If the earnest team working on Vermont’s Farm to Plate were shooting a video add for buying local veggies they couldn’t have gotten away with it. If our grandmothers overheard us, they would be pleased as punch. Even as I sit here I’m thinking – did that really happen? Did two teenage boy neighbors ask separately for how to prepare the chard gratin?
And imagine the satisfaction if the USDA Specialty Crop Grant shepherds could have just heard the curiosity shift to confidence… “Oh, I could MAKE that!” And the conversation shifted to the subject of the black currant meringues but followed the same basic script.
In a week when goat kids were birthed, when the beet and chard transplants weathered the single digit mid March nights in the hoop house and when we were warmed by those who gathered for Thursday night farmstand soup and weekend sugaring season brunch, all laced with farm tours and bouncy goat kids, these exchanges stood out.
And as we stepped out into these good and cold March mornings the comradery of Floating Bridge Food and Farms Cooperative bringing their wares (herb teas, honey, syrup, caramel, pizza, berries, etc.) and talents (making herb medicines, sugar on snow and maple candy!) and the hope for small farms contained in the prospect of kids preparing chard dishes, all seems possible, even if still a bit uphill.