BY RICK BERNSTEIN

“Now what, dad?” my daughter, Katie, asked. She was slumped behind a table laden with corn, green beans, tomatoes and lots-I mean lots-of zucchini. “For Sale: Fresh Garden Vegetables,” read a hand-lettered sign. She and my boys, Gregory and Daniel, had spent the day flagging down cars in front of our semi-rural house outside Baltimore. Now the summer sun was setting, and they hadn’t even made a dent in the vegetables that seemed to burst out of our quarter-acre garden. “We can’t eat all this,” Katie declared. “Do we just throw it away?”

Actually, I’d been asking myself that exact question long before my wife, Carol, and I got the idea to set the kids up with a roadside produce stand. You could say it was the question of my life. I worked downtown as an investment analyst for a bank. But what I really loved was farming. Maybe it was my ancestors, Polish farmers in New England’s Connecticut River Valley. Maybe it was because I felt cooped up behind a desk. All I really wanted to do was get outside, get dirty and make things grow. Problem was, I had no farm, no real experience and I certainly didn’t have the money-it takes millions-to buy the hundreds of acres of land and equipment required to turn a profit in today’s corporate food economy. So I stuffed my dream down and indulged my farming fantasy by running a hand tiller through our garden.

Next morning, I loaded boxes of potatoes, beans and corn into the trunk and drove to work. A few months before, my office had organized a successful volunteer day at a Catholic homeless mission called Our Daily Bread. Maybe they?d want the vegetables. I pulled into an alley and knocked on the mission’s back door. A man opened. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Um, I’ve got some produce in my trunk,” I said, realizing how strange that sounded. The man’s face immediately brightened. “Fresh produce?” he asked.

I nodded. “From my garden.”

He bustled past me to the trunk and ran his fingers through the green beans. “These are beautiful,” he said. “I’m Raymond, one of the cooks here. Usually all we get are castoffs from supermarkets-not in the best shape. Our guests will love these.”

I helped him carry boxes into the kitchen and again sensed what I’d felt my first time there-a bustling, pervading goodness. Volunteers from various churches were preparing food and talking. I heard laughter from the dining room. I wasn’t a churchgoer, but this felt nothing like any church activity I could picture. I asked Raymond if I could come again with more. “We’ll take anything you’ve got,” he said.

The trips became part of my routine. Their effect on me, though, was anything but. I had a great life-a wonderful wife, terrific kids, rewarding career-but I felt something was missing. Seeking more, I picked up the Bible. Over the next year and a half, I read it twice through. I knew what was missing. God. I became a Christian, and my life, especially the garden and my love of farming, took on a whole new meaning. Jesus said, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.… I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Those words blew me away.

One night, unable to sleep, I nudged Carol. “What is it?” she mumbled.

“We’re not doing enough,” I said.

She sat up. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning, I’m wondering if we should take our savings and buy a small farm.”

Carol was silent a long time. Then she looked at me. “If you really believe this is a call from God, I’m all in.”