party food

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.