The Library Writer

“Have you ever thought about the word 'hayseed?' a writer friend asked me one day, as we walked through waist-high pastures. What an amazing metaphor. Out of the entire English language, someone chose that word as an insult, but it has poetic double meaning. What are the odds? ...

What a tiny dream a hayseed is! What an outrageous assertion, that a seed could ever amount to anything more than just a single blade of grass. And yet, raveled into that tiny husk is everything our farm has ever needed, or will ever need in the future.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“Everyone contributes something, and I guess I bring the awkward.”
― Abbi Waxman, Adult Assembly Required

“Have you ever thought about time? The continuum that connects the dust of the ancients to the pollen that lands on our noses? Have you ever looked and thought...that thing needs a wrinkle in it?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“As much as I wanted to make all of our customers happy, our farm inevitably began to sell out of certain items each week...

I had been taught that businesses should constantly grow and expand. Owners should demand annual productivity increases, and resources were to be tapped for maximum potential. Like most things in our melting-pot society, the message was a uniquely American blend -- equal parts Manifest Destiny, Yankee ingenuity, and Protestant work ethic. A dash of Horatio Alger seemed to be thrown in for good luck.
Be more! Live more!
Consume! Produce!

...What if, at the end of the day, just growing what we could grow was good enough? And what if we genuinely wanted other family farms to succeed as well? These were the ideas I valued most, and the questions I wanted to answer. Everything else began to feel like noise.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm