Kurt Timmermeister has made me feel better about urban farmer’s markets. Or, at least, about the following decidedly controversial opinion that I’ve privately held for some time now: I am not sure that I like them.

When I first thought to contact him for an interview, having read the story of his farm in Culture magazine, having chuckled over his wry and thoughtful journal entries on his own website, and, having longed for his Dinah cheese (a close friend is a cheesemonger, and cannot say enough good things about its entrancingly creamy innards), I worried. I fretted. I wrote an essay about the fretting, last week, and pondered what I might possibly ask of someone, on the subject of farming, as a person who failed to grow tomatoes in a backyard garden last summer.