thank you good evening and welcome to his third in a series of presentations on the history as a town of farms to fight i'm sending the results of interviews with people about their knowledge and experience of turning in belmont the project is an experiment and i want to express my gratitude to the board of the belmont historical society for its willingness to try something new and untested presentation but it's important to emphasize that many volunteer hours have also been contributed to make this project a success in fact we could say that it is a success because it has drawn on the for the humanities to extend participation in local kids three in addition to the board i'm having to tell you my wonderful advisory committee joe has already named him who kept me on the straight making sure that the presentation is on tape and therefore available to the wider gulf on community to our local cable channel and times of course to the mass foundation for the humanities and to the belmont cultural council which is cultural council this is a great group of people supportive and wise and they have already done a lot and then especially to all the people willing to take the time to speak with me and in many cases recorded the personal pleasure to make so many connections and are in so much following the recommendation of the a five three committee i focused on two things you caught me in farming and childhood experiences belmont's far and as we go i hope you'll enjoy learning what i learned and i mention also that the recorded interviews are on disk and they are available to anyone who would like to listen to them i'd like to orient you a little by using of course one of the nineteen twenty four soil map produced by the united states department of agriculture this is an absolutely extraordinary publication it's not just of math it's a whole these are the different farms and farming activity over near waverly square east to grow street north to along washington street and then up into this area south of the pleasant and the long frightening glorious colors here represent all different kinds of soil and what's interesting is that you can see where the farms are the soil is in her already or strike to blue like wallpaper this is carl merry backflow soil and  publication this publication that i'm reading from includes a detailed description of agriculture it tells us that middlesex county and of course that includes ranked fifth in the counties of the united states in nineteen nineteen in the value of vegetables grown for market why we care so much about these farms one reason of course is that they are our history as a town from the earliest colonial period until the mid twentieth century we have little industry compared to where agriculture our town leaders were medications former my perception is that these farmers fear entrepreneurs risk takers and leaders in state agriculture i like to think that today they would be called very into nearing green technology venture capital another reason for caring so much is that there is such a renewed interest in global farming and you will hear tonight i'll begin with include a family herbert hoover was born on october sixteenth one thousand and twenty seven in waltham hospital and he grew up in belmont at one forty one sycamore street is farther born in holland graduated from the french agricultural college and came to live in weston eventually went to work for the ross and the where jerry seinfeld's on during world war two perverts family group a large victory garden all down behind the rich  you can see how the land slopes down it goes down of course all the way to the railroad track and there is just open space there with her it was a little boy he told me the land was probably the bottom of a large pond two hundred to three hundred years ago and then as the town developed all that land and started to train up into new sewers and everything so that left this very rich land of a lot of silt that settled there through the years eventually herbert and his parents saved enough money to buy a farm out and better by the end of world war two the land in melbourne had become too expensive and they called their new place the chicken in farms because the three of them pooled their earnings to buy the cro i've been there several times they sell eggs to some of the best restaurants and wholesalers in the boston area and the eggs are indeed delicious growing i've heard his father to liberty bell have learned about the ins and outs of liberty first by for pop up working in the garden was a prayer a holy moment that he cherished how else could it pear tree to produce five different types of pears except through the gentle tearing hands of a person in touch with nature there's a photograph of mr doris territory you can see that well maybe not in this photograph but close cropped you can see that the twisted stands at the bottom that are all part of the crafting here or some other photos  of you may be wondering can we rightly include the story of the coroner in this story on this farming my response is a passionate p s to adare they may not have made a living in farming but they fed the family share food with their i loved any story working so closely with her father and finding a place for herself in the car i wonder how many of you know of the scarfo farming business throughout the twentieth century battle scarred those family farms land and even as the houses went out around dams grandfather came from sicily at the beginning of the century he had several and with them he began an article about it about him father james scar here's the second piece of the article you can quote a graph of trolling between rows of tomato plants farmland as was most i felt and you can see over on the right has circled mary scarf cooked dressing for salads this was dense and mary if you was a radishes or just about any other vegetable you would go three twenty a pleasant street this is not three this is three eighteen plus it's three and you see on the right and driveway you go down the driveway behind the house you will find some of the fields worked by this car here with the far side areas says a lot of people and sometimes just to chit chat and talk about different things as to how things went up around the scarf was continued to produce a wide variety of market garden notice them to me this is the one of the most wonderful things said is that this farming could be so successful in the middle of what was basically a sucker here's radishes just coming out and see the same house there the background here is dan's grandfather daniel harvesting radishes here's a close up the focus is not so great you can see he's almost needed he's working down there and he's got a basket or some kind of container with bunches of ravages in it and here the radishes bunched and ready to be closely you can see that he's standing on some kind of a cultivated tool and his weight pushes the tool down and you can see who is doing most of the work at this picture not sure it's the man in the cigarette in his mouth farming and quite dense population can co exist i'm also struck by the way down is life is a combination of urban and agricultural activity you grew up learning about farming following his father  grandfather around doing as a sign chores and attending agricultural meetings here's what he had to say when i asked him about playing as a boy operations and has years of valuable experience to share i asked him about pesticide and he said we didn't use pesticides we just didn't have a lot if we did then we determine what was going to be the best pesticide to use so it wouldn't be involved in the growth of the crops of the food no we never use pesticides never never once never even now in my little gardens i don't use any pesticides and in a big field she said we could just tell by how they were growing and look at them thoroughly to see if there's anything happening so whether they would do is just go to a small area where they saw the bugs and got rid of them instead of using pesticides on the whole process never really never you got it before it got like her conveys family story dances one of the that has been working with family and the family that produces much of his in through farming in the case of the start in addition to dan's work at five means the family provided a number of services especially in the winter time such as having sargent who worked for the family for many years and kept all the books and beautiful penmanship and i just remembered her father her mother's father grandfather develops heating fresh tomatoes in the back of the store she remembers the stores along narrow building running back from school street with a store an office up front and a big sink to wash finished behind the building and the pupils soil what aspect that i particularly enjoyed about belmont's farming history is that causes the remaining testaments to the days when we were in town far i wonder how many of you know the story of this house now located at the corner of elm street and was built for his bride mary ellen percy daughter of a prosperous arlington farmer noticed over on the far right you can see a piece of  magnificent mustache and we had one two three four five six seven of their children every day and talked a bit about papa's ten as he was called papa and drove the wagon to market every day they always loved to say how i would get up every morning at four o'clock and you know go out and pack up the wagon and drive it piled high with lead us and go into boston and even sell it for what i remember as a nickel and head what's interesting to me among other things is that this is a very obviously well to do family which is doing very well in farming and here is a month's worth of receipts for the sale of manure you can see that they were buying the new over on the left you can see the dates january thirteenth seventeen twenty if they were getting loads of man every few days and this was the time of course when there were still enough forces around that you could get them in there already you could afford to pay for it here are the two magnificent greenhouses remember this was over in the area where they said the old your original first cemetery is stay and died in nine hundred fifteen there is a photograph of all eight of the children and you notice the green house in the background mary ellen her told me that not to stand was an excellent financial manager for the family she was able to send her girls to trinity college in washington d c and to purchase a cadillac for herself we have t it's written on the back of one of these  hair and all the scales were dark haired and this little girl because of most of the age of sarah who somebodies mother in law anyway sarah is a very strong personality and this little girl is getting far too much attention with her long hair before introducing our last narrator tonight i'd like to share a passage with you from the minute an autobiographical novel by ralph burns of the love of belmont president and all there this is not strictly speaking the oral history but  it's a wonderful way of getting a sense of what was life whether it was in the transition from being in town and farms out of the nest is based on ralph's family's immigration from ireland to boston and then to belmont he's got numerous descriptions of deep red wine sat the boys excitedly gathered the apples stuffing them into closets pulled together with drawstrings at the waist rock rock the vicious watch dog came flying around the corner of the green house barking threatening circling the boys ran up to the street the angry dog in their heels and bent over scrawny mr gibson in the dog's weight shaking a stick and hurling imprecations at the clean culprit i would love to know who the real mr gibson was out of the mist also includes an incident in which a watchman uses a shotgun to fire rock salt to the children the thing to remember is that while these little thieves were only children they were stealing someone's livelihood and as the neighborhoods grew causing considerable damage to the greek houses historical societies archives includes a handwritten letter from one distressed farmer to the selectmen asking for early childhood in brooklyn and i think we can safely say that she grew up on the farm after several deaths in the family including the death of planets grandmother that is mother grace pippin came back to them on the farm at nineteen twenty five and so street libya's grandfather's work was farming he had several hired men and two greenhouses his name with j howard richardson and here is why then he just says about him he grew everything everything vegetables and there are a pair for you cherry tree apple tree you see there are still care critics out there that are producing j richardson died following an accident where this horse pulling the vegetable wagon was startled by the screech of a trolley they read to read an acre of land to credit anderson with many of you last year launched her community supported agriculture program and is among other things teaching new farmers how to work the land they built a new caucus a kind of green house  carefully loosened around it i'm especially grateful to me for her willingness to record thoughts about the decision to put the remaining open farmland into into a truck here's a picture of bread as tomato plants being ready to be set out and here is a very nice view of the whole acre with the protective cloth covering of describe for me the family's decision to give up the financial benefits of the land by designating it is open space she said of her children i think they feel it was the correct thing to do to save the planet i think it's been very hard for them my second son david lives in philadelphia he's watched these beautiful farms yet they're divided up and her friend's houses put on them and each time i go there and say well that farm is gone and then there'd be another car going on and he was terribly upset david loves the land he's a doctor he's got a vegetable patch and the flower garden and his roots are in the earth also my dollars on the farm and other child was on a farm in oregon and henry loves the belmont park so it has something to do with chromosome so i think i asked levy about her hopes for the future of the ninety acres and she said it should be far it's protected in perpetuity by the american farm land trust and they know what they're doing their national and the business of grab a new young woman who's doing building one acre as an experiment with us and the people want to buy fresh vegetables and they don't know where stuff from shaw's is coming from a lot of it's coming from chilled out with a lot of pesticides on it and that was and he doesn't use pesticides and i don't think that this growth really doesn't use any pesticides and you know the world is getting poisoned with pesticides and god knows what you're eating let him story of growing up surrounded by farmland and the family love the land reminds us how farming gets into your blood it also shows us the possibility of continuity of agriculture despite the high land farms and tracts for continuing development the influx of new comers began to outnumber the farmers the old england town meeting form of government in the red river town hall became a veritable battleground as the increasingly outnumbered old greenhouse after a greenhouse was torn down glaciers whose livelihood depended on the setting of glass and maintenance of greenhouses were thrown out of work with lids and forests were local groups and streams were piped underground yet despite the drastic changes that are out first described across the country there is a growing interest in sustainable farming and healthy our beautiful belmont farmer's market supported entirely by volunteers is entering its second you can pay for it at the beginning of the season and she'll provide you with a constant supply of fresh organically grown vegetables all through the summer and fall and credit will be selling her produce at the belmont farmer's market this summer you see what is happening of course new people are getting involved and they too some day will be called on to report their own story in the meantime there is still much to do with aunts farming history and i invite you