It’s hard to be sad when it is sunny and warm and you are surrounded by smiling faces at the Homer Farmers Market. It’s the peak of summer and all the veggies we wait for are coming in.

The cucumbers, the broccoli, the cauliflower. The onions, the napa cabbage, the basil. The kale, the beets, the scallions. The chard, the herbs, the turnips. The kohlrabi, the greens, the flowers. There is so much abundance!

Every time I get a chance to visit one of our local farms, I am struck by the amount of work and dedication that goes into farming here. People aren’t inheriting old farms that have been worked and tended.

No matter how much experience you bring with you when you start a farm here, you are pulling tree stumps and glacial erratics out of your field, capturing a spring or building a pond or water catchment, and amending the acidic soils so that they can support this kind of production. Do you need a barn for your animals or a greenhouse or and orchard fence or a high tunnel?

Then you will need to figure out cold storage and some system for cleaning the veggies. And tools for the farm, whether it is a tractor or a walk-behind BCS tractor or a broadfork. Maybe you will save up to get a Jang seeder or a greens harvester. Maybe you will hire a bunch of local kids or try to juggle WWOOFers or pay a legit farm intern or manager.

But then you need to market it all as well. Hopefully you are good at interacting with folks at the Farmers Market and selling on the Alaska Food Hub and organizing CSA boxes and relationships with restaurants. It wouldn’t hurt if you had a good newsletter or an Instagram account as well.

Can any one person really do all this? A lot goes into being a successful farmer here. And when I see the amazing diversity and health popping out of the ground on our farms, I know that we are very lucky indeed.

So show them your support on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Wednesdays from 2-5 p.m.

Kyra Wagner is the board president for the Homer Farmer’s Market.