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A young farmer commands his horses as he maneuvers a buggy to the loading dock of the North Missouri Produce Auction, a centralized distribution center that connects rural farmers and city buyers.
In the heart of Jamesport’s Amish community, the mode of transportation is horse and buggy. Massive work horses graze in the pastures. Bonnets and aprons are hung on clotheslines. There’s something compelling about the serenity of the landscape and a lifestyle without cars.
Ironically, I get my first glimpse into this community from my seat on a bus as part of a daylong USDA New American Farm sustainable agriculture tour. The 30-plus folks on the bus with me — mostly farmers, researchers and extension agents — can talk about food miles and carbon footprints. But the Amish farmers don’t need the current environmental lingo to know that the cost of shipping a tomato from Florida or a strawberry from California to Missouri is going up.
A few miles from the produce auction house, we stop to visit Freeman Gingerich, who grows Trust and Mountain Fresh variety tomatoes in three high tunnels, also known as hoophouses. As we climb out of the bus, Freeman’s father, Joe Gingerich, greets us. In a laughable clash of cultures, there’s a vintage glass-and-aluminum phone booth next to a hitching post at the edge of the yard. The phone doesn’t work anymore, Joe says. Some of the visitors snap photos anyway.
Joe leads us up the hill to the high tunnels, where stately rows of tomatoes are thriving in the thick, warm air. Freeman, a soft-spoken man with gnarled hands from years of work in all types of weather, greets us. He says most of the tomatoes are destined for auction.
He plants seeds in January, uses a gas-powered leaf blower to pollinate — “It don’t take but two minutes,” Freeman says — and culls the tomatoes to just four per cluster. There are 490 plants in each 30-by-96-foot high tunnel, planted in rows 4 feet apart. He fertilizes but doesn’t have too much trouble with insects, save the occasional horn worm.
When they are ripe — “not green but not red ripe” — Gingerich and his family pick them. Most of the high tunnel tomatoes are bound for the auction. He’ll also have 400 or 500 more tomato plants, as well as peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon and pumpkins, growing in the fields.
I wander outside with my camera. Long before I can see it, I can hear the rhythmic clip-clop, clip-clop of another horse and buggy coming up and around a softly undulating hill. I can see the appeal of staying close to home and farming the land, instead of traveling to a city for work.
For the long haul
Beth Snow is co-owner of Snow’s Heritage Acres, an 80-acre farm atop some wind-burnished hills outside Hamilton, Mo. Five years ago Beth and her husband, Brian, were long-haul truck drivers, primarily transporting lettuce and salad mixes for Dole and Fresh Express from California and southern Arizona.
Five years ago Beth and her husband, Brian, were long-haul truck drivers, primarily transporting lettuce and salad mixes for Dole and Fresh Express from California and southern Arizona.
But somewhere on a cross-country trek, they realized they were driving to and from California hauling what they could grow themselves. Both had grown up on farms, and they wanted their five children to have the same upbringing. So they bought five acres of Beth’s family’s farm. Then they bought another 10 more acres; eventually they bought the remaining 65 acres.
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