I got an e-mail from someone recently who let me know that he didn’t approve of some campaign signs we had posted on Leesburg Pike in 2008.  He got right to the point: “You know I have waited a long time to tell you this. You have completely alienated a lot of your customers by being left wing loons. I stopped shopping at your stand and at the Reston farmers market ever since you started making political statements at your stand on route 7. Just thought you should know.”

I wrote back immediately. “Thank you for letting us know. That won’t change our practices but I am sorry to learn that your political convictions prevent you from eating our tomatoes.  There are plenty of people on the other end of the political spectrum who grow tomatoes, but I can’t vouch for the flavor. The last election showed that 50% of the people in this area voted for the same people we did and 50% voted for the other side. Does this mean that half of your neighbors are left wing loons?”

He said only half of those 50% are left wing loons, probably, and half of the other side are right wing nut jobs.  But he went on to explain that it wasn’t the name on the sign that he objected to – it was the fact that we put up a sign at all.  “I do not support any business, musician, athletes, you name it that are overly forceful in their political statements. I 100% believe it is your right to support whoever you like but do not think that as a business you should ever post those beliefs for fear of alienating parts of the population.”

This is a very interesting question.  We have been putting up campaign signs for many years, and we do understand that we may be “alienating” some of those who might want to shop here but won’t, now that we have declared our support for a certain candidate.  Out at Potomac Vegetable Farms – West, Ellen does not post political signs.  The stand has only been there for about five years and it is still getting established.  It seems unnecessarily provocative to her to “alienate” anyone, since we need all the customers we can get.  Here at PVF-East, we have been selling at this roadside stand for over forty years and we have established ourselves as a non-traditional, one-of-a-kind place to shop.  I can’t imagine that it would surprise anyone that we would be on the progressive, liberal end of the political spectrum – but maybe it’s true that people don’t really want to know that.

So then I got on my own soapbox, since we were still on speaking terms even after the rocky start of unnecessary name calling. “Thank you for writing back and for not trying to convince me that my political leanings are wrong — just that I should not voice them since we run a business.  We disagree there, I guess.  What’s the point of owning your own small business if you can’t make your own business decisions?  My brother-in-law agrees with you, but I don’t think that my desire to support candidates who seem to be the best option (to me) should  affect anyone’s desire to eat our tomatoes.  I’m not sending bags of money to these candidates, just putting their posters out on the road.

“You say you don’t support any business that is overly forceful in its political statements.  Do you have any qualms about supporting businesses that are bad for the environment, hard on their workers, cheat on their taxes, buy influence, etc? Or is it just political statements?  Is that the only test?  How much research do you do or do you just look for big signs that you don’t agree with?  Do you shop at Wal-Mart, for example?

“I think there are many excellent arguments to be made in our favor — for supporting a one-of-a-kind, family-owned business that grows excellent vegetables sustainably, pays its workers fairly, opens its doors to schools for tours, and maintains open space in an area that has forgotten how to put a value on keeping land open for food production.  I know I can’t convince you to shop here again, and I accept that, but I think you are making choices based on one small agenda and there are a bazillion more agendas to consider.

“If the people that you spoke with don’t think about all the values that I just listed, then I guess we didn’t really make a difference in their lives anyway.  They can buy tomatoes somewhere else. Left wing loons and right wing nut jobs probably don’t notice when they are sacrificing access to quality over a narrow sliver of principle.”

The conversation continued, amicably, and I learned that my pen pal works for a nonprofit environmental firm, he shops with sustainability in mind, and that we have much in common, we just don’t agree on speaking out when you own a business.

This is a complex issue. All businesses operate in a political context – it’s unavoidable. Is it really true that consumers have no idea about the political leanings of most businesses?  Is it different when you are running a small business or a huge corporation? The Supreme Court just ruled that corporations’ right to support political candidates is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech. Should our vegetable business maintain neutrality because it seems unfriendly if we speak up for a certain set of policies?  We are not a church, we are a vegetable farm.  Vegetable farmers have opinions.  Lots of opinions, actually.  Our decision to stay in Fairfax County as the last commercial vegetable farm may be the most profound political statement we can possibly make.  It’s hard for us to stay quiet when we are the last ones here.

Anyway, in the end, my new friend Mike said he had changed his mind and he would shop at our stand again – but only when there were no signs up. Fair enough.

Hana Newcomb is the manager of Potomac Vegetable Farm in Vienna, Virginia, which is a suburb of Washington, D.C.