Julia Rappaport
One Chilmark resident who made the trek down-Island for the Taste of the Vineyard festivities this weekend may have put it best.
“I haven’t come to Edgartown for years,” said the guest of the Saturday evening patrons’ dinner and gala auction. “You people have really come a long way.”
The seeds are planted and the first hay harvested. Across the Island, farms are full of activity and, just as their farmers are busy with animals and crops, farming advocates are working tirelessly to protect the agricultural tradition here.
Despite all this hard work, there is little to no coordination of agricultural activities on Island.
Leanne Giordano, restaurant manager at one of the Island’s most popular — and busiest — family restaurants, is fully staffed for the summer. And she has a running list of more than 150 prospective waiters, waitresses and bussers to call just in case a position opens.
When the American Cancer Society’s fifth annual Relay for Life begins this afternoon, more than 400 walkers will take over the track at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in Oak Bluffs to support patients in treatment for cancer, survivors of the disease and to honor the memory of those lost along the way.
The question on everyone’s lips was not who are you wearing, but what are you eating?
They were dressed to kill in the highest of heels and long strings of pearls; gussied up in bow ties and Ferragamo shoes. But last night, at the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust’s 23rd annual Taste of the Vineyard Gourmet Stroll outside the Dr. Daniel Fisher House in Edgartown, fashion took a back seat to the gluttonous display of food, wine and sweets.
The road leading into Flat Point Farm in West Tisbury is surrounded by hay fields and on Friday afternoon the late-day sun brushed their tops in shades of gold.
In one hand, Doug Brush, 26, held a cold beer — it was 5 p.m., after all. In the other he held a hammer. With him was his business partner, Jeff Munroe, 28. Together, they were finishing a self-designed movable pen for their 226 rock cornish-cross baby chicks, which arrived in the Vineyard Haven post office the day before.