City Slickers Take to the Crops, With Song

Zoë Wonfor is among those helping at Sylvester Manor, a farm on Shelter Island. Photo by Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times

Farms welcome volunteers

By Kathryn Shattuck
New York Times
May 28, 2010

Excerpt:

It was prime growing weather on Shelter Island, N.Y., as a breeze blew in from Dering Harbor, and Bennett Konesni was tending to his field of dreams: three neatly planted acres of bok choy, cauliflower, kale, Asian mustard greens, spinach, garlic, lettuce, onions, potatoes and leeks, with room for the peppers, eggplants and 15 varieties of tomatoes soon to be transplanted. Coming to a plot of leafy snap peas, inspiration struck. Suddenly he erupted in a full-throttle rendition of “Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow”: “Do you, or I, or anyone know/How oats, peas, beans and barley grow?”

Was anyone listening to his impromptu serenade? Who cared?

This is how work gets done on Sylvester Manor.

For the past couple of summers, the manor has resounded with music as Mr. Konesni, a scholar of work songs, has pushed his family’s ancestral estate into the next era with the help of some strong-voiced volunteers.

Now a nonprofit educational enterprise, the manor is among the New York-area farms attracting locavores, green-minded students and urbanites suffering from nature-deficit disorder who yearn to raise produce and livestock for a day, a week or longer.

“There’s this incredible boom right now,” Mr. Konesni said, “a broad and deep interest in creating vibrant local food communities and the landscapes that go with them.”

See the rest of the article here.