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“Mommy’s still talking to the Spanish people,”
my 3-year-old son explained to his brother as they waited
for me during our third visit to Essex
Farm in less than a week.
For the record, only English was spoken, though to a young
boy from New York City, Essex Farm was another world with
a language unfamiliar. And seeing Mark Kimball—one of
the proprietors; a tall, string-bean thin guy wearing a floppy
hat adorned with a turkey feather—come in from the fields
on a Belgian gelding-powered plow and talking about whether
the arugula seedlings were taking, it might as well have been
Mars.
It all started with an article I had read in Gourmet
magazine by a guy who challenged himself to go through
the winter months in Vermont eating only locally. Among his
resources was Essex Farm, a CSA run by a young man and his
writer-from-the-city wife. Picturing a kind of Green Acres
meets Sex and the City, I mentioned to my husband that we
should try to visit if ever we found ourselves in the area.
Essex Farm is 5-1/2 hours from our apartment, though a convenient
5-minute drive from the place we rented on the New York side
of Lake Champlain for a family holiday in August. As a CSA,
I knew Essex Farm wouldn’t offer off-the-road retail
shopping, but I hoped it would be okay if we stopped by.
The first time we drove down the long dirt road leading to
the Farm, there were chickens, pigs, turkeys and fields as
far as the eye could see, but no people. After a few, “Helloooos,”
Kristin Kimball walked toward us from the clothes line near
the back of the house. After a friendly exchange, she said
as they “weren’t saucing today,” we could
take as many tomatoes as we’d like from the shed (especially
the ones that look like peaches) and invited us to come back
on Friday, distribution day, saying, “there are always
leftovers.”
Her easy, natural generosity with those tomatoes signaled
a life-altering change in the way I shop and feed my family.
But first, the tomatoes. They were amazing and of the most
stunning quality, variety, color, shape, size and taste I
had ever experienced. While no stranger to the fabulous juiciness
of Jersey tomatoes, I. nonetheless, could have stayed gazing
at those beauties for an hour, but my husband dragged me away
after we carefully placed one of each type in our bag.
I was hooked and counting the minutes till Friday when we
could go back.
Distribution day did not disappoint. I had squirreled away
a bar of English chocolate and a jar of fancy French jam we
had packed from home to bring to the Kimballs so we had something
to exchange. I’m not certain our offering had anything
to do with Mark’s hearty welcome, but he gave us “the
run of the place.” When he thought I was being shy,
he filled countless bags with just-picked green beans, purple
garlic, potatoes with the dirt still clinging to them, more
of those glorious tomatoes, black beans, fresh herbs and his
father’s melon. Then he opened the fridge, whereupon
he encouraged us to take chicken, cuts of pork “so clean,
it’s practically kosher,” milk from their cows
and Kristin’s lovely, light cheese. All the while, he
talked…about life on Essex Farm, how he and Kristin
met (he slaughtered a pig on their first “date”),
the marketing challenges of running a CSA, the delicate balance
of staying financially solvent while pursuing a dream.
While our dinner that night was delicious, the satisfaction
we felt went way beyond taste. Every bite reminded us of Essex
Farm. And eating this way felt safe and right.
After our final visit to return the glass jars in which the
last of the milk and the cheese had only that morning been
rinsed clean, we headed back to the city. Though it is not
possible for us to join the Essex Farm CSA, I didn’t
want to lose the feeling. I vowed to eat as locally as we
could until the following August, our next opportunity to
visit.
And so till then, instead of shopping for my family online
or at the big, discount supermarkets, I steal away from my
office in the middle of the day and take the subway twice
weekly to one of the city’s Green Markets. Sure, it’s
less convenient and more expensive. But the contents of those
bulging bags I bring home inspire me to thumb through my cookbooks
and magazines to find recipes worthy of them. And as the market
transitions from end-of-summer corn and melons to squashes,
chard and beets, I wonder how life goes on the planet Essex
Farm and how their arugula turned out. 
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