You know you’ve achieved solid middle class when your reaction to an overly wet, overly cold growing season is: Cool! My farm is having trouble! I am so close to the land!
But this has been me, this year. We ponied up about $525 for 22+ weeks of produce from a local organic farm, plus free range turkey in October, including delivery to my actual porch, and it has been a revelation. Reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food as well as The 100-Mile Diet has only confirmed my experience, to wit:
- we eat more variety when we either get a CSA delivery or an organic food box. Not only is this personal, like getting out of a food rut, it’s also kind of a side-effect: Purple carrots, heirloom tomatoes, and orange cauliflower are just a few examples. And Savoy cabbage. I also saw tomatillos for the first time and made potato-bean enchiladas, which were super yummy. Garlic scape pesto also makes the list and no, I had never seen a garlic scape before either.
- food grown locally tastes better. I’d say it was the placebo effect, but I have fed it to guests unawares and they agreed. Tonight was sweet corn, eaten on the day of delivery, and it was so. fucking. yummy.
- I suspect that locally grown food also satisfies cravings better. This is pretty much hogwash scientifically, but it’s still my experience. It tastes so full and rich that a little goes a long way.
- except canteloupe which we can eat by the bushel, apparently. And yes, it grows in Ontario.
- it’s worked out reasonably close to what our usual budget would be, and when you include that it’s organic, it’s a good deal. But learning to preserve would be good. I am renting space in my parents’ freezer for cabbage-based dishes (6 cabbages! in two weeks!) but I wish that I had been more on the ball with setting myself up for pickling, and also having a freezer of my very own (not attached to my fridge) is a definite item on the wish list. We are doing some apple butter and port wine jelly this year for Xmas gifts, but next year if we do the CSA I will be a bit more methodical. As it is we’ve wasted some eggplant and beans and peas (shameful) and also supplied neighbours with produce.
Mostly though, it’s just freaking fun. It is. It arrives on Wednesday, with an email from the farmer, and it feels like Christmas every time.
organic farms will be the trend of the future coz we don’t like artificial stuffs inside our body”:;