Welcome to another week!
Leaf tips are turning orange and yellow. Soon I’ll be raking leaf piles for my kids to jump into.
I hope you’ll be able to take a jaunt on Ernst Tail sometime this fall to see the glories of nature. Most leaves turn golden along the trail. It’s magical.
Have you had any cider yet? My husband brought home two gallons from Al’s Melons. We’ve had to ration it, or we’ll drink half a gallon in one sitting. It’s so delicious. I’d drink fresh apple cider year round if I could.
I hope you read my fellow columnist, Roseanne Staab’s, article, “Stony Point CLAHS topic” in last week’s edition. She deserves credit for the facts contained in the next five paragraphs.
Dennis Mead, a direct descendent of David Mead, namesake of Meadville, shared some history about Fallowfield during his speech.
Now, I always assumed Fallowfield was named after a field that had lain fallow (plowed and harrowed but not sewn with seeds). Not so. It was named for Lancelot Fallowfield, who purchased the land from William Penn. In case your history is a little rusty, England’s King Charles II gave the area known as Pennsylvania to William Penn in 1681. Can you imagine? He owned an entire state. Penn lived from 1644 to 1718, so Fallowfield was settled in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. I had no idea my community has been populated by westerners for so long. One of my ancestors, James McEntire, came to the Conneaut Lake area in the 1700s.
Atlantic may have been named after the Atlantic Railroad, which passed through Fallowfield. The train stopped there, at Stony Point, and in Geneva. Irish railroad workers built the rail line. I’d never heard this, either.
The railroad bypassed Conneaut Lake, and I have to assume Hartstown, because the swamp and lake made the ground too wet to lay tracks. This explains, in part, why our local economy has always been based on agriculture. Atlantic and Adamsville are in a valley, and I know the land there is much more fertile than on Rocky Glen and Adamsville hills.
The Atlantic community remains an agricultural area. We still have several successful farms in our neighborhood. Some farms have been run by the same families for generations. Others have bought land off former farmers and expanded. Hobby farming is becoming a trend, and I know of at least one family with roots in Atlantic who own a few horses, cows, goats, and chickens. Self-sufficiency appeals to many Americans, don’t you agree? If I were a different person, I’d buy a goat and a couple chickens.
A farmer in my church remarked last week that farming requires faith and discourages worry. God controls the weather and farmers plant crops in faith. Christian farmers trust God to provide enough food for their livestock.
This year was a bad summer for hay and soybeans. Corn did poorly, too. Many farmers who normally cut their first crop of hay in early June didn’t get their hay in until late July.
By contrast blueberries, apples, and cherries did beautifully. I guess those folks did all right this harvest season. June was wet and July and August were dry, making blueberries plump and corn wither.
As you crunch on a delicious apple this week, please say a prayer for our local farmers. Thanks.
Have a wonderful week. Blessings!