Anyone who knew Bill Coleman knew a person whose tireless curiosity led him to be well and broadly informed; whose love of the exotic introduced him to unusual people, places, plants, and animals; and who had a personality that could engage nearly anyone. These qualities defined Bill both socially and in the community, where he was best known as a farmer who was an important part of the original organic food movement and the development of the current farm-to-table and slow-food trends.
My elder brother had an early interest in animals, as most small children do, possibly sparked by our parents’ milk cow. By the time he was out of junior high, he had raised and tended goats, including a couple of milkers, and several batches of a hundred fryer chickens. He learned the lessons of animal care, including that its strict schedules interfered with his growing social life. By high school, he’d ditched the goats and chickens, keeping instead specimen birds, starting with beautiful pheasants — goldens and Amhersts — and peafowl, which roamed at large. With his agriculture teacher, he started collecting and propagating rare ornamental plants.
In his last year of high school, he was introduced to commercial agriculture by the Japanese tenants of some land his grandfather owned. Most of their produce was grown for local markets — standard fare such as tomatoes, corn, string beans, and berries. But they grew on a scale Bill had never seen, planting hundreds of feet of beans and five acres of tomatoes, farming with typical Japanese efficiency and with methods and practices not seen in an ag class.
