The planks were sawed and nailed, corners cut and joined, and decorative paint added. It was a fine place for a farm stand. Along a generous width of road, visible from a distance, and framed with pastures extending behind it. Each day, farmer Matt and a familymember picked the fresh and ripest produce, carefully basketed it and carried their harvest to the stand. Placing the produce in rows, and turning each piece to show its size and color, was an act no different than when the Zen acolyte lays out the stones in his garden. That early task completed, Matt would sit on his garden chair, and read through seed catalogs, plan the next season's plantings, and go over his finances.

As the day darkened to dusk, farmer Matt would close up, separate the too-ripe or dated produce into brown baskets, and deliver the contents to one or another food bank. There, he'd talk with the volunteers, many of them retired from farming or factory work.

A new day would dawn, the fields would be gleaned, and Matt would put out for sale the finest of the yield. The sun would move from the pasture behind across to the hill beyond. Plans and efforts would be made, all to the end of providing - providing produce for others, and providing means to support his farm and family. Yet as each day of the growing season came to its sunset, most of the produce was unsold. The farm stand was a way station on the path from the field to the food banks. Promotion and word of mouth caused no change, and each day the produce went unwanted. Farmer Matt put forth a cornucopia of offers, but got only a thimblefull of acceptances. Those who stopped at the stand most frequently, came to say how much they appreciated Matt's donations to the food banks or who his gifts had helped.

The season ended. Matt moved the stand back from the edge of the road, and took his garden chair back to his house. On the next day, he went with his sheaf of seed catalogs and planting calendars to the chair and looked out over the fields from which the produce had been stripped. In columns and lines, the dormant fields were shades of browns and greys. Browns of cutoff stalks, bronze-tipped winter grasses, greys of dying plants, chalk lines of some morning frosts, and even as then seen, the field reminded Matt of what came before. His mindseye was urged back two seasons, and to bags of seeds opportunistically sowed, rains heaven sent at the time most needed, weeds excised, pests driven out, flowering and pollinating, and how within the fold of leaves the harvestable produce had emerged. His mind, filled with the possible, connected with his eyes seeing the actual.

We too are but some seasons passing, producing as we can, offering what we can make, hoping that it will join with others needs.

Then, the farm stand, which Matt built and tended, between those pastures laid out by the Great architect, was no more. It passed into memory. Many recalled it fondly, and often mentioned their high regard for Matt and how the produce he grew and offered was near perfect and perhaps the best they ever had seen.