Anna Sylvia tends to her draft horse Virgil every day at Sweetened Water barn in Edgartown. Whether after work at the SBS Grain store or after school during the winter, Anna takes at least an hour of her day to clean out Virgil’s stall, bathe and ride him. Yes, Anna rides her draft horse.

When you go to the Farmers’ Market, you trust the food you’re buying because you buy it straight from the farmer. You know where it came from, how it was grown, who picked it, and you are able to ask questions a grocery store clerk might not be able to answer. With the Island Grown Initiative’s (IGI) poultry mobile processing unit, knowing where your food comes from has taken on a new meaning for Vineyarders — they are now able to buy Island-raised chickens in the market.

On a recent Friday morning, a group of Edgartown School students could be found in the back of the building, grossly immersed in studies. They had no books, no pencils, no teachers telling them to quiet down, only their hands for tools. The six students, all under the age of nine, were wildly excited to be back to school to pick from the beds of vegetables they had started during the school year.

Food is for your stomach, and flowers are for your soul. That’s what Victoria Riger tells people when they ask why she sells flowers rather than produce. Ms. Riger, Krishana Collins, and Ken DeBettencourt are all farmers. You won’t see their names among the big farm names on the Island, but their bouquets of flowers fill our homes with color and scents that no potato can do. They are a few of the flower growers on the Vineyard.

The Vineyard is lucky to be an Island full of commercial farms that produce the best of the bounty, supplying Islanders with fresh lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes and blueberries. But the backyard farmer is another part of the mix. While many people trek to farmers’ markets and grocery stores for their produce, other Islanders have only to walk a few yards from their doors.