CHANGEWATER, N.J. — As he pushed a manual weeder through an inch-tall row of fall cilantro, Bill Maxwell ticked off a list of the types of people who make good vegetable farmers: worriers, workaholics, obsessive followers of the weather, those able to nap in a truck cab in the middle of Manhattan’s Union Square.

Mr. Maxwell, 65, is all of the above. He has spent the last three decades cultivating the fertile soil here in the Musconetcong River Valley in western New Jersey, currently tending 65 acres. Twice a week, he drives his harvest — cranberry beans, leafy greens, sweet melons, shaggy red potatoes — 70 miles east to New York City Greenmarkets.

“There’s a character flaw that has pushed me into this,” he said.

After this growing season ends (in late November, with luck), he will officially retire and end the lease on 60 acres of his rented farmland. In February, he plans to auction off his equipment.

It is a milestone not just for Mr. Maxwell, but also for the Greenmarkets. He is one of their longest-standing participants, joining the markets in 1983 when the nonprofit organization was 6 years old and had 17 locations. Today it has 54, and eating locally is so intertwined in the culinary fabric of New York, it is almost taken for granted.