“That seems like an awful lot of trouble,” Mom stands beside me chopping fresh asparagus from Barbers farm while I make the hollandaise for Sunday dinner.  

Hollandaise doesn’t happen without mise-en-place.  A class of cold water and a plate of cold butter to reverse the egg yolks should they start to turn; butter melted, but cooling; egg yolks and lemon continually subject to the brush of my whisk.  The sauce is about problem solving.  Yolks too thin, add heat to expand their ability to take up fat; yolks too cooked, cool down with cold butter; sauce too runny, either re-heat or pour in ice water to congeal the butter.  Hollandaise is one part recipe, and two parts response.

It’s usually a breeze for me to prepare.  But I nearly lose lose this sauce several times.  My mind isn’t at the kitchen counter.  It’s elsewhere.

Sometimes I’m driving a bus full of passengers down a windy mountain road and the breaks have failed.  Sometimes it’s a runaway train and I’m the conductor.  All this week, and in this moment over the hollandaise, I’m a fighter pilot under siege, and I’m channeling the Red Baron.  

These imaginings flood my attention daily.  They’re the metaphor of my life since the first case of Covid was announced in New York City. Don’t let anyone get sick.  Don’t make anyone sick.  Find a way to keep the business running…but don’t have social contact.  

The whole week leading up to this hollandaise was no exception.  This has been the week leading up to opening day of the farmers’ market.  Lambs are dropping up in the barn.  Dad’s calls to schedule processing dates for the July beef go unanswered.  So do the calls for the fall pigs.  And the winter beef.  Kate works to learn the new point-of-sale system for the market.  Bob and I are pulling meat and making arrangements to get enough sanitizer, and we’re making homemade disinfectant wipes (since we STILL can’t find any!) so Kate can be safe down there.  It’s supposed to be crowded.  

On Friday, Kate and I meet in the cutting room.  Because we sell all our meats online now, we have to track inventory.  Any meats we pull for the farmers’ market need to be subtracted from farm inventory.  We’re working through the process as baby Lark bops in the pack on her back.  She watches me intently.  I look up from my papers and meet her eyes, and can’t look away.

“Which brings me to another issue,” Kate calls my attention back.  “Breastfeeding.”

“Huh?”

“Breastfeeding.  If I go to the market, I need to pump.  I need to find someone who can cover the booth for me while I do it.  It takes a lot of time.  I have to get everything to pump set up, then pump, then break it all down.  It’s a production.…And if it’s busy, like they say, I don’t think I can ask the vendors on either side of me to cover.”

Without thinking I say, “I just brought the girls and nursed them there.”

“I can’t bring my baby there,” she reminds me.  “It’s not safe for her.  They don’t know what’s causing this next disease in kids after they get Covid.”

“Then let Bob go down and handle it.”

“He’s a type I!  There’s no way he’s going!”

I know how to navigate a tricky hollandaise.  I don’t know what I’m doing in this moment.

Over the past months I channeled the Red Baron’s split second decision-making to move the entire farm online to dodge the first round of bullets within seven hours of announcing closure of the cafe and farm store.  Then he guided me on the offensive to grab one of the last remaining refrigerators available form the local appliance store to set up the self-serve shed.  We flew high out of the fray to study the war zone and made a plan to count, tally and categorize every piece of meat on the farm and generate a computerized inventory (for the last 40 years, inventory control was merely a game of memory played by whoever was in the freezers last), to facilitate a more reliable online experience for customers.  As part of our game plan I wrote a new website, uploading all my cooking knowledge to offer descriptions and cooking tips for every cut of meat we sold.  So far, we were finding a way to navigate the war zone and dodge the fighting.  

The bills are getting paid, but if we can’t line up any appointments to get our livestock butchered under USDA inspection, we’re going to start running out of inventory by mid-July…especially with the increased demand from the farmers’ market.  But my family has held that booth since the market began.  For 28 years we’ve sold meats at the front of The Round Barn, gazing out over the Catskill Mountains as customers lined up to buy our cuts.  If we were to run out of meat and leave the market, we’d give up our space.  And we wouldn’t be entitled to get it back.  The plan was to go this year with what inventory we had, and hold the space in hopes that next year, all this would be back to normal.  It seemed like a reasonable strategy.  

 But here, in this moment, as my employee stares at me with a baby on her back, I feel like I’m sending her into the line of fire.

We talk about wiping down surfaces, keeping coolers closed and handling the meat for the customers (rather than letting them touch the product);  where to stand behind the booth to maintain six feet.  We box the cuts for the farmers market into the coolers and I drive down to the cafe to enter the data into the computer.

I can’t bring my baby there.  It’s not safe for her.  

Kate’s words ring in my ears as I drive away.  The Red Baron has been preparing me for battle.  But I’m not going to be the one fighting.  I just call the shots.  My car slows as I come into the hamlet.  I reach the crossroads and come to a complete stop.  

This booth at the farmers’ market was my family’s golden ticket.  It’s one of the best markets in the state.  It’s one of the best locations in the market.  My job, as I understood from the generations before me, is to make sure we hold it in perpetuity.

My employee is willing to take it on to make sure my husband stays isolated.  I can’t go because I need to re-open the cafe.  But what is the cost to my employee?

If all goes well, nothing.  

But what if it doesn’t go well?

And there at the crossroads, my car at a full stop, I nearly throw up.  Why am I moving forward with this?

Because my family has been there for 29 years.

Because the booth generates 30 % of our farm’s gross revenues. 

Because if I don’t, I lose the booth for good.  

Two out of three of those reasons were about the money. 

You’ve never made a business decision purely about money, a voice in my head whispers.  You’d never ask your employee to do something dangerous for money, it adds.

But we’re farmers.  Our job is to get the food to the people.  This is how my family has done it for 29 years.

But it doesn’t have to be done that way.  You’ve found a different way, the voice argues.

I pull over to let a car go by.  I recognize one of our customers, heading down to pick up her order from our self-serve shed.  She waves.

Fighter pilots are risk takers.  They’re leaders.

They also seize opportunity.  

And they should know when to abort a mission.  

Why had my family held the same booth at the same market for 29 years?

“Farmers markets are supposed to be business incubators,” I remember Dennis, the old maple producer who had the booth next to ours, lecturing me.  “You should grow out of ‘em.  They’re not supposed to be permanent.”

And I realized that we hadn’t held the booth for 29 years because we were successful.

We held it because we were afraid to let go. 

In the past five years we’ve built a farm store and a cafe.  We built it in West Fulton, down the road from our farm, because we wanted to help revive our community.  We invested in our hearts.  We held on to the farmers market because we weren’t sure we could survive without it.  But in the past twelve weeks we’ve made astronomical changes to create a system where that heart center could live on peacefully in the throes of global chaos.  Customers come to hike the woods and mountains and waterfalls, then get their food from our farm, and from Barbers farm down the road, all while staying safe.  They wave from their cars, they email with their questions.  The connection is still there.  And the community feels as alive as ever.

At a loss for what to do next for my family’s business, I suddenly see the new adventure.  Trust.  We have to trust ourselves that we’ve built a hearty enough business to survive without a farmers market.  We have to trust that our customers who helped us grow to this point will stay with us, seeing the value in what we’ve done together.  

Because in all the navigation and bullet-dodging and strategizing, the Red Baron reminds me, there are two essential tools you need when the flight plan fails:

The map and compass.

Know where you want to go.

And I want to be here.  And in all the chaos that has turned the world upside down, I want to build a better life for my community.  When the shake-up settles, I want a vibrant rural hometown. I want customers who support and care for each other.  I want people to come here who cherish the riches we can so easily offer: clear water, fresh air, fertile soil, nourishing food. 

I am willing to move through this chaos.  I am willing to do the work to make sure my family and employees stay safe.  Because when we come out the other side, I’m planning to come back to a life where the biggest tactical challenge I face is making a good hollandaise, and where the outcome is just as creamy and delicious.