In April, we picked the always-thrilling first crop (I still love spinach for that reason), and soon after came the more glamorous strawberries and rhubarb. When the June heat hit, zucchini production exploded, cucumbers were next, and blueberries came in on the Fourth of July. In the height of summer, we picked and sold hundreds of bushels of tomatoes. After Labor Day, we had to pick sweet corn before school, and when we came up the hill from the bus stop in the afternoon, a note on the kitchen table told us where to pick beans. By late September, we were all half praying for an early, hard frost to end our vegetable-driven days, but the cool-weather crops were still to come. In October, we lugged baskets of butternut squash, and our hands got numb from washing turnips and collard greens in big tin buckets. For vegetable farmers, winter is a great relief, like silence after listening to jack hammers. I don't know how dairy farmers keep going twelve months a year.
