What Brings Them Here
"Basically, the music," said Greg Dinsmore, 49, a bearish, gray-bearded man, wearing a Blutoesque t-shirt that said, "College," and wolfing down an organic hamburger with his wife, Karen, who was trying the grilled veggie patty. "It's just a fantastic line up. " They were particularly interested in seeing Jerry Lee Lewis play, but they were in tune with the whole idea of the benefit.
"We buy a lot of food from local places in addition to the grocery store," said Greg, a computer operator with McGraw Hill.
They've been to a Farm Aid before - outside Pittsburgh in 2002, and when she learned by email this summer that the show was coming back to the East Coast -- and just a 45-minute trip south from their Hightstown, N.J. home via public transportation -- it sounded too good to be true. "I thought we'd have to go to Nebraska," she said.
What brought Roger Allison here? An 18-hour truck ride from Columbia, Mo.
He was standing by the grill at Patchwork Family Farms, as a row of pink pork chops awaited a lathering of Show Me bbq sauce. He's executive director of a collective of 5,500 Missouri hog farmers. He wore a red t-shirt that said "Stop Factory Farms."
Between saying homey things like "once you get hooked on our ham, you'll come back," he was railing about current political attitudes toward small farmers.
I asked him what he hoped people took away from the show.
"What most Americans don't know - those who live in towns - is that the problem is one of policies. This country could have any kind of agricultural system that it wants. But now, policies benefit the biggest of the big, and have driven family farmers off their land. We need policies that will ensure that our kids and grandkids would have access to good, wholesome food. And that they'll be able to afford to eat it."