Today at the Vegetable Stand (from a respectable distance) I watched Tom, Nina, Makoto, Robin, and Henry cheerfully dispense spring onions, tiny purple and white scallions, spring garlic, four different types of spring potatoes, red, yellow and orange baby carrots, Fioretto, rapini, kale, Swiss Chard, spinach, baby artichokes, red, white, and purple radishes, beets, Brussels sprouts, mustard greens, strawberries, herbs, even fava beans and their leaves… to grateful customers and friends. What a blessing.

As someone commented recently, the greatest generation of our parents and grandparents was asked to fight a brutal war across the seas; all we have been asked to do in these strange and dangerous times is stay in the comfort or our homes. Then there are the selfless souls who keep working on the front lines, as it were, providing essential services to keep us safe, well, and fed, day in and day out. Like our masked and gloved friends at Chino Farm, a mile-and-a-half up river, who patiently – and bravely – market the spring bounty they harvest from the fields each morning.