Farm & Garden
There is nothing like a couple of rainstorms to set everything right. Here it is Saturday afternoon and I am sitting in the shade of the one tree in my vegetable garden.
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.
For several weeks now I have been complaining about the heat and lack of significant rain. Why should this week be any different? It is difficult for me to maintain a cheerful attitude when everyone is hot and crabby.
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.
I am a poor sport in the heat of the summer. I never understood the song Summertime and the Living Is Easy.
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.