Black Dirt Region
The Black Dirt Region is located in southern
The Black Dirt Region takes its name from the dark, extremely fertile
Geography
The area mostly consists of flat
History
Farmers generally avoided the area in the early years of settlement, because the soil, although rich, was frequently flooded and poorly drained. Instead, the land was used for pasturage, though sudden storms would often drown the stock. Starting in 1804, talks began about the best way to drain the swampland. First, an attempt was made to clear the natural obstacles, but that proved too expensive. Instead, a drainage canal was constructed by General George D. Wickham through his property in 1835. (The former course is now a creek meandering parallel). Immigrants from Eastern Europe, particularly Poles and Volga Germans, had worked in similar soils in their native countries and began farming the former swampland. In the mid-19th century they won a series of conflicts with downstream millers later dubbed "the Muskrat and Beaver Wars", giving them the right to prevent a dam from being built on the drainage channel [4]
They eventually began growing the pungent, highly prized black-dirt onion on the land, taking advantage of the relative proximity of New York City as a market. By the late 20th century the region was producing an average of 30,000 lb/acre of onion (3.4 kg/m2). Today, due to changing popular tastes in onions and different economic realities, that staple is not as profitable as it was, and farmers in the region have been diversifying their crops to include lettuce, radish, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and, increasingly, sod, hemp, and cannabis. Hemp can be seen growing robustly near the villages of Florida and Warwick, and large cannabis cultivation facilities are now operating at the site of the former Mid-Orange Correctional Facility. Development of the farmland is considered unlikely since the soil is very poor for building.[2]
See also
References
- ^ "Black Magic, Hudson Valley's Special Soil". Edible Hudson Valley. Retrieved 2018-10-03.
- ^ a b Gordon, John Steele (December 1990). "Sowing the American Dream". American Heritage. 41 (8). Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2007-08-26.
Orange County, with a total of twenty-six thousand acres, had more of it in one spot than any place else in the United States except the Florida Everglades.
- ^ "Wikimapia - Let's describe the whole world!".
- ^ Snell, James (1881). History of Sussex and Warren County, New Jersey. Archived from the original on 2007-06-21. Retrieved 2007-08-26..
Further reading
- Pride and Produce. Cheetah Haysom 2015. Drowned Lands Press, New York, NY. 978-0-692-59127-7.