LOCALadk Magazine

54 Fall 2019 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk A Day In The Life On an early summer morning, as the sun rises over the High Peaks and the fog lifts from the valleys at the base of those small mountain towns and villages that dot the landscape within the Blue Line, there is no place more peaceful, beau- tiful, or inspiring than the Adirondacks. At this early hour Adirondack farmers are already busy tending to their crops and making sure the land is primed to produce all that it can in the short growing season that people of the Park are priv- ileged to hope for. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, "The greatest fine art of the future will be in the making of a comfortable living on a small piece of land." Adirondack farms are a far cr y from the industrial, centralized farms of the Midwest, yet there are still hard-working individuals who take Lincoln's comment to heart. They make an attempt at earning a living by nurturing the soil within the Park and coaxing crops that will help to feed the people who live within the 6 million acres of the Blue Line. This is damn hard work—work that never ends—and work that tests the physical, mental, and emotional strength of those who stand tall as American farmers. It was George Smith, a farmer from Kentucky, who declared, "Ever y year we get one year older, but the workload stays the same." The modern Adirondack farmer is a new-generation individual who believes in the work, who is daring enough to tr y and make a living in this manner, and who invests the time to do so in a sustainable manner. These are oftentimes individuals who are first-generation farmers who have chosen an incred- ibly difficult and unpredictable career. They did not grow into farm life; they were not generational farmers who felt that this life was chosen for them, but rather farming was something that came to them in indirect ways. They were drawn to, and now live by, the mantra that introduces ever y issue of the Town and Countr y Farmer's Almanack: "Agricul- ture is the Mother of All Industr y." Farm work in the Adirondacks is especially challenging. Our weather patterns and seasons are predictably unpredictable, and far too short for most traditional farming. In fact, the word "Adirondack" is translated as barkeater—a name given to the Native American Algonquin tribe by the Mohawks as a derogator y label, signif ying that to live year-round in this region, one must rely on eating bark because of the scant By Paul Sorgule LOCAL Roots: Farmers Fields and Fruits of their Lab

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