Out on an annual quest for native cranberries to last us through the winter, we stopped in at York Corner Gardens this week, but too late: there were apples in evidence but not much in the way of other fruits or vegetables left - just a few items like potatoes and grapefruit among empty bins, and no cranberries - clear signs of the end of yet another season.
But in their place were Christmas greens - trees and wreathes galore, with the air everywhere rich in the seasonal scent of balsam fir - and proprietor David Coombs bouncing among them in fine fettle, recovered from his bout with cancer last fall and reveling in the prospect, now less than two weeks away, of a closing date, and of the long winter's rest to follow.
With him was his dog Pearl, laid-back and tail-wagging and apparently as happy with life as Dave himself. Dave said of her, "Pearl is great. This is her third season at York Corner Gardens, and she is a gem. She probably misses it more than anybody when I close. She loves everybody who comes in."
Then he laughed and added, "We're opposites: she loses weight in winter and I gain it."
Dave was doing some of his own wreath-decorating this year, he reported, and we watched as, while we chatted, he affixed artificial red berries and some small, bright-red Christmas balls, along with frosted and gilded pine cones, to wreathe already shaped. And he winced a bit as he noted that the balls had been made in China. The wincing came from a huge pride Dave takes in "selling local."
"I've been here for 10 years now - nine seasons - and from day one I put up ‘Buy Local' signs," he said. "I'm really glad that the movement has finally caught on," and he cited as evidence current interest that "localvores" have in eating only what's grown within, say, 100 miles of home.
The motivation behind that practice is usually environmental - to reduce the amount of energy required to produce, package and transport food while gaining improvements in freshness and quality - but Dave urged that community support be emphasized as a reason, too. "Buy Local," he stresses, should mean patronizing all small local businesses for what they bring to the strength of a community.
When we spoke of the cranberries we were seeking - big ones, grown by a man named Bob Nest at a place in Kennebunk with a name we love, "Old Gray Beaver Bog" - Dave excitedly listed for us some of the many other local businesses he patronizes in running his own business: Atlantic Cheese, of Kittery Point; Beryl L. Marton & Co. of Ogunquit (for cheese spreads and sunflower-seed pesto); Eva's Salsa, of Kittery; Giles Family Farm in Alfred (they provide cider); Art Kelly's orchards in Acton, Maine (from whom, Dave said, he bought apples this year "in more varieties than ever before"); bread made in York by Ron Fortin; Shain's of Maine ice cream.
Warming to this subject, Dave offered some advice to localvores who want to get really serious about their local eating habits. "Get history books," he says, "and figure out how people put things up here in New England - how they managed to have tomatoes in December and peaches in May and squash all year long. Those practices should be taught! And then you'll know what the integrity of your food is - what's in those jars. We're always too busy, but if you really want that lifestyle, turn the Patriots off on a Sunday afternoon and can!"
This advice was delivered with a grin and a chuckle - indications of an awareness that probably few people would take it to heart, however seriously it was intended.
At the same time, Dave was able to reach behind him to the shelf behind his counter and pull down four jars of home canning given him by customers: one of beach plum jam made by a woman in Moody, one of tomato juice made by another woman to whom Dave had given a deal on end-of-season tomatoes, and two of peach jam, one made by Dot Witham and one made by Virginia Skelton.
"I think they compete with each other," Dave said of those last two, with that characteristic grin and maybe a wink of deviltry.
When we asked Dave where his Christmas trees came from, he said he uses a local purveyor who, in turn, gets most of them from Quebec, some from Nova Scotia, and some (the table-top-sized ones) from Maine. All told, he gets, he said, "almost 500."
Two other Christmas offerings there that day had local ties: tree ornaments, advertised as hand-painted by "Disabled Artisans of Poland," were being sold by, and to benefit, the Kittery-based Ethel's Tree of Life, a four-year-old nonprofit that provides transitional training for youth and young adults with disabilities and/or special needs; and Christmas-green cemetery-basket floral arrangements, and wooden planters sporting reindeer heads and reindeer antlers, both hand-crafted by a North Hampton, N.H., man.
"They've sold quite well," Dave said of the reindeer planters, adding, with no hesitation and an ever-present eagerness to make others laugh or at least smile: "I've sold Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and I still have Donner and Blitzen. The others are flying around somebody's yard right now. I miss 'em."
For all the joking, there was some seriousness. Massive building projects, still ongoing, in the fields across the street - of a hotel, office and retail space, a restaurant, a Rite-Aid and more - plus a widening of Route 1 and the installation of curbs and yet another traffic light, had made it what he called "a difficult season to weather."
The road construction, he said, "started on the day I opened and wasn't done until Labor Day," cost him local customers, and so "definitely hurt business this year." Additionally, loss of parking space between his shop and the road meant that he had to spend money extending parking beyond his building, and now, with traffic streaking by much closer than before, he'd like to see the speed limit in that region lowered to 25 miles per hour, as it is through the Kittery malls. That, he feels would increase business for all the merchants there.
He also wishes that he could see signs of solar collectors somewhere among all the new buildings.
Still, incapable of being negative for long, he says, "But I survived."
And that's especially significant because the new development burgeoning all around him makes York Corner Gardens, with its hand-painted signs and 1940s ramshackle wooden buildings, increasingly an anomaly, and he knows it. Indeed, he's proud of that distinction. "I'm still Americana here," he says. "This place still has its original charm."
Dave reinforces the '40s atmosphere by playing Portsmouth's radio station WMYF, AM 1380, offering what he identifies as "lots of swing, Rat Pack music, Woody Herman, Count Basie, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald."
"This store loves the music," he muses. "It's soaked into the walls. Turn the radio off and you can still hear it."
Making the shop possible, he adds, is the fact that his landlord, a grandson to the Andrew Franklin who started the place, "loves what I do here."
Dave's last sales date this year, he's guessing, when all his greens are gone, will be Dec. 15.
Look for a bonfire in the back yard there just before dusk on that day, he says.
And then await reopening in the last week of April.
