How can you keep people down on the farm?
So it's harvest time, and that means that at least in my region we're having a bumper crop of farmer's markets all over town. And since my family has a lot of connections to small-scale agriculture we're pretty committed to buying locally grown produce. And that means this time of year we go to lots of farmer's markets. (If you like to cook and like to try new ingredients it's also cool to see all the variations on the basic hatfull of products we get at supermarkets -- even trendy Whole-Foods supermarkets.)
Anyway, one thing I've noticed is that you just don't see a lot of small produce farmers, small-scale fishermen or -women, or small-scaled ranchers who aren't height/weight proportional (as they say in the personals.)
I hadn't thought much about that before but the other day a friend mentioned that what we consider peak training condition for athletes today was pretty much just the way things were back in the days of horse and hand tools. Small farmers today have it a little "softer" but woah there are some kind of happy, healthy, hard-working, good-looking, socially conscious, market savvy and *incredibly buff* women and men out there!
I agree, figleaf. I visit my neighorhood farmers market every Sunday for the gnarled heirloom tomatoes and ten varieties of fingerling potatoes and flamboyant bunches of flowers, yeah...but I'm always discreetly checking out who's selling them, too. Can't help but be slain by a guy whose Carhartts fit him just so who also can discuss the interesting problem of keeping crows out of the melon field.
[Oh yeah, or for me, a woman in Carhartt bibs and a worn work t-shirt. Mmm! Thanks, Jen! --fl]
Hah. Funny you should say that.
I've noticed, since I've started to share the workload in the cultivation of a friends "veggie garden"*, that I'm suddenly height/weight proportional myself.
*She calls it a veggie garden. I call it "bigger than my 2 bedroom house".
I can't help wondering how its going to go, however, when the crops start coming in (southern hemisphere, we're preparing and planting right now). We're not allergic to cooking it all and eating it.
Overshare: Her geese are scared of me. Maybe they understood, when I threatened to stuff them with chestnuts if they didn't get their greedy beaks out of our seed-bucket.
[Yeah, it's surprising how quickly working with plants can whip you into shape that way -- it's a lot of work but (after the first couple of days, anyway) you don't notice how physical it really is. Thanks, RPB. --fl]