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Vol. 19 No. 24
Warwick Township farmers and
their sons load manure onto a
spreader at the farm of one of their
Martin’s Neighbors Pitch In
Once again, Lancaster
County farmers have come
to the aid of a disabled
fellow-farmer, joining
troops-in this case, tractors
to do his spring plowing for
him.
About six week ago, Joe
Martin, a team farmer in
Warwick Township, frac
tured his back when he fell
front a farm wagon. Home
from* the hospital just barely
3 week, starting the long
road to recovery, he was
faced with the enormous job
of a 90-acre farm at spring
plowing and planting time.
Of his 12 children, only a few
are old enough to handle the
heavy labors of plowing,
harrowing, removing stones,
and spreading manure.
On Tuesday morning, the
Martin corn and tobacco
fields that run along Millway
Road were filled with a
caravan of tractors and
plows, manned by more than
a dozen of Martin’s neigh
bors, who had given up a
precious day of work on their
own farms to come to
Martin’s aid.
In the cow barn, farmers
and their sons cleaned ont
tons of manure, loading it
into spreaders. Eight
tractors moved back and
forth across the corn and'
tobacco fields, preparing the
land for planting. Three,
four, and five bottom plows
paraded in picturesque
maneuvers back and forth
across the wide expanse of
fields that surround the
Martin farmhouse. The men
worked all morning and into
the afternoon harrowing the
land, removing the stones.
In the Martin’s farmhouse
kitchen, wives of the workers
gave Mrs. Martin and her
daughters a hand preparing
an enormous dinner for the
men. The kitchen table and
counter were filled with
homemade breads and pies,
salads, and meats, all a
labor for a fellow family in
need.
“I couldn’t possibly name
all the people who turned out
Organic farmer Paul Hartz produced about
80 organically fed steers last year. He sells
nearly all of his output directly to consumers.
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 27. 1974
neighbors, Joe Martin, Miilway Road,
whose back injury kept him from his
spring plowing.
to help,” said Allen Balmer,
who “captained” the
community effort to help the
Martins. “They came from
all around, bringing their
equipment with them. When
it’s time to plant, we’ll lie
here'to help with (hat, too,”
he'said.
Several of the fanners
brought four-bottom plows,
one brought a five-bottom
plow, several other brought
threebottom plows. For all
of them, it meant a day lost
on their own farms. But all
took their labors in stride,
full of good cheer as they
went about their heavy
tasks, knowing that if they
were in a similar
predicament, they, too,
would receive the helping
hands of their neighbors.
What greater love can a
man show? A visit to the
Martin farm on Tuesday
morning would have been an
inspiration to anyone who
ever doubted the realities of
friendship.
House to Weigh Farm
Tax Bill Amendments
There’s a good chance that
a farmland assessment bill
will finally be passed by the
Pennsylvania House of
Representatives as early as
Tuesday. While the measure
will still have to go before the
state Senate, it’s not likely
the Senators will work on the
bill for a year like the House
did. The bill could be ready
for Governor Shapp’s
signature by June.
House Bill 1056, the Far
mland Assessment Act, had
its genesis last May when
Pennsylvania voters
overwhelmingly approved a
constitutional amendment
allowing preferential tax
treatment for farmland.
Armed with the voters’
mandate, Representative
Francis Kennedy, chairman
of the House Agriculture
Committee, scheduled public
hearings throughout the
state.
There are two basic
provisions in the bill, one for
In This Issue
FARM CALENDAR 10
Markets 2-4
Sale Register 49
Farmers Almanac 6
Classified Ads 26
Editorials 10
Homestead Notes 34
Home on the Range 36
Thoughts in Passing 20
Lancaster Co. DHIA 12
4-HNews 22
Organic Living 14
Farm Women Calendar 48
Organic Farmer Tells
Successes, Problems
Mention organic farmers
or consumers to many in the
agricultural community, and
you’ll conjure up visions of
radical freaks intent on
sending the whole world
back to the days of
homespun cloth and horse
plowed fields. While this
characterization may fit at
least some members of the
organic movement, it does
not apply at all to Paul
Hartz, president of the
Pennsylvania Organic
Farmers and Consumers
Organization.
Hartz is a commerical
farmer with 150 acres of
cropland near Morgantown.
He raises about 80 steers a
year-and market them as
organic beef. He grows 70
acres of corn, 30 to 40 acres
a tax rollback and one for
land splitoffs. In order to get
a tax break, farmers must
agree to keep their land in
agriculture for a specified
number of years. The
agreement is strictly
voluntary, but if a farmer
signs it and later breaks it by
selling his property to a
developer or other non-farm
buyer, then the farmer must
pay a penalty. This penalty
will be equal to die tax
dollars not paid because of
the preferential assessment
plus interest for a certain
number of years.
FARM
TRENDS
Newspaper farm editors from all over America, but
mostly from the Midwest, met this week in
Washington, D.C., to catch up on the latest doings in
government agriculture and to trade ideas about
communicating with farmers and representing farm
interests. Lancaster Farming, in the person of editor
Dick Wanner, was at the three-day meeting.
Presented here are some of the meeting highlights.
Energy - Conserve, Conserve
John C. Sawhill, newly appointed head of the
Federal Energy Office, said his office has been sen
sitive to the special needs of farmers in the energy
crisis. He said they've done a number of things in an
effort to see that farmers get all the fuel they need for
plowing, planting and harvesting. On the natural gas,
and related fertilizer shortage, Sawhill told the farm
editors:
“I know your readers have questions about the
of soybeans and 10 acres of
wheat, much of which he
sells as whole grain wheat
flour. Hartz is that rarity m
the organic food business, a
large-scale commercial
producer. He is a quiet
spoken supporter of organic
farming methods, but is the
first to concede that there
are problems with those
methods.
“I switched to organic
fanning in 1960,” Hartz said
one recent morning in his
living room. “Until then I
was heavy on chemicals. I
was raised that way and
believed it was the only way.
I used lots of weed killers
and chemical fertilizers. But
then I began to feel that
there was a general decline.
There were more animal
The splitoff provision
spells out the manner in
which farmers may or may
not sell small parcels of land
without jeopardizing their
preferential tax status.
Unlimited splitoffs would
allow a farmer to sell as
much or as little lapd as he
wanted without any penalty.
Such a provision would
probably thwart the in
tention of the bill because it
would allow land speculators
to reap windfall profits at the
expense of the state’s tax
payers. A strict prohibition
(Continued on Page 16|
[Continued on Page 17|
health problems. It began
taking more and more
fertilizer to do the same job.
So I switched over.”
The change wasn’t without
its problems. “It was
terrible at first,” Hartz said.
“I had weed and insect
problems you wouldn’t
believe. The first few years
are really hard, and that
keeps a lot of farmers from
switching. If we could only
find a quicker way of
changing, I think we’d have
a lot more organic farmers.”
A major problem, Hartz
feels, is that there’s very
little research being done on
farming without chemicals.
“Farming is a unique in
dustry,” he said, “because
we don’t do our own
{Continued on Page 8)
$2.00 Per Year
by Dick
Wanner