This year’s mostly self-serve approach to CSA pick-up at the farmers’ market has gone along smoothly. The bin set-up has evolved into one long row, cafeteria-style, I guess you could call it—shareholders bring their own bags and move down the line. It definitely cuts hours off of Friday packing, which makes the weekly harvest a lot more fun. We’ve also had time for “extras,” like two or three herbs every week…
Fall harvest…
We’re definitely into fall weather now: the thermometer may still read “warm” but there’s always a cool edge in the air. This is the best field-working weather, you can go on for hours. Today was a bit damp, and the abundant root crops were muddy from the overnight rain (they get rinsed, with a spray of the hose on Jet for the roots, then a dunk in the laundry sink to rinse off the leaves). Carrots were in 2 lb (900g) bundles, by the trusty kitchen scale we’re still using…
We bundled the beets in the field—these are the red standbys of the season, Scarlet Supreme. Always reliable, they’re in great shape and flavor, and the greens are particularly substantial…
The tomato harvest was fairly slim and motley, maybe 120 lbs (54kg), enough for CSA shares only. We’re picking them even partially ripe—frost may come at any time, no sense in waiting. The toms may not be too pretty, but they’ve somehow become real tasty in the last couple of weeks, steadily developing from the milder flavors of the first pickings, to really quite fine! Was it the recent sunshine? Whatever the reason, it’s a pleasant surprise!
Violet returns: visiting with worms
Young Violet (2) returned to the field, sans siblings. She seemed to have fun on her first garden visit, on a sunny afternoon—today’s cool, cloudy, wet conditions didn’t faze her in the least. Interacting with earthworms occupied a good hour…
While Libby and Lynn dug carrots, Violet helpfully and with great interest relocated disturbed worms. A hands-on biology lesson, an early pre-school start… (Looking back, for the most part, I’d have much rather grown up in a field than in a classroom!)
Fall crop watch
After a good weeding and another round of rainy days, the fall brassicas are pretty well on their own. It’s amazing how quickly growth slows down in September—what a difference the sun pulling away makes! The kale and collards are doing fine—we’ll be harvesting some Red Russian kale tomorrow. Broccoli and cauliflower will come through. Whether cabbage, planted this late for harvesting at baby size, will make it by mid-October is up in the air. More gambling and waiting to see…!
Donkey care
Tanya the Farrier drops in on Jack the Miniature Donkey every 6-8 weeks to clean and trim his hooves. It’s a pretty quick operation, maybe 20 minutes. You might expect trouble, Jack being a fairly frisky, 400+ pounds of muscle, hard head and hoof, but he’s also easy-going, and Tanya seems to have established authority way back. I’ve been watching this routine for the six years I’ve been here. Bob does the holding, and Tanya goes to work…
…using a hooked knife to prying out built up gunk…
…and trim down the hoof.
A rasp is used for finishing touches…
…and in no time, Tanya’s gone and Jack’s good to go…
Trimming garlic
From the long stack of garlic drying in the barn, we’ve been taking out about a bushel a week since harvest began in late July. Today, we finished preparing the rest of the harvest. Lynn, Raechelle and Mel snipped the stems and sorted at the same time. (The roots weren’t trimmed; that can be done for some as we go through the bins and baskets each week for CSA shares and the farmers’ market.) In past years, the sorting was for size: dividing the mostly medium and large bulbs, and putting aside the very few tiny and damaged ones. Garlic does best with a dry final month of growth—this time, coming out of ground that had remained quite wet all summer, the harvest wasn’t in as good shape…
Sizing evened out, with most bulbs about what I call “medium” (this is the most useful size for cooking, but the big ones are so…impressive, everyone loves ’em). A little over half dried not to the usual tight, white skin, instead, to a tan color, wrinkled and split. So, we sorted into “good” and “not so good”… There was also a much higher proportion of really damaged bulbs, maybe 10% compared to a usual couple per hundred. Still, the taste is great, and the cloves themselves are fine. Only appearance and storage life are affected. We’re selling the less pretty, less storable bulbs at a couple of dollars less per pound. They’re good for immediate use (within 3-4 weeks, maybe a little longer) and as seed garlic for fall planting. Overall yield was great, although I’m not sure whether the hugely reduced number of large bulbs was due to weather, or to the more intensive 5-across planting we tried for the first time. As usual, more to observe and learn from. All in all, given the poor garlic weather, it all worked out quite well!
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Since I mentioned buying this book a while ago, I might as well wrap it up! I recently, finally read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, an investigative reporter’s full-on indictment of modern food. It came out in 2006, but with all of the praise and recommendation I’d heard from people around me and online, it almost felt like I was waaaay behind a life-changing, or at least, EYE-OPENING, experience. In fact, I’d read excerpts and heard Pollan speak on radio and TV, and I had a pretty good idea of what the book would be like: HIGHLY ENTERTAINING and densely packed with condensed bits of accessible scientific explanation, intriguing and disturbing facts, and involving eyewitness accounts. OD definitely delivered on all counts.
I read it over a couple of days, a real page-turner! For a week afterward, choice nuggets of often alarming info swirled in my head. And then, the details started to fade. It’s now a couple of weeks later, and a few choice bits remain. I really like the idea of being driven by the complementary opposing forces of neophilia and neophobia (kinda like the angel and the devil, sitting on each shoulder…), and that we humans developed big, powerful brains in order to figure out what to eat (something like that). The description of grass farming was absorbing. Mushroom hunting sounds…extreme! And so forth. Oh yeah, and we’re feeding ourselves crap!
The one big downside of this sort of intensely involving overview, covering so much territory in just 400 pages, is that you can’t absorb that much in a practical way. So, you’re entertained in an agri-suspense/thriller/horror style. The result: if you weren’t already convinced (I was…), you’re now likely quite certain that our food industry and the food it produces are both…horrifying (that’s not good!). You also hang on to some interesting facts that you didn’t know before, maybe stuff that you’ll go on to explore. And perhaps all this will fuel some significant personal action (that would be good).
All in all, OD is engagingly written edutainment, and I’d recommend it as a good read. As for its life-changing impact, the mileage no doubt varies.