Simon Bollin has given buying locally a whole new meaning. For him, it’s not about where the food comes from or how it’s grown, but what it used to be harvested with.

Lisa Fisher is protective of the word organic. She guards it like one of her precious artichokes, pays close attention to the term as she tends her string beans, and cares for it like the tomatoes that are just beginning to ripen.

There are nearly 90 certified organic farms across Massachusetts. Ms. Fisher’s Stannard Farms in West Tisbury is the only one on the Vineyard.

Every morning since April 24, Paul Goldstein has set out 30 colored soufflé cups with soapy water in them, a technique called bee bowling.

Their hands were stained red, their backs a little sore, but the smell of strawberries, as though you had stuck your head straight into a strawberry pie, washed over them.

There’s something romantic about hay bales dotting the rolling fields of the Vineyard at this time of year, those magical, large pillows that decorate the landscape. And then there’s the smell. Crisp, soft, sweet, it fills the senses (unless of course you are allergic).

It’s haying season again on Island farms.

As entries pour in for the 148th annual Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair, poster competition winner Morgan Lucero is readying her autograph hand.

Ms. Lucero’s winning entry for the highly competitive contest is of a team of strapping oxen attached to a cart in the foreground of the agricultural hall.

“I was very excited, it felt like I’d won the lottery,” said Ms. Lucero yesterday, “It’s the little things in life, you know.”