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It was a tough choice yesterday: Tour farms, or stain deck? Touring farms won. After all, the 2007 Kaw Valley Farm Tour was this weekend only, and my deck would still be there for a while (assuming I eventually get around to sealing it). You can read some highlights of the tour in my entry on Ethicurean.com.

I wish, though, that I’d taken a picture of John Vesecky of Vesecky Family Farms. Mr. Vesecky, more than any of the farmers we met, reminded me of my grandfather John Tucker, who with my grandmother Lula Tucker, farmed the quarter-section in Osage County, Kansas, where my mother and her siblings grew up. (A quarter section is a plot of land one-quarter-mile square, or 160 acres. Here’s more about the whole U.S. land survey system.)

Vesecky home includes original limestone portion.

John Vesecky pulled groups of visitors on a hay rack through his fields, past strawberries, turkeys, outbuildings and tanks from what I’m guessing is a natural gas well. The farm dates to 1866, probably not too different from my grandparents’ farm, which was the lone remaining parcel from my great-grandparents’ farm, much of which was lost in the depression of the 1890s, if memory serves. (Memory of the story, not of the event, thank you.)

What would Grandpa do?

I can remember riding on Grandpa’s old orange tractor into their fields, where he’d point out the oats, or comment on how the “beans” (soybeans) were doing, much like John Vesecky remarked on his strawberries and turkeys to this batch of strangers.

I wondered, Would Grandma and Grandpa have done this? Would they have opened their farm for a weekend to visitors from the city?

On the one hand, I can’t see it. My grandparents were faithful to their church and family but not particularly sociable; you didn’t see Grandma going to teas or joining the senior citizens group in town. They seemed to personify the no-nonsense stereotype of the farm folk. From my youthful perspective, they were hardworking people who didn’t complain, didn’t do (or care about) anything fancy.

As they grew older and more supplies were readily available, they gave up the chicken house, only occasionally raised a few beef cattle, and stuck to commodity crops for their income. They still ate pears and cherries from the old fruit trees, and Grandma always kept at least a modest kitchen garden with tomatoes and green beans and more.

But would they have made the transition in today’s murky markets? I don’t know. They didn’t have the capital, I don’t think, to get BIG, which has been the way agriculture has gone the last few decades, and they may have been too far from urban areas to do agritourism. They weren’t too keen on livestock. And they, like most farmers of their generation, didn’t raise any farmers.

Pastured white turkeys on Vesecky farm.

But here was John Vesecky, a man in his 60s, I’m guessing, with his rosy skin and ball cap and spare way of talking, hauling around a bunch of people who, presumably, think farming is interesting. And it is, but it’s an incredibly hard life, and as much as I loved visiting and staying on my grandparents’ farm, I never wanted to live there. Too far from other people. Too far from services. Too unpredictable. Too hard to get away. Too hard, period.

A new generation

And, yet, here, too, was William Vesecky, son of William and Sharon (who also operates a quilting shop in nearby Baldwin City), running to grab processed, frozen turkeys and chickens for visitors. His wife Joanna and their kids were around, too.

They clearly have another quality that I identify with my grandparents: resourcefulness. The Veseckys are raising chickens and turkey on pasture, which takes longer but sells for more than “conventional” poultry. They raise strawberries, blueberries and sweet corn, too—all foods that can be sold directly to consumers. I didn’t interview them, so I don’t know their motives, but I’m guessing that they see opportunity in raising some of these these crops this new/old way.

It won’t be easy, and I wish them well.

Note: You can see a collection of photos from the tour at http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/sets/72157602305466561/.