Providence Pike runs northeast out of Putnam toward the Rhode Island line, and one acre along it is worked entirely by hand. Assawaga Farm grows vegetables, herbs and fruits with an emphasis on Japanese varieties, no-till, the soil left undisturbed so the life inside it keeps its own arrangement. From May into November the farmstand opens Saturday mornings, nine to noon, and on Thursdays the same crates ride north to a market booth in Brookline. When the beds go quiet and the fields harden, the work turns toward snow — the same acre-scale attention, now aimed at a driveway opened before the day starts. It is a farm first, and a pair of hands that knows this ground in every weather.