Summer may begin in June but, for many parts of the country, gardens don’t reach their peak until August. Modern grocery stores manage to keep us satisfied with produce year round, but there is nothing like the flavor of farm fresh tomatoes, peaches, or sweet corn. And there is nothing like the experience of buying from local growers who are proud of their wares.

A farm is a section of land devoted to the production and management of food, either produce or livestock. The land and buildings that are associated with a farm are called the farmstead. This is the basic unit of agriculture. A farm can be owned by a enterprise, a single individual, family, or community, or it may be owned by a corporation or company.

In my early youth, I grew up on a farm where we had 33 cows, 18 we milked twice a day, 3 horses, some chickens, 60 acres of corn, hay and pasture. It was a farm that my maternal grandparents owned. There were barns, tractors, long hours and Sundays in church. We grew corn, hay and pasture. We had a large garden and some fruit trees. We hunted, foraged, and grew what we ate and used in most cases.

That farm woman would be me; a small town, farm grown girl, now small town farm wife and mother. There is a lot to be said about the benefits of being raised on a farm but I recall as a child always wanting to live in town, and my town friends wanted to be on the farm. The same can be said for our kids as they were growing up, but obviously there have always been pros and cons to both urban and rural living.