The Strawberry Farm

We had brunch with the strawberry farmer on Sunday. Went to a nice little country inn in Buckfield. We had been there a few years previously, but it has changed hands since. It's quite a bit more upscale, now. Last time, it was boarding house style roast turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, squash, and apple pie. This time, they had a nice buffet of fruit, cheese, muffins, coffee cake, and a juice bar. The proprietress told us the problem with being on the Atkins diet was that she couldn't eat her own baked goods. ML had an omelet with cream cheese and scallions. I had 'Crepes David', with sirloin tips and mushrooms. (Only one crepe, actually.)

On the way back, we drove past former farm fields where the black soil was torn up for the foundations of new houses. The strawberry farmer told us that thirty years ago when he started raising goats and strawberries, all the farmers in Turner would get together once a year at harvest time and talk about farming. With his usual bravado, he boasted to them that he would be the last farmer in town. They laughed at him and his goats and strawberries. Now, he says, he is the last real farmer. There are a few people breeding horses or leasing land to big apple growers and a DeCoster egg factory, but nobody making a full time living at farming except him, he says. Of course, he conveniently neglects to mention that he builds houses and spiral staircases himself.

No one in Turner has read James Kunstler: " A land full of places that are not worth caring about will soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending."