In Italy and France, people don’t love small farms just for the delicious food they produce. They also prize them for their looks — small-scale diversified agriculture is pleasing to the senses. So city dwellers often head out to the country on the weekend and hang out on farms, and support them with their tourist dollars.

Last week, Emily Biuso of The New York Times ran a good piece about how agritourism is slowly catching on in the United States. I direct you to it because it’s an interesting read, not just because Emily stayed on my own Maverick Farms while reporting the piece — and worked really hard, too.