I love to write about the small miracles of enterprise, creativity, and hard work that embody the best of urban America. It seems that these miracles of the enterprise are more doable, less expensive, freeer of regulation, and focused on family.

Today, we went to the Farmer’s Market to check out a unique new offering: the Shift Food Cart starring the McMillan Family and healthy and well-prepared wood-fired pizza, sandwiches, wraps, and exotic salads. It was everything we hoped for and more.

The food is delicious, but the pizza calls out to me; it is food a diabetic and someone with heart disease can eat in good conscience and with excellent taste. I’m having one of their bean burgers for lunch. I have no magic wands, but one of my passions is to do everything I can to support people like this, who take their dreams and take the leap and turn them into reality.

What Corey and Sarah are doing is hard, almost brutal work – I took the photo of them as they sweltered in the hot food wagon, making pizza, sandwiches, and salads. I hate to even think of how much work it took to restore that old decaying food wagon; we used to see it in town. This renovation was not recognizable as that cart.

That enterprise is one of the things I see coming to life in my town, from a young woman named Kiley Meraki, who was raised on a farm and started a dog salon on her own with few resources that is so busy it can’t handle new customers to Corey and Sarah McMillian showing up at the farmers market with a restored and classy food wagon that aims right at people like us.

Gourmet pizzas – Medittereans with tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil, all fresh; The Forager, roasted garlic and oil with mushrooms, mozzarella and Fontina cheeses; the Farmers Market with roasted veggies, fresh tomato and mozzarella, For the Love Of Garlic with pesto, goat cheese, and fresh tomato, and Brie’s Knees with caramelized onion, brie, pear, prosciutto, and arugula.

 

Corey and Sara Macmillan.

Hard pressed to make a choice, we picked the Marguerita. The wood-fired crusts are thin, crispy, and delicious, and the pizzas are not drowning in cheese and glop. Good pizza is never gloppy.

We got a 10-inch for dinner; it cost $12.

Corey and Sarah had brought our town the best food we’ve seen since the Round House Cafe was forced to close when the pandemic struck. That left a big hole in the town, even though Scott and Lisa Corrina sell food out of their Pompanuck Farm.

The two and only things I miss about urban life are the theater and good, healthy, and creative pizza.

The family lives close to us; Corey’s parents, Kim and Jack Macmillan, are good friends. Jack is a Bedlam Farm hero and legend; he has tractored over here to rescue us more than I can count.

He’s a good man and a good man to know. He’s the first person I call when I have a panic attack on the farm, which is more often than I like to think about.

We found the theater we wanted and missed in Williamstown, Mass., at the Williamstown Theater Festival,  and Shift could bring us and others some of the food we have to drive long distances to find and to eat.

This creative enterprise is meticulously planned and marked by challenging and continuous work and risks. I have great respect for what Corey and Sarah have done. So many people bitch and moan about their lives, but blessed are those who take the leap and do something about it.

I will never think of good wagons in the same way. I always associated food wagons with hot dogs, fake tacos,  hamburgers, and fried fish. I’ve seen some classy gourmet carts in New York City, but this is an almost radical redefining of the food cart in the country.

It might not seem like a big deal to many people reading this, but it is a great deal to the people living here who yearn for good and healthy food and to us. Creativity and hard work still live, and they work well with one another.

Corey and Sarah are just getting started. They are looking for a permanent place to park their food wagon – once a standard fixture in small towns.

They are off to a terrific start; there was a line around their wagon for much of the day.

Corey is a musician and house painter, and he and Sarah bought an old used food wagon and restored it themselves. It is a piece of art in itself. It’s a family operation; daughter Sadie was at the register taking orders and did a great job.

She didn’t rattle, smiled, kept track of the charges, and seemed completely at ease.  You would never imagine this was her first-day taking orders.

Proud grandparents Jack and Kim McMillian (friends and neighbors) were right outside with Sadies’ sister Piper.

The whole family was pitching in, making projects like this much more possible.

Shift offers seven different salads (pesto with mozzarella, the Thai Bowl with spinach, cucumber, carrot, red peppers, pickled onion, cabbage, and scallion; a Greek Salad with romaine, cucumbers, tomatoes, and red peppers, a Roasted Harvest Salad with roasted beets and carrots on a bed of baby spinach w/fried goat cheese, and several others.

 

 

We ordered two sandwiches for lunch (pizza for dinner tonight or tomorrow). I got a Black Bean Burger ($8) on a potato bun with lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and pickles.

Maria ordered the Falafel Wrap ($9) with hummus, romaine, tomatoes, cucumber, cabbage, and pickles w/a Lemon Tahiti Dressing. There are other sandwiches as well. I can only imagine the work it takes to gather all that fresh food.

One thing was clear. These are not your ordinary food wagon menus and offerings, at least not around here.

These people know their food and how to prepare it. A wagon makes sense – no heavy rents to pay – and so does family help – no expensive benefits or payrolls. But the work is brutal.

The Shift doesn’t have an online connection or a phone order mechanism yet.

But I have no doubt they will be as successful as they wish to be.

They’ll be at the Cambridge Farmer’s Market Sundays, and on weekends they’ll be parked by the Argyle Brewing Company in the middle of town.

We’ll be there and anywhere else they go. Maybe one day, the food cart will turn into a cafe or family restaurant.