Well, it’s the first Wednesday of the month again. Time once again for the most anticipated event on the internet: my monthly HOMEGROWN.org blog!
Before I get going with this months nonsensical rant, can someone tell me who the fuck decided to call these online articles a blog?
Anyway, my veggie season pretty much rapped up last Monday when the Central Square, Cambridge Farmers Market closed for the year. Now I have moved on to firewood production and sales. However, I did manage to get away for a few days, leaving last Tuesday morning for Disneyworld with my 5 year old son, Stephen Jr., plus my sister, her husband and their 3 kids, as well as my mother and father.

Now, I want to assure you that Disneyworld is not exactly my kind of place, and I thought about turning this months rambling into an anti-Disney tirade, but, well, I had a pretty good time. Mainly because my son had so much fun. It was a lot of work for me, and, by the time I got back, I was pretty worn out. But, again, seeing it through my son’s eyes made it more than worth it to me. Especially after months of  months of our relationship consisting of time spent together at farmers markets or csa drop offs – no time for “normal” parent child activities like swimming, fishing, book burnings, etc. It was nice to break away from it all and to do my best to help him have a little fun. He deserved it – after he helped me at the farmers markets (and he did help – his job was helping to unload the truck. I was shocked at the last Union Square Farmers Market when he was carrying bushels of sugar pumpkins – approx. 40 lbs – the 75 feet from my truck to my tent – and also loading the empty produce bins back into the truck). It was also nice for he and I to spend some time with my family, as our farm schedule rarely allows for that.
Amongst the highlights of my trip:

• As the plane took off, my son turned to me and asked “are we leaving the planet now?”
• At the monorail, he asked why it was called a monorail – so I explained to him that it only has one rail, and mono means one. “Is that Spanish?” he asked, amid the coincidentally mainly-Hispanic co-riders, all of whom erupted in laughter.
• At Chef Mickey’s place (insert finger in throat if you feel the need to vomit), where the highlight is “character dining” (Google search that for full explanation), I tried to get him to ask Minnie Mouse for a lap dance. He refused.
• At the Biergarten in the Epcot Center – getting him a “beer” (rootbeer, of course), his watching the band and saying “they’re not as good as Doc Watson“.
• Loading his plate at the buffet table and saying: “I got a really good buffet” – as if the buffet was the entree rather than the style of dining.

Anyway, enough of my human side. I know that’s not why my millions and millions of simple-minded readers tune in to me every month!
I don’t know… I was going to write a bit about my own horrible time farming in Florida, which started with my old Coonhound,  Joad, getting killed by an alligator, then my getting ripped off by the broker I was dealing with, and finally ending with a night of whiskey, guns and a woman (True story. Buy me a few drinks and you can hear it). But I think I will just call it quits for the evening and leave you with the words I exclaimed as I left Disneyland, to the horror of my co-travelers, as I raised my hand in the infamous salute: HEIL DISNEYRIECH!!!!

Hello all!
Well, today is Stephen Jr’s first day of kindergarten, and I am scrambling to figure out how I can break away from the CSA harvest for 20 minutes, so that I may see him get on the bus for his first day. A few weeks ago his starting school “hit” me, and I was feeling a bit blue about it – the whole ‘where have the years gone’-type thing. So I decide that I when I pick him up at day care so we can make our nightly CSA drop off, I am going to spoil him a little bit, so that – at least for a few more minutes – he can be my little boy once again, and I can let him know how special he is to me.

So I stop at the store, pick him up a chocolate milk and a treat and a little toy that had caught his eye a few days before, and proceed to pick him up and begin our journey into Somerville. He eats his snack, drinks his milk, then plays with his toy for a few minutes as I heap worship upon him, and I start to feel reassured that he will always, in some form, be my little fella. Then, as we get on the highway, he turns to me and says: “Daddy, when you get really old and die, do I still have to be a farmer?”

As Rodney Dangerfield would say, “I don’t get no respect”.
Well, I wish I had more time to write, but I have got to start harvest for tonight, and that pretty much sums up my life right now-next time, Steve.

More about Steve: “Common Ground: The Farmer and the Musician“. Parker Farm’s Facebook page is here.

I grow vegetables on 35-acres in Lunenberg, MA. My farm – Parker Farm – has been operating for 19 years and, if it doesn’t kill me, I’m planning to farm this land for many years to come.