York Corner
When we stopped in at Zach's Route 91 farm stand two Saturdays ago, on one of those days when the weather was picture-perfect, the fresh corn was flying out of the place about as fast as Zach (that's proprietor John Zacharias) could keep it stocked, and his melons, he said, along with other crops slowed by a wet spring, were now ripening early, thanks to the prolonged heat we got in July.
On that day, Kate Zacharias, Zach's adult daughter, was tending shop, and she told us that a customer, one of Zach's regulars, had just bought three-dozen ears of corn to be shipped by overnight express to Arizona, to a family originally from York.
Kate was happily astounded - and so were we.
The other news that Zach imparted concerned the maze he's opened to the public in his corn field each year for the past two. Chris Colby, who designs and executes it, is already working on this year's, Zach said, and its pattern, worked out through some agreement with the Kittery Trading Post, will be a bull's-eye 260 feet in diameter.
We made a note to check in with Chris soon for the details on that one.
On that day, we also talked with Robin Clithero of York, there with her son Jonathan, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at York Middle School. They were buying corn, cantaloupe, tomatoes and zucchini, among other items.
"Everything's going on the grille," Robin said of most of that produce - and she also told us (at our request) that she'd been born in York, grew up on Southside Road, moved to South Berwick for about nine years when she was first married, then returned to York to be near her family eight years ago.
Her husband, Bill, she added, has run the Ledgewood Mortgage Company in York for about 22 years, and another son, Brandon, 19, interested in his father's business, is about to begin a business course at York County Community College, following graduation from York High School this past spring.
"He was on the football team for a couple of years," Robin said of Brandon, but knee injuries forced an end to that; he's also served as a junior firefighter. "Most of the time," however, she added, "he's working at the Crate and Barrel in Kittery."
When we applauded Robin for successfully and cheerfully weathering the challenging task of bringing up kids in a difficult time, Kate, in a tiny lull between customers, spoke of her own experience as a teacher at Marshwood High School. She's in her sixth year of teaching English to sophomores and seniors there, she said, and she called them "awesome."
She sees between 100 and 150 of them every year, she said, and stressed, "I love every one of them."
She also called Marshwood "a great place to work," not only because of those awesome kids, but for colleagues "great to work with and for."
When customers called Kate's attention away once again, Robin turned her own attention back to Jonathan (who was waiting patiently through all this adult conversation) and told a little produce-related story on him.
When he was quite young - old enough to be interested in growing something but not old enough to tend a garden himself - his family planted a pumpkin seed for him. It became a plant, and the plant began to produce a pumpkin, but somewhere along the line it died. Unbeknownst to Jonathan, the family went to York Corner Gardens, bought a pumpkin, and attached it to what was left of Jonathan's plant.
Voila!
A happy Jonathan.
Robin's allegiance, however, remains with Zach's. She's been coming there, she told us, since she was a kid herself.
"It's nice having this here," she said. "I hope it never leaves."
We have one other little story from that day.
Charlie and Mary-Anne Szeniawski ducked in briefly when we were there - both well-known to York residents for capable and kindly work as parents, and for community contributions made both in and away from their official jobs, his as a long-term York police officer and current lieutenant, and hers as York's town clerk - and Kate had just enough time to ask them if it was really Charlie whom she'd seen on television seated in the stands with his younger brother at a Red Sox game a month or so earlier.
It was, they said.
Small world.
Good world.
