It's not even 5 a.m. on a cool Saturday, but Mac Stone and Ann Bell Stone are already running late for work.
At their Georgetown farm, they load their white minivan with boxes
and baskets of produce, positioning each to maximize space. "It's an
art," Ann said.
A bronze truck still has to be loaded with more produce, and Mac has
to pick up a large trailer with refrigerators and tables. If the Stones
aren't set up at the Lexington Farmers Market by 7 a.m., they can miss
out on the first wave of dedicated customers most likely to buy their
products.
City dwellers may dream about rural life, but managing a farm can be
as physically and intellectually challenging as running any small
business. The days can be long and hard and the rest short and sparse.
The Stones, in fact, have to begin work much, much earlier than before dawn on a summer morning to succeed at the market.
Their work actually begins in the winter when they buy seed, decide
what crops to grow and, just as important, when to plant them. Some are
grown in greenhouses and transplanted onto their 750-acre Elmwood Stock
Farm. Others are sown directly in the field.
Once the crops begin producing, the Stones harvest three times a
week to have produce for the market and to keep the vegetables coming.
The work begins long before sunrise
7 A.M. FRIDAY
Eight migrant workers begin picking crops long before the heat of the sun can dry out the fresh vegetables.
They have a list of what the farm's restaurant customers have
ordered; but some crops must be picked if they are ready. Leftover
veggies will be sold at the market.
The farm contracted the laborers through H2A work visas. They are
guaranteed a minimum number of hours of work and are housed in a
trailer on the farm. The first workers arrived in April, and most will
be home by Thanksgiving, Mac said.
NOON
Most of the vegetables have been washed and put away in a large
refrigerator. Vegetables will never be more fresh than immediately
after they are picked, so they try to refrigerate them as soon as
possible, Mac says.
"It is our job not to ruin all of our hard work," he said.
Mac begins to sort through restaurant orders. This is usually Ann's
responsibility, but she is helping air a farmers market promotion at a
local radio station.
Mac looks at the order list and gets the items from the refrigerator. He places them in boxes and carefully weighs them.
"I thought I worked hard until I fell in with this family," Mac said. "This whole bunch gets up early and works hard."
Both Ann and her brother, John Bell, attended the University of
Kentucky. Ann settled on a degree in consumer economics -- she changed
her major several times -- and worked a few part-time jobs while taking
graduate school classes.
But she couldn't settle away from her family's farm.
"I always knew that I didn't want to work in an office with set hours," she said. "The farm is where I grew up."
Ann's grandfather bought the farm in the 1940s. It once could grow
60 to 70 acres of tobacco, but in recent years the farm has had to
diversify its crops, in part because it now supports three families:
Ann and Mac; John Bell and his fiancee; and Cecil Bell Jr. and his
wife, Kay.
Each family operates as an independent business, but Ann is in
charge of marketing and selling everything that is produced, she said.
Doing that has taken some creativity. One strategy has been to offer
free recipes for products they sell. Offering new and different
products -- like edible flowers to go on salads -- is another.
"You always have to try something different," she said.
Sometimes customers come to them asking for something different. Two Russian families have requested beef tongue.
"A lot of our customer base is from Eastern Europe, and they look for items you can't find in the supermarket," Ann said.
2 P.M.
Alison Reese, a 20-year-old University of Kentucky student, arrives
from the Georgetown farmers market driving a white van with leftovers.
She is one of a handful of college-age workers who help out at the five
markets the Stones sell at in the summer.
Items that need to be refrigerated are removed from the white van.
About 2:30 p.m., another part-time employee of the Stones, Ross
Compton of Lexington, arrives to pick up orders for the restaurants.
Produce is loaded into the van, the last orders to be delivered placed
in the back.
"We spend an awful lot of time doing this," Mac said. "Trucking it in, trucking it out."
4 P.M.
Ann leaves to go to an orchard in Woodford County to buy wholesale
apples. She also stops by the bank to pick up change for Saturday's
market.
Mac heads back to the house to start on "chicken chores."
In his kitchen, he cleans two dozen eggs with a small brush. Later in the evening, he will clean 58 dozen more.
The eggs are brown and darker than those found in most supermarkets.
Mac says that is because his chickens eat a healthy diet of insects,
grass, clover and grain that commercial chickens don't get.
The result is a better-tasting egg that studies say has a better
fatty acid profile than most eggs, said Mac, who runs Kentucky State
University's research farm.
The eggs are brushed, rinsed in water and placed in a dish rack
where Mac pours a small amount of bleach solution to sanitize them.
He then picks up each egg and places it against a wooden,
rectangular box with a hole and a light inside. He checks to see if the
eggs are cracked or bad.
"Here's one that looks normal, but I could hear it when I touched
it," he said as he pressed the egg against the light. "This one has
cracks on the end."
Later in the evening, Mac feeds the chickens that lay eggs and Cornish hens that will be eaten.
He checks their water and moves the hens' "house" and electric fence so they have fresh grass.
When it gets dark, the chickens go inside the hen house to stay away from coyotes and other predators.
Mac and Ann make it to bed sometime after 11 p.m., about four and a half hours before they will get up the next morning.
4:30 A.M. SATURDAY
Mac and Ann are already loading produce to take to market.
Several boxes of tomatoes sit on a table near the large refrigerator and boxes of cabbage rest on a dolly.
The Stones pack a lot of food because they are expecting nice weather, which means a big crowd.
The items taken to market include: sweet corn, squash, zucchini,
cabbage, salad mix, peppers, cucumbers, okra, basil, tomatoes,
potatoes, blueberries, peaches, cantaloupe, apples, edible flowers,
chicken, beef, lamb, eggs and green beans.
"If we don't bring a lot, people will not buy it," Mac said. "It will look like it is leftovers or has been picked through."
After the van and truck are loaded and Mac picks up a trailer with tables and refrigerators, he is off to the market.
During the 30-minute drive to Lexington, he explains how a marketing firm surveyed customers for farmers at the Saturday market.
"By and large they are the so-called NPR crowd," he said. "Higher
income, more educated, concerned about their surroundings and food."
6 A.M.
Mac makes it to Lexington and begins setting up tents and tables. Ann arrives about 15 minutes later.
Some of the tables are really doors set atop baskets. They use them
as tables, Mac says, because "they are easy to store, and they're free."
The baskets are worn from years of use. "I made the mistake of
trying to throw one away once," Mac said, laughing. "Not around the
Bell family."
By 6:40 a.m. the first customers begin to trickle into the market.
Mac and Ann rush to get the food on the tables so customers can see it.
They are careful to place each vegetable in the same place every week
so customers won't assume they are out of a certain item.
7 A.M.
An unwelcome surprise: The sky turns gray and rain begins to fall. "This is totally going to ruin the day," Ann said.
By 7:30, the rain has stopped -- for the time being -- and the market is bustling.
3:30 P.M.
The tables are packed up and the Stones are ready to go home.
Ann says off-and-on rain dampened sales, so a lot of cucumbers and greens were donated to God's Pantry, an area food bank.
The Stones are home and everything has been put back in place by 5 p.m., marking the end of a nearly 13-hour workday.
They will rest Sunday, but Monday they'll get back to work, doing their chores and preparing for next week's markets.
