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From Addison County Clay To Illinois Black Dirt

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Tuesday November 18, 2008

By M. Stuart Parks

   Almost every early summer Jess Oldham, like the birds, migrates to Vermont.  It’s a long trek from the southern border of Illinois to the Green Mountains but that big black Dodge diesel dually makes it every time.  Usually there’s a 22 foot box trailer behind it that holds woodworking tools of every kind and description.  Jess had two professions in his sixty-nine years; he was a farmer and a cabinet maker.  He started farming with his Dad almost as soon as he could carry a small pail and continued until he retired in 1999.  His love of woodworking began when times were tough on the farm and he had to work in one of the local furniture factories.  He worked in wood from time to time and eventually owned a custom cabinet business with a partner for several years.  Now, in Vermont, he works part of the time for Ben Lucarelli, a local cabinet maker in New Haven, plus he does small jobs on his own. But farming, as every Vermonter knows, gets in your blood.  

    Along with his truck and trailer and tools Jess brings a cheerful personality and a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes.  He’s always ready to laugh at a good joke, even if it’s on him, and likes everyone he meets until they give him a reason not to.  He travels with his dog, Bandit, a shepherd cross who owns the front passenger seat and moves to the back only under extreme threat from Jess but is otherwise a sweet, friendly dog.

    Jess is a man who is always on the go but he sat down recently to talk about the differences between farming in Illinois and farming in Vermont.  He said “The soil is a good deal different.  Ours is a combination of black dirt, sand, silt and a little bit of red clay.  We have two kinds of topography; rolling land and flat lowland ground.  Because the dirt is so fine on our rolling land, and erodes easily, we don’t plow like farmers do in Vermont.  We practice “no-till” farming on the rolling ground.  We use a machine that, instead of turning the soil over, goes straight down into the soil and breaks it up.  A seeding machine can come along and plant right behind it.  The Soil Conservation Service requires a farmer to file a plan for his farm explaining how erosion will be controlled in his fields.  The plan must be approved before the fields are planted”.

    The size of farms also differs.  The majority of farms are over a thousand acres. There is one in my area that is 18,000 acres, but that is the exception.  The size of our fields is also much greater and it is not uncommon to have a field that is 120 to 150 acres.  One of my neighbors has a 500 acre field.  When producing a crop for market is your livelihood you need to be as efficient as possible and the larger open fields help to achieve this goal.

    The primary crops on my farm and the farms around me are winter wheat followed by soybeans.  An alternative is to grow only corn on an off year.  Besides being a cash crop winter wheat keeps the fine soil from eroding in the winter rains.  We get very little snow, a bit now and then, with an occasional storm that drops a few inches.  Until recently if we had eight inches of snow the secondary roads were closed until the farmers cleared them with tractors with scraper blades on the back.  This worked well as long as you could maintain a high enough speed to throw the snow clear.  Now the county clears the roads with trucks that are less than half the size of Vermont’s plow trucks.  

    Southern Illinois also has some very large vegetable farms.  At harvest time you can see the eighteen-wheelers lined up at the fields to haul the green beans or other crops to the processing plants.  Some of these trucks go to Green Giant plants and others go to places like Wisconsin.  It’s not uncommon for these farms to have about 700 acres of vegetables”.

    When asked why he likes woodworking he replied:  “It is always a challenge to build things for folks and have them be pleased with my work.  I’ve always loved to do things with wood that others backed away from.  This was especially true when I was younger and my eyesight was a bit better, but I still enjoy playing with the wood”.

    How long have you been coming to Vermont and why do you come back every year? “The summers are much more comfortable here.  Where I come from there are many, many days when the temperature is over 100 degrees.  The people in Vermont are exceptionally friendly and Middlebury has the most polite drivers in the country and I have traveled it all.  I’ve worked for a fair number of Vermonters and always find them to be fair and appreciative of my work.  Also, my neighbors would not let me back home if I didn’t bring them Vermont maple syrup and honey.  I expect to come back to Vermont every year, as long as I can”.

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