It seems like an odd place to try to connect to our customers to me but I thought I should try it anyhow. The talk circulates on the farm about the distance food travels, the lousy quality, and the disconnect between growers and eaters. I want to minimize the disconnect with our eaters--I want them to know me and my crew and my family. We are out here working hard, talking, laughing, learning--loving vegetables--bringing them home, cooking them up, sharing them with others. I hope we can share our farm life and work with the people who are buying and eating our produce. Maybe we can shed some light on how to cook some of the more unusual vegetables we're growing, and reveal more of the process of getting the vegetables to market. Maybe someone out there will know if saltwort, a new little green we're growing, is indeed agretti--a little green we've had in Italy--it would be nice to know.

We had a good week last week. Upwards of 3000 tomato transplants, 700 eggplants, maybe 2000 peppers all got into the ground. Some sore muscles, some blisters, and good sense of accomplishment. The weather forcast this week looks pretty cold and dismal and the ground is thoroughly saturated from a weekend of steady rain. We will bring produce to town every day this week--spinach, radishes, turnips, mustard greens, arugula--it's a start.

There is a pair of Canadian geese raising their six goslings on the farm this spring. Charming, but they have a taste for my chicory crop and the lettuce is starting show some damage too. I guess I'll try to cover it with remay as a deterrant. Funny, the deer always like the bitter greens best, also.