, when eaten, all will agree that the turkey is better this time than it was at first; or warm the remnants of the turkey over after the style of escaloped oysters (first a layer of bread-crumbs, then minced turkey, and so on); or add an egg or two and make nice breakfast croquettes. . . . All such dishes should be served hot with some sort of tart jelly. Always save a can of currant juice (after filling jelly cups and glasses), from which to make jelly in the winter, and it will taste as fresh and delicious as when made in its season.
—ESTELLE WOODS WILCOX, Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, 1877
As a boy, Twain often went hunting with his cousins and his Uncle John, stalking squirrels, geese, and deer in the forests and prairies beyond the farm. Perhaps their favorite quarry were the wild turkeys that gathered at dawn in great flocks; Quarles, Twain later remembered, imitated a turkey call “by sucking the air through the leg bone of a turkey which had previously