Carrot, Butter, Beef!

In the beginning, there was Essex Farm.

A couple of days ago, Hamilton College received an (at times) eccentric but inspired couple, Mark and Kristin Kimball, the owners and managers of Essex Farm in the Champlain Valley in the Adirondacks.  When the lecture begins with a farmer juggling eggs on top of a ladder and then throwing them into the crowd (to the chagrin of those unlucky enough to get splattered), you know that this is no ordinary farm.  Essex Farm began about a decade ago when Mark and Kristin “trial” rented just over 500 acres with only $18,000 dollars to their collective name.  They wanted to create a sustainable farm that met the “triple-bottom line” as they call it: economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability… all while growing a wide enough variety of food that they could provide for the entire human diet.  The community embraced the hard-working couple who, while plowing their fields with draft horses, developed a CSA program that now feeds close to 250 people each year.

Much of their success was due to the fact that they were essentially the only farm in the area.  As we discussed earlier in the semester, farming hit a bust in the Adirondacks as the rough terrain and poor weather could not support large-scale industrial farming.  But the small, sustainable, organic farm found a niche at the base of the High Peaks, supplying good quality, local food to a region largely forgotten about by the rest of the United States.  As Essex Farm grew, they hired interns from all walks of life who were truly inspired by the operation they encountered in the Adirondacks.  Consequently, when they left Essex Farm, they sought to continue their work and opened farms of their own, using similar sustainable practices learned from the Essex Farmers.  Now the Champlain Valley boasts a whole community of sustainable farms that are even spreading into other areas of the Adirondacks.  Unfortunately, because the local Adirondackers are not traditionally economically robust, the main problem confronting these new farms is finding niches within the local food system and between each other*.  In an effort to expand the “economic pie” and lessen competition between these neighborhood farmers, Essex Farm has begun to sell CSA shares to NYC.  Granted, this practice defies their local food initiative, but in the end, food that hails from 5 hours upstate is still better than avocadoes from Mexico.

In the end, farming is back in the Adirondacks! And not just any farming—the movement now focuses on low carbon emissions, healthy communities, and local agriculture.  Largely thanks to Essex Farm, the Adirondacks themselves are becoming more sustainable.

*If you are interested in starting a farm in the Adirondacks, niches that have yet to be established that might be profitable are those specializing in mushrooms, berries, or specialty game birds!

Source: http://www.adirondackexplorer.org/stories/new-crop-farmers

Eugenics

Racism wasn’t uncommon during the era of Great Camps in the Adirondacks, but it always surprises me how many of my historical heroes, like Teddy Roosevelt, held beliefs that I strongly disagree with. The scary thing is these wealthy leaders weren’t the types of uneducated racists we see today; they had so much power and resources that they developed an entire science behind their bigotry. It was called eugenics, “the science of improving stock”. It was developed for breeding farm animals, but some influential men decided it should be used on humans to beef up the American population by encouraging people with good traits to reproduce and discouraging other people, or races, from reproducing.

These wealthy Great Camp owners and national leaders promoted conservationism and helped preserve much of the forest by forming clubs in the Adirondacks to buy giant plots of land before logging companies could. I feel the need to note that these clubs prevented new members from joining based on race or religion. The entire ethic of conservationism in the turn of the 20^th century was tainted for me when I found out that there were conservationists who supported eugenics and that they believed those two ideas were based on the same goal: to preserve the old America, the wildlife and the races.

One eugenicist, Madison Grant, was a Progressive like Teddy Roosevelt and worked on getting conservation laws passed all over the US. He also wrote a book, about eugenics called The Passing of the Great Race that inspired Hitler’s racial cleansing plan. Grant and his supporters were worried that the superior American race was getting outcompeted by lesser, immigrant races. With his education and his political power, Grant spread the idea that some races are better than others and that the lesser races should be sterilized so they die out, like farm animals.

            Much of the land that is in the Forest Preserve was attained by these wealthy clubs or Great Camp owners, so we have them to thank for the preservation of the Adirondacks. However in the process of preserving the land, they excluded many people because of race or religion and they influenced the stance on immigrants and the racist culture of America. I like to think about things in black and white and find it shocking when the lists in my head of good versus bad have to be rewritten to include a middle ground. I guess for now I will just think of the conservationists as people who preserved so much for future Americans and I will think of eugenicists as racists who wanted to make decisions for other individuals without their consent, and I just won’t try to take a stance on the men who were both.

Godine, Amy. "Conservation's Dark Side." Adirondack Life Jan. 2015: 52-63. Web.

Schneider, Paul. The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness. New York: H. Holt, 1997. Print.

Toboggans

Our trip to the Adirondacks was filled with many memorable moments, many of which were completely new experiences for me. I've never visited a goat farm during kidding season or watched a man wrestle with wolves, but of these stops, I was most shocked by the popularity of tobogganing in Lake Placid. We arrived a few minutes after the track opened and almost immediately couples, families and friends were lined up on the steps to the top of the slope, eager for their turn. After one trip down the slope it wasn't hard to see why; the thrill of gliding on ice made me immediately want to run back up to the top and do it again. The enjoyment I got out of just one run made me curious about the history of this outdoor recreation. Although toboggans are now used almost solely for pleasure, not practical purposes, this form of transportation has a history that goes back to the Native Americans who originally lived in this harsh climate.

Long before sleds were used by Europeans for various sports, toboggans served a functional purpose for the Mi'kmaq and Abenaki Native Americans, who lived in Canada. These original sleds were handcrafted out of two or more thin boards of larch or birch wood which were secured to another board by crossbars, then loaded with goods or people to be transported across the snowy landscape. Toboggans were usually pulled by a man or women wearing a chest harness, or sled dogs for those lucky enough to have the extra help.

When Europeans arrived, toboggans quickly changed from practical transportation vehicles to sleds that were mainly used for recreation. Wealthy residents of Quebec often went tobogganing down the slopes of the Plains of Abraham, and Governor General, Lord Dufferin even added a toboggan slope for his citizens to enjoy. Sledding soon evolved into various Olympic sports such as bobsledding, lugging and skeleton, all of which are based on the general principles of tobogganing. 

My tobogganing experience was a short one; after a few runs it was time for us to go back to the Olympic Training Center, but many people probably spent the rest of their nights at Mirror Lake going down the chute over and over again. I find it very relieving that these types of recreation still exist and that so many people are enjoying them. It's very tempting to curl up inside during the winter and avoid the frigid cold, but bundling up and experiencing the thrill of the outdoors is definitely worth it.

Sources:
http://www.canadianicons.ca/toboggan.php?page=1

Lake Placid

Over the weekend, our class went on a trip to the Adirondack Park. On our voyage around the Park (and yes, we quite literally looped the Park), we stopped at many fantastic locations including a wildlife preserve, Tupper Lake’s Wild Center, and a incredible outdoors store called The Mountaineer.  Having only been to the Adirondacks for my Pre-Orientation trip on the St. Regis Canoe Area, I had not previously had the opportunity to experience more than the most rural parts of the Adirondacks.  Of all the stops we that made on our Adirondack excursion, I was most struck by the Lake Placid area, where we spent our evening.

In Lake Placid, we stayed overnight in the Olympic Training Center.  As a child, I, like so many others, always dreamed of being an Olympian, so this was a dream come true.  After I recovered from coming to terms with the fact that this weekend was closest I will ever come to being an Olympian, we went into Lake Placid to explore to the town.  Walking around the town center, one particular aspect of the town stuck out to me: everything was related to the Olympics.  I was amazed by the apparent love and obsession the town has with its Olympic history.

On the drive home from our wonderful trip, I stumbled upon an interesting Adirondack Almanack article by the Lake Placid Convention and Visitors Bureau Communications Director, Kimberly Rielly.  In her article, Rielly discusses the effects of the Olympics on the town, with a focus on the economy:

“After the 1980 games in Lake Placid, the tourism economy has more than doubled. Since ’80, the number of lodging rooms has remained fairly consistent – but occupancy and specifically fall season leisure travel have increased steadily. This success and the quality resort experience that visitors enjoy today can be attributed largely to the investments that resulted from hosting the games” (Rielly, The Adirondack Almanack)

Walking around Lake Placid, I noticed exactly what Rielly explained in the above excerpt.  In the town center, there were numerous restaurants, shops, and hotels, all of which were quite busy on this March weekend, and to think that all of this local economic success was the result of a 9 day athletic event is fascinating.

Rielly explains that part of the lasting excitement and success of the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, as it was the “last of the small town Olympic Winter Games” (Rielly, The Adirondack Almanack).  As a resident of a town about thirty minutes outside of Boston, Massachusetts, I was intrigued by this analysis.  For those who are unaware, the United States Olympic Committee submitted a bid to the International Olympic Committee for Boston to host the 2024 Olympics.  Since the announcement, there has been a great deal of debate amid influential Bostonian politicians, CEOs, university officials, and residents as to whether or not this would be beneficial to Boston. Before visiting Lake Placid, I had zero doubts that I supported the Boston 2024 Olympic efforts, though ever since returning from our trip, I have not been as sure about my views.  The Olympics greatly supported a small town like Lake Placid, though with Boston being such a compact city already, I am not sure this influx of new people and infrastructure would be beneficial.

Might the Lake Placid Olympic success of 1980 suggest that Olympics should be held in smaller towns, as a means of boosting economic success?

Works Cited:

Rielly, Kimberly. "The Olympics’ Impact On Lake Placid." The Adirondack Almanack. N.p., 27 Jan. 2014. Web. 8 Mar. 2015. <http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/01/moon-boots-miracles-olympics-impact-lake-placid.html>.

Endangered Species

According to Wikipedia, which is the way you should start all pieces of writing, in 2009 the United States fish and Wildlife Service listed 1200 animals from insects to mammals as endangered. Don't worry, other sources confirmed Wikepedia's (usually accurate) facts. 1200 animals is a lot of animals, many of which I had never heard of, such as the Kangaroo rat and the Gila monster. Don't worry, it's just a large lizard. At the risk of sounding overly calloused, I am going to revive the argument we have been having all semester about whether or not it is our duty to keep the number of species at the same levels in the same places as they were before humans "came along". Is it really important that we "save" the Gila monster? While this conundrum has been at the core of everything that we have talked about this semester, it hasn't been properly argued yet.

It is a simple fact that endless numbers of species have come and gone from the planet over the course of the last several billion years. Our own time on the planet is only a small slice of the last square of the toilet paper roll of the earth's life. When we think of the history of these animals coming and going, is it really tragic? Is it sad? Not unless you have a weirdly intimate connection with a particular velociraptor. What happened happened, and we are so out of touch with it that it doesn't matter to us that many of the dinosaurs, incredibly creatures, died when a meteor hit the earth. It doesn't matter to us that the Dodo bird no longer exists. So then when do we start to really care?

I realized the other day that I don't feel particularly bad about the disappearance of wolves or declining cougar populations. I don't feel sorry that the Adirondacks are changing at all, or that any of those changes are necessarily bad. However, when I imagine the woods of northern Maine, the woods where I grew up canoeing and fishing changing, it makes my skin tingle. This makes it clear to me that in order to really care about an area, you have to have a real connection to it. The handful of times that I have been to the Adirondacks hasn't done it. This "connection is caring" attitude can also be seen on a larger scale, i.e. global climate change. "So what, the world is changing. Wait, it's going to affect the place I live?" is a self-centered attitude many of us have harbored, myself included. Really good conservation work is not done by those who have a connection to the land but by those who don't.


Sources:

"Total Number of Known Threatened Species: 16,938." Endangered Species International. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.

"List of Endangered Species in North America." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.

Compare and Contrast

After visiting both The Mountaineer in Keene Valley and Hoss’s Country Corner in Long Lake, I began to compare and contrast the two stores in my head. The Mountaineer is clearly directed towards an audience seeking more serious outdoor recreation while Hoss’s Country Corner is directed towards the typical tourist. Because both of these stores serve different purposes, it makes sense that they would each be very distinct.  

The Mountaineer sells gear for hiking, camping, climbing, skiing, fishing, and several other outdoor activities. In order to engage in these types of recreation, at least one person in a group needs to know what they are doing. Tourists generally do not have the breadth or depth of knowledge to walk in a store that sells these types of gear and know exactly what they are looking for; however, there are still several exceptions. Hikers, campers, climbers, etc. all have to start somewhere, so it is not fair to judge someone if they are new to the activity. Rather, the point is that most tourists who travel to the Adirondacks only venture out on day trips without the need for a lot of equipment.

On the other hand, Hoss’s Country Corner sells a wide variety of Adirondack apparel, children’s toys, maple sugar products, and other general items. If someone lives in the area, they are not going to need many things from this particular type of store, so customers are mainly tourists. Something that both stores have in common is a large section of books pertaining to the Adirondacks. Even though the types of books each store has are not exactly the same, there is still quite a bit of overlap. In addition, both stores are a way for money to stay within the local community and support the permanent residents of the Adirondacks. The two stores are drastically different from one another, but after taking the time to reflect on our class field trip, I have realized that they have a bit more in common than I originally thought.

Let's Play Peasant

Marie Antoinette's husband, the 16th Louis, gave her some land in Versailles as a wedding gift. On it she had her architect, Richard Mique, build her a peasant village complete with a farmhouse, dairy, chicken coop, mill and barn. Not to mention a marble-walled boudoir so that she might retire from a day’s work. Despite having the world's luxury at her whim, the queen of France spent the time she could playing peasant, hosting friends and eating her chicken’s eggs. The trend spread throughout the nobility and peasant villages popped up all around what was agrarian France. America’s gilded aristocracy did the same in the Adirondacks with their Great Camps. While the romantic tendencies of consumptive lifestyles have exhibited themselves in different ways, the notion of “roughing it” for a short time, along with its criticism, continues.

We can look to these aristocrats playing adventurer or peasant, despite the massive social and economic inequalities that came to define their time, and tell ourselves how different it is now. This is not the case. Many Americans live a fairly similar lifestyle to the last queen of France and the Robber Baron clans- one based on consumption. While we do not get all of the perks, little is asked of us and much is given. Overall safety is not an issue, sugar and spices are everywhere and the only thing which keeps me from a full meal is the walk from Bundy to Commons.

The rustic appeal also continues today. WWOOFing is a popular trend among upper-middle class whites that lets them work for a short time on a farm anywhere in the world. Over this coming break, I will be going to Nicaragua with a group of peers to work on an organic coffee farm for one week. This is called voluntourism and would make Marie proud. As we learned from McKibben, many young and educated people, capable of the massive investments required, are choosing a life of farm and toil that was abandoned by their ancestors. 

Yet these rustic escapes seem to be inherently selfish and do much more to restore the advantaged individual  than anything else of use. Marie Antoinette did not return dignity to the French peasantry, Durant and Rockefeller did not restore wilderness to America, Essex and Asgaard Farms will not feed the world with organic food and I will not steer Nicaragua out of its economic tailspin. But would it have been better if Antoinette had stayed in the palace, or Rockefeller in the city, or organic farmers on Wall Street? Would my spring break have more worth on Palm Beach or Cancun? I am biased but, I do not think so.

Also, I have 18 eggs from the presentation and no idea what to do with them. If any of you want eggs, let me 

know.

Pictures:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Bronck_Farm_13-Sided_Barn_-_01.JPG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boathouse_2_at_Topridge.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Ferme1.jpg

Sources:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/marieantoinettes-village-119458

Schneider, The Adirondacks