Sustainable
Agriculture of the Pennsylvania Dutch or
Germans
Organic
fertilizers, crop rotation, nitrogen fixing,
and contour tillage? The Pennsylvania Dutch were about two and a
half centuries ahead of their time. Did they have chemists,
agricultural advisers, advanced degrees from ag schools? No, they
did not! To them it was common sense. The Dutch had some
wisdom from the old country to apply to the specific details of their
newfound homeland, and it worked well for them. Take the Oley
area for example. As you drive from the Oley Valley up into the
Oley Hills, you see more and more contour tilling intended to reduce
erosion and retain rain water and give it more time to soak into the
soil. Did the big ag corporation advise them to do that?
No, they were doing it from the beginning, because "es chust schaft
besser (it just worked better)."
Around the time of the Great Depression, the soil in
much of this country was about played out, exhausted! At the same
time, the soil on most Pennsylvania German farms was richer, darker,
more full of nutrients than it was when the Germans first came over
from the Palatinate regions of Germany. That's right, they
improved the soil by leaning toward organic agriculture! In
addition to the good old manure spreader,
they rotated hay, corn, tobacco, and then wheat or rye in succeeding
years.
Crop rotation! And no big ag companies were giving advice to
these farmers. If the soil in your little garden plot was already
in good shape you still rotated crops by the rule of "go over and under,"
alternating plants that produce fruit on
top of the ground with those that produce fruits below ground (like
turnips and potatoes). That's simple enough.
By the way, did you notice that I mentioned
tobacco. We were fancy Dutch and cigar-making was big business in
Reading, Pennsylvania. Tobacco was a good "cash crop." Check out this page if
you want to know a little more about dutch tobacco growing and see a
few pictures.
One last point, those huge red barns with the fancy big
hex signs on the side are a big tourist attraction in Berks and
Lancaster Counties. Where do you think all that paint came
from? The old Pennsylvania Dutch were mixing their own paints for
over two hundred years. The Berks area was full of iron oxide
deposits that yielded beautiful red, yellow, orange, and dark brown
pigments that were mixed with gum resins from fruit tree sap, boiled
linseed oil, and buttermilk, all provided by nature. These paints
often outlasted those commercially available. Also, the paint for
those big hex signs, often six or eight feet in diameter, bordered in
yellow, for example, featuring things like stylized birds, or
distelfinks, and geometrical symbols on a field of purple or red.
Those too were often painted with paints homemade from natural
ingredients that often lasted ten or more years. With regard to
those fancy hex signs, I remind you again that we were fancy
Dutch. The Amish didn't decorate like that.
By
the way, take a look at the way the fancy Dutch bring
in the cows
in the Oley Valley. Also, have a look
at an old John
Deere tractor and
read a little more about the old
way of
farming. "Some farmahs voot chust
as
soon
dump chemicals on a field as go ta da truple a schpreadin manuah, an da
manuah ist free, but course it takes moah time ta schpret it
ought. Dem
chemical farmahs ain’t intrested in naycha.” That was Arsenic
Schlank in The
Other Side of the Middle: A Pennsylvania Dutch Story of Family
Love.
If you would like to read about
Pennsylvania Dutch food and cooking with some great recipes in the
words of the Dutch themselves, then check out this web site: http://mypage.siu.edu/rae50/Pennsylvania_Dutch_recipes_in_their_own_words,_Pennsylvania_German_cooking_.html
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