Life on an Organic Farm

By Anne Galloway

Harvest: A Year in the Life of An Organic Farm by Nicola Smith with photographs by Geoff Hansen. The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 288 pages, hardcover, 2004.

Vermont has long been the number one destination for young romantics seeking the good life, and Kyle Jones and Jennifer Megyesi are no exception. They dreamed of having their own farm where they could raise livestock, grow their own vegetables and lead quiet, independent lives far from the great American rat race.

All of these dreams began to come true in 1998 when they sank their savings into 25 overgrown acres in Royalton. Over the last seven years, Jones and Megyesi have transformed this small rundown dairy farm into a highly diversified, organic establishment they call Fat Rooster Farm.

Many couples give up or break up when they get a taste of just how hard wresting food out of God's green earth is -- especially in Vermont's forbidding climate. But Jones and Megyesi have managed by dint of hard work (every waking hour seven days a week) to not only raise enough food for themselves, but also to sell eggs, honey, maple syrup, chickens, ducks, lambs, cut flowers, seedlings, vegetables of every description and hand-turned wooden bowls. Jones and Megyesi, both in their 40s, involve their pre-school son, Brad, in every aspect of farm life. In addition to staying on top of their never-ending chores, they hold part-time jobs.

A new book, Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm, chronicles the day-in and day-out trials, tribulations and joys of Jones and Megyesi's chosen existence. Author Nicola Smith and her husband, photographer Geoff Hansen, have created a memorable portrait of a farm family that is a cross between a glossy coffee-table book and literary journalism.

The photographs are stunning, in-the-moment outtakes of life on Fat Rooster Farm: of Brad, grinning as he rolls in driveway mud puddles (a picture that appeared on page 80 of our Spring issue); of Jones, his brow characteristically furrowed in concentration, picking corn; of Megyesi weighing produce; and the family working together at a farmers' market booth. Hansen documents the way the seasons change the complextion of the land and the nature of the couple's work. He also photographs the comings and goings of the local butcher, the interns who help out during the sugaring and growing seasons, and the farm's many animals. There are more than 65 images (many of them filling half pages) interspersed with text.

Hansen's irresistibly real photographs help to tell the stories within stories that Smith thoughtfully weaves together. Harvest is at once an intensely personal account of the couple's daily doings and a case study of how diversified agriculture has become the new paradigm for the small family farm. Smith tells us just about everything there is to know about Jones and Megyesi -- how they met, where they grew up, how they decided to farm, how they work together (or butt heads) -- and peppers the personal descriptions with statistical and factual discourses on New England weather, slaughterhouses, organic certification, cultivation techniques and the like.

Smith has broken the book up into chapters about the couple's relationship to each other, the farm, the animals and the land itself. The story line, though, is loosely chronological -- it roughly follows the seasons. And in Vermont there is a season for everything, especially for farmers who have diversified their crops as much as Jones and Megyesi have.

During a deep cold and clear spell in January 2003, it gets down to 30 below some nights, and the barn is so frigid that the roosters' coxcombs turn black, newborn piglets die, and the "people disappeared behind hats and scarves and developed a permanent hunch to their shoulders."

Smith details a less-than-ideal sugar season that year, trips to a borrowed greenhouse in South Randolph, the lambing season, planting and finally the vegetable harvest and animal slaughtering. There are emotional arguments over money and animals (Megyesi pushes to expand the livestock while pragmatic Kyle often resists); and there are gestures of neighborliness and bartering agreements for equipment that show just how interdependent small farmers are.

Harvest is about finding a true connection to the land and to the people who harness its mysteries. Smith and Hansen have documented what it means to master the lost art of family farming. It's a fate to which many are called, but few are fit.

Anne Galloway is an editor and writer for the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. She lives in East Hardwick.

Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm
is published by The Lyons Press

Copyright © 2005 by Nicola Smith and Geoff Hansen
All Rights Reserved