Food brings us to life and creates us both physically and socially. But shopping for it usually doesn't animate me. Though I've thought about food and how it's grown, who grows it and how, for much of my adult life (as an agricultural and environmental historian), I consider going to the market a chore. I put on my headphones and get it done. Then I moved to Guilford and found Bishop's. I realized right away that this is not just a store, or merely a family-owned farm, but a beloved institution that has come to represent the possibility that food can be grown in a community, for a community. Its owners clearly make decisions with both their family legacy and the future of their land in mind, and that's not a commonplace business model. They're not just ethical and high minded, they're smart and innovative--as farmers and entrepreneurs. I can't count the number of times I've told people that Bishops grows more than twenty varieties of apples. Why does this impress me so much? Because it says something about their mission. It links Bishop's and its customers to a broader New England tradition of agriculture in which farmers demonstrated that land does more than feed us, it produces a bounty that makes life richer without riches. It enlivens us if we give it labor and skill. Bishop's doesn't need to grow that many varieties. Its owners prove something by it. With their slightly eccentric fruit wines and giant solar array, they're telling us that all we need is right here in Guilford and Connecticut, that frugality and stewardship are not political markers but Yankee virtues, and that a farm and a store can bring us together over the taste of our own soil.