I'm prone to reflections at this time of year. It's of course late November and what else have I got to do but sit by my wood fire and mull over my regrets or count my blessings. But in spite of this cold gray and windy week, I and my crew completed the endless preparation task for the big Thanksgiving Farmers Market in Montpelier, Vermont,

on early Saturday morning about 3 a.m. in spite of us seized a break on my van we

pulled it all off. Of course the aftermath is that my house is a mess.

My back is a little tired and still

the fields have clean up to do and leaks and brussels sprouts out there needing to come in.

I sweated it a little bit, the forecast predicting single numbers should have gone out there and cut the Brussels sprouts with an abundance of caution, but the south wind began to blow. I still have to get some vegetables

into my storage spaces, and I sell them in the winter. I don't export them to other states in

hundred pound lots. I sell entirely locally to customers that I've known for 40 years.

Although I have been known to sell to restaurants and stores,

I prefer selling to people I can talk to and who are using my vegetables.

But even though I'm 62 in my back ain't what it was, I'm still doing what I love, which is I gather a hard thing

for most people to say honestly if I love it so much though why do I make so many

noises to the contrary I've noticed that Americans from hunters as well as the broader American public have a love

hate relationship with agriculture. They like pictures of falling down silos with

snow on fur trees in the background and an old guy in a cap plotting a well-worn path to the barn.

But there are negative opinions about that old guy in the cap,

actually, considered to be an unskilled laborer.

A lot of laborers in the arts of horticulture

and animal husbandry are regarded as unskilled laborer and paid as such in fact.

They are also removed from their lands and homes when they can no longer afford the property taxes or

keep up with the production demands that the payment of those property taxes require.

Well, in many ways I have to say I'm that old guy with a cap on the slippery path to the barn in the morning.

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