The display of pulleys and levers was stripped bare. The ground was muddy. The fair was over.

Before this Friday, I had never been to the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair.

To farm is to care for the land, to cultivate it, to honor it.

Walk outside, and the air is wet. Touch the ground, and the dirt is dry.

I've always maintained a stubborn distance from flower farming.

To farm is to wrestle with nature, to hijack her own powerful evolutionary flow to our culinary ends.

What I gleaned from the glean.

It might be cliché to go on about our bountiful mid-July harvest, but I think it's appropriate in this case.

Martha’s Vineyard’s first agricultural fair was a “splendid success,” leaving everyone “astonished and delighted.”