Alexander & Aaron Roberts

Alexander is auspicious, draws attention to himself, and thus gets a lot of publicity. Lately he has won the James Beard Award and thus more attention is coming his way. The sad thing is that most of this attention is superficial, not focusing on his true contribution to the health of food, as well as the taste and presentation of it, the way he treats (and holds) his employees, his deep and continuous support of local growers (vs. the recent, faddish implications of this), and agriculture itself, and his deep devotion to family. It is one of the highlights of my life to be able with my partner in life, Joni, to deliver vegetables to his restaurants, invite his staff out here to enjoy and work in Otter Creek, to celebrate the soil and plants with them.

Aaron is a carpenter, a builder, someone who can fix things, figure out what went wrong and get to it. He has done a lot of work with his brother, and he has been invaluable to us in Otter Creek. His profession is under rated because so much of the building trades are (perhaps unwittingly, employment is critical) involved in building structures which are not really respected; built not to last but to sell. Recently Aaron sent me an article which rates carpenters along with other trades and professions. Guess what? They come in 237th "out of the 250 most common -- or most visible -- jobs in America, according to the recently published "Jobs Rated Almanac." Garbage collectors ranked three places back at 240. I wonder how chefs ranked, or cooks for that matter (?).