Words Chris Hartman Photography Guzman

Published in No 14

Jared Handelsman is an artist with a deep sense of wonder about the natural world. At his rural farm, he has created an entire ecosystem — the centerpiece of which is his Blueberry Spiral, a labyrinthine and serpentine hedgerow draped with diaphanous netting that highlights his 83-acre property — which also includes a rambling, art-adorned 18th-century farmhouse he shares with his wife, the artist Portia Munson, and a converted tree house he originally built for his two children. He confesses with some satisfaction that he never wanted to live in the city — he was more interested in remote spaces where he could witness a thriving natural ecosystem.

He says that in 1997, his interest in landscape sculpture was piqued by a visit to Dunbarton Oaks, an historic estate in Washington D.C.’s Georgetown featuring dramatic hedge labyrinths. He then began studying all sorts of similar spirals from England, eventually traveling there and visiting over a dozen. When he returned home, he went on a “pick your own” trip with friends to a local farm that had large hedges of blueberries and that was the eureka moment he decided he would create his own blueberry spiral. “After all,” he exclaims, “I love blueberries!”

In preparing the design of the spiral, he began studying photos of petroglyphs at Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland. One of the stones outside of the main passage tomb featured a “double S” spiral design, and that’s what Handelsman decided to replicate. The significance of this double S spiral is that it represents the Celtic Druid symbol for a solar year.

Handelsman is fascinated by the vast array of insect and animal life that count the blueberry spiral as their home. He tries to work on his spiral without disturbing this complex habitat, because, as he says, he and they all contribute to making it “more lively.” For instance, if he sees that a spider has laid eggs in one part of the spiral, he’ll spend time that day in another part. He considers this kind of interdependency a vital part of the connectedness of man and nature.

For over the past ten years, Handelsman has been actively cultivating hybrid species of blueberries by mixing seeds. He likes that the spiral has a very wide range of genetic diversity and adds that he is the only farmer of blueberries he knows who grows and cultivates his crop from seeds, “because they’re so slow.” “It takes years,” he says, “for you to even put the roots out in the soil because of the length of time it takes to develop a robust root structure.” The hybrids he creates exhibit subtleties in texture, size, and flavor, but when residing in someone’s bucket or basket, they take on a “chameleon-like” quality, where differences among them blur.

Handelsman is an enthusiast of the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who asserted that “nature loves to hide” — in that in a garden, as Handelsman observes, “you tend to become almost invisible.” For example, he was weeding in the spiral one day and a fawn walked right up next to him — as if he weren’t even there — and started nibbling away. He is resolute that if you work in nature, you should not be impactful, but instead a facilitator of the natural order of life. He is introspective about weeding in that he thinks the process is misunderstood; he insists that weeds are part of the ecosystem and should be treated that way. He says for many, a weed is “just a plant that’s in a place where you don’t want it to be,” and then adds enthusiastically that an action as simple as weeding can result in new habitats for various forms of life, and that’s very exciting for him.

In an attempt to keep swarms of birds at bay, Handelsman placed a canopy of netting over the berries; but he added that those that gain entry are a relatively small number, which he is fine with. In fact, he noted that there are so many blueberries produced in the spiral every season that even a 25 percent loss in the crop would hardly make a dent in the overall annual harvest. And he says that even those that fall to the ground aren’t wasted, because they feed the microbes in the soil that keep the blueberry bushes healthy and thriving.

With a note of melancholy, Handelsman says that climate change has posed considerable challenges for his rural region in recent years. For instance, he says that there’s been a great increase in ticks, and more severe storms such as 2011’s Hurricane Irene, with its heavy downpours and high winds, that he says destroyed almost every bridge in the county. For years, Handelsman has also collected sap to make maple sugar, which has made him sensitive to the patterns of freezes and thaws, that he notes have become more erratic. He suspects that these changes are the result of a disruption of the jet stream.

Though he doesn’t open the spiral generally to the public — he’s ambivalent about doing so because in season, he’s usually hard at work in it — he’s often had friends, friends of friends and local summer camp children come visit to learn about blueberries and wander the farm. He also has an arrangement to sell his blueberries through a local farmer with a stand at a nearby farmers’ market. “It solved all my problems,” he says, because word that his berries were there spread like wildfire — pleasing the locals who have driven a steady demand for his crop. Handelsman’s also bartered with local farmers — blueberries in exchange for goat’s milk, honey, etc.

Studying the cycles of the moon and the seasons has made Handelsman finely tuned to how and when the blueberry spiral begins to produce berries, and what he calls their “exponential ripening.” He says one day — usually toward the end of June — one might collect one pint of berries; the next day, three; the day after that, three quarts, etc. He says that different varieties peak at different times, and that there is a “crescendo” in the middle of the season where the bushes are so weighted down by berries they bend over to the ground; but just as soon, the bounty begins to trail off.

Handelsman is of the mind that this blueberry project may never be fully completed; but his education on how the blueberry sculpture interacts with nature and man continues, and he credits the birds, bees, and other inhabitants of the spiral with expanding his learning. “The creatures are my teachers,” he says.

Chris Hartman is a regular contributor to UD. See more: Authory.com/ChrisHartman

Guzman are regular contributors to UD and are represented by veronique-peres-domergue.net @lesguzman.