Can I hold your dirt?

I put an ad on Craigslist.com a while back -- advertising our hay bales for sale. A young, college-age girl called and we made arrangements for her to come over and pick up her bales. Like most customers, a 10 minute chore turned into an hour-long discussion of chickens, "Whereyafrom?" and other farm-related conversation. Turns out, she and some friends have formed (what sounded like) a hippie commune, where everyone gets to live on the acreage for free, so long as they help with the garden and their joint booth at the farmers market.

The area where these folks have their farm is near a sandy creek about 10 miles away from me. When this young girl turned and saw our garden, she freaked out. She kept asking what we amended our soil with. We explained that this was only our first year with the garden, and we didn't do a thing except till it up. She couldn't get over how dark and rich it was...and finally just asked, "Can I go over and touch your dirt? Can I hold it?"

That's the first time I've ever been complimented on my shirt dirt.

She even paid cash for one of our surplus roosters.

I like that girl.