One of the great things about freelancing is coming into contact with the coolest people: farmers.

A story assignment recently took me out to the eastern edge of Marion County to meet Daniel Garcia, proprietor of Garcia’s Gardens. This suburban Lawrence farm takes up most of the Garcia family’s back yard and is overlooked by their neighbors’ subdivision houses.

This photo was taken in late fall, showing the crops that Daniel was going to protect through the winter.

“Do you ever wonder if people are looking out their windows at you while you farm?” I asked him when he took me on a midwinter tour of his grounds. We were looking under row covers at salad greens and “the babyest of baby spinach” as he put it.

“I hope so,” he quipped, “because nobody is ever outside, except for the occasional smoker.”

For someone who grew up working in his Mexican-born dad’s huge garden in northwest Indiana, and took a job picking strawberries at age 12, it’s hard to fathom why people would never show their faces outside. “Everybody’s always indoors. It’s weird,” he says with a shrug.

He says some of his neighbors think he’s crazy, but one older couple gets it. “When we first got our chickens,” he says, “they were like, ‘oh I used to tend my chickens and we used to have a big garden.’ I think they really like what I do.”

Chefs and customers like it too. In addition to direct customer sales, Daniel supplies restaurateurs who love his carrots, Asian greens, heirloom tomatoes, and green onions, just to name a few. Because of the size of his enterprise (he farms intensively on about half an acre) he can pay close attention to the quality of his produce.

Daniel checking under the hood of his 1940s-era David Bradley two-wheeled tractor.

One of the interesting things about this particular farm is Daniel’s use of a walk-behind David Bradley tractor, which dates back to the 1940s. He says it works like a mechanical mule with tires, and runs on a three-horsepower engine like a lawnmower’s. Just about any farm implement that would be hooked up to a regular tractor has its matching implement for this one-axle machine. Using it to keep weeds at bay allows Daniel to avoid chemical herbicides, which he’s committed to doing.

When I asked him if he felt like he was helping to keep history alive by using the David Bradley, he said, “I think so, a little bit—I hope it’s not like a curse!” He’s one of many organic farmers using this type of tractor—and some use it even for planting seeds.

Daniel takes his produce to the Fishers Winter Market and also sells it through stores like the Good Earth. Spring through fall, he can be found at numerous outlets, including the Irvington Farmers Market, which is where I met him. I believe we bonded over kohlrabi or some such thing, and I was struck by the joy he radiated, standing there in his veggie booth. Here is a man who loves what he does, I thought.

Later I got to meet his sweet family and hang out with them and their dog Gonzo (Gonzo Garcia, love it!). I got to crunch a freshly pulled carrot, and even made off with some delectable chickweed, as I wrote about here.

One of the best parts of working at home instead of in a corporation, as he did a few years ago, is more time with his daughters.

I know I’m not alone in appreciating the fact that people like Daniel are out there growing healthy food in innovative ways. Today I learned that Grist Magazine has honored another farmer I met “on the job,” Ben Hartman of Clay Bottom Farm. More on him in a later post!