I once had a girlfriend whose family loved their local flea market, or as they called it, the “swap meet.” We would pile in the station wagon on a Saturday morning and stroll the dusty aisles to examine the treasures, the junk and the interesting people. Sometimes it was tough to tell the three apart. Being young and nearly broke, I was cautious with what money I had. So I ignored the used bikes and reconditioned guns, and usually headed for the snacks. Swap meet food ran to homemade jerky, fried dough and boiled corn.

As I wander among the tables at the University District Farmers’ Market on a Saturday morning, I can’t help thinking of those semi-sketchy swap meets, mostly because of the world of difference between the two. First of all, the fresh produce is breathtaking. And despite being older and wiser, I still head directly for the food. Being slightly richer now, I throw caution out the window and splurge on tamales, pastries and cheeses, which taste dramatically better than the fried dough of swap meets past.

Turning a corner, I meet Wade Bennett of RockRidge Orchards. He’s already sold all his vegetables—30 minutes after the market opened. All that’s left is an array of bottled ciders, fruit wines and honeys. After he tells me he only grows unusual produce, I try to find something weird he hasn’t grown.

“I’ll bet you don’t grow…shiso leaves!”

“Well, we do grow shiso. We sell that to the bars for using in shiso mojitos.”

“Real wasabi?”

“We don’t sell very much of it. It’s more for my own personal use, because it’s so hard to grow. Imagine taking the sweetness and vegetable flavor of fresh edamame and then suddenly hitting it with this volcanic heat. That suddenly dissipates and turns sweet. That’s wasabi. ”

So much for my game of “Stump the Farmer”; his farming wisdom prevails. It’s like talking to a Yoda in jeans (Thankfully, he doesn’t garble his syntax, or speak in a weird Muppet voice). He hands me a sample of Skipping Stone Raspberry Apple Cider. It’s delicious, especially with a squeeze of lime. Fortunately, it comes in half-gallon jugs, because I could down about that much on a hot summer afternoon. I can also picture tossing in some vodka, or making sangria with it. The possibilities aren’t endless, but certainly half-gallonish.

I visit RockRidge Orchards a few weeks later, on a day where the sky is a dispirited gray and the wind wants to be starting something. Turning down the gravel driveway in Enumclaw, I recognize the signs of a working farm, where the farm machinery gets the prime parking spots. My first and most lasting impression is that, like the cranes and containers of Seattle’s working waterfront, there is an industrial beauty to RockRidge.

Farmers’ days start early. Just before dawn tomorrow morning, freshly picked produce will be loaded into their farm vehicle (“Exotic Edibles” painted on the side). A few more hours, and those glistening veggies—the very ones I see growing this afternoon—will be prized by the chefs of Café Flora and Sitka and Spruce.

Wade and Judy Bennett are doing something they love and are very good at, a rare and fortuitous outcome for a couple once mired in the fields of construction and bookkeeping. Having worked 17-hour days since they began in 1991, they’ve learned what is needed to succeed in sustainable small-scale farming. A product has to be both unusual and profitable, with “to die for” flavor.

Wade is a mad scientist with a tractor, willing and able to dig into the most arcane of fruit and vegetable possibilities. Judy takes care of myriad details of accounting, taxes and governmental regulation (she describes the liquor license paperwork as “pretty hideous”), while playing the role of midwife to a throng of babies known primarily by their botanical names. She recently received a seed packet from Japan whose cryptic growing directions instructed: “Plant when the moon is bright and the sun is happy.” She adds, laughing, “And is that spring? I don’t know. It looks kind of like a scallion.”

RockRidge is compact. Shoehorned onto its 101 acres are numerous rows of unusual crops, including fresh bamboo shoots for local Asian and vegetarian restaurants (and farmers’ markets), banana leaves, heirloom tomatoes and tea plants (Camellia sinensis), which can be ordered in the springtime. They grow Asian vegetables such as gai lan (Chinese broccoli), sansho (Szechuan peppercorn) and mizuna (Japanese mustard). There are also hundreds of varieties of bamboo and thousands of fruit trees—apple, Asian pear, Japanese plum, and fig trees of the “Brown Turkey”, “Stella” and “Desert Fig” varieties.

So what vegetables do gourmet vegetable farmers prepare at home? For these two, it turns out that neither eats cooked vegetables very much; they tend to snack all day as they harvest, partially for quality control but mostly because it just tastes so good. Wade’s favorite is raw Japanese cucumber with goat yogurt (from Port Madison Farm on Bainbridge Island) and his own wildflower RockRidge honey. Judy lives for the kikasui variety of Asian pear (available the 2nd week of September), which she describes as “green skinned and drippy crunchy sweet with a lemon-lime flavor."When pressed for something that actually encounters a stove, Judy admits that she likes to throw French green beans briefly into a hot wok with a little toasted sesame oil.

Entrepreneurship and dreams are inseparably intertwined. In the Bennett’s case, they dream of distilling their juices and wines into brandies. Why? Because “farming shouldn’t be boring.” And because Wade dreams of a comfortable retirement doing something he loves. As he told me, “My theory is (and my wife thinks I’m nuts), I figured that I would make 25 to 30 barrels [of apple brandy] a year, and I’ll spend my retirement age wandering around the state selling distilled spirits until I die.”

Not a bad plan. My Yoda in jeans has found another unique niche, that of an 80-proof Johnny Appleseed spreading the gospel of local, sustainable booze. It beats the heck out of the fried dough and boiled corn senior swap meet tour.

Eric Chastain has lived in Seattle since 1997. He worked in the specialty coffee and tea industry for eight years, with a particular focus on roasting, blending and tasting of coffees. As an exuberant amateur cook, he cultivates a continuing love affair with spices, distilled liquors and local foods.