Produce
Today was the second week of the Harvesting of The CSA Share. The principle of CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), in case you've missed my food lecture, is that you give the farmer a whole bunch of money upfront, when they need it to buy seed and equipment and get things started, and then you get a share of the harvest all season, however large or small it turns out to be - risk-sharing. It's a great system, guaranteeing the farmer some income, eliminating the middleman, and cutting out a substantial amount of packaging, processing, and transportation from the food chain. The farmer drives a whole bunch of produce to a local dropoff spot once a week and we go fetch our vegetables. This week we got fava beans, spinach, mixed sauteeing greens, lettuce, carrots, and something called "garlic chives" that is surely destined to get increasingly flaccid in the fridge hydrator until we eventually clean it out. ("Eventually" in this case meaning probably three months from now, by which time it will actually have become integrated into the matrix of the plastic drawer. )
I had to schlep a bunch of work stuff (plus some new trashy books from the library) by train to Dutch's daycare, take her and my stuff on a train and then a bus, then walk 7 blocks to the pickup site, pack up all our veggies, walk 6 blocks, and catch another bus home. Dutch and I were both pretty grumpy and tired, but my burden was lightened by the sight of her, seriously grimy from a long day of daycare, sitting on a busstop bench in her pink cowboy boots, gnawing on a carrot. We self-satisfied yuppie mommies are always raving about the joys of sharing gardening and fresh produce with our delightful children, and IT'S TRUE. She loves the farm carrots so much that she can't wait for me to get the rest of the produce - I must prepare a carrot for her as soon as I start picking them out of the box. (Preparing entails rubbing the carrot on my jeans to get some dirt off, then sloshing some backwashy water from her bottle over it. I hope the farmer isn't having any trouble with E. coli...) And it's not even that they taste fabulous, though they're perfectly nice carrots. She's excited about eating that carrot because the farmer brought it in the truck! And the farmer's dog licked her! And the carrot still had its top on, but we took the tops off all the carrots and put them in the bucket to be given to another farm-sharer's pet rabbit! And there's some dirt on the carrot! And you can't eat the green part, only the orange part! Apparently the produce from the grocery store is too tame for Dutch. She walks on the wild side.
I had to schlep a bunch of work stuff (plus some new trashy books from the library) by train to Dutch's daycare, take her and my stuff on a train and then a bus, then walk 7 blocks to the pickup site, pack up all our veggies, walk 6 blocks, and catch another bus home. Dutch and I were both pretty grumpy and tired, but my burden was lightened by the sight of her, seriously grimy from a long day of daycare, sitting on a busstop bench in her pink cowboy boots, gnawing on a carrot. We self-satisfied yuppie mommies are always raving about the joys of sharing gardening and fresh produce with our delightful children, and IT'S TRUE. She loves the farm carrots so much that she can't wait for me to get the rest of the produce - I must prepare a carrot for her as soon as I start picking them out of the box. (Preparing entails rubbing the carrot on my jeans to get some dirt off, then sloshing some backwashy water from her bottle over it. I hope the farmer isn't having any trouble with E. coli...) And it's not even that they taste fabulous, though they're perfectly nice carrots. She's excited about eating that carrot because the farmer brought it in the truck! And the farmer's dog licked her! And the carrot still had its top on, but we took the tops off all the carrots and put them in the bucket to be given to another farm-sharer's pet rabbit! And there's some dirt on the carrot! And you can't eat the green part, only the orange part! Apparently the produce from the grocery store is too tame for Dutch. She walks on the wild side.
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