VOL 18 No. 2
Phoebe Zurcher, Landisville, is the store manager for
Lancaster’s Organic Market. Among the items sold are bean
sprouts, range grown eggs, whole grain breads, other foods
and books and kitchen wares related to organic eating. Mrs.
Zurcher here is weighing out a bag of freshly ground wheat
flour.
Accident Victim’s Com
Harvested by Neighbors
Friends and neighbors of
Harold C. Herr converged on his
Kirkwood farm Wednesday to
complete harvesting the corn
crop that remained when the 56-
year old farmer was seriously
injured by a corn picker last
Friday.
Tobacco
Crop Not
Moving
A check with local tobacco
buyers this week revealed that
the crop here has so far shown
few signs of moving from the
tobacco barn to the tobacco
warehouse.
The only firm reported offering
of 42 cents a pound for number
No. 1 quality leaves and 35 cents
for No. 2 is apparently being
ignored by farmers who are
waiting to see if higher offerings
are forthcoming.
One buyer spokesman said that
when the buying starts in ear
nest, the entire crop will probably
be purchased in a very short
time. He said the break in the
market could come anytime
betweens now and February, but
he couldn’t hazard a prediction as
to when exactly the excitement
would start.
Herr lost both his legs after
they became caught Friday
afternoon. He is now in the
General Hospital where doctors
are getting him ready to be fitted
with artificial limbs.
The unusal weather this season
had made Herr’s corn difficult, if
not impossible, to harvest with
conventional machinery, so the
nearly 100 neighbors tackled the
job by hand, stripping big yellow
ears of corn from the stalks and
throwing them onto any of the 24
wagons scattered throughout the
20 acre field.
Many of the men working on
the Herr farm were Amish.
While the corn was being
harvested, Harry Temple,
Colerain Twp. police chief,
patroled roads near the farm,
keeping deer hunters out of the
area.
Farm Calendar
Monday, December 4
7 p.m. Manheim Young Far
mer Christmas party, Akron
Restaurant.
8 p.m. Lancaster County
Poultry Association board of
directors meeting, Farm and
Home Center.
Tuesday, December 5
7:30 p.m. Ephrata Young
Farmers Swine Management
course, “New Developments
in Breeding and Fattening
Hogs”, vo-ag department,
(Continued On Page 4)
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 2, 1972
Organic Market Owners
See Local Opportunity
Hankering for a handful of
bean sprouts? Hungering for
some delicious ice cream made
with organically grown black
cherries, honey and goat’s milk?
How about a delicious soybean
snack?
Items like these are turning up
in more and more home pantries,
and they’re being sold in
creasingly in speciality food
stores across the nation One
such is the Organic Market at 601
West Lemon St., Lancaster
Today you can buy organic foods
there. In the future, if the
market’s two owners have their
way, you’ll also be able to sell
organically grown produce
through a wholesale operation
which they hope will evolve from
the present business
“Actually, the whole idea
behind the Organic Market
wasn’t so much to make a profit
as it was to provide a place for
people to buy whole, natural
foods,” Kevin Carroll, one of the
co-owners, told LANCASTER
FARMING. “All the money we
make from this store is plowed
right back into the business.”
Carroll and his partner, Jim
Kirtner, are also involved in an
advertising agency, Storytellers,
which started recently in Lan
caster. Carroll is president of the
agency and Kirtner is the
marketing manager. Both are
also strict vegetarians, and
confirmed believers in the
philosophy that “you are what
you eat”.
All the foods sold in their store
are grown without chemical aids.
Nor are any chemical preser
vatives added during processing,
and processing itself is kept to a
minimum. Kirtner and Carroll
Bruce Erath, center, is the FFA's newly
elected national vice president for the
north Atlantic region. He was in Lancaster
County this week as part of a national
are frankly skeptical of many of
the foods sold through regular
channels.
“White bread,” Carroll said,
“is actually harmful to the people
that eat it Years ago, bread got
moldy if it sat around for a week
Today you can’t get mold to grow
on bread It’s not fit for mold and
it’s not fit for people They’ve
processed all the nutrition out of
the flour and put so many
chemicals into the bread that it’s
passed the point of being just
something worthless to eat It’s
actually harmful.”
The Organic Market opened its
doors about a year ago Besides
organic foods, it offers natural
National FFA VP
On Training Tour
Bruce Erath sees a promising
future nationally for the “new”
FFA and for the FFA 'Alumni
Association. He agrees with local
observers, though, that the
strength of the area’s present
programs might slow down the
adoption of any changes.
Bruce is the 20-year-old North
Atlantic regional vice president
for the National FFA. He is in
Lancaster County this week as
part of a training program
designed to bring him in touch
with FFA students, vocational
agriculture teachers and young
farmers.
In a televised interview with
WGAL farm editor Robert
Malick, Bruce talked about the
changes he sees in store for the
FFA. “The FFA is an integral
beauty aids, diet books, kitchen
wares and free advice on eating
organically And a snack bar is in
the process of being built
“We wanted to add a snack
bar,” Kirtnersaid, “to introduce
people to organic food A lot of
people don’t realize how good
organic foods can taste We hope
the snack bar will help change all
that ”
At the moment, organic far
ming and the marketing of
organic foods are, at best, loosely
organized Organic Market buys
from a number of distributors,
some of whom aren’t sure one
week if they’ll be in business the
(Continued On Page 33)
part of vocational agriculture,”
he said. “But vo-ag programs are
changing We’ve got to change
along with them ”
Bruce pointed out that less than
5 percent of this country’s people
are involved with production
agriculture. Yet about 40 percent
of the people are involved in some
way with food production or
marketing. “Vo-ag programs
today are teaching things like
horticulture, greenhouse
operation, landscaping, ag
mechanics, forestry and meat
cutting. We’ve got to reach those
students. We’ve got to let them
know how much FFA can do for
them. And that includes the girls
who are taking part in these
programs.”
officer training program. Tuesday morning
he and Nelson Martin, right, were in
terviewed by WGAL-TV farm editor Robert
Malick.
$2.00 Per Year
(Continued On Page 28)