Today was the Heirloom Tomato Festival in Pierceton, Indiana. Vendors from all over the county gathered to give tell of their fresh produce, original crafts, and donated food. My mother had a booth. We sold tomatoes, eggs, onions, herbs, and some crafts she had lying around. And I must say, that I was impressed. I was impressed by the amount of people that approached my mother’s booth with no intention of purchase, but rather the intention of sharing their information. Four or five couples were also organic farmers, who were looking to my mother for advice or expertise in some area or another. “I planted a Black Sea tomato and it came out looking more like a Beefsteak than I thought it should.” Sometimes my mother knew the answers, and sometimes she didn’t. But the fact that they were sharing this information was gratifying.
But there is more to it than that, this was not the exchange of one farmer to the next. None of these people grew up in agricultural families, at least they grew up as far from it as you can in a small Midwest town. Instead they started as hobbyists, supplementalists, organic junkies who weren’t getting what they wanted from the grocer. And they started their own farms with their own produce and livestock and they’re exchanging names and rates of local butchers and it is beautiful. It’s like stepping back a few hundred years to the excited agriculturalists of the time, who truly saw the growth and harvest of crop as a livelihood. Of course these people are also welders, daycare supervisors, and septic inspectors, but no matter, they are embracing the land they live on instead of simply living on top of it.
I would have never expected this from my hometown. I thought it was much too overpopulated with close-minded obese Walmart patrons who could give a shit less where their consumer goods were coming from. But I was wrong.
Generalizations are mostly wrong.
