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Friends, Like Jazz, the incorporation of the language of the street into mainstream English and the permutations of culture, community gardening seems to be beginning to be absorbed into the mainstream of our culture...here, in a very exclusive vacation community on Long Island, the Hamptons. As an old brick and trash moving cg pioneer type, I believe that this is a positive sign in our culture and I hope it catches on. Community Gardening is transformative and should last longer than "paint ball". Best wishes, Adam Honigman [EMAIL PROTECTED] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com. http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015 \----------------------------------------------------------/ $75 Rental in Hamptons (Tiny and Organic) July 6, 2003 By ANNE RAVER EAST HAMPTON, N.Y., July 2 - It's the cheapest rental in the Hamptons, but like most good deals, it's already taken. For $75 a year, the East End Community Organic Farm, a cooperative on Long Island, is renting 20-by-20-foot plots of prime farmland to anyone who is willing to join up and garden without chemical pesticides or fertilizers. And the idea has swept through this summer resort town like the latest Botox treatment. Last year, the first season the cooperative, known as Eeco Farm, had use of the land, 35 plots were rented out; this year, all 84 plots are taken, each with a splendid view over an open field, a vanishing commodity here. Most renters are Manhattanites with second homes in shady yards, or landed gentry who have to garden behind their hedges, where they are stuck staring at the same faces they drove out with. But at the farm, Upper East Siders gather to watch the sunset and, perhaps, drink a little pinot grigio with Japanese, Chinese, French, Ecuadoreans, even local Islanders. Life is so good, there are no more plots. "We say `patches,' " explained Annie Bliss, the farm's executive director and a founder. "We don't like the connotation of plots." You could call this a community garden, but for most here that would conjure up narrow patches dug out of rubble between brick buildings in Brooklyn or East Harlem. Eeco Farm's two acres of gardens are surrounded by seven acres of organically farmed corn, beets and peas, grown by the cooperative and sold to restaurants or given away to the needy. But while the East Hampton crowd may wear more polo shirts than their urban counterparts, the excitement of connecting with the earth and watching plants grow is the same. And when those tomatoes look wan, these gardeners are as tempted as any others to cheat with a few chemicals. "Being New Yorkers, they want everything instantly," said Lauren Jarrett, a founder of the farm with Ms. Bliss. "I snuck in the Miracle-Gro," confessed Gale Meisenberg, who runs a catering business called Gale's Kitchen, and used to grow enormous chemically fed vegetables at home. "I made 20 tins of eggplant parmigiana. Grew everything but the cheese." But she has mended her ways, afraid she would be busted if someone saw her mixing up the bright blue crystals. And besides, she is now a believer. "Mr. Miracle-Gro sat on one shoulder, and Lauren on the other," she said. "But I haven't given up my Botox treatments." The experiment began as an attempt to save the 42-acre potato field from becoming the site of 20 new houses. The town of East Hampton was also reeling from a high rate of cancer at East Hampton High School, and had banned pesticides from public lands. In 2001, the town and Suffolk County bought the parcel's development rights for nearly $5 million, a step that restricted its use to agriculture. But that still left the door wide open to a farmer or a nursery operator to buy it and continue to pour on the chemicals. So the town went the extra mile and bought the land itself for an additional $650,000 - and leased it to Eeco Farm. To hear these weekend farmers talk, you would think they were describing 1,000-acre spreads. "This is my farm," Shel de Satnick, 70, a retired bridge teacher, said as he surveyed his four eggplants and three tomato plants, all lovingly staked. His partner, Walter Klauss, a conductor in Manhattan, beamed at the rows of newly started lettuce and radishes. "Even though we have a house out here, it's a flower garden, not open space." And their yard is shady. "Every time I'd reach for a packet of seeds, it would say `full sun,' and I'd put it back," Mr. de Satnick said. When seed potatoes arrived in the mail, the men thought it was a mistake. Weren't seeds supposed to look more like granola? "They were just potatoes," Mr. de Satnick said. The manager of Eeco Farm, John White, whose family has farmed on the East End for 13 generations, showed them how to cut up each potato so that each piece had an eye, or growing bud. But it is more than sun and open space that draws the two men to the farm daily to watch their garden grow. "It's the level of energy out here," Mr. Klauss said. "And we're all concerned about the environment." "The McMansions springing up instead of lettuce," put in B. J. Roemer, a friend from nearby Water Mill, by way of elaboration. Ms. Roemer, who has an adjacent plot, actually hates gardening around her cottage. "I don't like doing it alone," she said. "But I adore these guys." The three gardening pals were inspired to plant nasturtiums along their "waterfront," their word for the irrigation ditch. "Next to the water, like Giverny," Ms. Roemer explained. Some back-to-the-earth types don't have time to get their hands dirty, among them Faith Popcorn, who gives names to lifestyle trends, like "nesting" and "atmosfear" (anxiety about polluted air, contaminated water, bioterrorist attacks, mad cow disease, and all that). Ms. Popcorn hired Fusae Shigezawa to plant an Asian-style garden on her plot. She wanted her 5-year-old adopted daughter to connect with her Chinese roots. "I don't want her to think bok choy comes from Citarella," Ms. Popcorn said, referring to the Manhattan emporium, which has an outpost in Water Mill. "She's going to plant, reap and sell it at the farm stand." But so far, all the work has been done by Ms. Shigezawa, who grew up in Hawaii and studied tropical agriculture in college, and Fred Garofalo, an organic landscaper who dug in his five-star compost. (Others with less exalted sources have to rely on compost from the dump.) "Isn't that terrible?" Ms. Roemer said, casting a longing eye at Ms. Popcorn's vigorous dark-green vegetables and a lone marigold as big as a tennis ball. "I thought the idea was to do it yourself." Mr. Shigezawa is not the only Asian gardener who has found his way to Eeco Farm. Junheng Coach Xu, a year-round resident of East Hampton who teaches swimming, tai chi and healthful cooking at the town recreation center, is growing snap peas and Chinese lettuce, bok choy and strawberries. "I was forced to learn, when they marched us out of Shanghai," Mr. Xu said, remembering the Cultural Revolution, which forced city people into the country. "We were re-educated. This makes me very sick then. But I learned how to grow vegetables. This, I like." His friend Fumiko Matsubara, who came to the East End from Tokyo in 1989, tends the plot next door. This evening, she came by with her uncle, Tsuneaki Horiguchi, just off the plane from Yokohama, and went home with a basket full of greens. "We're aiming for diversity," said Ms. Jarrett, who has been known to beat the bushes for gardeners other than weekending Upper East Siders. "I saw some Hispanic people on the other side of the fence, and I ran along spouting words like `jardín!' and `verdes!' in my pidgin Spanish." José Cajamarca and Luis Tenecota, two carpenters from Cuenca, Ecuador, got swept into the organic family. They grow chilies, tomatoes, onions and watermelons on two plots for their families. Ms. Jarrett commandeered two chefs from the Ross School, a private school and Center for Well-Being founded by the socialite Courtney Ross Holst. "She kept saying: `Take a plot! Take a plot!' " Deena Chafetz, the school's executive sous chef, said. "And I kept saying: `No, we're too busy. Maybe next year.' " But there the two women were, hoeing their Bloody Butcher dent corn. They may till rarefied earth, but these gardeners are no different from any others when it comes to tomatoes. Who has the first, the biggest, the juiciest, the most flavorful. And almost everyone has too many. "I planted 27 plants last year," said John Malafronte, a local public television producer. "The guy at the nursery asked me if I had a big family - you only need four." Mr. Malafronte now brags that his tomato paste sets the standard for all tomato paste. The connection to the land cuts through class and money. "Sometimes in the Hamptons, people get isolated in their own groups," said Newell Turner, the editor of Hamptons Cottages and Gardens, as he trellised his tomatoes. "They race out from the city to go to the beach or sit by the pool. But here, there's a whole range of people." Mr. Turner, 41, comes from a farm family in the Mississippi Delta. "We grew 1,500 acres of cotton and sweet potatoes," he said. "My father handed my brother and me a hoe to learn what it was all about. And hoeing coffee weed in 100-degree weather is enough to kill you." At Eeco Farm, the fog rolls in, cooling the fields in the evenings. The sun streaks the sky pink and red. Ms. Meisenberg wears gloves to protect her bubblegum-pink manicure, but last week, thanks to her daily gym routine, she was able to roll in two wheelbarrows of bricks and enough sand to lay a little patio between her two plots. It is now complete with wicker chairs, "so I can sit and watch the weeds come up," she said. Her own epiphany came last year in the pumpkin patch. She had donated all the seeds, "so long as I could pick any pumpkin I wanted," she said. And one raw day right before Halloween, as her husband and a friend pointed to the best pumpkins from their pickup, she celebrated the harvest. "I pushed the wheelbarrow, and started to cry," she said. "Just to be able to be out there, in that open field, picking pumpkins." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/nyregion/06PATC.html?ex=1058673040&ei=1&en=36f443c86fc09045 --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! 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