Pretty as a picture Farm stands a portrait of harvest’s colorful bounty

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If you’ve been to your local farm this month, then you know that the fruits of this late summer season read like a poem.

Sweet Temptation.

Silver Queen.

Yukon Gold.

Paula Red.

Jetstar.

Glamour.

Supersonic.

Heirloom.

That’s corn, potatoes, apples, tomatoes. And if they are the lyrical words of the season, then the farm stand – that small, succinct collection of fruits, vegetables and flowers – is a haiku. With all due respect to farmers markets and grocery chains, the farm stand is one of the miniature, untouted gifts of rural life. It runs at its own speed, sets its own rules, delights in plenty and shrugs at formalities.

I set off recently to find farm stands that were, more or less, on my drive home. The more I shopped at stands, where I was looking for vegetables to make a meal fully inspired by food in season, I realized that the farm stand is one of the residual symbols of the way life used to be, when the neighbor’s farm down the road was the place your grandparents and great-grandparents bought food. Today, the farm stand is a wagon or truck on the side of the road. It may or may not be there tomorrow, or an hour from now. Or it may be a small table or shelf in someone’s front yard with a sign instructing you to help yourself and put your money in the can.

Early in my journey, I discovered that it’s best to get to farm stands in the morning, because morning is the farmer’s time of day. But if you understand that there’s a take-what-you-get mood to farm stands, then there’s no rush to arrive, no sense of limited hours, grabbing shoppers or long lines. Sometimes it’s just you and a basket of tomatoes and a coin jar at sunset.

As poetic as the farm stand may be, it represents both work and income on the part of those independent farmers who forgo the more organized forum of the farmers market or food cooperative.

“It’s pure hell,” said Mark Hardison of Annie’s Pride Farm. A man of genial bluster, Hardison and his wife Beth run a large farm stand under a shade tree on Route 1 in north Ellsworth. One recent cool day, the wagon was decorated with varieties of squash, white and red potatoes, tomatoes, zucchinis, green beans, broccoli, blueberries, peppers, carrots, corn, dried flowers and more. The more, believe it or not, was strawberries. This time of year, Hardison gets the sweet, red berries every other day from Quebec. It was a surprise to find them, but a sure way to jazz up a fruit salad I was planning.

While Hardison and I spoke, about 20 minutes passed and more than a dozen cars stopped to make purchases. It was clear that many of the buyers were repeat customers. One woman was asking for a type of sweet apples she had purchased from the stand last year.

“We have days in the summertime when we ask ourselves why we do this,” Hardison said in a break from the action. They start in June and sell through October, sometimes as late as the 31st, and work seven days a week, with Beth harvesting and Mark selling. He also makes runs to pick up apples and corn at other farms. The stand is closed on Mondays, but it’s still a workday at the farm. Otherwise, the stand “opens at 10 a.m. if things go right,” a sign reads.

The Hardisons get exactly no days off in the summer.

Beth, it turned out, had the answer to why she and her husband work so hard at a job that does not sustain them financially through the year. (In the winter, she waits tables and he delivers electrical supplies.)

“I came here every summer as a girl. It’s all I know,” said Beth. She had just returned from picking vegetables with a few high-school kids who work for her. Her arms and legs were tan, and she was barefoot as she sat on a stool in the kitchen of the 14-acre farm up the road from the stand. It’s Beth’s grandmother Annie after whom the farm is named. “My grandfather used to take us to the top of the field and say that someday this would all be ours. I just assumed I would always be here. So I do this because it was my grandparents’ farm. My husband does it because he loves me.”

Scott Howell and Sara Bushman, another husband-and-wife team, run Organic Harvest Farmstand in Blue Hill. They work out of a wooden building near their home on Route 175. Most of their food is grown on their own land but they also sell fresh produce and farm products from a few others farms in the area. Unlike the Hardisons, Howell and Bushman, both of whom are from Missouri, grow food that is certified organic by the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association.

On a recent sunny day, Bushman was cleaning blueberries in a winnower while her border collie Patch played with her son. Her husband was at the house caring for their two toddlers – they have four children in all – and Bushman was running the stand.

“This is the big, bountiful time in Maine,” she said. “This is the time when we get things that last, the squash for example. It can be very exciting.”

Indeed. I picked up four types of melons to mix with my strawberries.

As exciting as that was for me, I could see how busy the day had been for this family. Soon, Bushman told me, they would be forced to conform to the school schedule of the two older children and that would add another dimension to an already taxing and concentrated selling time.

She also spoke about an openness that can come along with running a farm stand. Most shoppers are used to the anonymity of larger, corporate food markets. But at Organic Harvest, it’s “more like coming to our home,” she said, “and I think people like that.”

But summer shoppers are sometimes misinformed about what farm stands can provide, added Bushman, who studied zoology at college in Hawaii. (Howell has a degree in sustainable agriculture from the University of Maine, where he helped establish a food guild on campus.)

“Some customers think the farm stand is like a grocery store, and that we can provide all things all the time. A lot of people have a hard time understanding that everything in my mother’s generation was eaten by season. And that’s what the farm stand goes by: season. Meeting peoples’ unrealistic expectations is a challenge,” she explained.

Not far off in Trenton, where Peter Mayo and Jill Warren run J&P’s Market, which features fruits from other states, as well as vegetables, flowers, jams, jellies and meats, a woman visiting her sister on Mount Desert Island was buying a chicken for dinner.

“I was so happy to discover this place,” she said. “I come here almost every day.”

That’s the other joy of the farm stand. A sense of the everyday. My personal favorite is a small, unmanned farm stand in Orland. It has a simple sign – Nana’s Flowers – stuck in the ground, and it is the last little spot I pass on my way home. A basket of tomatoes, four onions and a few potatoes. Humble offerings, but like a minimalist poem, it qualified. Especially when the tomatoes cost $1 a pound and were, that night in a salad with cucumbers and goat’s cheese, every bit as delicious as a well-rhymed couplet.

The following recipes reflect farm-stand availability as well as farm-stand independence. The amounts and even the ingredients themselves are variable according to the tastes of the cook and the fruits of the season. The key is to have the willingness and daring to adapt.

Tomato Salad

The combination of tomatoes with herbs and garlic is unmistakably one of the best flavors of summer. Use ripe tomatoes and crisp lettuce. A handful of arugula with the bed of lettuce only increases the richness.

4-6 cups mixed lettuce, preferably fresh from the garden, roughly cut into large leaves

2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

5 medium tomatoes, sliced into mouth-size wedges

2 tablespoons fresh herbs, such as tarragon, thyme, basil, parsley, rosemary, chopped

1 cucumber, thinly sliced into medallions

1cup fresh corn (about two ears), steamed lightly

crumbly cheese, such as feta or chevre, for topping

For dressing:

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1-2 garlic cloves, crushed and diced finely (or pushed through garlic press)

1 tablespoon maple syrup

salt and pepper to taste

Combine all vegetables (except lettuce) and herbs in a separate bowl. Prepare dressing, shake well, and pour over mixture. Let sit for one hour. Arrange lettuce on a large platter and top with tomatoes. Sprinkle with cheese and lots of freshly ground pepper. Serve with crusty bread.

Roasted Berry Galette

This recipe is a result of having berries but no time to prepare the pastry dough. No matter how superior homemade pastry is, it is always a good idea to keep frozen pie shells in the freezer just in case someone drops in with a quart of berries. I sometimes leave out the lemon, but I’ve also, at times, included both the lemon juice and zest. It is your choice, but be careful not to add too much liquid or you will end up pouring it off after the galette is finished cooling. If you do, top the galette with vanilla ice cream and drizzle with juice.

1 frozen pie shell

2 cups of blueberries (or any in-season berry)

1 apple sliced into thin wedges

2 tablespoons of sugar

1 tablespoon of apple liqueur

1 teaspoon cinnamon

splash of fresh lemon juice (optional)

2 tablespoons melted butter

more sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, gently toss berries in sugar, juice and liqueur. Arrange apple slices decoratively around edge of pie shell. (Reserve several slices for finishing garnish.) Brush apples with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon, and more sugar if desired. Pour blueberry mixture into center of pie, spreading evenly toward the apples slices. Decorate top with reserved apple slices, forming a star. Brush top with butter – as well as more sugar or cinnamon if desired. Place pie on baking sheet to catch any liquid that may spill over sides. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until firm and dark, though not burned. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Alicia Anstead can be reached at aanstead@bangordailynews.net.