The LuLac Edition #4, 792, August 24th, 2022

 

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

Our “Write On Wednesday” logo

Many times we take for granted our local food sources. The Times Leader’s Mary Therese Biebel reminds us just how important our local farmers are.

  

LOCAL FARMERS NOURISH THE COMMUNITY

Larry O’Malia paused in the middle of the row of corn, peeled off a husk and grinned as he bit into the raw ear.

“Awesome!” he said, turning the ear and offering the other side to me and my husband, Mark.

 We each took a bite and agreed. The raw corn, only a moment removed from its stalk, was probably the best corn we’d ever tasted. And it was just one of many perks — along with fresh air, the sweet scent of dill, and the sight of a hawk soaring overhead — that I experienced during the six hours or so I spent at Larry O’Malia’s Farms in Plains Township on Tuesday.

Technically, I visited the place as a reporter. And Mark was the photographer. But I had approached Larry and asked for the chance to actually experience some farm chores “so I can write about it.”

The long-time family farmer — he started at age 12 and has more than 50 years experience — obligingly designed a day that allowed me to pick corn, pull carrots and beets, use a knife to cut broccoli and a scissors-like tool to harvest eggplant.

I also bunched and washed vegetables, did some weeding with a hoe, dug through turned-over soil with my hands to pick out potatoes and even, as my final chore, drove a truck through a cornfield.

Two days later, when I saw Larry at his stand at the Wilkes-Barre Farmers Market, he asked how I felt after my farm experience.

“My family and friends predicted I’d be all exhausted and sore afterward,” I told him. “But I’m not. I had a blast!”

 “I’m glad to hear it,” Larry said, noting he tries to break up the daily activities for his regular workers, too. “You want to make it a fairly enjoyable day if you can.”

Of course, I think he made sure my day would be easy. And I certainly learned a lot.

Each cornstalk, for example, usually grows only one ear, and if you pick enough you can start to tell, by the way it feels in your hand, and by how dark the tassle is, whether it’s ripe or immature. I also learned what insect damage and bird damage look like; we didn’t bother to pick those ears.

 As for the good ears, early in the day Larry, his cousin Frank Purta and I walked through a field, picking them off the stalks and pitching them into bins on the back of a truck that a helper named Kelly was slowly driving. Since I’ve never been much of a softball player or even much of a beanbag tosser, it felt like I did more throwing on Tuesday than ever before in my life.

Corn is popular at Larry O’Malia’s farmstand on River Road in Plains Township, as well as at the Farmers Market in Wilkes-Barre, so the O’Malias devote 15 of their 40 acres along the Susquehanna River to the summery golden crop.

Some varieties take 5 or 10 days longer to grow than others, Larry explained, so his brother, Gary, plants the fields with the intention that each week there will be fresh corn to harvest.

After we’d picked corn for a while, Larry transferred me to a row of carrots where Dominick Tafani, 37, an O’Malia’s employee since age 13, was loosening the dry earth with a pitchfork. Without his efforts, it seemed like the tops would have just broken off and the carrots would have been stuck in the ground.

The beets came up much more easily. They also came in various sizes, and soon I was helping to bind red and golden beets of similar size into bunches. Later, I helped Kelly, the erstwhile truck driver, wash beets and carrots in an outdoor sink and stack them in trays in a walk-in cooler where we could see our breath.

 “Sometimes the guys eat their lunch in the cooler,” Larry told me.

Happily, Tuesday was neither severely hot nor humid. It was comfortable, and several of us spent our noon-time break in a room attached to the greenhouses.

As Frank Purta passed around some of his homemade pickles — absolutely wonderful with the cheese sandwich I’d packed — I asked my companions what they like about their jobs.

“Being outdoors,” said Stan Galenty, a self-trained botanist from West Wyoming who delights in spotting wildlife and identifying all sorts of wild plants.

“It’s peaceful,” said 14-year-old Brody Grymko.

“No two days are the same,” Frank said.

“We’re producing natural food,” Stan pointed out.

“Farm-fresh food,” said 16-year-old Caelan Spagnola.

Each of those responses made a lot of sense to me. It certainly was beautiful and peaceful to work outdoors, hearing no traffic sounds from River Road, even though it was just half a mile away.

And the work itself — providing fresh, nourishing food — is so vital.

That’s what keeps Larry and his brother Gary working the land their grandfather and father, both also named Larry, farmed decades ago.

“Our clientele are wonderful, and I do feel the community truly appreciates what we do, more than they used to,” Larry O’Malia said. “More professional people have backyard gardens now, and they know how much work is involved.”

Of course there are challenges, he said, when the weather doesn’t cooperate, and when prices of supplies such as diesel fuel escalate and “make you wonder if at the end of the day we’ll break even.”

Still, it’s rewarding to see the change of the seasons, to feel at one with the earth and to help nourish your family and your neighbors.

“Lots of people are interested in healthy eating,” Larry said, “and they want to eat something locally grown.”