I love growing veggies. Don’t really care what kind, I just enjoy planting seeds, tending them and harvesting the crop. For several years we grew a little more than we needed for the winter. Corn, beans, potatoes, peas, pumpkins and squash were the majority of what was planted. That’s what we ate and put up for the long Vermont winter.

The kids grew up hoeing rows of vegetables while singing songs and helping with the harvest. Those were nice times in the sunshine working the large garden with the family. In time we decided to sell some so Uncle Richard was called and together we built a roadside stand to market the crops. Down the road, in either direction were other roadside stands, but I did not give them much thought. We are all farmers and seem to get along so all would be fine. Who’s gonna care that Zack and Zoë are selling a few ears of corn and other vegetables.

Photo courtesy of Jean Snide, www.flickr.com/maidenvt

Apparently, all the books I had read about farmers helping each other were fluffy pipe dreams written by some guy who smoked way too much dope and never got into the business of growing for profit.

At that time, a dozen ears of corn were selling for $1.50 and that is what we charged. Soon, customers were telling us about other growers selling thirteen or fourteen ears at the same price. Then came the mid-August glut of corn and the price dropped to as low as one dollar a dozen. Now, I don’t have an MBA, but even in the early 1980s, one dollar a dozen will not pay the bills. Not being a shy fella, I visited a few of these farmers and asked them why they sold their corn so cheaply. One guy told me to mind my own business and get the hell off his property. He lived one mile down the road. Another smiled and said “in the veggie biz, you must sell some at a loss and some at a profit.” Still another stated he just got what he could and it really did not matter because it’s just extra money.

“Skittles, you gotta be kidding me,” I thought driving home. This is a ton of work and why would somebody grow acres of crops just for the hell of it. Me and Zoë decided to attempt to hold the price line where we could make a profit and give the business another season or two. Further, we figured to increase the quality of the product sold and build a customer base on that theory. Well, it worked out fine for a while and I started expanding the acreage planted. Soon we had two acres of beans, squash, lettuce, beets, peas, cut flowers, onions, winter squash and pumpkins. Add another four acres of potatoes and at the height of production, 15 acres of sweet corn. In addition to the farm stand Zoë and the kids started to attend the local farmers market.

If you think local growers’ attitudes were poor, the methodology and mindset of many vendors at the market was much worse. Sure, some welcome you into the fold, expressing their love of growing, how being organic is a life- style, that the market is all one big happy family, blah, blah blah. But that is so far from the truth it’s criminal. Back then, if you got into the market and thought these folks were your friend’s your dead wrong. Farmers Market’s, in my opinion, should be a place where local farmers sell vegetables they grow, only. Somewhere buying vegetables from farmers/wholesalers, sometimes from another state, and in some instances, from across the country, and selling them as their own. Yeah, OK, Zack, so how do you know?

Well, the first instance happened when we had the roadside stand. A guy would always come by the stand Friday afternoon and buy up what Zoë and the kids had left. Then he started ordering half or full bushels of produce. It all seems cool, right? Well, Zoë goes down to the farmer’s market and sees this guy selling produce that looked an awful lot like ours, especially since some of the produce was still in our boxes. Two weeks later I am driving past his place and a big-named commercial wholesaler is just pulling out of his yard. Boxes of produce are piled high in his door yard, bearing the name of the wholesaler. I would have had a few words with the guy, but he was still asleep, at 8 a.m.. Like farmers can sleep till 8, gimme a break!

Still, we continued to grow produce and flowers at a slight profit for many years. Hard work for sure attempting to get the crops in the cold ground early, covering with row covers to save a little heat, harvesting, and weeding.

Weeding many acres of crops can seem never ending, especially with the ancient equipment we used. I had an old International tractor with mid- and rear-mounted cultivators. An old farmer gave me a crash course in setting them up and operating them. He’d say, “Zack, these cultivators and a hoe is all you need to grow crops,” and he was right. The problem was a crash course in cultivating just gets you started. If you set the width of the cultivators wrong, you bury the crops, killing them. Not close enough and you’ll be hoeing for a long time. I truly admire the farmers who grew good crops before herbicides. The knowledge of cultivation they had is staggering to me.

Then, there was the small, yet significant, labor problem. I have always called myself an equal opportunity kind of guy. My children were taught to do all things and this also pertained to the field crops. My daughter loved flowers and was quite good at tending the cut-flower fields. My son excelled at vegetables and could really weed, pick and sell produce better than I. Sounds good, right? Well, seems there was a slight problem in the field one day. Apparently, the flower bunches made by my son were not acceptable to his sister, and, his sister was not picking veggies properly. Both had their heels dug in. I blame Zoë, she’s Irish, and told them that from now on my son took care of the veggies and his sister managed the flowers. I had the job of picking corn because Zoë did not like the kids coming in with cuts on their faces and arms from the leaves. Personally, I must appear more attractive with the leaf cuts all over me, but that is for another magazine; this is a family publication.

Time moves on and Zack gets older and perhaps a little wiser. The kids move on and the greenhouse/garlic business grows and becomes a job Zoë and I can manage by ourselves. A few years back we sold most of the vegetable equipment and now I’m back to growing plenty of vegetables for the winter and a few friends. I still own several hoes and use them. The weeds never stop.

Zack Winter is a true “native” Vermonter from Rutland County.