Whether spending long summer days working or playing, summer on the Island is an energetic time of year. On Island roads, in grocery store lines, even eating our meals, the pace is quick.

I was 15 minutes late to the Allen Farm this morning. It was cold and getting out of bed felt like torture.

Lucy Thompson lives on Spring Moon Farm off Lambert’s Cove Road, a here-an-oink, there-an-oink working farm. It requires all the dawn-to-dusk responsibilities involved with raising cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, pigs and other animals, plus all the daily work of maintaining a lush garden that tumbles over with herbs, melons, squash, and a variety of vegetables. 

Summer is the time for taking advantage of the abundance of available fresh vegetables and fruits. Lightly steamed, prepared raw, sautéed or grilled, vegetables go with anything, anytime. Gobbled up as snacks, blended into smoothies or sliced on top of yogurt, fruit quenches thirst, adds sweetness and tastes delicious.

I miss having goats on the farm. As annoying as it was to wake up each morning to milk, it was a labor of love.

I am eight years old. My father, my brother Andrew and I board a large fishing boat in Menemsha. We have packed sandwiches and bananas for lunch.

My first cousin Nathaniel and I used to spend every waking hour together in the summertime. Our mornings were at the Chilmark Community Center running after perfect spirals from the Rev. John Taylor on the football field. Players were encouraged to be barefoot and the game was not over until the noon whistle was no longer audible to our eagerly searching ears.

Eating is crucial to what goes on inside the body. It also has a lot to do with appearance and vitality, too. Skin is bombarded daily with the stressors of pollution, the natural aging process and environment, in particular the sun, cold, humidity and wind. The rate of skin cell damage begins to exceed the rate of repair after about 27 years of age. Poor nutrition accelerates this damage. The good news is that the right nutrition can help.

I have had more failures and mishaps learning to farm than most. My tendency to be cheap and, at times, careless has proven costly more often than not. In California, on a winery where we were also raising food, three heritage breed piglets were purchased from a breeder on the coast for more money than I would like to admit. They were brought back to their new home, and housed in a small makeshift pen meant to be a temporary home while we constructed a more permanent place for them behind a large storage facility.

With Thanksgiving over, pie crust pressure is off. Whew.