B2*Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 13, 19F5
The Road
GAIL STROCK
Mifflin Co. Correspondent
HUNTINGDON (Huntingdon
O i.) —Every once in a blue moon,
someone chooses the road less
traveled.
My assignment was to inter
view a woman blacksmith. Nice
twist to a not-so-common hobby.
Just jot down the tool names and
describe procedures. Simple.
But the road less traveled is
often more extraordinary than
simple. Abundant with a natural
richness seldom seen by those in
the fast lane, the road less traveled
led me to the Blue Moon Farm
where Judy Berger practices an
endangered trade, blacksmithing,
and where giving and sharing far
exceed taking.
"We’re stewards of this particu
lar piece of land. It’s ours to
share,” Judy says of the 181-acre
farm she and her husband, Win
fried, an orthopedic doctor, pur
chased last year. Nestled among
the ridges and rolling fields and
pastures just outside Huntingdon,
the Bergers share their respite
from the rat race with exchange
students, a farm manager, tenant
farmers, family, friends, visitors,
and of course, oodles of animals.
"We’ve come full circle,” Judy
said of her and her husband’s
being raised on farms, she near
Allentown and he in Germany.
They’ve raised four children, the
youngest of whom is a fulltime
blacksmith in Texas. “It was
always a dream of ours, to move
back to the land.”
The soul-soothing sounds of
Welding within the forge takes a practiced eye. Flux is
added to help fuse two pieces of Iron.
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Part of farm manager Sean Fowler’s Job on the 181 acre farm is to care for the
sheep herd. His latest addition to the farm is the movable solar powered electric
fence. The white strands alert deer to keep out and sheep to stay In.
Less Traveled Leads To Blue Moon Farm
nature on this scantly-mechanized
farm are interrupted on occasion
when Judy, a juried blacksmith,
fires the forge or turns on the pow
er hammer in her blacksmith shop.
“Iron is a wonderful material to
work with,” Judy says, sprinkling
water on surrounding chunks of
coke to prevent its spread and to
encourage a hotter fire in the
center.
“Coke is to coal as charcoal is
to wood,” she informs me as she
prepares to weld two iron pieces
together. When the irons turn red
hot, she spoons on a compound
called flux, which could be borax
or sand or a commercial flux.
With a trained eye, Judy pulls the
irons from the fire with tongs,
spatters sparks of residue flux
across the cemented floor, quickly
places the iron on the anvil, and
strikes the top and bottom making
them one. Grasping a steel brush,
she scrapes off any residue flux
she doesn’t want pounded into the
finish. To taper the end and draw
out the piece further, Judy turns to
her latest purchase, a power ham
mer. The heavy, thumping ham
mer pounds the still glowing iron.
This particular piece will become
a twisted basket from which will
hang an iron chandelier.
“I make chandeliers, candle
holders, sign brackets, hinges,
inside railings for kitchens, out
side railings for steps or for securi
ty purposes, ornamentals, repro
duction hardware, fireplace tools,
and kitchen tools such as ladles
and forks.”
Ornamentals include one of her
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Jl jrgerusesa. jhen stove to steam
Shaker boxes, another hobby of hers.
current projects, creating from
iron a miniature representative of
each type of animal on then
farm—goats, sheep, pigs, geese,
wild turkeys, ducks, chickens,
horses, one cow, one milking goat,
peacocks and peahens—all of
which will be worked into a rail
ing for the patio with a wood top
on which to sit.
Her most ambitious project
hangs above the blacksmith shop
door.
“It’s a spit jack or a clock jack.
It runs with a rope and drum. The
weight is wound up and slowly
falls down turning the meat on the
spit in front of the early kitchen
hearths. The idea for this design
came from different places,
museums. I finally found the one I
wanted in Williamsburg,” she
said.
Judy learned filing and finish
ing from Peter Ross, the master
blacksmith at Williamsburg. She
studied advanced blacksmithing
with her mentor Francis Whitaker
in North Carolina. It was Whitaker
who encouraged her to share
blacksmithing with others before
it becomes lost.
“If we don’t share it, it’s not
going to be around,” Judy
explains. “There were so many
blacksmiths in the past, but there
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Shown here with her latest purchase, a power hammer,
blacksmith Judy Berger pounds two pieces of hot Iron to
ensure a good weld.
was also secretism, to protect their
trademark. Now there are not
enough blacksmiths to go around,
and we need to share the trade.”
Judy will be going just that
when she leaves for North Caroli-.
na this month to teach a blacksmi
thing course. She loves to meet
older blacksmiths who still have,
so to speak, an iron in the fire or
who remember how their fathers
practiced what was once an integ
ral part of their lives. She is a
member of the Artist Blacksmiths
of North America, a 25-year-old
organization devoted to demon
strating, showing, and sharing the
trade.
Judy’s blacksmith shop houses
is of wood
most of what a smith would
need—a forge with bellows, an
anvil, treadle hammer, tongs, and
hammers.
‘This is a swage we used for
shaping the sections of a large
rosette for the dining room ceil
ing,” Judy says pointing to a three
foot high tree trunk with the figure
of a leaf carved in the top. “If I
were making leaves, they would
all be the same shape and size.
Nearby is a more traditional
swage block.”
Lined aloig the walls are more
handmade swages of all shapes
and sizes whose main purpose is
to mold hot iron. One in particular
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