3. The Shock of the Old
It was 1970, and Joan and Gerald Sutton had just moved to the Island, settling first in French River. They had chosen PEI in part because of Joan’s love of the Anne of Green Gables books. The first time they went to Charlottetown, Joan says, "Okay. We were in the middle of town, I looked around, and — we came from Chicago — I said, 'Ger, there has to be more!' So we got back in our car, looked for more, and there wasn't any more!"
Cef Pobjoy tells a similar story, but different. It was 1972, and before starting out from Toronto, he had stuffed his car’s rust holes with bags of pot. "[W]hen we landed on PEI I was driving the station wagon. I was very nervous about the cops and we drove out around Pooles Corner and I saw a car stopped on the side of the road with a cop car behind it, and the Mountie had two elderly people up against the car and he was body searching them. And I was stoned. And I thought, 'Oh my God, where have I moved to?'"
This was counterculture shock. Pulling up stakes and moving to PEI was a grand adventure, but one that offered no escape from reality — just a different, often more difficult, reality. And as alien as the back-to-the-landers were to Island society, the reverse was even more true. Most knew next to nothing about their new home, its history, society, politics, or expectations. For example, Joan Sutton recalls her first experience with real Island weather:
They were forecasting a snowstorm. I thought, 'Oh well, big deal. So what?' So I went to Summerside and it starts to snow and I'm looking and it's really starting to snow. I call Ger, 'Well, what do I do?' He said, 'Well, whatever you do, don't stop, okay?' So I piled everything in the car as quick as I could and got going. I did stop once — that was when I was off in a field and I couldn't find out where the road was, so I had to get out of my car to find out where the road was again. I drove from Summerside to French River in a blinding blizzard in a little Volkswagen Bug. I went through drift after drift. The only reason I didn't get killed was because nobody else was stupid enough to be out there at that time. And our landlady was calling Ger, 'What did you let her go for? You should have kept her home. Don't you know anything?' 'No.'
Or as Mark Arnold puts it, "August in Irishtown, there's no place like it. And February in Irishtown ... there's no place like it."
But it was in growing food that the newcomers' lack of knowledge made itself felt the most. The back-to-the-landers faced more than the typical difficulties that come with relocating, because they were attempting to start a new life that was essentially experimental. They planned to live simply, sustainably, and off the land. And it was a land that they didn't know. The Suttons recall that when they moved to Breadalbane, people laughed at them for eagerly trying to grow every possible kind of bean – but forgetting to plant green beans. David Sobers raised bees and an acre garden his first year, not to mention cows, ducks, geese, chickens, and a pony. "Really, we had too much going on at the same time." Like the Suttons, Rick and Carla Gibbs were entirely new to farming. He was from New York City, she from Montreal, and the extent of their knowledge of agriculture was a brief stint on her uncle’s farm and a worn copy of Richard W. Langer’s guidebook Grow It. Yet they took over a 223-acre farm in Iris, and tried a little of everything, raising cows, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, and horses. And pigs: "We kind of enjoyed the idea of a New York Jew having a pig farm. That kind of entertained us." Rick got rid of the ducks when they attacked him; more generally, many of the back-to-the-landers' experiments failed. "If anybody ever tells you they want to go into business having a u-pick cucumber field," advises Wendy Ader-Jones, "talk them out of it."
But before the back-to-the-landers ever gained such hard-earned knowledge, they relied on the experience of locals. Mark Arnold knew nothing about farming when he bought a tractor, a plough, harrows, and seed, and got ready to plant. "My neighbours were very helpful. I mean, they were giving me lots of tips. 'This is what you do, and this how you do it....'" Just before Mark was about to start, neighbour Borden McAllister — "a tobacco-chewing, tobacco-spitting guy; salt of the earth" — drove into his yard, ran up to him, and said, "'Mark, before you do it I gotta tell you one thing: if you don't turn the seeds of grain head-down it won't sprout!' And I stopped and said, 'Wait a second. I'm sowing a ton of seed. You mean I got to turn every little head by hand? Every little seed with the head down? I can't do that!' And he smiled at me and I knew he was joking."