Randy Katz lives on a 3½-acre farm tucked behind Copley High School’s football stadium. He has 540,000 bees and lots of plants to keep them busy. They love Katz and all his gardens. “You name it, I grow it,” said the retired scrap yard owner who is now the Summit County apiary inspector. “Flowers, tomatoes and peppers.”

Katz sells bouquets of flowers, eggs, honey and pecks of produce through the Community Supported Agriculture program. On this sunny day, it was the tomatoes that brought me to the farm with Vaccaro’s Trattoria owner Raphael Vaccaro riding shotgun.