Farmer M.

Laster winter I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. In her text, Kingsolver documents the year she and her family spend as locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. They grow their own vegetables, raise their own poultry and buy the rest of their food directly from farmers markets and other local sources. When I finished the book I decided I wanted to be a famer. Husband A gently reminded me that I have a difficult time keeping a cactus alive so rather than the abrupt lifestyle change from teacher to farmer I decided to join a CSA (community supported agriculture) program. In a typical CSA, subscribers pay a producer in early spring and then receive a weekly share of the produce all season long. We currently spend our Wednesday evenings driving out to Woodstock to visit Farmer M.'s farm to pick up our weekly bag of veggies. Sometimes we have a chance to visit with Farmer M. but usually we just grab our bag of veggies from the old fridge in her barn. Farmer M. is a lovely woman about my age who run the farm on her own. She supplies her CSA supporters with veggies and makes a weekly trip into the city to sell her organic vegetables. Husband A doesn't consider Farmer M.'s farm as an actual farm but rather as a hippie's garden. Regardless of its size she grows veggies for others on her farm and supports herself by doing so thus she is a farmer.