Two days a week, sometimes more, I climb into my car and drive most of the way across Lancaster county to work on site at my client's cabinet shop, Premier Custom-Built in New Holland. That's the same New Holland that produces the well known brand of farm machinery seen all over the country, and despite the best efforts of real estate developers, the area is still a stronghold for family owned farms, most of them relatively small operations. Having grown up in an agricultural community in central New York, the landscape, while much flatter down here, is agreeable and soothing to me.
Harvest is pretty much over for the year, and as I traveled east between fields put to rest for the coming winter, I got a sense that the land and farm buildings resting on it are hunkered down, waiting quietly yet still vibrating with the potential that this richly fertile soil is famous for. Passing by a tract of roughly turned ground with a string of white painted house, barns, outbuildings, and a cluster of tall silos, spread across the low ridge beyond, under a gray sky not quite benign but a little short of menacing, I had to make myself late getting to the plant and pull off to the side of the road to do a quick drawing. Not as invigorating as drawing in the middle of a bike ride like on Sunday afternoon, but nonetheless a better start to my work day than cursing myself for yet again missing an opportunity to record my impressions of this place that over the last nineteen years has gotten into my blood.
farm along North Shirk Road, New Holland, PA; 11 9/16 x 8, watersoluble and wax colored pencils and graphite
Scott A. Stultz
