The first of many, for sure.

Any farmer can tell you about the irony of the field workers’ in-season diet. Strung out on long hours and manual labor, we often bypass the gorgeous nutritious produce we spend our lives slaving over and go for the sugary jolt of a quick fix – curly fries at the Chilmark Store, pizza from Back Alley’s, ice cream from anywhere. At the end of the day, there’s no leftover energy to turn on the stove and pick up a knife. Your body takes over – you want food and sleep, preferably in that order.

But when I go off-farm as a guest, I try to bring something special, and I fall in love with produce as food all over again. As a farmer, I often start to see it as money instead. That pint of cherry tomatoes? I’d rather have the five dollars thanks. I’ll have something else for lunch. It’s joyless and bad to view it this way. I know. I’m working on it.

The salad I made the other night? Sungolds, supersweets, brown berries. Tossed up with pea shoots, sorrel, purple basil in a wooden bowl I found at the thrift store in Vineyard Haven last week. Simple, special. Maybe I’ll even make a habit of it.

Summer has definitely come at the stand, spinach and turnips giving way to flowers, zucchini, and tomatoes. With vacationland in full swing, the wooden crates empty out easy, and some days I spend most of my time just harvesting to keep up. Not that I’m complaining. It’s a good rhythm, one familiar from farming seasons past, and it’s not so hard anymore to figure out what to do, how to prioritize. You just harvest and try to make money. That I can do.