Laughter ripples through the square.
Ivy smiles. A real one, unguarded and bright.
"We did this."
"You did most of it."
"Liar." She stands, offers me a hand. Pulls me up. "You organized the entire food pavilion, convinced half the town to volunteer, and somehow got Farmer Hank to donate his best apples for the tasting menu."
"I'm very charming."
"You're very stubborn." She says it like an accusation, but there's warmth underneath, the kind that suggests she doesn't entirely mind.
Same thing, really.
The festival opens at ten sharp, Mayor Elsie cutting a ceremonial ribbon with a pair of comically oversized scissors while the school band plays an enthusiastic if slightly off-key fanfare.
By ten-fifteen, the square is absolutely packed.
Families. Retirees. Teenagers taking selfies beside the pumpkin tower. Food vendors sling fresh cider and kettle corn. The pie contest draws a crowd so thick I can't see the judges' table.
And the food pavilion.
My food pavilion.
I set it up like a tasting tour. Six stations. Each one featuring a local ingredient prepared simply, deliciously, with a card crediting the farm or grower. Roasted squash from Hank's fields. Wild mushroom tarts using Ivy's foraged varieties. Herbed flatbread with chèvre from the dairy two towns over.
People line up at every station, drawn by the smell of caramelized vegetables and fresh-baked bread, by the bright autumn colors arranged on each platter like edible art.
They taste, tentative at first, then eager.
They smile—genuine smiles, the kind that start slow and spread, that light up their whole faces.
A woman with two kids stops at the squash station, her hands full of festival programs and apple cider cups. She takes a bite of the roasted butternut, honey-glazed and scattered with toasted pepitas. Closes her eyes. Goes perfectly still in that way people do when a flavor hits exactly right.
"Oh my god."
I relax against the table, grinning. "Local butternut," I tell her, gesturing toward the handwritten card crediting Farmer Hank's north field. "Grown three miles from here. Harvested two days ago."
"It tastes like—" She pauses, searching for the word. "Like sunshine. Like actual sunshine."
Her kids, curious now, demand their own samples. They try it. Make exaggerated yum noises, the theatrical kind only children can pull off. Ask for seconds, then thirds, until their mother laughingly pulls them away toward the next station.
This. This exact moment. This is why I cook.
Not for the accolades, the magazine features, the prestige of a name on a kitchen door.
This moment when food connects someone to a place. To a story. To the hands that grew it and the community that sustains it.
Ivy walks in with a clipboard and a grin.
"The seed swap booth is packed. We've had thirty new sign-ups for the winter program." She taps her pen against the board. "And someone just asked if we do cooking classes."
"Do we?"
"We could." The thought catches fire in my mind immediately, the possibilities unspooling like ribbon. Cooking classes on weekend mornings, seasonal menus that shift with the harvest calendar, intimate farm dinners under string lights where people break bread together and really understand the connection between seed and soil and plate.
A whole future, unfolding right here in front of me.
