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We were at the farm packing up bags for distribution when O got totally excited about a carrot. In fact, he was so excited about this carrot that he took it over to show to Farmer Jerry, who said O could keep it. Well. When we got home, O promptly washed and peeled it and made this beautiful soup with it. Everyone had just.one.taste. Then we dumped it. He remains undeterred and continues to covet my vegetables to invent other recipes. Most involve sugar, salt, pepper, baking powder and vegetables. I'd share the recipes, but they're proprietary. Sorry. |
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Here are our SFGs (photos taken June 29). They're coming along slowly. We had a lovely crop of peas which we'll have tonight in beef with pea pods. O's carrots seem to be what's growing best so far. This week's farm harvest gave us turnips, red potatoes, kohlrabi, broccoli, zuchini, cue ball squash (that's the abundance of balls on the counter in the last photo) and butterhead and red lettuce. The cue ball squash is a nice summer squash that made great zuchini bread; it will be sliced thick, marinated in balsamic vingar & garlic, and grilled; and we'll have it in creamed zuchini & parmesan under grilled chicken breast. (I'll share that recipe if it's as good as it sounds.) The rest of it was grated and frozen. |
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I've been out working at the farm three times now. Our first week was rained out. Then we planted melons, melons & cucumbers, and this week did our first distribution and hoed carrots. Itty, bitty carrots (some with only 1 or 2 leaves) drowning in enormous weeds because of the rain. By my own But I don't hink my job is going to go away. So I'm exploring other options for a continuous source of varied, local food. We don't have any sort of visiting farmers' market in our neighborhood, or a closer CSA. But there are several farms much closer than our CSA that have their own markets. So this summer I'm committed to going there after I get our weekly share, seeing (and recording) what they have-- and filling in the "gaps" in our own share with theirs-- and comparing it in the fall. Don't get me wrong. I am committed to local food, and I have learned a ton from being a working member-- not just about food, but about life. But this is a very busy stage in our life, and I'm tired. And supporting (more consistently) the farm in my own backyard, as it were, might be a better option for us than the farm 45 minutes away. I'll keep you posted. |
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Reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I was blown away by the fact that she kept track of everything her family bought/cooked/ate for a year so that she could plan what they needed to plant for their year of eating home-grown/locally. I'm not quite that ambitious, and I'm not sure we'll ever be free of boxes of Mac&Cheese. But I was struck by how useful it would be to know how much we ate so that I could plan for next summer's canning and freezing. (That said, every year we eat more than the year before, so I may never catch up!) This is my handy-dandy chart, which hangs inside a cupboard next to a pen. Every time I open a jar of peaches or applesauce (or anything else) I mark it off. This summer, I should have a much better idea of what to shoot for in terms of "putting up." The flaw in this plan was all the food we had to dump when the freezer died... but life is a work in progress, no? |
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We've been members of various CSA farms for seven summers now (not consecutively). This is the first summer I have worked as a member. At the beginning of the summer, I thought, Sure, this is great... no big deal. After a month and a half, I thought, Wow, this is a lot of work for the discount. At the end of July, I thought, This has been a good experience, but I don't think I'll do it again next summer. And now, with two weeks left, I'm thinking that I really need these people-- the other working members. They sharpen me. It has been a wonderful experience. Though we are all very different, the members with whom I work are all what I'd call "radicals." I don't mean that in a jump-in-and-join-the-commune kind of way. I mean that they make the effort to live in accordance with what they believe. Last week, after the truck was packed to distribute the shares, we members sat around and split garlic heads into cloves for planting. We sat in a little circle and talked about music in contemporary culture and education. One of the members is a composer (who actually supports his family by composing classical music); another is a bass player, though they can't live off her music. We had a dentist, a retired teacher, a homemaker with grown children, a graduate student, and myself. These are all people who live "unusual" lives. I like to tell people that our family is trying hard not to get back on the gerbil wheel of life. All these other farm members-- though our politics and faiths diverge-- help me to see the value in living an unusual life. They have looked at the issues and formed opinions (about local food, the Wall Street bailout, or listening to Aerosmith) and they live in accordance with their beliefs. I think that's pretty unusual. And I am encouraged by their example to live in accordance with my beliefs. When I was younger, I often fell pray to the sophism that-- although I knew what the right way (or at least, the better way) was-- it was too much trouble (or too radical) to live that way. Now I am learning that, be it difficult or not, I need to live like I believe... no matter what the Joneses think about it. |
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When I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I was flabbergasted by her statement that she calculated the number of onions she planted, so she’d have enough for the year. I couldn’t imagine the effort and time she had put into the planning of her garden. Now, one quarter of the year into our journey to learn to eat locally, I’m wishing I’d been keeping meticulous records. I’m not sure where to start: with what I buy, or what I cook, or after the fact, with what we’ve eaten? My pantry is filling up with jars of tomatoes, peaches and jam; my freezer is filling with diced peppers and onions and spaghetti sauce. But I don’t have any sense if I’m even in the ballpark for what we’ll consume this winter. I’m ready to go buy locally milled flour and oats and lentils, but I have no sense of how much to buy. I know our farmer calculates every spring how much to plant to cover the shares in his CSA. He told me that this was the first year he knew what to plant, since this year they filled up all their shares (and have a waiting list!) so they don’t have to rely on the caprices of the Farmer’s Market crowd. And I guess for summer food, I can just rely on their shares, since I have bought no vegetables and very little fruit while the farm has been delivering. I guess I just need to put a list in my cupboard, and every time I finish another bag or box of something, mark it down… for a year. And then increase it every year, since my boys seem to be consuming more food by the minute. |
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I'm a little overwhelmed with the harvest: canning tomatoes, peaches and pear sauce; freezing diced peppers and sliced onions, roasted eggplant (for baba ganouj), making spaghetti sauce... All my "spare time" has been spent canning. I'll be back soon! |
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in produce! I spent I afternoon washing peppers and onions and carrots and tomatoes and melons and squash and eggplants and beets and potatoes and cabbage... Our farmers are very concerned because they've had 8 inches of rain in 12 days-- very unusual for Colorado in general, but especially in August. Both their truck and their tractor got stuck in the mud over the weekend. They can't drive into the fields, so to harvest they are lugging bushel baskets FULL out of the fields. They're exhausted, and afraid the produce is going to rot in the fields before they can get it out. As much as I enjoy the cooler weather and the moisture, I'm praying that we'd have some warm weather to dry out the fields. I'm freezing the peppers-- some sliced for stir-fry, some diced for soups, etc. I freeze the onions as well: sliced thin in rings for Carmelized Onion Sauce (to go on pasta with a little goat cheese and walnuts), and diced for everything else. But that will have to wait til tomorrow. I'm beat. |
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Last week at the farm, we working members got started late. Our farmer is tired and was visibly upset, chastising us and asking us to be on time... we weren't sure what to do. We awkwardly kept bagging the produce as he talked, knowing that if we paused to explain all of the myriad reasons why we hadn't been ready to start at 7 a.m., we would be that much later sending him off to deliver the shares. Later, once the trucks were almost packed, someone dropped a watermelon, and it cracked open. Our farmer pulled out his knife, and we shared the melon there in the sun. Then we shared another, and another. I brought home my share of produce and spent the entire afternoon processing it.
These two photos don't show my weekly onions and potatoes, or the yellow beets I was already cooking, or the apricots and sour cherries which were turned into apricot bars, or were frozen for pies. Before we joined a CSA, I was completely ignorant about farming. I don't mean just the miracle of growing produce-- though I was ignorant in that, too. I knew nothing about the risk of farming. Yeah, sure I read the Little House series. But in doing so, I lamented Almanzo's gambling nature that led him to risk what little they had to gain more. I had no sense of the roles of Providence and Disaster in a farmer's lot. My farmers get up at 4 a.m. They work non-stop all day, seven days a week, and still can't keep the weeds at bay. When there's a storm, I close my windows and bring my laundry inside. They thank God for the rain... or watch in horror as the hail destroys months of work that would have paid for a new axel on their truck. I read several posts in June from folks who were calculating the benefit of bring in a CSA purely in terms of their grocery bill. What they received in a given week had cost more than 1/12 of what they had paid for their 12 weeks of produce. Hence, by that math, the CSA was not a sound investment. One farmer read a blog post to that effect and offered that member a refund. I am sad for that former farm-member. She did not get to see the amazing bounty that is August-- this week alone I brought home enough corn for forty people. She may have understood the value of the food she invested in, but she missed the point of a CSA. A CSA is about community. I take the risk with the farmer: if it is a cold spring, my table is lean in June. (And mine was.) Because of a late frost, there weren't enough strawberries for jam. If July is hot, the corn is early and awesome. (And it was.) But my standing in community with my farmers (and the other members) meant that for the first time, our farmers didn't have to take out a loan to buy their spring seeds. When the harvest overflows, they pour it out upon us. When the strawberries fail, we mourn them together. And when the watermelon cracks open, we stand to share its juicy sweetness and promise to get up a little earlier next week. |
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No photos, because I can't find the camera. Er.. I think I'm worse than the children for misplacing things. What a plentiful harvest! We've been so blessed. This week: fingerling potatoes, red onions, garlic, turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, yellow crookneck squash, zuchini, cue ball squash (looks like... a cue ball, tastes like zuchini), lettuce, honey and apricots. Mmmm. Local pizza: we sauteed some local Italian sausage and then sauteed the onions and garlic together in the same pan (while the sausage dried off), and then sauteed some yellow squash as well. I chopped some of the oregano and basil I had frozen in bags, and sprinkled it all over the pizza crust. Now I just need to start making mozerrella! On the local note, it seems that the mill I was eyeing from which to purchase flour is out of business. So still no local source of flour, though fields all around us are growing wheat. The local oats I found aren't cleaned. What does that mean exactly? I'm not sure. How does one clean oats? Dunno. It's all a process... and I'm still in the beginning stages. But I'm learning. |