I will be frank; we need customers.

People love the open fields and the green grass, and they look appreciatively at the hard work they can see in a well-kept field of vegetables as they drive past at 60 miles an hour.

Three years ago, during Covid, shoppers avoided big and small stores alike and shopped outside wherever they could and stopped at road stands and farmer’s markets, if they were open, and that year brought a bumper return for local farmers. Now, not so much. Not only are customers few and far between, but our local farmers have lost entire crops and fields of produce to the unpredictable weather from hell. The last month, following a dry spring during which if we had not irrigated our garlic three times from a huge 275-gallon tank we would have had nothing, there came rains like hurricane events -- four inches here, eight inches there, and then, a day later, two more inches and more. Fields were so wet they could not be cultivated. Early harvests were abandoned. We lost most of our cabbage and all the parsley and broccoli. Any potatoes planted on low or marginal soils have been lost. It’s a risk we take.

I know other dirt farmers have suffered the same and worse. Some have lost their corn and certainly all have lost their low growing vine crops like squash, underwater so long they are mush, the vines suffocated. And the strawberry growers suffered berries struck black by the falling rain. In one field, our tomatoes are stunted by the rain and clouds, while in the upper field, they were trimmed down to stalks by the deer. Recently, we have been able to fence that area, and with two days of herculean effort, tilled those almost lost tomatoes and we are ready to stake them and prune.

All is not lost. Our local farm stands are open with whatever they have; Froehlich’s on Albany Post, Hoeffner’s on Goodwill Road, our own humble stand here on Route 52. Charley Rowe and Son Produce in Maybrook.

My helpers are paid every Friday. If the stand does not produce the cash flow needed to pay them, the money comes out of my savings. I am not complaining. I am fine. It’s just that it would be nice to be at least sustainable. Remember Maeve Harkin? She worked at my stand for many summers, starting in high school. She earned herself a full scholarship to Hunter College in New York City and is now in Madrid studying Spanish and the Spanish culture, in part through the earnings she made thanks to the customers who shopped at our stand. Spending locally really counts. And spending cash counts even more. If you spend $50 cash with me, I can spend the full $50 on other purchases, or for labor. And then they can spend the same full $50. If I take Venmo, I lose 3 percent, and then the next transaction for the same $50 loses 3%, and pretty soon, using credit for every purchase, the value of the starting $50 is less than $0; while if spending the same $50 bill cash over and over, keeps its original value. It has not lost 3% to the bank on every subsequent transaction.

I loved watching Anthony Bourdain’s show “Parts Unknown.” He was a fine writer, and he was able to take me places with his certain unrepentant charm I otherwise never would have seen. With a take on one of his famous quotes, “Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you have never been…. …Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.” I might say: step out of your comfort zone. Stop at that roadstand. Turn around if you missed it. If there is no one there and it is open, stop anyway, you might find it is self-serve, everything labeled. Trust is in the air. Read the little signs. Buy the local honey. Have a taste of it on your finger. Buy the finest vanilla bean ice cream tonight and drizzle the honey right on top like stripes on a zebra. Peaches and tomatoes not quite ripe? Buy them anyway. Put them on your kitchen windowsill. Let them ripen like your mother did. Over ripe? Make a red sauce in your cast iron skillet. Make a peach cobbler. Travel with cash. Don’t surrender.

And with a real nod of the head, as for Anthony, if only he had taken his own advice rather than his own life.