Ed Stockman shows off his organic fruit.
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Ed hasn't let the job become second nature, though; working sometimes alone and sometimes with an apprentice, he brings in a crop with the rigor and attention to variables of a researcher - which he actually is. He serves as NOFA's Organic Extension Educator.
The 1800-ft.-elevation spot he and his wife, Chris, live on in Plainfield, called Summit Farm, is a jewel of orderly beauty. A graceful solar-heated house he built himself in 1985 sits on a west-facing hillside.
Below it is a neat yet rustic barn (which he also built) with a sign informing pick-your-own visitors of their liability risks.
Both buildings are flanked to the south by trimmed fields containing long beds of squash, sunflowers and greens - produce that he sells twice a week at the farmers' market in Pittsfield. Much of his produce, but especially berries, he's been successful in offering as pick-your-own to a mostly-local clientele. "Last year I hardly wasted a strawberry," he said. He says he's planning to expand that part of his operation, and thinking of growing more berries, depending on whether he's able to get apprentice help.
Because of the farm's high elevation, Ed is able to grow lettuce and broccoli virtually all summer long.
Ed Stockman is a familiar presence in NOFA. He's been certified by NOFA/Mass since 1989 and served on the NOFA/Mass Certification Committee for a period in the mid-1990s. Next he reviewed ag input products for the Certification Committee. He regularly leads workshops at NOFA conferences. In his town, he was chairman of the Plainfield Conservaton Commission for twelve years.
A certified wetlands scientist, Ed has recently worked as an environmental consultant, before that as a teacher, and even before that as a fisherman and clammer. Farming used to be something he did summers to help feed himself, his wife, Chris, and their two sons. It grew, and recently become his full-time occupation.
Ed used to sell his vegetables to Rowe Camp and Conference Center, McCusker's Market, Kripalu Yoga Center and other wholesale accounts. This is the first year he hasn't sold to Kripalu, he said, because of difficulty finding apprentice help to plant the bigger beds of the carrots and winter squash they want. His output this year is being sold at farmers' markets. "I like retail pricing," he admitted.
Over three decades, Ed has witnessed a near-reversal in the popular attitude toward his practice of agriculture. "Thirty years ago, nobody ever heard about it," he said. For years, at a farmers' market, "they'd point to the word 'organic' and veer away. Now I don't see that. It's come from that to an acceptable form of agriculture. But I don't see it becoming mainstream, either."
As a fallout of organic teachings, and of their own hard learning curve, conventional farmers "are becoming more sustainable," Ed says. "I see cover crops more, hear them talk more about organic content of the soil. But they're a long way from being organic."
He says the problem with being an organic farmer is "You've got to know so much more. A lot of what you do is preventative rather than curative - preventing soil nutrient problems, preventing disease. I'm already thinking about next year, and the year after."
Ed has a passion for researching growing methods, which he hopes to indulge more fully in the future. This year he carried out a Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) grant on growing cherry tomatoes under high polytunnels. He's recording the quantity of tomatoes growing in his highest field under two of these structures. He doesn't even try to grow tomatoes in the open, cherry or regular.
He offers the visitor an idea how high his farm is: "The day last March I had to shovel off my greenhouse for the last time, the snowbank alongside was the same height as the greenhouse. A couple of days later I talked to a farmer down in the valley. He'd been out planting lettuce in his field."
Some farmers apparently don't need those long-season, bottomland growing advantages.
This page was last modified on January 14, 2008 at 12:25:34 PM.