Spring, 2011
Statement of Support- Zenner Road Conservation Easement
By Jillian Krupski, Granddaughter/Farm Enthusiast
We’re a farm family. We’ve been sustainable before “sustainable” was a buzzword and organic before “organic” implied a certain social status. In a day and age where obesity is an epidemic, we have a healthy relationship with food and manual labor. We’re American. We’re middle-class. None of us are full-time farmers. We have careers: a chemical engineer, a research biologist, a project manager. We shop at large grocery stores, drive non fuel-efficient cars, and live in 1970’s-era subdivisions. You wouldn’t call us environmentalists, but our farm is our world.
We divide our year by the season: June is for strawberries, July is pea and pickle season. August is for cauliflower and tomatoes. April is spent in the greenhouse, November finds us winterizing the chicken house. We practice farming because we know we have an incredible gift of land to which a decreasing amount of people have access. We do it because we always have. We do it because it is our heritage and because it is immensely satisfying. We do it because we believe it’s incredibly important to pass it on.
Of course this farm is special for one thousand or more snapshots in time: for the myriad summer evenings the pond has given up its sunfish to ecstatic grandchildren; for the 40+ years that the woods have sheltered bands of campers and ordinary families singing like a world-class choir around a campfire; for the simple mystery of filling a plastic milk jug with crisp spring water straight from a hillside spigot; for the grove of pines that have provided years and years of Christmas Trees, for the sugar maples and the sugar shack and a rich warm maple perfume that cuts through cold spring air. For innumerable nights of catching fireflies in mason jars. For teaching brothers and cousins how to work together to get the ATV out of a mudhole or to construct cauliflower boxes at a rapid pace or to move an entire irrigation system in the 30 minutes after ice cream cones and before sunset. For teaching three generations how to be good stewards of our earth.
It’s not that you can’t encounter these attributes elsewhere. This type of tradition binds families and generations across the US; it’s our American heritage. Organic peas, berries and pumpkins can be grown anywhere. Instead, what’s makes this farm unique is the people it has produced. Two married farmers built a system that produced four generous, hardworking individuals who will testify that their moral fabric is a direct result of their farm upbringing. Those four adults have in turn produced ten principled, productive members of society who choose to spend their summer vacations taking part in the familialbound food production process. We, the human products of the Zenner Road Farm are instilled with sense of unique tradition, responsibility and a tie to the earth that we are determined to pass on to generations in perpetuity.
Beautifully written.