Welcome to Rumbull's Trip Vermont, I'm Erica Heilman.

This is an hour of conversation with Central Vermont farmer Alan LePage. When I got to Alan's farm up on LePage,

when I got to Alan's farm up on Lepage Road between Barry and Montpelier,

he didn't look real glad to see me.

He was busy stripping kale from its stock and smearing clothes of garlic on hoaggy rolls with

sausage cooking on an old wood stove in his kitchen. He fried up the kale in a pan on the

stove and stirred it with his bare fingers. He was busy. He was making lunch for an army of

apprentice farmers who were out picking vegetables to sell at one of the local

farmers markets.

Alan La Page has been an organic farmer since long before it was a virtue.

And his family's been farming in Central Vermont

since the Civil War.

My friend said that when she first met Alan,

she smelled him before she could see him.

Wood smoke and pickles, she said.

We sat in his kitchen and talked about his family, about gardening, religion, Vermont

history, and gardening again.

Alan the Page has a hungry and avid mind,

and he's a person who is impossible to categorize.

Here is some of what he said.

Was there a time when you first recognized a thrill to what grows. Oh, I always, I worked with my grandfather.

My father didn't farm, but my grandfather,

...