It begins with the sound of cutlasses swiping through dew-soaked weeds. At 5:30am, the village is already breathing — farmers pacing down red earth paths, sacks balanced, radios whispering local news. The soil here is clay-brown and generous, crumbling between the fingers of Kofi as he stoops to check on the garden eggs. His wife, Esi, is a few rows down, uprooting carrots with quiet strength.
By 8:00am, the harvest is loaded onto a rickety tricycle cart and rumbles off towards the roadside market in town. There’s no cold storage, no certifications, no formal packaging — just baskets, handwoven, and smiles exchanged with customers who know the farmers by name. Tomatoes with their vine-fresh scent, tilapia from the dam just a few miles away, kontomire leaves glistening from morning rain.
At noon, the scene shifts to a kitchen behind a small chop bar. The market woman’s daughter is sorting okro into neat piles. A firewood stove crackles to life, and the bubbling soup begins — garden eggs, dry fish, scotch bonnet pepper, and groundnut paste, all blended into something sacred. By 2:00pm, a steaming bowl of fufu and soup sits on a wooden table, served with a ladle of warmth and a side of village gossip.
Farm-to-table here isn’t a marketing label — it’s a rhythm, a relationship, a lineage. The distance from soil to plate is short, but the journey is rich: in labour, in love, in legacy.
Takeaway:
“Farm-to-table” in my part of the world means hands that know the soil, mouths that know the grower, and food that tastes like home.
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