one of my earliest memories is seeing a
hyacinth blooming at my grandmother's I
was not permitted to touch it so I
remember distinctly having my hands
behind my back and bending over to smell
that hyacinth from there on I was hooked
we don't think about the fact we've been
doing it thirty four years that we just
think about you know this is another day
in the life of paraffin farm but many
times we stand up for picking something
you look around you go wow this is what
I do for a living because it doesn't
feel like this is a job we just exist
this is what we do when we've done it a
long time and haven't become the old
rats in the barn amongst our peers it
was all his idea yeah she always says it
was my we wanted to live in the country
and make our living be our own bosses
there was no family land because we're
first-generation farmers those early
years were pretty lame we lived in a
tent for eight months we lived without
running water for 450 days started
building the house we built about a
third of it they'd had all the plumbing
in the kitchen if we didn't make it work
we would lose our home and so that was a
real incentive to get up at 5 o'clock in
the morning to cover stuff when freezes
were coming in or you know a storm was
about to happen
one thing about agriculture is it's kind
of tyrannical the reason that it's
always in your head is that it has to
always be in your head you could have a
weather event and the greenhouses could
blow down or go something floods or
lightning takes it out a huge tree and
it falls on a building you know just one
never thinks about what somebody else's
real work is for the two of us I would
say that it's taken both brains most of
the time I don't think I would have been
graceful had I been out doing this all
the time by myself and then and Alex
come home from another job and there
have been some minor crisis that had to
be dealt with at 4:00 a.m. and he stayed
in bed no
so we managed the four acres with four
people the two of us and two other folks
so not a person an acre is what it takes
tit to maintain at this level and this
intensity and so we're all about an even
balance of energy expenditure here at
the farm and no heroic efforts we just
want it to sort of flow through the
season because it's a long year
it's like cooking it's all orchestrated
serve it by five o'clock
boom that's done and it sort of marks
the successful end of a week I got the
last week water you want
in the part of the market May through
September we get up here at 4:15 or 4:30
so that we can be out the door and a
half an hour with the coffee and over to
the packing shed to load the last bits
of things and they get the town slide on
the bed
mortiser if I wanted to hit your brother
are you going to that big wedding today
we have about a hundred hours a year to
make her that's 20 good Saturday's at
five hours of Saturday so we don't screw
around with those hundred hours for us
the farmers market is fun
it's very social you get immediate
feedback good and bad addy
how are you food the people immediately
eat is really such a common denominator
you're sweating away working hard and
sometimes you think you know why am i
doing it and you've got a market people
go I just love that thing and so you go
great I'll go out do it again
realize there's not very many of us who
have been at it three decades going for
decades so we have a point of view that
most folks don't
every once in a while you know we think
about how convenient it would be to live
in town and walk to the grocery store
and go to the movies or go to a
restaurant one of our neighbors Glen
lived by himself and one day folks at
where's Glen
so someone went by the house and he had
died sitting in the chair on the front
porch looking at the view with a
coca-cola in his hand and he was just
sitting there dead its doornail but just
sitting there and you can tell that he
had just and I would love to be that be
the way that I go I just sit there
looking at the view that'd be perfect
in my early adulthood as a young mother
I was a waitress and a bartender and
then I was going to open an uptown
branch in my vintage clothing store and
accidentally stumbled on the building
that's the upper line and persuaded my
son to quit his job as a chef we opened
up a line with 40 chairs and no money
for the first weeks payroll in January
1983