In 2013, I wrote my first local history book, Of the Earth: Stories from Oswego County’s Muck Farms. I hadn’t embarked on my writing career intending to focus on local history; I considered myself a poet. But one night at a reading, after sharing poems about growing up in the country, several muck farmers in the audience began telling stories. As I listened, I realized they were describing a unique type of farming, one that few outside of Oswego County have ever experienced.
I began researching muck farming with my own family. I had two uncles, Joe Leotta and Sam Figiera, who owned farms in the Fulton area and I worked for them a few weeks each summer topping onions. Topping required a pair of special farm scissors to clip the ribboned tops off onions and then carefully dropping the pungent bulbs into a wooden crate. Topping used to be done on hands and knees, slowly working the endless onion rows under hot sun. Having such a labor intensive job in my youth turned out to be a gift: Every other job I’ve worked has seemed like a walk in the park.
After talking with my uncles’ families, they referred me to other muck farmers, as well as their neighbors and agricultural experts. With each new story I gained more respect for those who worked the mucks. Of course, every type of farming is to be admired; without them we couldn’t survive. But Oswego County has reason to be especially proud of its muck farms because, within its rich soil, there’s a rich history.
You may not think you know what muck soil is, but if you’ve traveled around Oswego County in spring, before crops are planted, you’ve probably seen those freshly plowed fields of black soil. That’s muck, and what gives it that dark rich color is organic material. (Muck soil is so rich in nutrients that some farmers call it black gold.) Yes, Mother Nature held the secrets of organic farming before it became a food fad—long before.
According to Dale Young, former Cornell Cooperative Extension Agricultural Agent, muck farming is only possible because of something that happened 11,000 years ago, “when the last Ice Age took place and its mammoth glaciers came through this area, scouring sections of our ground and leaving pockets of deep, almost lake-like, formations.”
John DeHollander, whose family operated a muck farm in the town of Oswego, shared more about what happened during the Ice Age: “When the glaciers retreated northward, they periodically stopped for great lengths of time. As the earth’s temperature warmed, the glaciers melted, creating so-called glacier lakes. Organic matter gathered and decomposed in those lakes, becoming ‘locked up’ in their lower levels.”
John also explained why muck farming is unique to Oswego County and Central New York. “Our environmental conditions—the four seasons, the long winters with heavy snow that keep the mucks protected—were very conducive for the development of those rich organic deposits.” In fact, John said, you’d have to follow the same latitude where we live around the world to find similar pockets of land, making Oswego County one of the few places where muck farming is even possible.
Fast forward thousands of years and that organic matter had built up to substantial amounts—some measurements went seventy feet deep—turning those ponds and small lakes into woody swamps or wetlands. For a long time no one thought they had any value, but in a June 1855 New York State Census for the town of Scriba, I found this early reference to a farmer growing crops on muck land:
Mathers and Wellington, 100 acres: “Situated about one mile east from the city of Oswego, [this lot] consists entirely of a Tamarack swamp, almost perfectly level and formally considered almost worthless…R.C. Wellington cut broad, deep ditches and cleaned it of timber; and Henry Mathers is now aiding by his enterprise and his capital to complete the cleaning and the ditching and setting it to different kinds of crops, which all promise a bountiful yield, especially onions and root crops…[Soon it will] become the most valuable land in the town, instead of a dismal swamp and a nuisance.”
By the early 1900s, numerous Oswego County swamp lands were being turned into muck land. Doing the labor intensive work of removing trees and stumps, draining swamps and working the soil were immigrant families. Among those I interviewed were Ben and Gay Musumeci, whose family emigrated from Italy in 1910 and started a muck farm on County Route 6 between Fulton and Phoenix.
Ben remembered hearing stories of how his family created their farm: “The first job my Grandfather Sebastiano had to do was to clear the land. This was initially done with horses and two-man saws. Each year they would clear a little and then farm it. My grandfather’s goal was to double the number of cleared acres every decade.”
All that effort was worthwhile. The vegetables muck farmers grew—lettuce, carrots, celery and onions—were highly regarded in markets along the east coast of the United States. One example of that respect is a vivid memory I have of my Uncle Sam’s farm. His family was visiting from New York City and the first thing they wanted to do was see the mucks, where my uncle’s iceberg lettuce was ready for harvest. He cut a few heads and without bothering to wash away the muck, his relatives broke the lettuce into chunks and ate it, declaring it the best they’d ever tasted.
In Oswego County, over 150 families once operated muck farms. But, for economic reasons, doing so has become increasingly difficult. One problem, though, has nothing to do with finances. It’s because the muck land providing us with delicious produce all these years is not endless. Those Ice Age ponds were not bottomless, so muck soil is not endless. Each year, through cultivation and weather conditions, farmers lose about an inch of soil. Now, after decades of farming, some mucks have come to the end of their rich depths.
If you’re lucky, you can still find muck-raised heads of lettuce and pungent onions at a farmers market. When purchasing their produce, why not take a moment to thank our muck farmers.
Photo: The Stancampiano and Tesorario mucks, located in New Haven, New York
