SHARON — There was still snow on the ground on Friday, March 1, when the Mad Gardeners held a spring planting symposium in one of the greenhouses at Paley’s Farm Market on Route 343. For flowers, black is ‘in’The event, attended by more than 30 area professionals — growers, garden designers, retailers and dedicated home gardeners —was an opportunity to share ideas and hear about the latest trends in the gardening world. Such as: Black is the new pink. Sounds like a diktat from a fashion magazine, but in fact, it’s the newest trend in flower colors, according to Mitch Rand of the Ball Seed Co., one of the largest horticulture companies in the world. And to prove his point he gestured to page 9 of the Ball catalogue: black velvet petunia, phantom petunia, ‘blackout’ Heuchera, black pearl ornamental pepper, “After-Dark” Agonis. But actually, the It color for this year is green, he said. Think acid and lime. Also, fragrance — after years of being an afterthought to the shape, size and color of a plant — is making a comeback.Charlie Paley, host of the symposium, and Roberta Scott, owner of Falls Village Flower Farm, (they are, by the way, siblings) may have some black varieties on hand, but both said that what they care about most is sustainability, longevity, durability. Andy Durbridge, a garden designer and the moderator of the symposium, said, “One of the things that growers do is filter, by their years of experience, the plants that work well, that thrive in our region. They weed out the finicky, troublesome plants that may not be worth the soil they’re planted in.”Scott, who presented at the symposium, said, “I don’t sell anything that I haven’t successfully grown at the nursery. If you want to be [a plant] in my nursery, you have to be disease-resistant and look good all season.” That means she usually sees a plant through several growing cycles before she recommends it. While some of the talk was about the fun, sexy stuff such as new varietals — begonias are leaving their slightly waxy, stuffy, Victorian image behind as they go either jumbo or micro in new styles and colors — the focus was also on troubleshooting and how to best serve the customer. Dangers that lurkRand talked a lot about downy mildew, a plague that was prevalent last year on impatiens. Apparently, entire swaths of the colorful, hardy, ground-covering plant have been wiped out by this fast-moving fungus. Paley noted that as of last year it hadn’t hit this corner of Connecticut, but he asks himself if he’s going to grow lots of impatiens this year. “It’s usually a pretty bulletproof plant. I used to sell a lot of it, but it seems customers are branching out.” This segued into talk of the begonia and hardier varieties of impatiens, such as New Guinea, divine and sunpatiens.Durbridge also spoke about the solid science behind mixing it up with plantings. “When you invest in a plant, that is, use a lot of one type, and it’s not so successful, it makes a very good case for mixing things up. If you have a lot of one thing and it fails, your landscape will suffer. The more variety you have, the more sustainable your garden will be.”Glories of the greenhousePaley gave the participants a tour of one of the greenhouses. Stepping inside was like walking into spring. A deep aromatic loamy smell of earth rose from the hundreds of flats of pansies getting ready for their April debut. Paley talked about the economics of the nursery business and how he balances the needs of his customers with the staggering costs of fuel oil, cardboard and plastic, of which he uses copious amounts. This year for the first time, he will be using Cowpots, the plantable invention of the Freunds of North Canaan. The seedling pots are made from manure from the family’s dairy farm.Paley also recycles as much of the plastic as he can, and yes, he welcomes returns of the 4- and 6-inch pots with his logo on the side. Falls Village Flower Farm specializes in herbaceous perennials and woody perennials, such as roses and hydrangeas. Scott said, “Some of the best perennials, that will work well, have been around for awhile.”She is a big fan of hellebores. They are, she says, “virtually indestructible. If you give them time, you can turn them into ground cover. They live forever and are low maintenance.” Scott left the audience with a long list of plants she’s excited about. The mention of blue yonder agapanthus elicited oohs and aahs from the crowd.While winter looks to be hanging around for a few weeks more, the Mad Gardeners of Northwest Connecticut are already plotting and planning, and growing in their greenhouses.Paley’s opens for the season on March 30. The next Mad Gardeners symposium is March 9 at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. And there will be a Mad Gardeners workshop March 8 at an 18th-century property in Sharon that is undergoing renovations.For information, go to www.madgardeners.com.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his first wife, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
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