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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. |
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Here's the crew pulling oregano leaves off the branches to freeze. (This works great with oregano and parsley-- not so much with basil, because it turns black.) Then in the winter, I chop it frozen to add to sauces and whatnot. Just opening the bag brings me back to summer. All of a sudden, the farm bags these last two weeks have been amazing-- gobs of potatoes (red or yukon gold), kohlrabi, turnips (yellow or red), onions (this week Walla Walla!), garlic, carrots, zuchini and summer squash, and lettuces... I'm forgetting something. It was a slow start, but I'm in vegetable heaven now. We also got our first fruit from the fruit farm-- Rainier and bing cherries. Mmmmm. I discovered that the vanilla my grocery store sells is local, and I'm looking into a local cheesery... though I may end up just making my own cheese. Anyone with experience in this? "Then God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.'.. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there evening, and there was morning-- the sixth day." Genesis 1:29, 31 |
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We've worked at "our" CSA now five times. We planted celery, celeriac, broccoli and cauliflower in April. Since mid-May we've been hoeing. The night after we hoed the first time, I was so sore I could barely raise my arms. It has been more difficult and more rewarding than I foresaw. Challenges: Four hours is a very long time for SweetP to amuse herself, even if she's asleep for much of the time. (I've started bringing the pack & play, and clipping a sheet to the top to keep out the bugs and the sun.) We leave the house at 6:15, so I have to wake the kids us and have everything (including breakfast) in the car and ready to go before that. Sunscreen. Blessings: The kids love being with the other kids, and being outside for that time amongst bugs and mud and pigs (though the pigs are behind the fence). Jerry, our farmer, is a lovely person, and I love talking to him and the other working members. We haven't even gotten any food yet, but I'm really enjoying the experience. |
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You may have gathered from some of my recent posts that I am really thinking hard about how we eat. This is something that I think about a lot, and my thoughts have gone in many different directions over time-- how can I eat in a healthier way? How can I eat more cheaply? How can I encourage variety in my children's diet? How can I teach them not to be controlled by my appetites? More recently, the question has been, How can we eat in a way that makes us healthy without exploiting others? We rejoined our CSA after a two-year hiatus. It's the third farm of which we've been members, and my favorite so far. We spent one day planting with other members in April... what hard work! We had a wonderful day, my children learning from other members' children (lots of homeschoolers belong to the farm, it turns out!) about planting and geometry and water... and my legs and back ached for days. I have seen many young farm-workers (well, my age-- I hope that's still young) who feel and look like old people from long years of hard work... and now I have a new realization of how my purchasing habits have contributed to the problem. Deep Economy and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (see more under book reviews) both highlighted the statistics: only 9 cents of every dollar spent on food in this country goes to the farmer (the rest goes to the distributors, packagers, transporters, and oil companies...), and the average meal on the dinner table traveled 1500 miles to get there. What? I feel pretty convicted about my small part in it all. So we are going to be taking baby steps toward eating more locally. I'm not quite ready to declare myself a locavore, but I'm committed to asking God to open my eyes. Our first baby steps: eating seasonally for the rest of this year, and locally purchasing our produce from our farm (and growing a little, too). I have found a local (50 miles away) grain mill, so I'm going to contact them about buying our flour from them. I found a local source of oats (we eat a ton of oats) but they don't "clean" the oats first... so I have to learn a little more about how to do that... and how to store larger amounts. My tea may not all be grown locally, but at least it's packaged about 30 miles away, and I can obtain honey locally instead of sugar from across the continent. We have local sources for grass-fed beef, chickens, and eggs, and we already buy our milk fom a local dairy (and make our yogurt from it). There are some things we eat a ton of that we're not ready to give up: Bananas. Rice. Fresh fruit in the winter. Dunno how to get those locally... though I hear bananas may not be a transportable commodity after the banana-fungus makes it to Central America. I think this will be a process for us of: 1) changing how I think about buying food (to value local-- and small-- farms/businesses over cheap ones) 2) researching specific sources of foods we eat 3) learning how to substitute (e.g., honey for sugar) |
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This link has a map and search function by zip or state to find a CSA near you. It also has more information about CSAs and the state of farming in this country. http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ Even if you're not ready to join a CSA (or will never be!) this link can help you find farms to visit, or farmers' markets where you can buy local produce. Blessings! |
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Being a part of a CSA has been a great experience for us in many ways. In the six years we've been a part of community sponsored farms, I've learned so much! I've learned about vegetables I never knew existed. Our first two farms were very heavy on greens-- their members were pretty die-hard vegetarians, so we learned what to do with collards, kale, mustard greens, bok choi, swiss chard... and these greens in large quantities. I learned to love cauliflower. I learned I could chop onions in large quantities and freeze them. I learned how to freeze pesto... and best of all, I've learned how to eat and cook seasonally. To this end, I'd recommend Our eating habits have changed dramatically. I've learned to incorporate so many more vegetables in my diet, because they show up in my box and have to be eaten. Before we were in a CSA, at the end of a busy day at work, I'd resort to parta and some kind of jarred sauce-- or some sort of frozen convenience meal. Having all these vegetables to eat forced me to learn new cooking habits . I was just like a small child who says, "I don't like X" because he's never tried it. Because I've eaten X lots of times now, (and X fresh from the farm, in season!) I've learned to like things I never did before. Another thing I love about being in a CSA is knowing that I am supporting sustainable agriculture. We'll still be doing our garden this year, though I've planned more herbs and no zucchini because of what we'll receive from the farm. But my gardening over the years has improved because of the methods of composting and things I've learned from our farmers. This year we're going to be working members, and I'm excited for my kids to learn more about the farm. I want them to know what a potato plant looks like. (Obviously, if you plant potatoes at home, your kids will learn this.) I am excited that this will be a part of our routine: every week, we'll go spend time on the farm and bring home a box of the most delicious produce... my mouth is watering just thinking about it! |
