"Oh, collard greens, what do you do with those?"  "Why do the radishes look like that?"  "Look Jim, have you ever seen a beet like that?"  "Swiss chard, how do I cook swiss chard?"  "What is mesclun?"  "Do you have tomatoes?" "I love carrots, but I can't pay $3 for a bunch."  "Kale?"

This is what our Saturday's have sounded like for the past two months.  And we try to offer comprehensive answers or explanations each and every time.  I love to tell people about our heirloom varieties, how by growing them we are fighting against the collapse of agricultural biodiversity and continuing and adding to an important tale of cultural heritage, and how by purchasing these varieties they are joining in this continuum as well.  I enjoy explaining the ways to prepare kale and I appreciate it even more when we get customers returning week after week for their new favorite green or vegetable.

I will talk food and farming all day with anyone who cares to chat it up.  If they decide to buy something that's great.  If not, who cares.  We will bring it home and eat it or freeze it.  We do this because it is important to us.  For us it is the most enriching, self-gratifying work we can imagine and we are passionate about it.

As Horace Greeley wrote, farming is, "that vocation which conduces most directly and palpably to a reverence for Honesty and Truth."  We deal with both, directly each day.  We are at natures every whim.  Last week a customer asked me if the holes in the swiss chard were bad, to which I answered, "no, you just shared your chard with a few slugs."  And today it finally rained.  Too late for our lettuce which pretty much all bolted in the recent stretch of heat, but nice timing for our tomatoes, which are finally ripening.  Yet, we persevere - because we have to.    

We are earning a little extra money and learning more and more about food each day - growing it, selling it, and cooking it.  I know we are happiest when we are engaged in the community of food and eating it and we've never been more immersed.  Lately we have been pretty damn happy.