Slide Rock Apple Orchards

Orchard Tractors from the 1950s

We packed up and headed west a couple of weeks ago for a visit with daughter Kate's family in the mountains of Arizona. Always drawn to Farmers' Markets while traveling (we visited Flagstaff's on Sunday), we also seem to find our way to farms. 

Slide Rock State Park was our target that day with plans to soak up the sunshine, hike and bask in that cosmic energy unique to the red rocks of Sedona. And so it was that we discovered the Pendley Homestead.

 

Frank and Jane Pendley's offspring carried on their family's farming heritage until the mid-1980s when they sold the orchard to the state of Arizona and it became Slide Rock State Park, incorporating a popular swimming spot (in the Coconino National Forest where our daughter is Watershed Program Manager) with natural water slides and icy-cold water even in the height of summer.

Reimagined sites, with their carefully crafted descriptions and found objects pieced together send me on a journey to know more, to really imagine with my own sensibilities, the lives lived and lost in those spaces. Twenty-first century research tools at my fingertips can offer me a glimpse of the trials and tribulations of a family making their way in the early twentieth century - making their way in a western landscape so very different from our gently rolling Potter County hills.

But they faced the same kinds of vicissitudes of farming as we do, even with our 'modern' methods. Hailstorms, late spring freezes, deer damage, insect damage, injury, accidents, finding markets for the fruit - it's all there in the records of old newspapers from the era.

From 1970,  the headline screams "Oak Creek Fruit Crop Wiped Out By Cold Snap" and the story goes on to report: "What appeared to be one of the largest deciduous fruit crops in many years in Oak Creek Canyon is now only a dream."

1934: "An experiment in Oak Creek Canyon to help control insect pests was underway by the agriculture experimental station of the University of Arizona. Frank Pendley, prominent fruit grower in the district, asked for help with reference to the wooly aphis in his orchard." 

This from 1963: "What would you do if you had a thousand boxes of apples and nowhere to sell them? That's the position in which Tom Pendley finds himself in this fall and he frankly is at a loss as to what to do about it." And in 1971, it was "Oak Creek Orchard Men Battling Deer ... Antlered Invaders Love Fruit." 

The Pendley home today

With a backdrop of the red rocks, fruit trees along Oak Creek

Read more about the Pendley Homestead here.

A Warm Welcome

 

What fun to share this old farmstead with old friends - that is friends who shared the journey through the 12 years in the Coudersport Area Schools!

We hosted Jane's class reunion last Saturday afternoon, scrambling to accommodate everyone if rain promised by the weather folks came to pass. But after on and off showers in the morning, the skies cleared for the afternoon reunion and 70-somethings enjoyed catching up and laughing and remembering the good old days.

Classmates David Schaub and Tom Shirey, remembering their glory days on Metzger* Field (next to the high school), posed questions about the origin of the old football field to Coudersport Library Director Teri McDowell and she was off and running.

Her well-researched presentation about the history of football in Coudersport and the athletic fields in the community was a highlight of a delightful afternoon. 

It was only after everyone had departed and the rains came and went that the sign on the barn changed to this!

*While the athletic field bears the name Metzger, the benefactor was distantly related to these Metzgers! 

From 1907

 

1907

"The industry is one of the most important in the community because it purchases the grain of the farmers in this section, always paying the best market price for it. Industries of this nature are indispensable help in the commercial upbuilding of our community."

From The Potter Enterprise, 1907:

"At the corner of Main and Chestnut streets stands one of the most completely equipped and successfully operated flour and feed mills in this section of the state. Their location is very advantageous owing to the fact that the railway switch used by them is in direct connections with the C & PA Railroad,  so direct in fact that is is but the work of a minute to swing the cars either loaded or unloaded upon the main track, thus avoiding the confusion and loss of time attendant upon a long period of switching."

"At the right of the switch projects the elevator opening from the mill.... Two men shoveling the grain from the car into the elevator can empty a car in exactly two and one half hours. A few steps to the right and a trap opening disclosed the belt elevator that was conveying the wheat to the machine that was to give it the first process in becoming flour."

"Seven hundred bushels per hour are carried by this smoothly running and comparatively noiseless elevator to a very ingenious machine called a separator which takes out the roughest dirt. ... Just the width of an elevator shaft separated the "cleaner" from the polishing machine containing six double rollers made of the finest quality of chilled steel and revolving in different directions with varying degrees of speed..."

"Another turn, a walk of about 20 feet and perhaps the most marvelous machine stands. Underneath are numerous canvas tubes that extend to every elevator in the building except the outside one.  Mr. Guilden opened the top and then the flour as it came from the various machines through the elevators sifted by this wonderful machine into the various brands of flour."

"The plant has a capacity of one hundred and fifty barrels of flour per day. Owing to the fact that the company has plenty of fine storage room, they are not under the necessity of sacking their flour as fast as they mill it. They produce fifty tons of feed in 24 hours, The complete storage capacity of the plant is forty thousand bushels."

"A fine grade of buckwheat flour put out by this concern is creating a demand for itself throughout the country. Corn meal is also an important output, Some of the brand of flour manufactured are Gold Eagle, Special Patent, Choice Patent and Fancy Blended."

"The Eulalia Milling Company was established in 1905 by D.W. Van Wegen of this place and Miles Johnson of Cross Fork. Both are these men are far sighted and progressive business men who are always ready to do all within the scope of their influence for the advancement of Coudersport."

Remembering

Yesterday was the birthdate of Arthur Eugene Metzger. Were he still alive, he would be 100 years old.

His fierce love for this farm - these pieces of land stitched together by the Dingman Run Road - defined him in so many ways. It was this love that was planted in the man I married, the man who carries the name, often these days with the Jr. suffix omitted as the Senior Arthur has been gone for more than 40 years.

Polio - infantile paralysis - struck on this farm in the summer of 1944, days before Arthur and Wanda Gooch had planned to be married. 

From The Potter Enterprise, August 10, 1944

Arthur, with Wanda by his side, spent months in the hospital in Sayre and later at a rehabilitation facility in West Virginia.

Potter Enterprise, 1946

'Never fully recovered,' the newspaper story says. But the man I first met in 1970 had recovered and built (with Wanda always at his side) a fulfilling life - a much different life than the one he had dreamed of on this farm. He walked with the assistance of leg braces and crutches, his broad shoulders and strong arms a testament to his strength and determination. They had been a part of his life since that fateful summer.

Farming - especially in the days before air-conditioned mega tractors and gps guided equipment - demanded great physical strength and, while the whole family supported the effort, it was too much. By this time, he was raising two children, and his parents sharing farming responsibilities while caring for the older generation and raising a young daughter, were stretched to their limits. He knew his farming dream wouldn't support the needs of a growing family. The whole family pitched in to make it work as he set off to college at nearby St. Bonaventure and graduating magna cum laude in 1961.

His career as an accountant with the Federal Government took the family from the farm to locations in New York, the Harrisburg area and then northeastern Pennsylvania. Nearly every weekend and every hunting season, they packed up the station wagon traveled back to the farm.

He and Wanda planned their future together here, a time when they could retire. They fixed up the old horse barn, built a new workshop when the old one was destroyed by fire, and made some modern updates in the old farmhouse.

Memories are blurry sometimes, much like the picture at the top of this post. Though I've heard pieces of this story from many perspectives over the years, it's not my story to tell. Perhaps some day those who carry the memories - his sister Dawn, his daughter Carol and his son, Arthur, will tell their own stories.

I like to think of him as a grandfather, for the birth of our daughter Kate changed him, softened what I perceived as a hard, protective shell and brought him great joy. In fact, they delighted in one another.

By the time Joey was born four years later, Arthur Sr. was ill and returning to this farm in retirement was just a dream. He died in this house in the early summer of 1983.

We all miss him.

with grandson Joseph Arthur, February 1982

 

Walk The Line

February 26, 2024

A beautiful afternoon - way too warm for typical February but what's typical as we adapt to climate change? We walked along the borders of our property under blue skies, geese honking above on their northward migration. Both of us using trek poles on the uneven ground, over our own hills and dales, checking in with the fluttering orange surveyor's tape marking the iron stakes pounded into the ground so very many years ago.

Nestled just a foot above the ground in the brush, this engineering marvel, caught my eye.

Ground Hog Day

 It's early morning on February 2 and those hardy souls in Punxsutawney are ready for their moment in the bright glare of television lights with their beloved Phil waiting in his burrow.

That first year Arthur and his family had moved away from the beloved family farm, he spent some time in Children's Hospital in Utica, N.Y. Potter County friends and neighbors showered him with cards and letters and, seeing it was in February, Valentines too - many handmade by his former classmates in Mrs. Dewey's room at the Coudersport Elementary School.

His mother, Wanda, had saved these letters and some time later passed them on to him and, being the sentimental one he is, they went into a box into the attic.

I pulled that box out last week and this fell from one of the envelopes along with a card and letter from Aunt Margie Gooch.

  

Salt Rising Bread

I am convinced there lingers in this old farmhouse a ghostly whiff of salt rising bread. This cold January morning, it joins the fresh aroma from bread we tucked into our cooler when we departed our daughter's Arizona home Wednesday morning. 

Kate has taken up salt rising bread mantle in our family, the recipe passed to her by her great-aunt Dawn Metzger Newton, who learned from her mother in this same farmhouse kitchen where we toasted Kate's bread as special treat for breakfast today.

Salt rising bread carries its own mystique in these parts. These days, the bread from local bakeries (particularly the Giant Market in Wellsville or the Angelica version sold in some stores) is popular and delicious, but for those who grew up with the old-fashioned variety, it's not the same.

It took me a long time to enjoy salt rising bread. My grandfather, newspaperman W.D. "Golly" Fish, loved salt rising bread and I can still see him reaching for a thick slice from the bread plate which accompanied every meal at my grandparents' home. I thought it was disgusting, mostly from its odor. which might be described as dirty gym socks or worse. 

He was a connoisseur of salt rising bread and often wrote about it in his weekly column.

This from November 1967:

"Salt Rising Bread.  It was just about 100 years ago when Golly's parents were united in marriage. Mother had learned as a young girl the art of making salt rising bread. She lived to be 85 years. All that time she baked salt rising and no other kind of bread. All his life it has been Golly's staff of life. Maybe this accounts for the longevity of this scribe."

He wrote so often about his love affair with the bread that readers began bringing him their offerings - both from home kitchens or from local and far-flung bakeries.

As a matter of fact, I remember my future grandmother-in-law, Thelma Metzger, soon after I made her acquaintance, telling me that my grandfather once pronounced her salt rising bread the best he'd had since his mother was living.

Making salt rising bread is not as simple as putting together a yeasted bread. It involves temperature control to grow the sponge. Cookbook author James Beard writes in "Beard on Bread:"

"Salt rising bread is one of the oldest breads in this country, It has delicious and unusual flavor and a very smooth texture. In fact, it is one of the most remarkable of all breads. It does present one great difficulty for the bread maker. It is unpredictable. You may try the same recipe three or four times without success to find that it works the fifth time."

And from the New York Times in an article from 2020, as the world turned to sour dough during the Covid Pandemic:

"... the delegation of bakers who make salt rising bread agree: You want to wake up to it! You want it to hit you the second you walk into the kitchen because it's the auspicious whiff of a successful salt rising starter, the first sign that efficient bacteria have been working hard all night, metabolizing protein in a fast, wild fermentation filling the starter with hydrogen sulfide and other gasses. It's a promise that within several hours, if all goes well, a flat-topped, fine crumbed loaf will come out a rich, yellow gold from the oven."

Kate's recipe, bearing some water spots and other stains, was typed on a computer, each step carefully detailed and described by Aunt Dawn to help insure success. Kate even had a hands-on lesson before she perfected her own technique that involves a yogurt maker and ways of turning off and on an electric oven to maintain the perfect temperature. And even then, there are occasional failures.

While I've never ventured into the world of salt rising bread making, perhaps this will be winter that I do, summoning the friendly ghosts who set their starter in this very kitchen.

And to answer the question as to why it's salt-rising bread? I read today that pioneer women always kept a bag of rock salt by the fire where they cooked. When they would make the starter, they would tuck it down into the warm bag of rock salt which kept it at the right temperature.

From Potter Enterprise, 1949

From Potter Enterprise, 1938