Summer of Veggies

This summer Eben and I decided to join a farm. We didn't actually do any work or even get our hands dirty (much to my dismay), but we have been sharing in the bounty of the farm. Towards the end of winter this past year, I was chatting with one of my clients at the spa about local produce and area farms. She told me about a friend of her's who bought his first farm in western Mass and was planning to offer farm shares.

Here's our farm in April before any planting started outside.

The way the shares work, if you're unfamiliar with CSA (community assisted agriculture), is to buy a full or half share and to then get fresh local produce for a set number of weeks. It's great for so many reasons! You, as the share holder, provide the farm with the capital it needs to begin the growing season, the farm has an already established customer base for their harvests, you know exactly where and from whom you're vegetables come, and best of all for me, you get to learn about the seasonality and types of vegetables available in your region.

I love going each week, not knowing what I'll get, then having to sort out what to do with all the veggies. Each week they do a 'drop' in Cambridge, so we go after work and pick up our vegetables. At our farm, Stone Soup Farm, we get veggies for 22 weeks. Since one full share includes anywhere from 10 to 15lbs of different veggies (that's what they say, but it's definitely more) and sometimes herbs and fruit, we decided to share our share with a couple of friends. Two of my coworkers at the spa wanted in, so Mindy and her son Aidan, Fiona and her husband Chris, and Eben and I have been sharing our full share all summer. The farm offers a sliding scale for payment. One full share costs $450 to produce, so that's what we opted to pay, which translates to $150 each for 22 weeks of organic veggies!!!! In addition to our veggies, I also got a flower share, so each week I also get a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

An early week with lots of greens (various types of kale), onions, fennel, basil, eggplant, summer squash, and zucchini (no flowers yet).

Later in the summer with peppers, scallions, carrots, cucumbers, rosemary, potatoes, chard, green beans and some lovely flowers!

I've been doing lots of cooking with our veggies. Here are a couple of examples:

Tofu ratatouille in the process of cooking (in my Le Creuset to stick with the French theme).

After roasting for about an hour. YUM, it was super delicious!

This week had lots of random stuff, so I did some chopping and opted for a stirfry.

Onions, garlic, fennel, eggplant, and both squash sauteed with lemon.

Next I sauteed the kale and raw corn. In the end, I just mixed it all together with some fresh basil and served it over cous cous. I was pretty impressed because I had no idea how these flavors would combine (never used fennel before) and it was yummy! The sweet corn really added a neat flavor to more traditional stir fry items.

I am a huge supporter of eating local organic produce!!! Not only is the food healthier for the individual, but it's also much healthier for your environment because you don't have to worry about pesticides and poisons seeping into ground water, rivers, and lakes. Nor is there as high a concern of depleting the soil (as long as compost is utilized and crops are rotated). You help alleviate agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels in the form of shipping and fertilizers. You're not eating pesticide covered food, produced on another continent, harvested before it's ripe, covered in wax, flown across the world, and shipped in refrigerated trucks before it gets to your local stores. Using compost based fertilizers instead of fossil fuel derived N-P-K fertilizers provides plants all the essentials for growing nutrient rich foods. Although nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are essential for plant growth, those are not the only elements important, and thus 'conventional' veggies have lower nutritional values than their organic counterparts. If you're interested in learning about conventional, large scale organic, and local organic I recommend reading The Omnivores Dilemma. There's a lot of information out there. I'm really curious, what options are there in your area for local organic produce and grass fed meat and dairy?

After that rant, I'll leave you with some inhabitants of our farm...

CHICKENS!!!! (fluffy little bums!)