Down on the farm

Yesterday, The Mint Killer and her family and I headed out together to Acoustic Farms, the home of Farmer Mark and his lovely wife Barbara, who provide us with fabulous veggies as part of our community-supported agriculture (CSA) share. Mark and Barbara invited us up for homemade sausage gravy and biscuits, with the caveat that they were going to put us to work once they’d fed us.

I think we were all expecting something akin to hot, sweaty, tough labor. I mean, farming’s supposed to be hard, right? But when it got down to it, with three extra hands on the job (not that the four-and-a-half-year-old didn’t help, but she alternated helping with cavorting through the fields), we probably didn’t spend much more time actually working than we did tearing through breakfast.

We helped out with planting tomato seedlings, asparagus, onions and potatoes, and watched while they put in an experimental row of peanuts. I ignored my allergies and snuggled a kitten, and pet a chicken for the first time ever. Then we sat on the porch, sipping iced tea and listening to Farmer Mark strum his guitar. It doesn’t get much more idyllic than that.