Michael Cecchi discusses the changing demographic of farmers and the role his father still plays in keeping the farmstand up and running in this digital extra.
Explore the 76-year history of E. Cecchi Farms in our full feature on the local farm.
Read the full transcript:
Michael Cecchi, E. Cecchi Farms: I’m the old farmer now. I remember growing up there, all — all the farmers were all old farmers. And I was the young guy, you know?
But now I look around and it’s, like, there was there was no young guys, but now there’s — there’s a lot of young guys, you know? Which is good because, you know, we’re not going to live forever. And somebody’s got to — somebody’s got to grow the food, you know? Somebody’s got to feed the people.
My dad’s still…he’s semi-retired, I guess you’d call it. But he’s over…he’s over every day. He’s — he’s our mechanic still. He’s fixing stuff. He builds stuff. He doesn’t do much field work or anything anymore, or you know, tractor work. But he’s he’s always there to — to, you know, fix a starter, you know, grab a battery or, and you know, diagnose this or that or, weld this up or fix this.
And that’s important because that’s something…you know, we have a lot of equipment, a lot of tractors. Something’s always breaking. You need it. You need it yesterday. And, you know, he — he’s good at it. He knows what he’s doing.
And if you try to shop that out, you’re — you’re going to…tough to make a living when you’re — you’re paying for that, you know?
