Poor Richard’s Almanac

Yesterday, our friend Ben wrote about Gary Paul Nabhan and how he’d been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his outstanding work with plant preservation (”Brother, can you spare a MacArthur award?”). Today I’d like to come a little closer to home—to the tiny but scenic crossroads of Bowers, Pennsylvania—and introduce you to someone I think deserves a MacArthur, Jim Weaver of Meadow View Farm.

Our friend Ben and Silence Dogood make the trek out to Bowers several times each year to see what Mr. Weaver has growing in his extensive greenhouses. And of course, we never leave empty-handed. Meadow View specializes in heirloom vegetable transplants, and because of Mr. Weaver’s enthusiasm for keeping these fascinating plants available to home gardeners, there are literally hundreds of varieties to choose from. If your gardening space is limited, this is an absolute godsend: Instead of buying a packet of 100 seeds, or a six-pack of a single variety, you can mix’n'match to your heart’s content. Of course, when you want at least one of everything, like our friend Ben, this can still be a challenge. But fortunately Silence is more level-headed and keeps reminding our friend Ben that every drop of water that doesn’t fall naturally on the Hawk’s Haven garden beds has to be hauled back there in gallon milk jugs.

It’s too early to pick up the heirloom tomato, pepper, eggplant, cuke, squash, and melon transplants for our Pennsylvania garden—the soil’s just now reaching the “okay to plant potatoes and onions” stage—but it was a gorgeous Saturday, so we thought a trip to the country to see what Meadow View had on hand would be rewarding. And our friend Ben managed to find a few choice lettuces, Swiss chard, and herbs (peppermint, which I adore and, despite its reputation for invasiveness, seem incapable of keeping alive; ‘Arp’ and prostrate rosemaries, ditto; and variegated lemon thyme, which sometimes returns and sometimes doesn’t).

Then, of course, there’s the Meadow View store, selling an extraordinary selection of jellies, pickles, and preserves made by Alma Weaver (our friend Ben chose a peach-tomato marmalade and a jar of pickled beans), as well as beautiful dried-flower and herb wreaths, seed potatoes, and smoked garlic. And it is here that you get the first hint at Jim Weaver’s true passion: hot peppers. All around you are jars and bunches of dried peppers, red and yellow chile pepper ristras and wreaths, and pickled hot peppers of every type and stripe. And there is the table labeled “Dutchy Gun Powder” with packets and jars of powdered hot peppers, smoked and straight up, of every cultivar known to man. (”Dutchy” in this case is not a misspelling of Prince Charles’s line of organic products, but rather a play on the predominant local culture, Pennsylvania Dutch, which is not Dutch at all but rather German. But that is another story and another post.) Our friend Ben and Silence always stock up on these for our fire-breathing friend, Richard Saunders of Poor Richard’s Almanac fame.

The chile extravaganza our friend Ben encountered in early April pales, however, compared to chile harvest season, when Meadow View will have boxes and bushel baskets of every color of habanero, including white and a true Crayola peach, every Scotch bonnet (which may have reminded someone of Scottish headgear, but basically looks like a pepper someone’s stomped repeatedly to our friend Ben), every jalapeno, every Thai pepper, Vietnamese pepper, Chinese pepper, Mexican pepper, Caribbean pepper… you get the idea. Our friend Ben defies you to find another such selection of form, flavor, and color anywhere. Who’d have imagined that you would find this in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, where the local cuisine is as bland as that of our friend Ben’s native Nashville home?

Jim Weaver’s passion for peppers is also behind Bowers’s single claim to fame, the annual Bowers Chile Pepper Festival. Held in the Bowers community park in early September, after the pepper harvest has come in, it is one of the most fun events our friend Ben has ever attended. Our friend Ben is not a fan of crowds, lines, and the like, but the chile pepper crowds, though enthusiastic, are relaxed. There’s no clawing through a horde of rabid shoppers to get to one of the innumerable purveyors of their own-made chile products, from an astonishing selection of salsas to hot sauces, jellies, dips, chili, and even chocolates. There are also lots and lots of fresh chiles for sale, along with hanging baskets of ornamental hot pepper plants and every conceivable kind of chile paraphernalia, from tee-shirts and caps to jewelry, pottery, suncatchers, and tablecloths. Vendors come from all over the East Coast for the event. Local chefs set up hot-food stands (”hot” having several layers of meaning in this case), musicians perform, and Meadow View hosts horse-drawn wagon tours of the farm.

Our friend Ben of course patronizes many of these booths, and Silence and I have to frequently remind our friend Richard, who is addicted to super-hot salsas and brings several gunny sacks along to hold his stash of freshly harvested hot peppers, that there is in fact a reason why he is known as “Poor” Richard. (Especially immediately after the Chile Pepper Festival!) But I must just say a word here about my favorite vendor, Csigi Chili Sauce (www.csigichilisauce.com). Csigi makes fabulous all-natural salsas and sauces (our friend Ben’s very favorite is the Roasted Onion Salsa). They also make fabulous hand-printed, chile-themed tee-shirts. But what really pushed them over the edge in our friend Ben’s opinion is that they sell Ben Franklin-themed paraphernalia. Great salsas and sauces, fantastic tee-shirts, and Ben Franklin?!! All righty then!

If you live on the East Coast, love hot peppers, and/or are looking for a family-friendly fall festival (no alcohol here), you can’t beat the Bowers Chile Pepper Festival. This year, it will be held September 5th and 6th from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST. Head to your good friend Google or click this link to check out the website (www.pepperfestival.com) and enjoy a virtual chile fix!

Our friend Ben promises to keep you apprised of the doings at Meadow View Farm and the Bowers Chile Pepper Festival as the season progresses, so stay tuned. (And if anyone can enlighten our friend Ben as to why there is a large sign on the road to Bowers featuring Ernie Bushmiller’s famous Depression-era cartoon creation, Nancy, holding a telephone receiver, with no caption or explanation whatsoever, please do so. Our friend Ben was convinced that Bushmiller must have been a Bowers native, but it turns out he was from New York State. I remain completely baffled.)

But okay, what about that MacArthur award? I’d say that James Weaver deserves the award on two obvious fronts: for tirelessly promoting heirloom vegetables, and thus crop diversity, and for revitalizing his community via the annual festival. But this delightful, enthusiastic natural teacher—ask him anything about peppers or, for that matter, any fruit, vegetable, or farm animal, and he’ll pause in his endless tasks and share his hard-won knowledge with real pleasure—deserves an award, in our friend Ben’s opinion, for a third reason as well. Like our friend Ben, Mr. Weaver is a Luddite. But in his case, it’s a natural part of his faith. You see, Jim Weaver is a conservative Mennonite.

The Mennonites are the older spiritual brothers of the Amish, and like them, eschew modern conveniences as unnecessary and worldly. Mind you, there are many sects of Mennonites, some of whom drive cars, have electricity, and live much like the rest of us. But the Meadow View family is not among them. If you go there, you’ll see the women of the family modestly attired in homemade calico dresses, their hair in buns and prayer kapps (head coverings) in place. The men will be wearing their uniform of dark blue pants, lighter blue shirts, and straw hats. Though Meadow View now has electricity and a telephone in their shop, those lines stop short of the house itself. To look up the hill at the Weaver home is to time-travel back to the pioneer era.

For anyone to have achieved what James Weaver has would be impressive. In his case, it is astounding. MacArthur nominators, are you reading this?! If so, please look into Mr. Weaver’s achievement. And as long as I’m making my own nominations, hello, does the name Wendell Berry mean anything to you?!