16 July 2009

Arugula, Cucumbers, Black currants, Dill, Lettuce, Sugar snap peas, Scallions, Squash, Oasis turnips

Just about any grocery store in New York has tomatoes for sale year round. Oddly enough, the quality never seems to fluctuate that much. You’ll get the same unsatisfying tomatoes with an eating quality somewhere between that of a fruit and a packing material when the world is buried in feet of snow and when local farmers’ fields are full of tasty fresh produce.

I understand the appeal of finding produce available months out of season, the appeal of not having to wait for those too brief weeks when we can enjoy the bounty of our farms, the appeal of being able to get whatever you want when you want it.

But I also understand the differences between truly fresh produce and most of what passes for “fresh”. Just because something has not been frozen or processed does not make it fresh. The average vegetable we encounter grew who knows where who knows when who knows how.

Now, it is true you don’t have to know all about your turnips. You can go ahead and pop them in your mouth completely ignorant of their history. On the other hand, once you have put them in your mouth you probably are planning on swallowing them. Wouldn’t you prefer to know just a little more about your food before it gets to your stomach? Such as when it was picked, or what it was sprayed with. Or maybe even what variety it is and who picked it and which field it grew in.

Try asking a produce manager to tell about the turnips on his shelves. Then try asking your farmer about the turnips in your share. I like Hakurei best, but the seed costs a lot—$45 for the four ounce packet I bought this year—and sometimes the tops are a little paltry and fragile. So this year we also tried Oasis, and the bed Jan sowed in the patch between the field houses and the strawberries has done well though we never sprayed it with anything (we used a row cover to keep off the flea beetles). Jan, Mike and Adrienne picked the turnips on Tuesday, ran them through the barrel washer and put them in the cooler.

That may well satisfy your curiosity about your turnips. But maybe you wonder where exactly this turnip bed is on the farm and what we used for fertilizer and who these people picking your turnips are and you have lost track of whether Oasis is a worker or a turnip. Well, if you are the sort of person who wants to know more you might consider coming out to the farm this season.

I won’t claim that seeing the farm and meeting the farm crew will necessarily makes the turnips or any of the other produce taste better. But the taste of food depends to a significant extent on its context, on how and where and when one encounters it. My workers and I once had a miraculously good lunch at the Cambridge diner. I doubt we would have enjoyed it so much if we had not just spent the morning picking and washing hundred of pounds of carrots in the snow. Sitting in a warm dry place with a mug of hot coffee was enough to make the meal remarkable—and to be fair they had good blackberry pie back then.

I don’t mean to suggest that you need to come to the farm and get soaking wet and bitterly cold so you can truly appreciate root vegetables. But I would like to think that walking through the (I hope dry) fields and talking with the crew and learning a bit about what we do might add some element to your enjoyment of what you get from us each week.