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HARVEST DAY AT LINDENWALD
Carole Osterink
ccSCOOP News
| 09-28-09 - 11:30 a.m. - Columbia County offers wonderful events that help us connect with our agrarian past. In the spring, there’s the Chancellor’s Sheep & Wool Showcase at Clermont. In the fall, there’s Harvest Day at Lindenwald. Held on the lawns surrounding the historic homes of famous men who played major roles in the founding and early development of the country, both events are occasions to learn about the practical arts and skills of the 18th and early 19th centuries. What was especially striking about this year’s Harvest Day at Lindenwald, which took place this past Saturday, was the sense that the knowledge and traditions of the past are still part of the present in our region. |
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Talking about the pair of soulful-eyed oxen that stood patiently beside him, Ralph Hartzel told not only how oxen were used in agriculture historically but also about the work that team of oxen did today, explaining how their gentle nature allowed a person to walk out in front of them—something that could not be done with horses—which made them the ideal animals for such tasks as dragging logs out of the forest.
The simultaneity of past and present was evident elsewhere as well. Jeanette Martino, an educator from Dutchess County, demonstrated 19th-century butter churning methods using cream from Gumaer Farms Dairy, while nearby Bill Gumaer demonstrated milking with one of the dairy’s cows, who was accompanied at Harvest Day by her young calf, and offered samples of the milk produced at Gumaer Farms Dairy. There were real live sheep being shorn, and demonstrations of wool being dyed using traditional methods and natural dyes. Eric Johnson’s border collies from Wild Goose Chase were also there, demonstrating how they, traditionally sheepherding dogs, had diversified for modern times, learning to herd the wild geese that can be a nuisance to parks and golf courses.
Putting the continuum of more than two centuries into focus was an exhibit by the Farmscape Ecology Program of Hawthorne Valley Farm—for the land, after all, is the basic and constant element in past, present, and future. The program defines farmscape as “the mosaic of field and forest that forms much of our region’s landscape, and among its goals are helping people to understand how different land uses—agricultural, residential, commercial, and recreational—are interacting influences on the natural landscape and to appreciate how farms are a critical part of an ecologically functional landscape. One of the most interesting items in the exhibit was a chart entitled “The Changing Face of Columbia County,” which tracked the number of acres taken up by farmland, grassland, forest, wetland, and shrubland, from the late 18th century—about the time Columbia County was established—and to the present. It was no surprise that the chart showed that the amount of land devoted to farming spiked in the latter half of the 19th century and has steadily and quite dramatically declined since the beginning of the 20th century. The more surprising revelation was that the land taken up by forest, which reached its lowest points in the latter half of the 19th century, when farming was at its height, now exceeds what existed in the end of the 18th century.
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