Escape the Urban: Along Our Forgotten Coast

Subconsciously directed by the radial street pattern and daily commutes, when Western New York faces inward it focuses toward the Erie Canal Harbor, City Hall, the Lake Erie shoreline and the mouth of Niagara River. In to work, out to home. In for a Sabres game, out for the Bills. In for dinner and a show, out for a movie and trip to the mall. Such a forward and back mindset is understandable but self-limiting, and can skew our perspective when considering possibilities for exploration. As we work to improve a couple miles of lakefront in downtown Buffalo, we unintentionally turn our collective metaphorical back on a second coast almost as near but far less frequented.

If Niagara Falls is the place you take out-of-town relatives when they visit, then further to the north, the sweep of the Lower Niagara River and Lake Ontario is…what? Lewiston has succeeded in marketing its art fairs, jazz festival, free concerts at Artpark and shoppy/eaty Center Street, and does a respectable business as a cool hang out. But beyond? For many WNYers, there may as well be dragons there.

Let me offer a few reasons to keep driving north on the Robert Moses Parkway, so seldom trafficked that weeds grow in the cracks between the concrete slabs.  Drive down the Niagara Escarpment and the sweep of the possibilities open, Canada’s Queenston Heights memorial pinnacle dominating the terrain across the river, and (if the weather cooperates) verdant fields and forests stretching to the horizon to the north and east. First comes Youngstown and it’s charming timeless main street. Then Old Fort Niagara, the oldest continuously occupied military site in North America. Its 1726 French chateau makes Buffalo feel new. Then conveniently numbered creeks (4 Mile and up), corn and cabbage fields, farmer’s markets and apple orchards, bluffs and shoreline estates, two wineries, Wilson and the Boathouse restaurant, Olcott and its beach and marina, and finally, our destination, the Singer family farm.

I personally know exactly one Singer, Vivianne, who I met during a volunteer clean-up effort for The Nature Conservancy. More specifically, I and my sons were doing the clean-up. Vivianne, a bright-eyed outgoing woman with a hint of an English accent, was doing the hosting of TNC, though she wielded a mean rake herself. The Singers have owned land along Lake Ontario for several generations, and while much is cultivated for crops, they kept a substantial portion in its natural forested condition. That private nature preserve is now home to some rare old tree specimens – black birch and wild black cherry among them – and plenty of hard-to-spot songbirds. It was for those songbirds that The Nature Conservancy wanted a visit, and my boys and I were happy to help. Viv was equally appreciative of the assistance, and rewarded my sons with dark chocolate covered cherries from her new endeavor, Singer Farm Naturals.

Vivianne and her husband Tom have opened quite a modern outpost along this Lake Ontario farm road. Housed in a restored nineteenth century barn insulated by hay bales, and powered by panels from local Solar Liberty, Singer Farm Naturals is the foodie end of the family farm. Tom specializes in garlic, 22 varieties that he says are as unlike each other as the many strains of apples. Add in dried cherries and cinnamon covered apples, chocolate covered treats, blueberries and peaches and cookies from local bakeries, plus opportunities to U-Pick your own. When I recently visited cherries were out of season (just a short July window this year) and apples aren’t due til the Fall, but U-Dig potatoes were still an option. My kids jumped at the chance to play in the dirt.

Tom grabbed a heavy, four-tined potato fork and led my gaggle out into a nearby plot. Next to the barn and behind the solar array Tom has laid out his garlic and potato fields in the natural sandy soil. I am more than a little jealous – my home garden is so clay bound that I must compost and roto-till constantly just to keep it loose and productive. It’s perfect potato harvesting time; the leafy upper plants are dying off, and the underground tubers are as big as they’ll get. We start with a purple variety, a startlingly royal shade, as Tom easily overturns one section at a time and my children dive in to the Easter egg hunt. My first grab is for the mother potato, the “seed” planted by Tom earlier in the year. It collapses into wet mush in my hand, much to the laughing delight of my children. Tom teaches the kids about how the potatoes grow, which are good to eat and which have gone bad from exposure to the sun, and the differences in each variety. My haul after ten minutes of work was 12 pounds of purple, red and fingerling spuds. That they were a fraction of the supermarket price was hardly the point. Far more valuable was the knowledge of exactly where they had come from and the enjoyment of watching my sons do the harvesting.