Category Archives: newsletters '06

8/2/06 Vol. 3 #21

Just when you are at your weakest they always pour it on!  Last weeks weather was bad but this week is just grinding it in.  Good thing we are going on break next week to recover.  After 21 straight weeks at market we are crawling into the mid summer break, and this heat just reinforces why we take it.  We have taken the second week in August off for years now, as a way to get some recharge for the end of the harvest and marketing season.  It is planned for when the first tomatoes crash and before the colored bell peppers really get going.  Now I always refer to it as a “break” and not a vacation because Betsy and I don’t really get to check out.  We give the staff the week off with pay and they usually leave town.  That leaves us here to water, and irrigate, keep and eye on the turkeys, pick a little bit of stuff that has to be harvested, etc.  The break is in not going to markets and doing regular deliveries.  We usually do a few hours of chores in the cool of the morning and then find some kind of diversion in the afternoons, eat a lot, take naps, read and other general sloth.  To that end there will be no newsletter next week and we will not be at market Wednesday 8/9 and Saturday 8/12.

In preparation for all of this we have been mowing old crops down and generally tidying up the place.  Earlier in the year, when I wasn’t thinking clearly, we agreed to have an open house for the company who manufactures the Big Tops (Haygrove).  Well it is today!  Hottest day of the year!  We have tried to gussie up the joint as much as we can but what they really want to see is how well crops do growing under the covers.  Well on top of it being time for the tomatoes to expire we also have those unusual diseases in them as well so it is not exactly a beauty pageant in the tomatoes.  We are so tired and it is so hot that it is hard to muster enthusiasm for having a group of folks here this afternoon, maybe the 100 degree forecast will limit the crowd, only the truly insane will come out to look at the tunnels and with the sweat running down into their eyes maybe they will think it all looks great!  Now the stuff that they don’t want to look at does look good.  The late flowers are doing really well in this heat and the peppers look respectable along with the limelight hydrangeas.  It is so hot that the turnips, radishes and other crops that we need to plant this week will have to wait until early next week to go in so that they don’t just vaporize in the hot soil.

Picture of the Week
Celosias and Asclepias and the proper distance for viewing the quality of the crops in the Big Tops

8/14/06 Vol. 3 #22

Back from the summer “break” and already we are running around like crazy so this will be a quick newsletter.  The time off was too short and we worked far too much, we did have some nice dinners out and slower afternoons but we are going to have to rethink how to actually make it even slower.  Now we are back at it trying to get caught up and into the swing.  The staff is back too and are ready to go, after a good long week off.  Today was tomato picking and turkey moving.  The rest of the week there are more fall crops to plant, peppers to pick and plenty of regular maintenance chores to take care of.  The dry spell is really getting noticeable as the cover crops are not growing as they should and some near the tree lines are really stunted.  The creek stopped running last week and we will have to start pulling water out of the upper pond soon.  Perfect weather for peppers as long as we keep them irrigated.

What’s up with the early newsletter?  Betsy and I have to leave for the airport at 4:30 in the morning to fly to Wisconsin.  Not exactly the week we would have planned to be gone again but we are receiving the Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture and thought we might ought to be there to accept it.  We are very surprised and honored to have been even nominated for such an award and nearly speechless (well almost, you know Alex).  The award is presented by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, the USDA’s effort at helping to make agriculture more sustainable.  “This award recognizes producers who have explored ways to make farming more profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities, and have served as effective educators”.  We are always amazed when anyone recognizes us for what we consider everyday farm work and the outreach we do to anyone who has questions.  On top of it there will be an embarrassing amount of publicity about it including an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered with Melissa Block on Wednesday afternoon.  We won’t be back until Thursday late so Rachel and Will will be taking care of Wednesday market and the farm along with Joann.

Picture of the Week

It is colored bell and pepper roaster time!

8/23/06 Vol. 3 #23

Well it was a whirlwind trip to Wisconsin but we survived.  We attended some interesting workshops and went on a great tour through the beautiful countryside to an excellent small meat processing plant and retail store (had to see where all those sausages are made), then to a mushroom farm and store.  Betsy was pleased to have finally toured a mushroom operation as her mother tried for years to get them on one in Pennsylvania and never succeeded.  Betsy’s mother was a great adventurer and wanted to show her kids where stuff came from.  Instead of just going to museums and zoos they went to factories and farms and out of the way places, you can begin to see where Betsy gets her interest in all things cultural.  As we accepted the award I told the crowd about the survey I had just heard about where more Americans know the names of the Three Stooges than the three branches of government.  My reason for doing this was to point out how hard it was going to be to make Americans aware of the three tenets of sustainability.  Now I am a basics kind of person, just keep reinforcing the major points and the rest will fall in place.  Of course those of you who have received this newsletter for any time already know those three tenets; environmentally sound, economically sound and socially responsible.  Those along with Slow Foods three guidelines; food that is good, clean and fair are how Betsy and I have tried to organize our lives.  It is hard at times to meet them all but if we try to at least keep them in mind when we make decisions here at the farm then generally we make a better decision than we might otherwise.  We want to thank everyone who called or e-mailed to congratulate us on the Patrick Madden Award, it is a little overwhelming.  A friend of ours, who was on NPR this spring, warned us that we would get messages from people we hadn’t seen in years, she was right!

Back to real world.  The staff did a great job while we were away.  The celery (for Thanksgiving) and lettuce (for September) were transplanted and the turnips, radishes, and carrots are seeded and up now.  We are headed towards getting all the rest of the Thanksgiving crops in over the next few weeks, the lettuce and collards have been seeded in flats for later transplanting, soon the spinach, radishes, turnips and carrots will be seeded in the sliding tunnels so we can keep them growing actively up to Thanksgiving as the nights begin to get cooler.  They got the last layers of trellising on the peppers as the plants are becoming heavy with fruit, high up on the branches, without support those branches will break off.  The early, early tomatoes in the sliding tunnels were taken down yesterday, a dirty job as the old vines have to be ripped off the trellis fences as you try to not splat yourself with an old oozy tomato still hanging on.  No more Early Picks or Orange Blossoms.  It is getting so dry now that everything that is not irrigated is getting really crispy.  We had to pull the first water out of the upper pond as the creek is still not running.  Good thing that we made sure to refill that pond this spring!  So now the end game begins, as one by one the crops finish up and are taken out.  Over the next few months we will begin to plant the whole farm in winter cover crops like a blanket, putting the farm to bed for the winter.

Picture of the Week
The modern mushroom cave, white buttons in the front and Portabellos in the back

8/30/06 Vol. 3 #24

We look skyward as we do the rain dance hoping that something will come to erase that crispy look and feel the farm has been developing over the last few weeks.  Now that Ernesto is on his way I hope we didn’t dance too gleefully as they are now calling for up to seven inches of rain before Friday afternoon!  Now we go into batten down the hatches mode.  Mostly that means we have to pick quite a bit of stuff for Saturday market this morning before the rains start.  Fortunately peppers are one of those vegetables that can be picked quite early and their quality holds up beautifully for days.  When you see how long it is possible to hold peppers one begins to wonder how old those peppers in the grocery store actually are, but I digress.  Anytime that it is dry, for this length of time, we also get lackadaisical about making sure everything is put away completely so it doesn’t get wet.  So we need to circle the farm and make sure there is nothing laying out in the weather.  We also need to pull the gravity feed intake out of the bone dry creek in case it floods as well as keep an eye on the river levels over the next few days as we might have to pull the irrigation pump if it actually rains that much.  Not much wind associated with this storm so at least we don’t have to make sure everything is tied down too.

Further signs of fall this past week as the days get noticeably shorter and the staff begins to move towards their fall and winter schedules.  Rachel started back at UNC this week so we only have her help on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.  Joann, who keeps a schedule that makes us weary to think about (she runs her own farm, mostly runs ours and also works a couple of days a week at Weaver Street Market!), is beginning to pick up more shifts at Weaver Street for the winter season.  Rett is already gone to his new farm in the mountains.  Will is still hanging in there for the next month or so until we have the place put to bed for the winter.  Several mornings a week it is just Will, Betsy and me to hold the place down.  Soon as my mother used to say it will be “just us chickens”.

We have just four Saturday markets left in our season so the end is in sight.  That means it is turkey reservation time!  We always wait until now to make sure we have a fairly accurate number before we start to take peoples names and deposits.  For those of you who got birds last year I will also send out a separate message just to make sure you don’t miss it in the regular newsletter mix.  We have 84 birds on the ground right now with many of those already spoken for, so don’t delay.  Attached is the turkey reservation information and form.  Eerily like last year we are not exactly sure where we will be getting the birds processed.  The local plant is in a state of transition and so we may have to go out of state or process them ourselves.  The law allows farmers to process, without inspection, their own birds (up to 250 turkeys a year) and sell them to the public.  Many people argue that in many ways this is a safer and cleaner option than large plants (like Perdue).  In either case they will be frozen just as last year at a state of the art freezing plant that results in excellent meat quality.  Because we are going to Italy before Thanksgiving we are going to process the birds early so we don’t  have to worry about them while we are gone.

Picture of the Week

The dry creek bed with the end of the gravity feed water line

9/6/06 Vol. 3 #25

It is amazingly dark these mornings and it makes it hard to get going.  We pulled all the shade cloth off the little tunnels this week because the days are getting so short that the crops that were under the shade get too leggy trying to stretch for the diminishing light.  In August those same crops (lettuce, Brussels sprouts, celery, etc.) can’t take the heat so we give them the extra shade to get them going but with a snap of the fingers it becomes too much shade.  We now know that Labor Day is the changing point and by then the heat has begun to break as well.  Ernesto brought very nice rain without much wind, we had 2.5 inches that came down gently.  Then we had a monsoon type down pour on Monday with 2.5 inches more in about thirty minutes.  The river didn’t rise much and the creek is barely running again but things look much better around the farm, now the ground will not be so dry and I can begin to get soil ready for the fall and winter.  The early tomatoes get taken down today as we have to make way for planting campanula and other flowers for next year and so the preparations for the next season begin in earnest.

This is sometimes a difficult time of year for us as we have one foot still in this growing season, trying to make sure we get everything we can out of the crops that are left, and one foot in the next growing season.  We know that a big part of next year’s success is rooted in what we do over the next few months and so we become a little schizophrenic this time of year as we look way ahead while trying to keep a focus on the last few weeks of market.  This is one of those “sustainability” things that we realized a few years back.  In a conventional farming system the plans for the next growing season or crop only need to be made just before planting happens.  A conventional farmer may make the decision on how much corn to plant based on the commodity market in the spring and then just has to use fertilizer in a bag and plant.  For us the crop rotation dictates what crops go where and how much we will plant is based on what, you, our customers tell us you want.  Most of our “fertilizer” is from the organic matter in the soil that we resupply by growing cover crops in that same soil and then turning them under.  It is a much longer term view of farming.  That is why we stopped raising the fall cool season crops so that we could instead concentrate of getting the farm ready for next year.  Of course being able to go on vacation in October is not a bad side benefit either!

Picture of the Week
Lettuce started under shade, it will be ready in a week or two

9/13/06 Vol. 3 #26

Yesterday was one of the those interesting days, which occur from time to time, that are a condensed version of our life in one shot.  Up early when it is just barely light to go for a walk because there is a lot to do.  Back for just enough time to have a cup of coffee and check some emails.  This was turkey moving day so I headed out to do that but first started the irrigation in the little tunnels to keep all the Thanksgiving vegetables happy and to take soil samples in the field the birds are about to go into.  Put the fences up around the new area and open the fence that was keeping them in the current field as they watched me intently get the new field ready.  I think they really do know when it’s time to move.  Immediately they move into the lush green cover crop, heads down, making what we call the “happy turkey sound”.  Drag their shelters, feeders and waters into the new field and it is done.  Jump on the tractor to mow down the rest of the six foot tall sudangrass cover crop in the field they had been in so that I can be ready take soil samples there prior to preparing the soil for the winter.  While on the tractor I mow the grass field the turkeys will be in next so the tender regrowth will be just the right height when they move in there in a week or so.  It is 11:00, enough time to shower and change clothes and drive to Pittsboro several meetings.

Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) is one of the hardworking non profits that we work with in multiple capacities, their headquarters is in Pittsboro.  First I met to discuss a new crop insurance program for diversified farmers to see if it would work for us.  We have never had crop insurance because one: it hasn’t been available and two: we are so diversified that if some crop fails some other crop or crops always makes up for it.  We decide we are not a good test case but come up with some other farmers who might be.  The bulk of the afternoon is spent meeting with a group of representatives of organizations who fund non profits like RAFI.  They are learning about sustainable agriculture and where they could fund projects, they are particularly interested in what is happening with our Growers’ Choice poultry cooperative.  I speak, our former plant manager talks about his experience and one of the Latino employees talks (with an interpreter) about the difference between working for us and the large chicken plants (he liked us better).  They are then all loaded on a bus and drive up for a quick tour of our farm, to see more examples of sustainable farming.  It is 4:00 by the time they leave, just enough time to feed and water the turkeys and head into town with Betsy.  We stop at the hardware store for a few supplies and then she goes to Italian class while I walk down the street to have dinner with a class of UNC students studying food.  We talk about farming (why are colored peppers so expensive), and politics (why we are going to Italy for the Slow Food conference), chefs, travel, local food, farming…. this same class will be coming to the farm in a few weeks.  I have to leave early (8:00) to meet Betsy and go to a Farmers’ Market Board meeting.  We are no longer on the board but try to go to as many meetings as we can to keep up and help answer questions that may come up.  10:30 we get home, what a day.

Picture of the Week
The guys strutting for the girls who are paying no attention, typical.

9/20/06 Vol. 3 #27

What a gloriously beautiful day!  It is these days that we live for, the reason we wanted to work outside for a living, the kinds of days that make farming easy.  Emotions are high these days on both sides of the good/bad divide.  It has been twenty eight weeks since we started market back in March and thirty four since we planted the first spring crops in the field, and more than a year since the first crops for this season were started.  Twenty five years ago last week we signed the papers and closed on this piece of land intent on turning it into a small farm, just months before that Betsy and I got married, what an interesting trip its been!  The night we closed on the farm we camped out here with some friends of ours and it was cool enough (like tonight will be) to have a small fire, plenty of toasting and talk of plans and dreams for the future.  Twenty five seasons now under the belt, it is hard to imagine.  It is almost done now for this year as this is our last week at market other than the special pre-Thanksgiving market.  Only a few crops left in the field which will go under the mower in a few days.  This week I will begin the process of turning under two and a half acres to seed to winter cover crops.  Monday the turkeys go in for processing and into the freezer, in two weeks the farm will be ready for the long winter sleep.

We’re happy that the season is about over.  It has been a fairly good year but challenging at the same time so we are ready for a rest and change of pace.  At the same time we are a little sad that it is over.  We do miss seeing everyone at market, visiting with our chefs and store buyers too.  When the turkeys go away it is a serious day as we have worked with them all year to get to this point but still know that the reason we have them is for eating too.  We will miss working with our staff and talking with them about farming and their futures.  But at fifty years old we are also ready for some quiet time on the farm too, as well as traveling to new places.  So this will be the last weekly newsletter of the season.  We have a full schedule up to Christmas and beyond so look for a monthly report on our off season adventures.  We will send one in October before we head to Italy for the Slow Food conference and traveling around to see Italian markets, farms and restaurants but after I come back from a much anticipated hiking trip to one of  southern Utah’s amazing canyons.  You will get a report before Thanksgiving on what we saw and learned in Italy and to prepare you for the Thanksgiving market.  Then more after that including Betsy’s trip to Kenya to visit some of the largest cut flower farms in the world.  We thank everyone for helping us to do what we do here on the farm, with out your support and business it would not be possible.

Picture of the Week
The long shadows of early fall on nearly empty fields

10/19/06 Vol. 3 #28

Wow, has it really been a month?  We have moved heaven and earth (literally) around here to get things mostly to bed for the winter.  We took the turkeys in for processing and it is always a long and exhausting day, up early catching them before daylight and then watching over things at the processing plant.  As a whole they looked really good, a bit lighter in weight than last years but the quality seems good.  They are now down at the freezer plant sleeping until Thanksgiving.  Our focus then turned to getting the soil and cover crops ready for the winter and next spring.  Miles of pepper trellis had to be deconstructed first and the landscape fabric that we use for mulch in the hot peppers had to come up.  Then the endless tractor driving.

I spend more time on the tractor during this time of year than all the rest of the year combined.  Days and days of going round and round.  First all the remaining crops have to be mowed down so they will more easily till into the soil.  Before the soil turning begins I have to spread what ever mineral amendments the soil tests (that I took last month) indicate we will need to grow next years crops.  Not too bad this fall, only a bit of lime and even less phosphorus (P) and potassium (K).   Then the heavy metal comes out in the shape of a heavy disk harrow that cuts the soil a few inches and throws some of it over the crop residue.  Then a pass with the spring tooth field cultivator which rips and lifts the soil about every foot and about a foot deep.  After this lifting another pass with the disk to really cut those crop residues into the top soil.  Now the heavy work is done, the soil is loose but the tractor driving is far from done.  Any crop that gets planted before late April next year goes onto a raised bed, this is primarily so the soil drains and warms up faster in the cool of spring.  Without a raised bed it is almost impossible to prepare the soil for planting when we need to in February, March and April.  So round and round I go again with a four disk hiller, throwing up the loose soil into rough ridges.  200 beds raised  (20,000 feet and two acres) and another three quarters of an acre in what I call flat fields,  thankfully we don’t have to plant and take care of that all at once!  As Betsy says “It would make it hard to get up in the morning to face it”.  Finally it is time to spread the cover crop seeds.  On the tractor once again to spin out the grain crops, rye and oats, depending what cash crop will follow it, 400 pounds total.  On foot now I follow the grains with the legumes, hairy vetch and crimson clover,  to fix the nitrogen to feed the cash crops, using a chest spreader to spin them over the rough ground.  The rains came beautifully the day after I finished and the cover crops look beautiful.

The last big project is to move one of the sets of “Big Tops”, the big four bay high tunnels that cover a quarter of an acre.  Need to get them out of the way so I can get that last bit of soil prepared for next spring.  We will reconstruct them in their new field sometime later this winter.  We did get all the parts down and moved out of the way, what remains is to unscrew the legs from the ground, today and tomorrow and it should all be done.  We have had a pretty good frost and the dahlias are blackened along with other scattered damage.  Betsy’s flowers for next year are going in, in small lots.  Larkspur, bachelors buttons, Gloriosa Daisy, the tulips are planted in their crates for the winter chill period.  The vegetables for Thanksgiving are really starting to grow, even the Brussels Sprouts that struggled in the late summer heat have come out of it and are putting on good new top growth.

My much anticipated hiking trip to Paria Canyon in southern Utah turned out radically different than we had expected to say the least.  Most of this walk is through very narrow slot canyons (some of the longest in the world).  It requires perfect weather because of the danger of flash flooding.  We new it had flooded two days before we headed in and that the forecast was for 50% chance of rain the next day but clear after that.  Eight of us started in down the muddy river bed only to be stopped after 4 miles by a rescue helicopter landing in front of us.  The forecast had changed and flash floods were a distinct possibility.  We were given no choice, we had to get out of the canyon.  At least several of us got a free helicopter ride over the incredible landscape.  That left us to come up with plan B for ten people.  We ended up in Zion National Park and had a great time in an equally incredible landscape, just not what we had planned so long for.  I guess I will just have to plan another trip!

So we are off Monday, to Italy, for the Slow Food Terra Madre conference.  We already have a full list of farmers’ markets we want to go see and people we want to talk to.  Our delegation will be blogging from Torino and Betsy and I are scheduled for Friday the 27th.  You can follow our groups experiences at the Slow Food Triangle website.  Also while we are gone you can eat some of our heritage turkeys and support our friends at the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy in Pittsboro by having dinner at Panzanella restaurant.  For the fourth year they are having a Heritage Turkey Dinner (with our turkeys again this year) and 10% of the proceeds go to ALBC.  Unfortunately we will miss it but you all can enjoy it for us.  Look for another newsletter from us just before Thanksgiving with news from Italy and updates on the pre-Thanksgiving market.  Until then remember the Carrboro Market is open until Christmas, so keep on shopping with the rest of the market vendors.

11/17/06 Vol. 3 #29

Well we’ve been back from Italy about ten days now and finally are thinking about eating full meals again.  We ate so much great food during our stay that it was almost too much, almost.  Just like the first Terra Madre the second time around was a whirlwind experience but very different.  Our first trip to Torino for the inaugural Terra Madre was a leap of faith.  Slow Food and its mission were unknown to us. The details of the event were non-existent but the potential seemed large.  After six days of travel, jet lag, and short nights we came away aware that not only were the Italians great people but they had started something huge.  For two years we have been trying to become more familiar with Slow Food and its’ drive to preserve artisanal food production, small farms, bio diversity and more.  Food that is good, clean and fair.

The opportunity to participate in the second Terra Madre was a goal that we worked for.  Now we knew the lay of the land and wanted to take full advantage of it in a way we could not understand in 2004.  Then Slow Food increased the level of difficulty and potential by adding 1000 chefs from around the world to the nearly 5000 producers from 148 countries.  Slow Food’s goal was to increase and improve the networks between producers and chefs, the ingredient providers with the people who turn those ingredients into even more marvelous creations for the “eaters”.  What better way to introduce a wider audience to the ideals of Slow Food.  We knew immediately what we wanted to do.  Our long time customers and friends Ben and Karen Barker from Magnolia Grill in Durham had to go.  If we could attend with them, not only could they experience what we had two years prior but we could also hopefully see it through their eyes too.  We hoped to walk through the Salone del Gusto and local farmers markets with them.  We wanted to introduce them to our host family from 2004 and now good friends.  The most incredible part of the first Terra Madre, for us, was the farm and family where we were housed.  Not only were we amazed by their production of Piemontese beef and the artisanal meat products they turned it into but fell in love with their family and how they all worked together.

Karen and Ben did attend Terra Madre and our dreams came true but always in the Italian way.  We flew in a day early to make sure we were over the jet lag so we could be ready for what was surely to be a busy time.  Our 2004 host family offered for us to stay with them and we accepted.  The opening ceremonies were once again inspiring even though long, a mix of the United Nations meets the Olympics, lots of fanfare and speeches.

We dove right into the Salone del Gusto intent on exploring it much more thoroughly than we did the last time.  Held every two years since 1996 it is inspiring in its size, the quality of its products and its diversity.  Part trade show, part educational event.  It is Slow Food’s showcase for the work they are doing to save small producers of rare and indigenous foods.  If you can get people to eat these foods then the rest of the work is all down hill.  Most interesting are the Presidia.  Groups of producers of a kind of food (cheese from Castelmagno from mountain pastures to papaccella from Naples) or an endangered variety or breed (white Monreale plums to the white cow of Modena) are working together with Slow Food to have uniform production standards and a marketing strategy.  The heritage turkeys we raise are recognized as a Presidia here in the US.  We ate an incredible amount of interesting foodstuffs and came away with some new ideas.  One of the ideas that we have had from 2004 is to work with Slow Food USA, American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and Growers’ Choice poultry cooperative to establish a heritage chicken presidia and have our local growers raise, sell and preserve these breeds.

In the Terra Madre spirit of building relationships and networks we spent Friday introducing the Barkers to our Italian friends, Michele and Kati Piovano who have a macellaria and farm, where they sell beef and pork they raise, from the grain through the final cuts.  What was to be a quick tour of their farm and shop turned into a six hour full immersion experience.  Ben and Karen had aprons on and hands in, making sausages and other products.

Ben making sausages Michele instructing, Karen studying

It continued on to a full scale Italian lunch with many courses which Ben and Karen helped Michele’s mother cook!  This family experience continued on Sunday when we all participated in an extended family meal.  Aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and friends all convened.  One uncle made the tonnato sauce for the veal that Michele and Kati raised, a cousin made a mushroom dish from mushrooms she collected the day before, Ben made a salad from ingredients he had bought the day before in a local market, Betsy and I did the best we could to eat and visit.  Another uncle was a retired market farmer and pepper grower; despite language difficulties he and I were able to share pictures and experiences.

The rest of the conference went the same crazy way, we attended some workshops but spent most of our time connecting with other producers and exposing our Italian friends to the Salone del Gusto.  Here just minutes away from Torino are these incredible artisanal food producers and they had never been to the best artisanal food show in the world!  We were able to get them into the Salone and experience, through their eyes and taste buds, new and interesting foods.  We ended our trip by traveling around the Piedmonte region going to farmers’ markets and sampling the incredible foods of the region and seeing how they were produced.  We accomplished most of our objectives and feel very fortunate to have been able to participate in the second edition of Terra Madre!

Ben, Betsy and Karen at farmers’ market