Связь поколений: журналист объединил фермера и профессора через общие истории

A few weeks ago, my friend, colleague and sometimes jam mate Dave Lefever wrote an opinion piece about community journalism that struck a chord with me (and raised the bar for good column writing). Dave reminded me what an honor and privilege it is to connect with people and share their stories. Sometimes, we even get a chance to connect the dots. Four years back, I wrote a piece about native tree expert and longtime dairy farmer Robert Seip, now 96 and still living on the 180-acre Berks County farm he’s called home since boyhood. A little more than three years later, I found myself in Mount Bethel sharing lunch with retired Penn State engineering professor Charlie Cole, 86, and his wife, Wanda, after touring an old bank barn built before his ancestors’ arrival there in 1898. Something told me Charlie and Robert (whose acquaintance and friendship predate my time at Lancaster Farming) would enjoy meeting. A few months later, the stars aligned. We sat around a small round table in the Seips’ yard. Conrad Road — now the “Huffs Church Expressway” thanks to Google Maps — separates their 1750s home from their nursery business and the place of worship that gives the village its name. Gathered for cheese, crackers, fruit and conversation were Charlie and Wanda, Robert and his wife, Cindy, the Seips’ daughter Emelie Swackhamer, her husband, Scott, and me ... in my element. Charlie asked Emelie what it was like to grow up on a farm, and Scott answered that the couple was fond of saying he grew up in the ’70s and she grew up in the ’40s. The Seips didn’t have indoor plumbing until Emelie’s younger sister was born (and she has two older brothers). The owner of Pilgert’s General Store around the corner shared a party line and would sometimes eavesdrop on phone calls. Emelie as a girl was busy graduating from teat dipper to udder washer and learning to approach an animal only from the right-hand side (and watching for flying hooves) while Scott was at home in Maryland watching Gilligan’s Island. Robert recalled clearing glacier-deposited boulders from his field with a hired Caterpillar D6 dozer and over-the-counter dynamite purchased at the local hardware store. One such blast had revealed an encased smooth, shiny, black rock Robert now reckons was probably a meteorite. Cindy suggested Robert probably should have called someone to take a look before burying it on the hill with the rest of the rock rubble. She said people didn’t know better back then and that the mysterious rock incident predated her own time at the farm. The couple had met in May 1960 at a hoedown in Lenhartsville, got engaged that June and married in November. Talk turned to the curious tree towering over the farmhouse that bears several different types of nuts. Robert had grown a business grafting important and useful nut cultivars onto bare rootstock and shipping them across the country. Budwood gifted to him from friends made its way to a Northern pecan “cocktail nut tree” that now bears two cultivars each of shellbark hickory, hican and pecan. Scott and Wanda discovered they held similar roles chronicling the history of their respective churches (Huffs Church and Trinity United Church of Christ, respectively), and Emelie learned of other connections with Charlie (besides formerly serving as an Extension agent for his county). Charlie’s brother, now deceased, had been Emelie’s mentor and advocate as head of the Plant Pathology Department at Penn State. The last name helped connect those dots. Charlie suggested it was probably the nose. Emelie also learned that Charlie now rents part of his farm to a Bangor-based grass-fed beef producer she has known and worked with since becoming an Extension agent in 1995. It’s a small world, she said later, and the farming community is even smaller. Call it coincidence or synchronicity, but I believe we can all discover similar connections when we tell each other our stories. Listening helps, too. Speaking of stories, people often ask me if I ever run out of leads. No, I respond, because one rich conversation sparks five new ideas. Like the time I visited Charlie Cole to write about his barn and inside found a treasure trove of antique tools from his ancestors dating back four generations, each object with its own story to tell. A few months later I wrote those stories, and the dots keep on connecting.