Endless Mountain Life: A Trip to Berry Fields Farm

The trip to Berry Fields Farm from our cottage in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania took about 45 minutes – a lovely ride through the pine forests of World’s End State Park, past the covered bridge at Forksville and the rapids and swimming holes of the Loyalsock River, along a winding mountain road lined with cornfields, scattered trailers and wooden farmhouses, and finally, up a dirt lane marked with a sign that read “No Winter Maintenance”.

It is the Annual Blueberry Festival which has brought us to Berry Fields Farm on this day. Held in the first weekend of August each year, the festival is a chance for visitors to sample blueberry laden pies, cakes and ice cream, hear a little bluegrass and of course, pick some blueberries. But before I tell you about all that, let me tell you about the farm…

Berry Fields Farm is a tough little scrapper of a farm perched atop Cahill mountain just west of New Albany, Pa. The land, originally purchased by its owner Charles Gerlach as a hunting retreat, is not what anyone would call ideal farm land. It is remote, hilly, and rocky. Yet over the years, Charles and his wife Barbara have turned this isolated little patch of hilltop heaven into a small but vibrant piece of a dream called “sustainable agriculture”.

“What’s that?”, you ask? Well, according to the National Sustainable Agricultue Information Service:

Sustainable agriculture produces abundant food without depleting the earth’s resources or polluting its environment. It is agriculture that follows the principles of nature to develop systems for raising crops and livestock that are, like nature, self-sustaining. Sustainable agriculture is also the agriculture of social values, one whose success is indistinguishable from vibrant rural communities, rich lives for families on the farms, and wholesome food for everyone.

By nature, sustainable agriculture is a local phenomenon. But, like Johnny Appleseed’s trees, small organic farms like Berry Fields are cropping up all over America, the family farm re-invented for a new generation.

The idea of sustainable agriculture is not quite a pipe dream, but it’s close. According to Barbara, this kind of farming makes little to no profit. This fact, more often than not, forces the young couples who start such farms to abandon them when it becomes clear that they cannot generate the income needed to raise a family.

Because the Gerlachs are retired and their children grown, the financial challenges for them are a bit less onerous than for younger families. Still, they work the land alone, with no help save their guests at their B&B, visitors from as far away as Japan who pay for the privilege of working an organic farm. This, along with the income from their little farm store and restaurant, allows Berry Fields’ owners to sustain their dream. They are building additional housing for the student interns they hope will join them next year, bringing yet another “added value” to the farm.

“Added value” – that’s the sustainable agriculture movement’s buzz-word for human labor. Human labor that can ransform a $1 pint of blueberries into a $10 blueberry pie, $2 bars of soap or a $5 jar of jelly. The difference between a failing farm and a sustainable family business.

Barbara and Charles do more than grow berries. They raise goats, chickens, pigs and cows, and they do so naturally. The cows are raised on pasture only, making their meat leaner and healthier. The eggs laid by their chickens are rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

Raising organic animals is no easy undertaking, and the Gerlachs have had to make some tough choices in the process. When their goats acquired a parasitic infection, they removed them from food-producing because the treatment involved chemical antibiotic use. Did I say that Barbara and Charles are committed?

But back to the Festival, which is the real reason we came this day…

About 15 cars lined the road, and although there were never more than 30 or so folks at the festival at any given time, Barbara was worried that her guests would be put off by the crowds. “Crowds?” proclaimed my fellow-New Yorker friend L. “Why, more people than this live on your floor!” Of course, she was right. It was really more like a little gathering than a festival. Yet somehow, this tiny event kept us occupied for a whole afternoon on this beautiful summer day.

We picked blueberries, or were they really huckleberries? They were certainly smaller than the hybrids I am used to eating, but fresh and packed with flavor. While we picked, the musicians who call themselves Oak and Ivy wandered among the berry bushes serenading us with bluegrass and folk songs.

There were clothespins hidden in the berry bushes, and when my younger daughter found one, she was rewarded with a candy bar made with blueberries and chocolate. We ran into our neighbors there among the bushes, and even got a little lost at one point in the blueberry maze.

And of course, there was the food. There were pies and cakes baked by the members of the Sullivan County Art League.

My friend L had chili topped with blueberries, which she pronounced delicious.

I myself headed to the booth run by a local goat farmer, and it was there that I found my own personal Nirvana – what else do you call a place where one can combine the words “organic goat cheese” and perogie” in one delicious mouthful?

What I like best about Berry Fields is that it is so real. This is no Martha Stewart farmette, and while its owners may speak the langauge of the gentleman (and woman) farmer, they are anything but. No pretty clapboard county house, no picturesque red barn here. It’s about the food, the animals and the land, not visual appeal.

But I ask you – With views like this, who needs Martha Stewart?

Category: Considerations