Coming up to our 250th Fourth of July, I've had our national stories on my mind. I'm taking the long view away from any particular political present and feeling a part of a thoroughly American story, and moreover, seeing my farm business as an American business that is in step with those same stories most of us have heard before.

There is the quintessential American story of the immigrant coming over with nothing and leaving their next generation better off, and the story of the entrepreneur starting a small business, creating something new that is their own—with the freedom to take risks and fail, and then start over again if it doesn't work out.

And there is the story of the dedicated inventor, like the Wright brothers in their shop, developing new machines to fly. Later, an American first flew across the ocean, and two others were the first to fly around the world—and not as part of any great national or company effort, but as individuals with the passion and dedication to try, and redesign, and try again, on the way to doing something nobody had done before.

It's not that people can't do these things in other countries—and it's not that these stories are or ever were possible for all people to achieve here—but, nonetheless, these are (to me anyway) archetypes of our national stories. The story, the aspiration, is entirely separate from the execution—ours was always a country of promise not yet realized, but possible, which inspired all sorts of people to adopt that story as their own, and do what they could to take steps towards the possible futures they imagined.

It was American innovators, as farm mechanization was being developed in the 19th century, who brought their mowing and harvesting machines to competitions in Europe—and won. It was American companies who developed the farm tractor into its modern form, and in the 1920s International Harvester began to market a whole system of new machinery for tractor cultivation of farm crops. With rural electrification in the late '30s, American companies could market small farm welders to American farmers, who by then had equipment and machinery needing to be repaired—and improved. Other countries did not have home-scale welders at that time, but Americans could innovate and improve their machines and their lives, as mechanization took hold on the farm.

This isn't to say, “Go us, for being the first!”, but simply that I see what I'm doing here on the farm as very much in that tradition. My tractors are International Harvester, because that company continued to build the most useful vegetable tractors. I take that old vegetable equipment and alter it with my American welder to make it do what I need it to do on my own farm. And I harvest vegetables riding on a machine that I devised and built in my own farm shop, a design that I dreamed up, which, as far as I know, has not existed before. The physical work and small-scale farm operation is in the lineage of the small-scale Pennsylvanian farm society of the 18th century, as it trickled down here to Lovettsville as immigrants spread south, something I had in mind while harvesting onions all weekend in 95 degree heat to get the crop in before rain.

The idea of starting a business, itself, is part of the American story—not that people don't start businesses in other countries, but I'd say the small home entrepreneur is one of our American archetypes, and to see it that way allowed me to view taking that risk 15 years ago as a “normal” thing to do—a typical American option—even though I didn't grow up knowing anybody who owned a business or invented anything. The immigrant story, though, trickles down, with my father's Italian family coming over and starting a food importing business, and my mother's father, from a family of Jewish immigrants, starting a kitchen design & installation business in Arlington after the war. In the land of opportunity, starting one's own business can be a way to a better life.

I started the farm business because I needed to support myself financially somehow, and I wanted to see if I could accomplish that in a way that was engaging to me personally and allowed me to live the sort of life that I wanted—all while knowing, that if I failed, I could restart, move somewhere else, take a different job, and lead a different life. Doing new and unheard of things on this farm is what keeps it interesting for me, and it seems to work out. Nobody would have thought that a short 15-week CSA, with just 6 vegetables per week, and no kale, turnips, or specialty local farmy things, and really not all that much variety overall, would work as a CSA. It just wasn't what a CSA looked like. And yet, here we are! This CSA model has supported my farm for over 10 years now. I'm pushing the edges of what can be done, with the CSA, and farming with unknown machines, all by imagining the possibility of what can be and having the freedom to try and make it so.

My story, and the story of the farm itself, fit in here in America in a way that wouldn't find kinship in a different country, with different national identity and narratives. The work, the innovation, the risk-taking, all in order to try to live a better life, feels very much a part of American stories—a continuation of that history of small-scale farmers, home inventors, and immigrant entrepreneurs who came here because of what was possible, whether or not they really COULD achieve that future they aspired to. Just like our country as a whole, which never has been what its people aspire for it to be, but thoroughly has retained the potential for that future, which inspires people to continue to come here and continue to engage with that opportunity.

So from one of the farmers tinkering in the shop with their American tools (and our ridiculous inch measurement system), to mechanize tasks that could before only be done by hand, I thank you for taking a risk each year on this unusual CSA system and all its unknowns, each year a small-scale American experiment.