From purple eggplants and yellow squash to bright orange carrots and the greenest of beans.
Every week, Robert Auge lays out the week’s harvest in neatly organized and labeled bins on a repurposed horse trailer to sell at local farmers markets.
Even after 15 years, Auge still greets every customer with a big smile and a contagious laugh.
“It’s more (about) the quality of food you get, not only for your own family but that you are able to share with other people,” Auge says. “It just gives you a great sense of satisfaction to take a seed and get something from it.”
He began growing his own food in the 1970s — shortly after he married his wife, Nelda. He was inspired by his “old-time gardener” father-in-law, who enjoyed growing his food for most of his life, coming of age in the era of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era.
“There is a lot to be said for canning, preserving, growing your own food, because a lot of his upbringing was in Vaughn, (N.M.), and there was no Walmart in Vaughn,” Auge said with a chuckle. “And when you live in that kind of environment that they had in those years, you’ll learn lots of tricks. The old-timers can teach us a whole lot of things if we just paid attention.”
After a short break from gardening and growing, Auge said he and Nelda got back into it and began selling their excess at local farmers markets, following the recession of 2008 to pad their retirement fund.
“We got back into it too so that we would have a good source of food — preserving, canning, freezing — and it’s really paid off,” Auge said. “You have things to eat when the stores are empty.”
Original source found here.
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