Harvesting for post- COVID future
Like many of us trapped in the coronavirus plague, Terry Jones, the farmer/ philosopher/ poet of Shelton’s White Hills, is looking shaggy these days, under that faded Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station baseball cap.
The rambunctious head of gray hair, nearly covering his ears now like rye grass on a pumpkin patch, is just something else that he’s nurturing, along with the strawberries, blueberries, pumpkins, wine grapes and Christmas trees at his family’s eponymous farm.
But at 73, is Terry really ready to commit to an eventual ponytail? Well, why not? He’s in that Baby Boomer sweet spot, so there’s no time like the present. I mean, he didn’t see the Rolling Stones until Barack Obama was president, and in Havana, no less.
So, anything should be possible for the Jones patriarch. Particularly now, when the grandchildren are getting old enough to help Jamie Jones, their father, and the dozens of other employees keep the operation going during the plague.
Terry and I were sitting on the shady porch of the farm office the other late afternoon as the sun was slanting, smack dab in the middle of 2,000 acres of sustainable farms and forest and Shelton Land Trust and water company property. The winery staff was just getting off- duty after the socially distant guests finished sipping from their glasses of Muscat Ottonel, and polishing off the cheese and salami plates under the parasols, amid the profusion of potted fig trees, their green fruits already the size of preschooler hands.
Across the little valley of Means Brook, we could see Jones’ Pumpkinseed Hill farm a couple miles away as the crows — and occasional eagles — fly. That brown patch is where the rye grass was cut to protect the recent planting of the pumpkins that will dot the hillside with orange orbs during the fall.
I was overdue for my first strawberry- picking visit of this sweetest of brief seasons, and was worried about how the harvest was going in the new COVID age of reservations, one- price- fits- all, and social distancing in the fields.
But to visit Terry — chairman of the Working Lands Alliance’s steering committee, who was also on the state Board of Education during the eight- year administration of Dannel Malloy — you soon realize it’s all about the continuum, not just a single growing season.
They’re planting Christmas trees that won’t be harvested until Jamie’s oldest, a high schooler, is in his mid- 40s. Under a little shelter is an old, retired John Deere tractor Terry recalls his grandfather driving in the mid- 1960s, taking it for a final, nostalgic spin as he was dying from prostate cancer, and Terry’s grandmother watched, weeping.
The rambunctious head of gray hair, nearly covering his ears now like rye grass on a pumpkin patch, is just something else that he’s nurturing, along with the strawberries, blueberries, pumpkins, wine grapes and Christmas trees ...
During the height of the pandemic, as most of Connecticut stood still, Terry, an occasional essayist for Hearst Connecticut Media, could wander to the top of the hill of the Valley Farm, and was able to clearly see Long Island 35 miles away, thanks to the three- month pause in pollution from the Interstate- 95 corridor.
“It’s not too difficult to socially distance on 400 acres,” he said, smiling, leaning back in an Adirondack chair, talking about the recent planting of 25,000 strawberry plants for next year; the 20,000 Christmas tree seedlings.
Most of the spring, with the winery closed in the pandemic, farm life went on almost as normal, preparing for the glory of the June strawberry season, the coming blueberry season.
“We were a community unto ourselves,” Terry said. “It was like a bubble. We were very careful. Even planting trees with the team we have, they’re not on top of each other. It was surreal. It was kind of like going back in time, I presume. It was like a century ago, but back then there was still a lot of socialization.”
He praised the 15 summer interns, more than the usual number, to assure social distancing where the hundreds of daily strawberry pickers are limited to working every other row.
Terry hopes the state is on the cusp of a new era, with an possible influx of people who might get tired of city survival.
“I just hope we’re smart enough as a society in Connecticut, our 169 fiefdoms,” he said. “I hope we’re smart enough to figure out ways to have residential growth and rural areas, but to do it smartly, like with village centers.”
The next morning, I was in the first wave of strawberry pickers at Pumpkinseed Hill, chatting with the smart college students, then bending to the peakseason picking among the swooping barn swallows. “Look,” said one of the yellow- shirted interns. “A bunny rabbit.”
My box filled quickly.