We just returned from six weeks on your terrific Island. This year we were able to spend 95 per cent of our food budget (almost everything except nondairy coffee creamer and the occasional half-gallon of Jansel Valley non-pasteurized orange juice from Cronig’s) on things that were grown, raised, milked, baked, picked, hooked, caught, trapped, squeezed, or turned into raspberry jam right on the Island.

While we always want to support local production, our spending was not an act of charity. Somehow the 19,000 full-time residents of this Island create higher-quality food than the two million residents of our metropolitan area, which shall go unnamed so that we don’t have to worry about starting our car in the morning, but it rhymes with Boston.

Keep up the good work, and those of you new to visiting the Island will find that the high prices are matched or exceeded by the high quality of local output.

Mary Troxell and Al Lewis

Newton