Lida Farm

I’m sure you’ve heard the term, an honest living?

For me the term conjures up some guy in the 1930’s mob-ridden America who puts on his work boots each morning and heads off with a lunch bucket to go mining or pour steel. In his world, a bunch of other guys in the neighborhood make all kinds of easy money through various schemes, drive fast cars, and hang out with fast women. By the end of this storyline in my mind, the mobsters reluctantly acknowledge the working stiff has it right. A moral story run over and over again.

I feel like some mythical honest entrepreneur when leaving a farmers market. I bring vegetables I grew with my two hands, customers and I banter face-to-face, and they hand me cash for the vegetables. It feels good for both buyer and seller, in part due to this being one of the longest-running forms of economy in human history. In our earliest civilizations, we created face-to-face markets. Some, like the Grand Bazaar Maree and I visited in Turkey where I worked 20 years ago, have been running since America was first discovered by Europeans.

Honest living. I feel like we want it more than ever because the world keeps getting more complicated and products become less tangible. People today sell a collection of pixels for millions of dollars. Entrepreneurs make good livings off small fees tacked onto billions of dollars moving from one electronic account to another. Or just have ‘evergreen’ products that you syndicate that provide passive income. Trades. Crypto. Financial derivatives. What are we doing? More ways to get those fast cars but today we videotape ourselves doing it – which, BTW, we can sell as our ‘secret sauce’ to get rich quick.

I’m afraid that I’m now veering off into a rant or turning into the ornery old farmer shaking his fist at all modernity… End of the day, we all want work that is rewarding that contributes to others in a meaningful way. We need to find ways of recognizing that in what we do and it’s difficult to say I know that for anyone else. I only know that, for me, farming is not only honest work, but work that is immeasurably rewarding and also provides some of the best deep sleep the world over.

In the box:

• Green Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Green Garlic: This is simply garlic that has not yet been cured (it’s fresh out of the ground). Pull out the cloves as you would any garlic and use as you would any garlic – just a bit more pungent.
• Green Leaf Lettuce
• 1# of Green Beans
• 2-3 Salad Turnips: White radish-y looking things with green tops. A lot like a radish, but with a mellow flavor.
• Kohlrabi: Green bulb with little leaves. Just peel, salt, and eat.
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers: European types with a thinner skim than your American slicer.