18 September 2008

Endive, Fennel, Garlic, Lettuce, Melon, Onions, Peppers, Jalapeno or Cherry Bomb hot pepper, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes, Dill or thyme

I understand that some of you mistook last week’s update for a letter of resignation.  A Letter of Resignation of the formal sort, that is.  Most of my newsletters express a certain degree of informal resignation—of rueful despair, fatalistic anguish, gloomy acceptance of the imperfect nature of things.  But I have yet to send out a note saying I quit.

I confess I thought of quitting on several occasions this season.  Particularly, early on when it seemed I might never find any workers.  For a number of years now I have found workers—and mostly remarkably good ones—by posting a listing on a national database run by the USDA.  This year the listing elicited a single enquiry about the job—from a guy in his 50s who has been on something of a search for himself the past few decades.  It seemed unlikely to me he would find himself here among the weeds so he didn’t. 

The national listing having failed, I posted the job locally everywhere I could think of and did get responses. I arranged an interview with a guy from Glens Falls who e-mailed that morning to say he was running 45 minutes late.  It has been a long 45 minutes.  I got an e-mail from a woman in Albany who was very interested until she remembered that she didn’t have any way of getting here.  An RPI graduate student almost came for an interview, but got tired on the way to the car and canceled (I’m serious).  I got an e-mail from a man who needed farming experience for his upcoming Peace Corps stint, which sounded promising until he got around to mentioning that he works nights so he would not want to get to the farm before 4 pm.  I interviewed a woman who had worked on farms before and wants to grow her own food.  She was so promising I hired her, and I bet she would have been great.  But a week later she discovered, to her surprise that she was pregnant with twins and could not farm.  I hired a Skidmore student who had done landscaping and seemed pleasantly enthusiastic about farm work.  She would probably have been good too, but she took another job—a small detail I had to coax from her the day she was supposed to start.  She really did mean to tell me, but she had been so busy.

I took out an ad in the local Free Press, which resulted almost immediately in lots of messages from potential workers.  I got the feeling most of them had called from a pay phone in a bar.  I set up interviews with the ones who displayed some level competence—such as remembering to leave their names on the answering machine.  The first six never showed up.  I was so grateful to the seventh for actually making it to the farm I almost hired him.  He seemed like a nice guy.  A nice round guy.  Spherical, actually. It was not clear that he would survive farm work.  

It was not clear that I would survive farm work—not if I failed to find workers.  I was just looking for a few able bodied people with an interest in agriculture and some sense of responsibility.  I was getting an extended lesson in the rate of incompetence.  I get the feeling it is rising.  I am not which depressed me more: the applicants who lacked all job seeking (let alone job holding) skills or the ones who had every reason to know better and still could not be bothered to do the simplest of tasks correctly.  

Not that I was going to give up on the season just because we have a permanent underclass or an unsatisfactory notion of how to behave.  The fact that a lot of necessary tasks were not getting done had more to do with.  I knew that at some point I would fall so far behind I could never catch up.  But the thought that I would have, every year, to look for workers from amongst this pool of unsatisfactory candidates did not encourage me. 

However, I did not quit then and I did not quit last week.  It has been, for me, a notably unsatisfactory season, and not simply because I spent much of July on my back waiting for the pain to subside.  We had more rain in the middle of the summer than this farm, with its heavy soil and high water table, can bear.  We lost a lot of vegetables to that weather, including at least half the winter squash and untold numbers of carrots.  Most of the workers I finally found never seemed particularly engaged by the work and did it in almost total silence.  A good conversation can make nearly any farm task easier; the mute company of people counting the minutes until quitting time does not.   

But here we are in September, with decent weather, three happy workers (though one will leave, regretfully, this Friday for a job with benefits; when will we get national health care?) and some pretty well weeded fall crops (just avert your gaze from the parsnip beds).  We have piles of onions drying in the barn, 22 more rows of potatoes to dig and three rows of greenhouse tomatoes that show no sign of giving up yet (almost all of this week’s tomatoes came off those rows).  It is hardly the moment to give up.  Finishing up the season will require a lot of work (such as digging those 22 rows of potatoes), more work, given the beginning of the season and the nature of things, than I would have hoped.  But after fourteen years of farming I am, not too unhappily, resigned to that.

 

 

 

11 September 2008

Beans, Eggplant, Garlic, Lettuce, Melon, Onions, Peppers, Anaheim peppers, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes

  Getting through a farming season is not unlike running a race.  A long race.  A very long race.  Uphill.  In the mud.  And rain.  And thistles.  With wet socks.  And pests.  And an aching back. 

If you are not careful you will find yourself spending most of the race, after than pain has settled in, asking yourself why you keep going.  Why not stop for a while and find a comfortable spot to sit down and stretch your legs out and enjoy the sight of all the other racers wheezing past.  Just get a little rest, catch your breath, let the pain subside, and then you can run some more. 

But if you have ever been in a race you know that stopping in the middle is a big mistake.  At least, if you are planning on finishing.  Obviously, if you have truly had enough, then stopping makes sense.  There’s no good reason to inflict more pain on yourself once you have decided you don’t need to get to the end. 

If you are a pigheaded farmer, however, you don’t like to quit, even if you no longer have any idea what made you start in the first place, if that lunatic moment has faded from memory. So you answer that voice, telling yourself you will go a little further, a little further before you rest.  And bit by bit you go on. 

You go on because, as much as it hurts to continue, you know it will only hurt more to stop and rest and start again.  Bodies and minds just don’t seem to take well to that.  Once at rest they wish to stay at rest.  I am not sure it is true that once in motion they wish to stay in motion—hence that pleading, wheedling voice in your head reminding you this could be your last step.  At best, they stay in motion grudgingly.  So if you give in to that voice and take a break, which is frighteningly easy to do, and then announce that it is time to set out again, your body and mind will put up strenuous objections. 

You can, with a sufficient degree of stubbornness and pain tolerance (two specialties of farmers), drag yourself back into action, overcoming all your body and mind’s considerable and ingenious efforts to root you to the spot.  But it never feels the same.  You cannot find your rhythm and you are constantly and painfully aware of the effort.

Unfortunately, that is the point at which I find myself this season.  Not that I took a break from farming just because it seemed like a good idea.  It was not so much some querulous inner voice as a shooting pain down my right leg that convinced me to pull over and lie down.  But the effect is much the same.  I thought that having the pain go away would give me such a sense of relief that I would launch myself back into farming with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.  And anyway I had things to do.  But I find I have even more tasks to do than I realized  (though I suspect that is a universal condition) and less energy to do them than I hoped (quite possibly another universal condition). 

In other words, things are a bit of a mess on the farm right now.  We brought in the last of the onions this week but have not found time to pick a single winter squash.  The greenhouse tomatoes have long since grown over the top of their trellis but the outside tomatoes are dead.  We are getting a second crop of green beans off the first planting but the deer are mowing down the shell beans.  We have a lot of rows of potatoes left but the yield is below average. 

Of somewhat more concern, though, is the fact that I did not get a chance to plant many of the fall crops until quite recently.  I sowed radishes and turnips over the weekend and we were still transplanting broccoli this Monday.  If we have decent fall weather most of things I have gotten in the ground the past few weeks will have enough time.  But they still won’t be ready to pick until some time in October, and with most of the summer crops petering out we could use a few other vegetables sooner.

Or maybe not.  Perhaps eating a CSA share is like a race too and your head is telling you you could  use a break from fresh vegetables just about now.  Nothing permanent.  Just a week or two of Big Macs and Pepsi to get your energy back for those odd late season root crops.

In case you are too stubborn to give in to that siren song, here are some more vegetables.  Mostly more tomatoes, which I don’t ever consider a bad thing.  I have not had many tomato-free meals for well over a month and I am not sick of them yet.  They will be gone soon enough and we will be left to stare disconsolately at the sad, spongy tomatoish objects in the grocery store.

If you have had enough of tomato salad—though who has?—you could make some salsa this week.  Those Anaheim peppers (which are straighter and smoother than the pointy sweet peppers) would work well roasted, peeled and chopped up with onion, tomatoes, garlic and lime juice.  Or you could roast and mash the eggplant with lots of garlic and lemon juice and add the chopped peppers (and some diced tomato) to that.  Or you could try making a melon salsa with the peppers, grilled onions and lime juice.  I say try making in this case because I have never made a melon salsa myself.  I just invented it on the spur or the moment (though I would guess I am not the first person to think of it).  There’s a small chance it would not be any good.  But somebody ought to give it a try.   And if it proves inedible, well then you have a good reason to skip the fresh stuff—just for a meal or two, of course—and head out for fast food all the sooner.   

 

September 4 2008

Eggplant, Escarole, Garlic, Leeks, Melon, Oregano, Peppers, Hot pepper, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes

One of the advantages, allegedly, of belonging to a CSA is the bond it affords you with your farmer.  Whether or not this actually constitutes a benefit is debatable.  Certainly, most Americans have little interest in any sort of relationship at all with farmers.  And that includes the most basic one: eating the stuff farmers grow.  Knowing where your food comes from and who bears responsibility for it is somehow less enticing when you consume the sorts of things many people do.  Only a gung-ho industrial chemist could get truly excited about the provenance of a frozen microwaveable pepperoni hot pocket.

But what if you actually enjoy dining on fresh produce and take an interest in what it was up to before it got to your house?  Well, for a start you will probably end up in some NSA database and notice an odd little clicking noise when you pick up the phone and the occasional resealed envelope.  Real patriots insist on high fructose corn syrup in everything they swallow.  Apart from the loving attention of your government, however, you might also get a hankering to know something about the person who grew your meal.  You might even go so far as to join a CSA and get your produce from a particular farmer working a particular piece of ground. 

There’s a big difference, though, between eating the tomatoes some guy grew and knowing anything about the tomato grower.  Perhaps a vegetable intuitive could develop ideas about the grower based on such factors as variety selection, ripeness or packaging.  But you might be surprised by how many different sorts of farmers will for different sorts of reasons grow the same sorts of tomatoes.  I don’t know that anyone could really gain more insight into your nature from your tomatoes than from your palm or your aura or even your bank account.

So how do you get to know anything about your farmer?  Well, you could come out to the farm and meet him (coming out to the farm being one of the prerogatives of CSA membership).  But I suspect that even some of you who have tried that remain a little puzzled.  He is not the most effusive or confessional guy—even by farmer standards.   To help you out, I offer the following clues.

Judging by his appearance, he escaped from an asylum a few years back and has been living in a ditch ever since.  It seems he gets his clothes from the Salvation Army’s reject pile, has his hair done by a drunk car mechanic and is not on good terms with his razor. Most days you could scrape enough dirt off him to fill a good sized planter box and enterprising birds could scavenge quantities of nesting material from his head. He often fails to notice if he is bleeding, which he often is.  He mumbles in conversation, speaks to cats, yells at broken equipment and avoids the telephone when possible.  His tone of voice suggests irony or scorn even when he is reading a shopping list.  He will eat large quantities of whatever food you put in front of him at an indelicate speed and finish just about any meal with considerably more stains on his clothes, not that you would necessarily notice given the state of his clothes.  He is incapable of baking the simplest cookies and has odd ideas about the appropriate amount of garlic in any dish.  He thinks a chainsaw makes a fine birthday present. 

He also happens to have three tuxedo jackets (including a natty red one), an Italian ice cream maker, the complete works of Thomas Hardy, an eight burner stove, a penchant for growing esoteric crops, and a M.A. in English and Comparative literature.  He makes vegetable sorbets, writes absurdly complicated sentences (often stuffed with odd parenthetical asides), likes kohlrabi, and is proud to have cultivated his sons’ affection for Monty Python and good cheese. 

So there you have it; he’s just your average insane epicurean unwashed overeducated incomprehensible irascible vagabond red sorrel grower.  Of course, now that you understand what he is like you’re probably thinking you don’t really need that tight a bond with your farmer after all.  In fact, all of a sudden those hot pockets are sounding pretty tempting.  

Well, there’s nothing wrong with a hot pocket.  If you make your own.  You just need some bread dough, some decent mozzarella, a little grated Parmesan, a bit of minced oregano and garlicky sautéed eggplant and cherry tomatoes or some cooked escarole and hot pepper.  You could even make the hot pockets, freeze them and then heat them up again in a microwave.  Not that you would want to eat them after that.  Microwaves have a strange and unfortunate effect on bread, an effect that food scientists overcome only with the help of a battery of unappetizing additives.  The sorts of things that make you think putting up with a weird farmer might just be worth it if that is what it takes to get a steady supply of unadulterated food.  And maybe that’s enough of a bond, the food itself, the potato that is just a potato, a little of the field clinging to its skin.

And anyway, if you want to know more about your farmer you can always find clues to his character in those tomatoes.  White Tomesol?  Black Prince?  Rose de Berne?  Green Zebra?  Brown Berry?  Solid Gold?  Enough said. 

28 August 2008

Beans, Carrots, Garlic, Lettuce, Onions, Peppers, Hot pepper, Red sorrel, Tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes

  Controversy erupted on the farm earlier this week when the Estonian judge gave the American snap beans a score of 8.2 after assessing a 5/10s point mandatory deduction for seediness despite the fact that none of the other six judges saw it and replays clearly showed that the beans had committed no such infraction.  The beans’ head coach and representatives of the American Olympic Committee suggested that the Estonian judge was retaliating for a low score from an American judge at the World Championships that denied Estonia’s top Cauliflower, a precompetition favorite, the bronze medal in the heading vegetable finals.  A spokesman for the judging committee, responding to these allegations, said that he had full confidence in the impartiality of the judges and had no plans the launch an investigation.  A member of the Estonian delegation, who requested to remain anonymous, said the Americans were just being “crybabies.” The Americans threatened to withdraw all their lettuce from further events, but chose in the end to allow their full leaf team to compete and instead replied “am not.”  To which the Estonians answered “are too.” 

In other news, Habanero, as expected, took the gold beet in the tasty but so very hot event, one that it has dominated over the past several decades.  Despite a slow start—Paper Lantern got off well and led until near the halfway point—Habanero, in its customary orange outfit, cruised to victory by a comfortable margin.  In a slight surprise, Roberto’s Cuban Seasoning got the bronze, narrowly edging out Jalapeno, which appeared to run out of steam down the stretch. 

Over at the National Outdoor Bulb Stadium, in the preliminary rounds Candy and Varsity got the biggest scores, putting in some very impressive efforts that went well beyond what we have seen from them the past few years.  But with Redwing and Prince yet to compete, it is too early to tell who the top medal contenders will be.  It promises to be a highly contested event, with all the top onions going neck to neck.

The biggest disappointment to date has been in the root vegetable matches.  The carrots have failed entirely to live up to early expectations for success.  Weediness and excessive moisture set them back during training earlier this summer and despite repeated denials from their agent that this would in any way hamper their ability to perform at peak levels, it has obviously had a serious impact on them.  They appear to be significantly out of form and it is unclear if they can continue at all. 

On the other hand, the tomatoes, declared by most observers, to be completely out of it, have staged a remarkable comeback.  They have been producing notable results even while suffering from multiple diseases.  It is not at all clear that the can maintain this pace for much longer, but is inspiring to see them overcoming adversity even for a little while.

Weird cooking greens may not garner quite the attention of stars such as tomatoes and garlic, with their international following.  Many of them labor in obscurity for years, waiting for their chance to shine.  It is no surprise they can become bitter.  But it would be a shame to overlook them entirely, especially when an attractive entrant like red sorrel comes along.  Displaying great versatility, this potent performer can team up with salad greens, go it alone or play a pivotal role in soup. 

 Speaking of potent performers, these two weeks of vegetables have been brought to you by the proud members of FFA (Former Farmworkers of America).  Andrea, who worked here the past two years, and Ben, who spent a season on the farm five years ago, came back to help me while I had no crew and strict orders (from Liz) to stop picking up heavy objects.  It is because of them that you have these vegetables.  

21 August 2008

Basil, Beans, Eggplant, Garlic, Lettuce, Onions, Peppers, Paper Lantern and Anaheim or Ancho hot peppers, Potatoes, Squash, Tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes

           It has been my habit over the years to celebrate Washington County Fair week by offering cooking tips inspired by the food available at the fairgrounds.  Actually, the standard suggestion is that you leave the bag as it comes packed, dip the whole thing in a light batter and deep fry it.  It is hard to quibble with the simplicity of the preparation.  At most, all you would need to accompany it is a dipping sauce, and in my estimation you would do far better merely to sprinkle on some sea salt and a little malt vinegar.  If you find yourself still a bit peckish after polishing off the bag (you will want to eat it all right away; fritters do not age well) you might consider getting some fried dough or a funnel cake, always an excellent way to end a meal.

         I cannot, for some reason, get over the feeling that nobody has yet followed this cooking advice.  I am aware that some people have minor health concerns about fried foods, even fried vegetables, though as we all know vegetables are good for you.  But I suspect these concerns have little to do with it, and that it is instead in large part due to nothing more than a lack of proper equipment.  After all, how many of us have a large enough deep fat fryer at home to handle an entire bag of vegetables at once?

         If this is indeed what is stopping you right now from whipping up that batter and heating that oil, you might consider several possible solutions.  The most obvious, of course, is finally purchasing that industrial sized fryer you have had your eye on all these years.  And why not treat yourself.  You will be amazed just how many kitchen tasks become easier once you have that baby up and running. 

            If you find yourself balking at switching to commercial equipment, you could of course take the various vegetables out of the bag and fry them up separately.  The effect, both visual and culinary, of the final dish will not be quite the same.  But I think you will find the results entirely satisfactory. 

         And if that does not work for you, I guess you could always toss out the share and head to the fair, where you will find plenty of people with adequately sized fryers waiting to help you up your grease intake.

         On the way there this Saturday, you could stop in at the farm.  You may not find any fried foods here (and then again, you might).  But you will have a chance to walk around the fields (many parts of which may even have dried out by then), meet the large pig (bigger by far than any of the pigs at the fair) and pull up a weed or two.  The folks who came out to the farm last Saturday for Weedfest—many thanks to all of you who did—were kind enough to leave a few of them (though a lot fewer of them) for someone else.  There’s much to be said for weeding.  It’s great (and surprising rare) to have tangible results for your efforts.  It gives you a useful sense of what it takes to produce food.  It helps the farm.  But best of all it is a proven way to increase your appetite, which will come in handy later in the day at the fair as you eye a second funnel cake.  So come to the farm this Saturday between 10 and 2.  We will provide drinks and snacks and enough weeds to go around. 

         Oh, and in case you were wondering, many of the vegetables in your share this week can be eaten unfried—if absolutely necessary.  That includes the small red hot pepper in the cherry tomato bag, which while well short of lethal certainly packs enough heat to add a notable spiciness to any dish.  I bet it would be excellent pureed into some batter for spicy eggplant fritters and onion rings.

 

 

 

Directions to The Alleged Farm:

 

1. 787 north to exit for Route 7 east toward Troy and Bennington.
2. Take Route 7 east (Hoosick St) to second stop light and turn left onto Route 40 north (Oakwood Ave).
3. Go 18+ miles north on Route 40 and turn right onto Meetinghouse Road.
4. Follow the paved portion of Meetinghouse Road for 1.5 miles to a sort of fork in the road, where you will bear left (straight) onto the dirt road portion of Meetinghouse Road (paved road curves off hard to the right and becomes South Cambridge Road).
5. Go 1 mile on the dirt road portion of Meetinghouse Road (up and over the hill) to the intersection with Cooke Hollow Road. The Alleged Farm is on the right at this intersection – blue house with red barns.

 

Beans, Beets, Cucumber, Garlic, Onion, Peppers, Hot pepper, Potatoes, Purple scallions, Squash, Tomatoes, Purple basil

Your guest author this week is the farmer’s wife. Yup, there’s trouble on the farm. Not only am I writing the newsletter, I’ve actually been out in the fields for a purpose other than picking berries. In fact, I know where the bean patch is. And that’s because I spent much of last weekend weeding it. Most of you don’t really know me very well, but let me promise you that this is shocking news. 

What would cause such aberrant behavior? Well, it’s a direct result of the excruciating pain that Thomas has been experiencing for the last six weeks, which has resulted in many a farm task going undone.  He had a herniated disk – L5S1 to be exact (not sure what that actually means, but low down in his back), that was causing shooting pain down his leg to his somewhat numb foot.  Sitting was impossible, standing far from pleasant – only lying flat on the kitchen floor seemed to bring regular relief. Needless to say, this has not been conducive to accomplishing farm chores. 

Well, he just couldn’t take it any more, so this morning he had surgery (microdiskectomy to be precise). And modern medicine really can be amazing – by late this afternoon he was home and completely free of the excruciating nerve pain. The big challenge ahead is keeping him from working too hard in the near term – resting is not really his forte. 

I am going to need assistance with restraining him, and that’s where you members can help. Weeds are taking over the farm! The plants are drowning – O.K., you can’t do anything about that. But you can help with the weeds. And it can be good clean dirty fun. While I’m not really known for my weeding ability, I am known for my party organizing. So, it seemed to make sense to build on my skills and combine weeding with a party – what could be more fun? So, please join us this Saturday afternoon (anytime after 1pm) for an Alleged Farm first – Weed Fest 2008, an opportunity to fight back against the weed offensive and to join other members in a potluck dinner following an afternoon of good, hard, dirty work. Bring a dish to share and we’ll supply drinks. 

Now, when I say dirty, I mean really dirty.  I don’t need to tell you all that it has been a wet summer, but it’s hard to really understand the amount of mud that this translates into on a farm. Whatever you wear (and I strongly recommend pants and sturdy shoes), be sure that you don’t mind it being covered in mud. And think about bringing a change of clothes or at least a towel or tarp to protect your car seats on the ride home. Also, please leave your dogs at home. 

If the weather looks too wet on Saturday, we will re-schedule for Sunday morning (10am) with a potluck lunch. If you will be joining us for this ridiculously fun event – please give us a call at 692-9065 or send an email to Thomas@TheAllegedFarm.com so we can plan for weeding tasks and drinks. I do have this grand vision of 100+ of our members sweeping across the farm and wiping out the scourge of weeds – and I’m not even the one on serious pain medication – but I do think it’s possible! So, please join us this weekend for Weed Fest 2008. 

August 7 2008

Beans, Cabbage, Carrots, Cucumbers, Garlic, Onions, Peppers, Potatoes, Squash, Tomatoes, Basil, Cilantro, Dill

  Here’s a bag of standard summer vegetables. Nothing weird or unrecognizable or unheard of.  True, a few of the tomatoes are odd colors (there are even some white tomatoes in a couple of shares) and there are round zucchini.  But I doubt that sort of thing even gets your attention at this point.  Whatever the color or shape, it is still a familiar vegetable at heart. 

I mean to suggest neither that these familiar crops are better than some of the odder things we grow nor that you are unable to handle the occasional kohlrabi or dandelion green.  Nor, on the other hand, do I mean to derogate these vegetables by suggesting they are common.  I like growing radicchio and parsley root, husk cherries and tatsoi, lemon grass and celeriac.  But I am no vegetable snob, turning my nose up at the hoi polloi’s produce.  I get as much pleasure from harvesting a nice long carrot or hefty onion as I do from picking a bunch of Chinese broccoli. 

There is much to be said for the more popular crops.  In most cases there are good reasons they are more popular.  We had the radio on in the packing room and the station played an obscure Procul Harum song—by obscure I mean not one of the two Procul Harum songs anyone but a fanatic has ever heard.  It sounded like those two songs, but a lot worse.  It was a useful reminder that whatever one thinks of modern marketed culture, sometimes things—songs or vegetables—deserve their reputation.  Tomatoes, for instance.  I have met one or two sane people who object to tomatoes, but for the vast majority of us the tomato’s (by which I mean the real, vine ripened summer tomato) renown comes as no surprise.

Unfortunately, what does come as a surprise is how few ripe tomatoes we still have.  I keep thinking that this week they will really start to produce and then not much happens.  Not much except more rain and more disease.  So at this point I won’t, in this (I hope) nonstandard summer, promise that you will see huge quantities of tomatoes.  But I remain vaguely optimistic.

Beans also merit praise.  At least, good ones do.  Unfortunately, too many farmers wait too long to pick their beans and then those beans take too long to get to eaters.  They are limp and seedy and fibrous and you have to overcook them to have any chance of getting them down.  It is hard to love a bean like that (unless you are a farmer, in which case you love the fact that you get a bigger yield from bigger beans).  But then it is hard to love cheap ice cream too. 

I have to confess (all right, I don’t have to, but I do it anyway) that I have gotten slightly sick of eating plain carrots.  It is one of the hazards of farming.  You end up snacking on a lot of raw vegetables and sometimes you grow tired of them.  I could happily go a long time without chomping up another carrot.  I have not, however, lost my taste for shredded carrot in all sorts of dishes such as cole slaw, and I am particularly fond of carrot salad—of shredded raw carrot with a strong, mustardy vinaigrette perhaps with a pinch of ground cumin and a little paprika.

Perhaps because I do not snack on them out in the field or in the packing room, I have not grown tired of onions.  Life without onions would be a sad, sad thing.  Raw, fried, grilled, baked, cooked down to mush, pickled, made into chutney or jam, it does not matter.  The only onions I have any reservations at all about are those huge bland ones you can “eat just like an apple.”  Why would you eat an onion just like an apple?  Has anyone ever done this?  Why not just have an apple?  Onions are not supposed to be bland, and it takes a real marketing genius to turn such an obvious shortcoming into a selling point.  It ranks up there with the no heat jalapeno, which as far as I can tell is just a very small green pepper.  It allows people who do not like spicy food to eat “spicy” food.  I am not sure I understand the point.

But then I doubt most modern marketing gurus have me in mind as they craft new products and sales pitches.  I am too cheap, too grouchy, too poorly paid, too rural and way too old.  I guess I could feel sore about that.  But it is kind of nice to belong to an extraneous demographic.  I don’t have to waste my time watching the special cable channel, reading the lifestyle magazine, eating the cereal.  It leaves me with a lot of free time to grow vegetables.

I am going to need all that time soon.  By the end of the month I will have one worker, and he will be away on a Mediterranean cruise (it is what all farm workers do on their time off).  So if you happen to know of people looking for a farm job through the middle of November, please send them my way.  In addition to hourly pay, they get to snack on as many carrots as they can.  Or onions.