The sharp scent alerted us to onion fields before we could see them. The green tops poked up from neat hummocks that ran beside the road for nearly a mile. Along the highways crops were laid out like quilt squares, potatoes and alfalfa and onions and beets all stitched together with dirt roads. Very pastoral and lovely. Then we paused to watch as a small plane swooped low over a cornfield, and sprayed out a thick mist of pesticide. A bit farther down the road, we came across this sign:

Think I’ll take my veggies without the synthetic chemicals.