A Gentleman and a Farmer: Ted King
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Mr. King, 65, maintains his family's six-generation tradition of providing for New Yorkers, but instead of shipping hay he drives rutabagas and portabellas, delphinium and smoked trout, downstate to sell at city greenmarkets. A gifted student of math and science, Mr. King was on an engineering track at the University of Vermont, when he realized an office job was not for him."I said the heck with that, I wanted to milk cows, grow crops." Rising at 2:30 a.m., Mr. King packs his truck and heads south from his farm in Athens, N.Y. (pop. 3,000), three times a week. Despite being doubled over from sclerosis, making him four inches shorter than his full height of 5'10'', Mr. King often unloads the truck and sets up his tents, tables, and produce alone. Frequently, he will not return home until 9:00 p.m. His wife used to accompany him, but two years ago she suffered a debilitating car accident, confining her to their farmhouse. By the time he returns one of their six children has usually brought over dinner for her. "I give her a kiss and then I have supper, chill out, and go to bed," Mr. King said. Mr. King, decided to sell at city greenmarkets to make his life easier. Seven years ago, while working as a dairy farmer, where he handled cows weighing between 1,000 and 1,600 pounds, he had a heart attack. His doctor told him he needed to ease up. Around that time, a former director of Greenmarkets, the organization that overseas markets in the city, was recruiting farmers in the Hudson Valley. Mr. King figured it was a way to get out of dairy. Since he made the shift to agriculture he has not been able to get the dirt out from beneath the nails of his knobby fingers and his 4 a.m. dairy schedule now seems like sleeping in. "We started at Bowling Green, the scum of the markets," Mr. King said, recalling the hassles of parking a truck on cobblestones and the difficulty of convincing financial district shoppers to buy local produce. "That's why you could get in there." The September 11 attacks halted his selling at Bowling Green for more than a year, but by then his farm was servicing markets at Cadman Plaza, Sunset Park, and Borough Park in Brooklyn, as well as at the United Nations in Manhattan. About a year ago, Mr. King was given an opportunity to sell at the holy grail of city markets, Union Square, but he turned it down."It's a well-established market," he said, "but there's a lot of back-biting and back-scratching among the vendors. Here at the other markets I feel we try and help each other." It's nearly impossible for Mr. King to stand still while tending market. On a recent Saturday at the Fort Greene, Brooklyn, market a regular customer, a middle-aged black woman, searched him out for plant advice. Mr. King smiled and flirted casually with her about what type of lily to buy. "I tend to be more open" from years of selling to New Yorkers, Mr. King remarked, after the woman decided $8 was too expensive for a plant and walks away. "Where I live I don't see many people. I'm in the farm or on the tractor." Another customer, a 20-something European man on a bike, stopped by and asked how to eat smoked trout. Mr. King gets the trout from his neighbor, Lenny Bee who catches the fish in a Catskill pond and smokes them himself. A Tibetan cashier, part of a three-person crew he has helping him, looked to Mr. King for help. He adroitly slid open the trout, pulled out the bones, and sliced it into pieces for samples. The customer bought the trout and came back for potatoes. Mr. King can earn about the same selling wholesale, but it's the interaction with New Yorkers, he said, that makes his three-hour trips downstate worth the journey. "I learn a lot from them, about their lives, the city," he said. "It's been a real education." Of course, as a customer came by to complain about wilting rose leaves, he acknowledged animals do have one advantage: "It's easier with cows; if they give me too much of an argument I ship them off to what we used to call the Golden Arches. " Working in higher-crime neighborhoods, he has become adept with pickpocketers, like a lady who twice tried to saddle up to him and slide her hands into his worn green apron where he keeps his change. "Sneaky pickpocketer, keep your hands out of my pocket," he simply reprimanded her. A siren rolls by the market, and Mr. King recalls what he does not like about city living. "I like to tell people we have the coyotes and turkeys to listen to, not the sirens." The part of farming New Yorkers most often misunderstand, Mr. King said, are the benefits of organic production. "They think something's better if it's organic and it's not necessarily true," said Mr. King, who tries to use as little pesticide as possible."Sometimes you get diseases in the fruit." The certification process is too expensive for Mr. King, and he said it's the little things, like the fact he uses volcanic rock instead of certified organic soil, that prevents some of his crops from being eligible for certification. Mr. King has watched almost all the other farmers in his area disappear during his lifetime as New Yorkers turn farmland into country homes. No longer do "horse doctors" come door to door to treat human patients, as one did when Mr. King was born with a clubfoot. And the area has become more cosmopolitan, a shift reflected in Mr. King's 12 grandchildren,who are of Chinese,African-American, and Romanian descent. But two of his children plan to keep Rexcroft Farm going through at least the next generation. And Mr. King does not have any plans to stop his treks to New York anytime soon."The more I keep going the better I am," he said. "God hasn't given up on me, so why should I do any different?"
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