It’s 9am. I’ve gone through a couple different modes of transportation. A 4:30am Uber to Harvard Square to pick up Tracy, and bring us to South Station. A 45-minute commuter rail ride from South Station to Framingham, where Chris meets us in a dark parking lot. Chris’s car (he’s taken out his son’s car-seat to make room for me, Tracy, and Paul) to Hadley, Mass.
We drive out to Western Mass, and it’s the perfect fall morning. Brown and gold leaves, a little bit of frost in the air. We’re finally going to see the place that we’ve been talking about for the past 3 years. Michael Docter is our favorite farmer, the one responsible (directly and indirectly) for most of the local produce on our menu in 2014. During our first or second year in operation, he ate at the Clover truck, and said to himself, “I want to grow food for them one day.”
Michael is making breakfast when we arrive. He’s got a griddle on, heating up tortillas made by a Mexican family using non-GMO corn grown in Hadley. Later on, we’ll see the corn growing in a field a few miles away. There are fried eggs. We’ll later visit the chickens that laid them. And Michael’s own beautiful watermelon radishes, which we’ll pick and eat straight from the ground. Obviously it’s the best breakfast ever, and a wonderful preview to what the day will hold.
If you join Michael’s Winter CSA, you too can eat delicious breakfasts like these, all winter long!