Men in muddy boots gathered under a drab December sky last year, eyeballing the tractor tires and soil tillers, whole fields full of farm equipment the Marino family was auctioning off in Swedesboro, New Jersey.
That’s what happens when a farmer gets out of the business, but it still hurt, like someone rummaging through four generations of memories. Joe Marino, 50, told his father to go hunting that morning. Take your mind off it.
Earlier this week, Russell Marino Sr. , 72, Joe’s father, stood beneath the sun pruning tomatoes on a raised bed behind the farmhouse he still lives in. All the fields around him were green with someone else’s crops. Most of the heavy machinery was gone.
