Food Fit on the Farm

September, on a vegetable farm, is all about food.  Though we farmers are certainly grateful for the abundance of the harvest, we are also a bit daunted by the effect it has on our farm kitchen.

Every surface is covered with food.  There are freezing projects, canning projects, drying projects, and pickling projects, all happening at once.  Or more accurately, not happening, all at once. 

The idea of squeezing time out of a full farming schedule to put food by for the winter is crazy, yet it seems crazier not to.  After all, we’ve nurtured and labored over this beautiful, local, healthy produce for months; now we just need to labor over it all a little more so it will nurture us this winter.

“This is just important as weeding the cabbage, or putting in the cover crops, ” I announce, surveying the kitchen, trying to bolster myself for the task.

“That’s right,” agrees my fellow farmer.

But I am unbolstered.  I hold my head and moan.  “I don’t even know where to start.” 

The five-gallon bucket of paste tomatoes?  The several trays of zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers?  The mountain of basil?  The heap of peppers?  The mound of beans?  The limp pile of Swiss chard?

I want to give up, and try to put my head in my arms on the table.  But the table is completely covered in heirloom tomatoes, waiting to become sauce and salsa.

Luckily, my fellow farmer is a man of decision and action in both field and kitchen, and he steps boldly up.

“All right!” he says, “This chard is too tired to freeze.  Let’s compost that.”        “But we could have it for supper?” I suggest.

“Nah,” he says, “We’ll go get fresh chard if we want if for supper.  This is from last week.  And these cucumbers are dried out.  Let’s compost these.”

“But we could have them for supper?” I repeat.

“Nah,” he says, tossing the sad little cucumbers in the compost bucket.  “And this basil?  This is too far gone.” 

“Supper?” I say.  “I hate to waste perfectly good food.”

“But it’s not perfectly good food,” my fellow says reasonably.  “It was perfectly good food.  Now it’s tired, dried out old food, that would be really good for the compost.  We want to preserve the best, freshest produce, so it keeps. The farmers are supposed to eat well, remember?”

“Yeah.  But the farmers are supposed to eat or preserve all this best, freshest produce before it gets tired and old.”

My fellow pats me sympathetically on the back.  “The farmers can’t do everything.  They’re doing the best that they can.”

“They are?” I say doubtfully.

“Yes!” my fellow answers firmly.  “Now let’s work on this together.  I’ll get these paste tomatoes on the dryer, and maybe you could cut those others up for sauce.”

I edge out a tiny space to work and start cutting, repeating soothing mantras to myself:  We’re doing the best that we can.  We can’t do everything. We hardly waste anything.  It will be good for the compost.  We should eat well.  And, my best mantra: it’s mighty nice to have food in the winter.

My fellow and I make tremendous progress, clearing out the old and putting by the new.  The sink reappears.  Counters reappear.  Even the table reappears. 

It has taken far more hours than we imagined, like most things on a farm, but now we admire our beautiful jars of sauce and pickles, our drying herbs and tomatoes, our frozen beans.

We are caught up until the next flood of food.  We sit down, and admire our clear and clean table.

Our clear table.  Completely clear.  Breathtakingly clear.  And here it is, supper time.  We’ve got lots of room to eat our nice supper.

Except.  Nobody’s planned supper.  Nobody’s made supper.  

There’s no supper.

We farmers look pathetically at each other.  We groan. 

September.  It’s all about food.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Sept 4 – Sept 10, 2013

Tomato Time: Swooning on the Farm

August, on our CSA farm, is the month of tomato. 

Of course, we’ve been harvesting tomatoes from the greenhouses for weeks now, but August is True Tomato Time.

Long, long ago, in early July, we yearned for the first ripe tomato.  We checked the top contenders daily: growing bigger and bigger, changing from firm, certain green to paler and paler to almost white-green.  And then at last the first blush.  The deepening of the blush.  And then: the swoon.

We pick our very first fresh tomato of the year, round, ripe, red, juicy.  We consider bearing it to the kitchen on a silver platter, but compromise by bringing it in with calloused farmer hands.  We inhale its spicy-sweet aroma deeply, set it on the cutting board, admire its perfection.

Then we take the special tomato knife—the-do-not-use-this-for-anything-else-no-matter-how-much-it-resembles-a-ripe-tomato-or-there-will-be-big- trouble-knife—and we cut thick slices. 

The first tomato.  We eat.  We swoon.

But all that happened in July.  Now it’s August, and we’re harvesting 500 or more tomatoes a week, both standard red greenhouse varieties and heirloom tomatoes.  The standard varieties are the sturdy, dependable, delicious hybrids that caused the earlier swoon. 

In August, we’re way beyond hybrids. 

Now we are eating Big Rainbow, a yellow beauty delicately streaked with pink.  We’re eating Black Brandywine and Paul Robeson, two purply-black tomatoes that are a current favorite, lush and full, almost salty.  We’re eating Hungarian Heart, rich, sweet, smooth.

We’re also considering becoming wine tasters, as we string out our adjectives over supper: “A complex, full flavored tomato, with a hint of dried peach and cinnamon, wouldn’t you say?” I ask my fellow.

“Oh yes,” he replies,  “and with the slightest undertone of bologna.”  We snort and giggle.  We decide to stick to tomato tasting rather than wine tasting, as we revel in the tomato abundance of August.

Our CSA members revel too.

In the harvest shed, a member exclaims: “Beautiful!”

“They’re like jewels!” says another, admiring the perfect red globes of the standard tomatoes, in orderly rows, against the dark green tomato trays.

“Yes, yes,” we say, “but look at these!” and we proudly show the heirlooms.

“Wow,” the members say, noting the strange colors and sizes and shapes.  There are no tidy rows here.  There are single tomatoes that could make a potluck dish for ten; there are petite tomatoes that are perfect for a single sandwich. There are pink, purple, black, brown, green, yellow, orange, white, and yes! even red! tomatoes.  There are cracks and crevices and odd lumps and bulges. 

“Wow,” say the members, and then turn ever so slightly back to the symmetry and familiarity of the red jewels.  We heave a little heirloom tomato farmer sigh, but are reassured by the clever heirloom distribution system we’ve developed over the years.

When we first started farming, we used to mix the standards and heirlooms in the trays, thinking the heirlooms would disappear in a flash.  But at the end of the day, any lone tomato left would always be an heirloom.  We learned to divide up the standards and heirlooms, and on our harvest chalkboard, we write “Tomatoes: Standard- eight, Heirloom- two.” 

The harvest chalkboard is mighty and indisputable, and people comply: they go home with eight standards, and two heirlooms, tucked in their bags.  They come back raving: “It’s the best tomato I ever had!”  “It tasted just like the tomatoes my grandmother grew!” 

We beam.

The tenderness and flavor of the heirlooms quickly convince CSA members to look for more, but we farmers never have to worry about not getting enough for the farm kitchen.  Along with the fantastic taste and colors, heirlooms are also very thin skinned, prone to cracking and other troubles.  There are always some heirlooms that don’t make the CSA grade, and we have to make the sacrifice of not only eating exclusively heirlooms, but also of making all heirloom salsas and all heirloom tomato sauces. 

Of course, our near-constant August tomato swoon makes it a little tricky to get any farm work done, but who better than a sustainable farmer to model the beauties of eating locally and seasonally?  Not to mention celebrating the beauties of diversity, of sizes, shapes, colors, flavors? 

And by golly, it is abundance time, cup running over time, go a little heirloom wild time, swooning time: it’s Tomato Time! 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 7 – Aug 13, 2013

"What Farm?"

In July we farmers give up. 

We are inundated, with two greenhouses and five garden sections in full swing. Everything is flourishing, garden plants, garden weeds, garden pathways. 

Sometimes it seems like the tasks of all the seasons bulge themselves into this time of year.  We are preparing ground and planting, as in spring, but now for fall crops.  We are weeding, irrigating, and mowing, summer work.  We are harvesting, beginning to put food by, and putting in cover crops, as in autumn. 

We are not resting, however, as in winter!  The biodynamic farming fire held in the earth in wintertime is now thundering all around us, the energies of growth and life and change vibrating in the plants and rising up into the atmosphere  (Oh, the banging, crashing thunderstorms!)

Funny thing is, even with all this inundating, flourishing, bulging, and thundering, we feel more relaxed than in other seasons.  We don’t precisely give up; it’s more like we give over: give over to the fact that we can’t get everything done, no matter how long and hard and fast we work.

Now we are not worrying about all the other things we have to do; we are just in the pressing task of the moment. 

“What garden?” we say, in the house, when we’re deciding whether to start with the dirty dishes on the counter or the dirty dishes on the floor.  (It’s good to have a little variety in one’s dish-washing life.)

“What house?” we say in the garden, as we weed the carrots, the beets, the summer squash, the winter squash, four plantings of lettuce, the broccoli, the cabbage, the potatoes, the beans. . .

“What greenhouse?” we say, as we put up loose hay with and for our draft horses, bringing in the last load of the day at 9:30 at night.

“What hayfields?” we say in the greenhouse, as we prune and pick tomatoes, and string up sweet and hot and green peppers, and harvest basil and eggplant.

“What barn?” we say, as we set the have-a-heart traps, and trim and trim and trim under the electric fence, so that it won’t ground out and foil all our plans against marauding woodchuck and deer.

“What fence?” we say, in the barn, as we muck out the impressive amount of manure four 1200-pound horses can produce in a single day, as they enjoy their shady, cool, fly-free stalls.

And then there are the individual farmer tasks: “What hooves?” says the farmer who is tapping on her keyboard.  “What farming and sustainability column?” says the other farmer, who is trimming all sixteen of those 1200-pound horses’ hooves, which also grow more luxuriantly in spring and summer.

The final questions, of course, in July, are these two: “What swimming hole?” we say, as we are farming and farming. 

And, at last, since we are feeling so relaxed and in the sustainable farming moment: “What farm?” we ask, as we eat ripe juicy tomatoes, and delicious basil, and (locally made, of course) fresh mozzarella cheese at our 8:30 p.m. supper picnic at the swimming hole. 

Then we say it again, just for the pure summer fun of it: “What farm?”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jul 10 – Jul 16, 2013

Outer Space Veggies

June is a welcome month – oh summer! and also a welcoming month, on a CSA farm. 

In June, we farmers welcome back returning CSA members, and we also introduce new members to the garden, the fields, the workhorses, the greenhouses.  We slip in a little warning about our scratchy bitey kitty, on our way to the last stop on the farm tour: the distribution shed.

The shed is where it all comes together, from soil to compost to seed to food: the fresh from the spring garden vegetables are ready!  Returning members, and many new ones, look eagerly for favorite spring treats, knowing that the season is relatively short for many of the crisp, crunchy spring offerings. 

There are always a few new folks, however, who are a little more hesitant.

First up in the shed are the fresh herbs: basil, oregano, thyme, lemon balm, garlic greens. 

“Wow, they smell great,” says the new member.  “but I don’t really know how to use fresh herbs.”

“Just like dried herbs,” we answer.  “Just use three times as much in your recipe as dried.  You’ll be amazed at what a difference fresh herbs make.”

“Well . . . I’ll take a little.”  The member takes a smidgen of each kind of herb.  Then she/he thinks better of it, and puts half of each smidgen back in the basket.     

“There’s plenty more,” we encourage.

“Oh, that’s all right.  Whoa! what’s that thing?  It looks like a space ship! Are you supposed to eat it?” 

“Oh, yes,” we answer, holding up a purple spiky fist-sized vegetable.  “This is kohlrabi!  It’s in the broccoli family.  You can eat it raw with dip or in a salad, or you can cook it.  But first you have to peel off the purple skin.  You eat the pale green part inside.”

“Okayyyy . . .”  the member places two kohlrabi gingerly in his/her bag.   “Now what’s this?  A radish?”

“That’s a spring turnip.”

The member wrinkles her/his nose.  “I don’t like turnips.  My grandmother always tried to get me to eat turnips.  I do not like turnips.”

“This is not you r grandparents’ turnip!” we reassure.  “This is a spring turnip, mild, crisp, tasty.  You don’t even have to peel it; and you can eat it raw or cooked.   You could even eat it out of hand, like an apple.” 

One farmer gleefully eats a turnip, to demonstrate the spring turnip’s non-poisonous, non-icky, decidedly delicious nature.  The other farmer points and nods encouragingly at the happy turnip-eating farmer.

“Okayyyy . . .”  The bunch of turnips goes slowly into the bag, next to the space craft.  “Now what’s this?”

“That’s pac choi, or bok choy, it’s also called.  You might know it from Asian food?  You can stir-fry it, or you can slice it up for your salad.  It’s crisp, and tender, both.”

“Okayyy . . . I guess I could try it.”  The member peers in his/her bag, as if the addition of yet another strange item might cause a sudden blast-off of the space ship kohlrabi.   Then she/he turns to the next tray.  “What about this?  Is this some kind of lettuce? Or what?”

“Very close.  It’s great in a salad: a mix of salad greens, mustard greens, arugula, tatsoi, tiny kale.  It adds a little spice to your salad.  Here, try a leaf!”

The member takes a tiny bite of a tiny leaf.  “Whoaa,” he/she says,  “That’s really spicy, really spicy.”

“Good, isn’t it?  It mixes in beautifully with the lettuce.”

The new member’s eyes light up, with excitement or relief, we’re not sure which, when she/he sees the next tray of produce: heads of lettuce. 

Lettuce.  Now that is a proper vegetable.

And right next to the lettuce is spinach.  The member is positively beaming.  Lettuce!  And spinach! 

“This looks really good,” he/she says.  “All this lettuce and spinach.  And I can just chop up all this other stuff and stick it in my salad?”

“Yes!  But don’t forget to peel the kohlrabi.”

“The kohlrabi . . . which one is that again?”

“The purple space ship.”  The space ship that will take to you to new heights of local sustainable gastronomic delight! we want to add. 

But we don’t want to scare our nice new member too much.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jun 12– Jun 18, 2013