When the Simmons Hickory Farm family lays out their produce under the 9-foot portico at Rollier Hardware in Mt. Lebanon next Thursday, Cindy Simmons is apt to see some familiar faces.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Cindy Simmons walks past a 130-year-old barn toward the fields at her family farm near Hickory. Click photo for larger image.

In a reverse of country girl goes to the city, she is taking her business to the town where she grew up and graduated from high school in 1977.

It's family farm meets family business. Herman Rollier founded the hardware store in Shadyside in 1923, and it is still owned by third-generation descendents of the founder: Doug, Bob and Chuck Satterfield. A second store opened in Mt. Lebanon in 1953, and the new store they built on Washington Road opened in 1995.

This farm-business connection between two well-known local names runs counter to the big box, cookie-cut chain phenomenon sweeping the country.

"I think people appreciate homegrown businesses," says Bob Satterfield. "The 'big boxes' don't care about their customers like we do."

"We're excited to be at Rollier's," says Cindy, who sold pumpkins at the store last year.

		Where to buy Simmons Hickory Farm produce is available from noon to 6 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays, Rollier Hardware, 600 Washington Road, Mt. Lebanon; 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Mt. Lebanon Farmers' Market; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays, McDonald Farmers' Market; and noon to 6 p.m. daily except Wednesdays, Routes 519 and Route 50, Hickory. In fall, they sell canning tomatoes at the Original Farmers Market, Bridgeville.

She had always loved being outdoors and studied agriculture at Penn State. She met her husband, Dave, at his family's business, Simmons Farms in McMurray. She had hoped to join the Environmental Protection Agency; her husband had grown up on the farm. It was idealist meets pragmatist.

"Dave taught me the practical side of things," she says.

What emerged at the new operation, which takes its name from the farm's location near Hickory in Mount Pleasant, Washington County, was an amalgam of tried-and-true practices and concern for the environment.

The family operation includes their four children, Drew, 18, Bethany, 17, Emma, 13, and Rachel, 11, all of whom work on the farm. Cindy's parents, Shirley and Dan Morgan of Mt. Lebanon help out, too.

"Dave is a fourth-generation grower," says Cindy. "Drew will be the fifth."

The farm practices Integrated Pest Management, which involves carefully monitoring pests and weeds in order to use the least amount of pesticides for environmental sustainability. Wherever possible, they use biological controls. Not that there isn't an economic incentive. "Chemicals are so expensive," she says, citing a pesticide that's $500 a gallon.

An edge of quality

The season started slowly with temperatures that had dropped to 38 degrees the night before our May 26 visit. "Growing stopped to a standstill," Cindy says. "It's colder in the country."

The hot days this week should bring on the crops like gang-busters -- "we should have corn by the end of June," she says.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Cindy Simmons: "We're all working to put the farm on its own. Our goal is to have it support two families some day." Click photo for larger image.

Dave Simmons left the original Simmons operation three years ago, although the families still own some land in common. His parents, Earl and Dolores Simmons, are semi-retired, and brothers Scott and Bob still farm in McMurray and sell at their own markets. Economic pressures have never been greater for the young farmer starting out, says Dave. "The cost of production didn't used to be as high as it is today -- the seeds, getting the right varieties, the labor, the insurance," he says. "The overhead is astronomical."

You need optimum production from every acre, he says. "If you had a bad crop, you used to lose $500 an acre; now it's $1,500."

Marketing has become more important. Families used to buy fruit and vegetables by the bushel to can or freeze. "Now they buy by the quart," he says.

In many homes, there is little time for food preservation, and supermarkets sell canned and frozen produce at "just slightly higher" than the cost of doing it themselves, he says.

But fresh local produce has one big selling point: "The only edge we have is a higher-quality, better-tasting product," Dave says. "That's what keeps the local farmer going."

In what has become a common practice to sustain small farms, Dave works full time off the farm, driving 30 minutes to Hapchuck Inc. in Eighty-Four. Working the farm are Cindy, their three daughters and son Drew, who will graduate this month after studying auto mechanics at Western Area Technology Center, Houston.

"Dave really misses farming, and in the evening he walks with Drew and me in the field and tells us what to do," she says. "We're all working to put the farm on its own. Our goal is to have it support two families some day."

A farm is a home, too

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Three generations -- from left, Shirley Morgan, Emma Simmons, Cindy Simmons and Rachel Simmons -- sit outdoors, with a sample of Blueberry-Lemon Coffee Cake. Click photo for larger image.

The Simmons family is restoring a circa-1870 farmhouse -- they found an 1898 newspaper in the wall. The house, which has the original hand-hewn cedar floors with square nails, is undergoing extensive renovation. There's a beautiful country kitchen, and they have added a family room and master bedroom, where Cindy does the bookkeeping on a computer. They repainted the original crown molding, decorated the dining room in a fruit-and-vegetable botanical motif, built a spacious front porch and their children executed the decor for their rooms. They expect to complete the work by summer 2006. The place has two springhouses, as well as a dairy barn and other "excess" outbuildings.

To outsiders who may know little of arising each morning to search the sky for needed rain or warm weather to ripen the crops, Simmons Hickory Farm seems idyllic.

Yet there's more to farming. Machinery must be kept running. "If you want to drive it, you have to be willing to fix it," Cindy Simmons says wryly, citing a recent expenditure of $250 for a water pump for the Case tractor. "That's just the part, not the labor."

Farm labor isn't an easy job. The hardest is stooping to plant under sheets of plastic, which holds heat and moisture for quick growth in early spring. The plants are 9 inches apart. "You're either bent over, or further bent over," says Rachel, the more talkative of the two younger girls.

The children are paid for their labors, because, says their mother, "If they didn't do it, we'd have to hire more help from outside the family." Mike Metsmeyer, a friend of Drew's, also helps out.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Mike Metsmeyer, a friend of the family, cultivates the early sweet corn on the Simmons Hickory Farm. Click photo for larger image.

Today's farm families are as much marketers as growers, and some consumers wonder why more local produce isn't sold in supermarkets. Cindy says most family farms wouldn't have enough product to stock a supermarket chain's warehouse, nor could small farm owners make a living if they received only wholesale prices for their produce.

One avenue for profit is the so-called value-added products made at the farm. No doubt Cindy would have little trouble selling the delicious blueberry coffee cake, but first she'd have to have a kitchen approved by the health department. "If you do 'value-added,' you've really got two businesses," she says.

Nature is complicated

This is the quiet of the countryside. The Simmons' 165 acres have gently rolling hills, and their fields are contoured to preserve topsoil and prevent runoff.

"The first thing we did was dig a pond -- you don't plant vegetables without irrigation," Cindy says. "We can't change the weather, but we've managed it as much as we can."

		The best corn on the cob First, says Cindy Simmons, know that corn doesn't need to be coked -- only heated "so the butter will melt." Here's her method: Bring a big pot of unsalted water to a rolling boil. Drop in the husked corn. Heat for 2 minutes -- there's no need for the water to retun to a boil before you start timing. Remove and serve immediately. "the longer corn cooks, the more sugar that changes to starch," she warns. "Cooking it too long can make it starchy."

The crops are rotated on alternate years with strips of grass. So far, the Simmonses have 30 acres in production, with hopes of building up the soil and adding a few acres each year. The former dairy farm was a part of the 1,000-acre Cherry Valley Farm founded in 1825.

Today, Cindy, who majored in plant science, is learning other fundamental aspects of agriculture that include the business of staying in business.

"I wanted to help save our environment for future generations," she says. During college, she had put her ideals to work for three summers in the Youth Conservation Corps.

Marrying a farmer, who had to earn a living as well as practice conservation, tempered her views. "My husband taught me the practicality of chemicals as a necessary evil to feed the world," she says, though they use as few as possible.

The hitch is that while American farmers operate under many environmental regulations, other countries' farms may not. Yet the U.S. farmer has to compete globally when it comes to price. "These same crops are going to be coming to America," she says. She pauses. "I just didn't know that until I worked on a farm."

'We go for flavor'

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette In her kitchen Cindy Simmons cools her Blueberry-Lemon Coffee Cake. Click photo for larger image.

After a marriage of 20 years, Cindy can talk corn with the best of them. In less sophisticated times, a farmer planted a variety or two of corn. Today, the Simmonses grow eight varieties. New types, such as SE (sugar enhanced) or SS (super sweet) increase the corn's sweetness and shelf life. The Simmonses grow SE, because Dave "thinks the supersweet is really tough," she says.

"There's a lot to know about corn. We go for flavor."

Picking the ears one by one is just the last of the backbreaking jobs for this crop.

Picking tomatoes is also stoop labor. It may not be too hard to pick an armload in a city backyard garden, but the Simmons children pick for several hours per day. They treat each tomato like the treasure it is. And they do sleep well at night.

"I'm a kid, and I don't mind going to bed early," jokes Rachel.

The tomatoes are picked red-ripe and will last on the kitchen counter for six or seven days. (Tomatoes should not be refrigerated because it changes their flavor.) Most supermarket tomatoes, especially in the off-season, are "picked green and gassed before they are sold," Cindy says. "They have no flavor."

They also sell grape tomatoes, yellow and green peppers (some will ripen to red), cantaloupe, zucchini and cucumbers. Next year they will add strawberries, but in the meantime they sell berries from the McMurray farm.

There have been failures. They had no sooner transplanted their eggplant than the resident groundhogs scheduled a feast.

Cindy's mother, Shirley, says she feels sorry for people who have never truly tasted a fresh fruit or vegetable.

"Cardboard," the granddaughters say. "Plastic."

Seasonality is all. "You have to learn to get the local when they're here," says their grandmother.

Their produce is not made to be shipped, Cindy says, and one thing is sure. "You could never pick a Pennsylvania strawberry and ship it to California."

Playing their part

On this sunny day, there's only the murmur of the tractor in the distance and a neighbor cutting wood. The girls don't mind the trips into town, though.

"I like to work selling our things," says Emma, who remembers one happy customer who brought them some soup she had made from the vegetables the farm family had grown.

Though Cindy wonders which they look forward to more, the end of schoolwork or the end of farm work in the fall, her daughters seem to get a kick out of farm life.

"We can say, 'We picked this, we sold this,' " says Rachel. "We can say, 'Wow! I did that!' "

"They have responsibility, and they know they're needed," says her mother. "We're never away from farming, but we love it."

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Blueberry-Lemon Coffee Cake

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Blueberry-Lemon Coffee Cake Click photo for larger image.

Blueberries and lemon are a natural match, and they come together nicely in this fruit-filled snack cake. Almond paste, a sweet mixture of ground almonds and sugar, contributes a mildly nutty flavor and moist texture. Almond paste is found in the baking section of the grocery store. (Don't substitute marzipan, which is sweeter and has a smoother texture.) If it is hard, soften it by microwaving at high 10 to 15 seconds.

Cake:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
  
• 1/3 cup almond paste
  
• 2 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into small pieces
  
• 1 large egg
  
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  
• 3/4 cup fat-free milk
  
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries (frozen or fresh)
  
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
  
• Cooking spray

Topping:

• 1/4 cup sugar
  
• 3 tablespoons sliced almonds, chopped
  
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted
  
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cake: Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk.

Place 1/₂ cup sugar, almond paste and 2 tablespoons butter in a large bowl, beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add egg and lemon juice, beating well. Add flour mixture and fat-free milk alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries and rind. Spoon batter into a 9-inch-square baking pan coated with cooking spray.

Topping: Combine ¹/₄ cup sugar and remaining ingredients in a small bowl, tossing with a fork until moist. (We doubled the almonds.) Sprinkle topping evenly over batter. Bake for 35 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Yield: 12 servings.

Nutritional information per serving: calories 196 (30 percent from fat); total fat 6.5 grams (2.1 grams saturated); protein 3.8 grams; carb 31.6 grams; fiber 1.4 grams; cholesterol 27 milligrams; iron 1.2 milligrams; sodium 243 milligrams; calcium 82 milligrams.

-- Cooking Light magazine

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Cindy Simmons and Abby the dog walk through the 1870 barn at the farm. Click photo for larger image.