Dayna Kurtz is sitting in a rocker on her porch, mostly in the dark, clipping something with a pair of scissors.

“I’m cleaning garlic,” she says. “It’s been hung and cured properly and I’m very overdue and I am snipping it.”

It’s the end of a harvest-time day. She’s been in the field tending to various gourds, squashes and melons, and now she sits with a glass of wine, sipping ...