Women take the tractor wheel

Kate Stillman starts her day at 4 a.m. Four days a week, the third-generation farmer loads up a truck the size of a small U-Haul and drives 75 miles from Hardwick, Mass., to farmers markets across the Boston area. The truck is so weighed down by her cuts of locally raised meat and produce grown by her father and brother that the bumper barely clears the curb. If there is room in the cab, one of her two young boys will ride along with her.

She’s used to not sleeping much.

“When you have animals – like when you have small children – it’s the same thing. You never really sleep soundly. You are constantly trying to listen for if there is a problem,” says Ms. Stillman, who sells grass-fed beef, lamb, pastured poultry, and pork from animals she raises on a farm that she bought in her early 20s. She’s also a single mother. Midnight is the earliest she turns in.

With her right arm thrust deep inside a glass-topped freezer as she rummages for a customer’s order at the Brookline Farmers Market, Stillman recounts the time she forgot to