A few readers have come forward to request some good news about Goochland County.

And after several months of getting down and dirty with the budget and the countywide audit, there are several among us who are getting on their knees for a tangible cause: Honoring the earth and all that grows on it.

April heralds a celebration of Earth Day and Arbor Day, and neither of these are going unheeded in a county where farmers still make a living through growth.

Last week Garden Fest drew those that want to cultivate their skills in tending to the plants and flowers that sustain our bodies and our souls.

As participants dug down into compost, adding wriggling worms and vegetable peelings and other matter that can transform soil into a fertile environment for growth, they were experiencing a connection that can easily be lost in a society that can often seem manic.

There is a simple beauty that can still be found by tilling land, adding seeds and water and sunlight, and being rewarded by green leaves, edibly gorgeous fruits and vegetables, and a sense of renewal.

The Goochland Farmers Market will be opening this weekend, providing a venue for farmers and consumers to exchange products and services that create a culture where sustainability seems less like a popular ideal and more like a good idea.

The Goochland Farmers Market, and programs like Garden Fest and AgDay, have made it their mission to inspire children to appreciate the agrarian tradition that still reigns here: Teaching kids to tend and choose a fruit in season, grown up the street at a family farm, can be more satisfying than the immediate gratification of buying one grown out of season and flown around the world.

Such lessons teach them, and remind us, that being local is an idea that transcends a bumper sticker; it is perhaps the only way we can retain our passion for where, and how, we live.

Sustaining and celebrating local agriculture is a means toward an end, toward true economic and aesthetic viability.

So more than 160 students took classes at Garden Fest, AgDay hosted a huge crowd of school children, and the Goochland Farmers Market is poised to serve all of us, all summer.

Here in Goochland, we have the opportunity to make a difference in our community, and to ease our way back into remembering that sometimes slowing down, and feeling the sun on our backs and the ground beneath our feet, is a noble mission!