Fifth Season's five stores in the Carolinas and Virginia sell gardening supplies and chicken feed, as well as kits for making sake wine and chevre cheese and cultures for yogurt, kefir, sour cream and buttermilk.
It is rather like one of the buffet dinners so favoured by global gatherings, where you have to balance a wine glass and a plate in one hand, feed yourself with the other, try and have a sensible conversation and exchange cards with three people at the same time.
"Farmers are now discovering you can make wine under an ecologically sensitive set of circumstances, own no more than five hectares, feed a family and live decently, " Mr. Nossiter says.