2013 week 11
August 28, 2013
CSA week 11 August 14th 2013
In The Box:
2 Lettuce Iceberg
1 bunch Basil
2 zucchini
2 lb Potatoes ‘Jaqueline Lee’
2 lbs Assorted Tomatoes
1 lb of Cherry Tomatoes
1 Sweet Yellow Onion
1 melon ‘Butterscotch’
3 ears of Sweet Corn
1 lb of ‘Mirabelle’ Plums (or 2 lbs of Cherry toms)
After almost 20 years in this game and when I am at my most vulnerable it can be all too easy to slip into a sort of philosophical cynicism. The ongoing battle of ecology versus economy perpetually at play on the small family farm can quell the fire in the belly of even the most ardent believer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a reasonable battle, a righteous fight. One that without trust fund or off farm income we cannot lose. At 42 I am too young to resolve myself to absent minded grumblings like many of the old time farmers I learned my craft from. I still have enough fire to rant philosophic about the evils of the Monsantos and the good of right livelihood to any of my crew foolish enough to stand still long enough. The age old ‘If I only knew then what I know now’ illustrated for me as I see their dreams of farm and business ownership. If I could only really teach them what I know now. (They’d probably run for the hills.) These guys are the future of farming the future of localized sustainable food production. Leaner and meaner than us, smaller and with less debt they’ll navigate the landscape of starting their own farm in a culture so much readier to accept them. For me that was the rut, the stuck needle in the record of my mind on Monday evening. How do you guide, teach, inspire the next generation. The folks that will grow food better and smarter than us. How do you share the insight learned from 20 years of mistakes and successes……. and then I heard the sound….. A metallic grind, a soft splash and a yell…..’HELP! GET DAVE!’ Able, one of the guys that bought the Noti farm from us and a former right hand man had managed to submerge himself and his tractor in the pond. As I scurried around without panic and with a fair amount of laughter bubbling in my throat it dawned on me; to some degree, you can’t. Now I know you don’t back a small Kubota tractor with a mower down a steep pond bank to mow it and expect to not get your behind a little dampened and now he does too. It’s the experience, the struggle, the journey. The lessons that come from repeating the same mistake enough times that you learn. How not to strip the skin off of all your knuckles when changing spark plugs on a 1946 Farmall Super A, how to back a 450lb sow up a trailer ramp, how to pull a tractor out of a pond with a bigger tractor. You learn by doing, by trying, by pushing the boundaries, by losing a few battles and hopefully winning the war. Because at the end of the day there’s a reason I knew the best way to pull a tractor out of a pond and there will be plenty of time to sit on the porch grumbling while future generations of farmers crash their laser guided hover tractors into the silo.
A tease of melon in the box today and for some of you, the first of many harvests to come from the new farm. Little yellow, what we think might be ‘Mirabelle’ plums. An unfortunate math error meant that not enough bags were weighed from the harvest and some of you will get double cherry tomatoes this week instead. (Not to worry, we’ll make it up to you next week.) The corn harvest numbers dropped a little this as the first rotation finally gave up all that it had. Thankfully the next planting looks like it will be ready for next weeks harvest. For those of you who haven’t settled into the Wednesday is pesto night routine you can always grind up fresh basil with a little olive oil, freeze it in ice cube trays to use for cooking when the sun is long gone for the year. Once the cube are frozen dump them out into a freezer bag and make more.
Enjoy,
Dave, Lori and the crew
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