november 18, 2009 forager

F   O   R   A   G   E   R

Where Wednesday is Thursday and Tuesday is Wednesday too You see, all of our Wednesdays may as well be Sundays anyway  Because Saturday feels like Monday, all Friday long

18 November 2009

It was the week before Thanksgiving, and all across the farm, product needed eating and giving thanks early intends no harm. But first, before we get completely lost in paragraphs of wonder and silliness, we have to explain THE CSA PICKUP SCHEDULE FOR THANKSGIVING WEEK.

NEXT WEEK…..IF YOU ARE A WEDNESDAY PICKERUPPER YOU PICK UP ON TUESDAY. IN SIMILAR FASHION,  THURSDAY MEMBERS PLEASE PICK UP ON WEDNESDAY. THE FARMER AND THE COOK WILL BE CLOSED ON THANKSGIVING DAY.

So, what do think of that arugula, anyway? I was picking it at Gozo the other day with Quin, current cofarmer at Mano Farm, one of my former subsidiaries, and Quin said: “ This bunch would be worth six bucks in New York City”. My position is clear: if I have it, I will load it. There is no point in being stingy if the earth yields up the green. Same thing on the lettuce. I asked the harvest crew to put extra lettuce in the box even though the shares were already full because I can not sell it all at the store or the farmers market, so? Cram it all in the box. It’s all up to you now. Grab some garlic and get your salad on, maybe with some tomatoes, rice, and a nice steaming bowl of baked squash.

We know we are not in New York City. If we were in New York City you would be making $645,000 a year doing architectural drawings, selling bonds, or working at the MET. By night you would be on off-off Broadway, designing sets or doing Othello set in Baghdad, 2003. Then you could all afford my six dollar arugula and three dollar heads of lettuce. Its not bragging, but more a form of sly commercial propaganda, which, when mixed with a folksy down-home self effacing tone, is one of my more satisfying forms of private entertainment. The greatest compliment I may have ever been paid was that I was “ grossly under-employed”. And I am just enough of a fool to take pleasure in that as fact. So stay on the surface for as long as you can, the ocean is deep and darker down below.

You could not compare Butternut squash prices in New York City this year anyway. The east coast suffered serious climate-based crop disasters and the long term cucurbitae got hammered. No pumpkin for Gotham. Locally I recently saw conventional Butternut going for a buck-twenty-niner. I have been dumping hard squash at the Farmer and Cook for fifty cents a pound for probably no good reason. My wife says it will sell at a fair price to anyone who really wants it. There is no point in giving it away, especially since it will be good through January!

I have finished planting for the year 2009! The rationale is thus: No need to plant at the end of November, because you might as well be planting on the 20th of January. Its not really like all that Wednesday is Thursday stuff because November same as January is based on sound solar science: its all about the day length. And there will be no phyto-acceleration until a month after the Solstice. Like us, plants just tend to sit there, as if the bowl game was over in the first quarter and now we are just sticking around for another serving of nachos and clear, chilled Tequila. Except the vegetables prefer the chirping of songbirds to alcoholic beverages. I leave old crops in place so the little things will have a place to hide from the falcons. Sixty seven sparrows enjoyed the dying tomato vines this morning more than ever we did, as we had eaten the tomatoes that had been harvested there a month earlier.

NEXT WEEK; PICK UP ON TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY, AND MAKE READY FOR PIE.

forager november 11,

F O R A G E R

We were going to just let that box speak for itself

But you should know I have something else to say

11 November 2009

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the war in Europe ended in 1918.

Why they just didn’t ended it a few days earlier instead of being all poetic about it is kind of crazy. Paul Baumer, the narrator and protagonist of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front dies in October, which underscores the futility of the circumstance even further. And that war, above perhaps any other should have instructed us all about the futility of combat. If it costs us a million dollars a year to keep a soldier in Afghanistan and we are going to send 40,000 more over there (in the ninth year of US involvement) why not just buy everybody off instead?

That’s forty billion dollars, and I will bet that is a low estimate. That is well over a thousand dollars for every one of the 28 million Afghanis. I understand that they like wheat, and sixty pounds of wheat only costs $4.00, but you have to buy 1000 tons, which the US government can sure do.

Buy off is a rather crass way of describing an economic solution rather than one that comes out of a gun barrel. Nine years? Every day that goes by makes the record of other great states in that part of the world seem more cogent. Britain lost an army there in the 19^th century. Pakistan does not want anything to do with the place and they could have owned it whenever. The Persians really don’t see much need in owning it either, though they have a few million of their ethnic brethren parked there. After Alexander its been a no-no. Especially with the Yuezhi to deal with. Those are the tribes, and it’s the tribes that get to you, not some gaudy army. Its rarely an organization that does in the Greeks, the Russians, the Ghazni, the Kushans or the Mongols. Losers all, to the mountains and the tribes that refuse to have anything to do with what comes over the ridge.

What is it they want? Security, food, and to be left alone. Maybe we should drill them a water well instead of blow up their village. One well costs around $50,000 to drill and stick a pump on. One of the US Army’s battle tanks costs four million, and that’s before all the people inside it die, so the value is unbeatable.

This sort of prattle is considered crazy by people who prefer war you know.

I know, I am just talking about something else to keep from talking about the winter squash pamphlet I promised last week. I should never promise. Unfulfilled promise turns hope to dust. Oops, more political talk, unintended.

As for the CSA box: this is the load that makes good on the few boxes that were a little light. Hope you took some apples and bell peppers too. When you see open boxes of produce lying out by your check off list, snatch up a few. It’s a free choice.

Did you see the film Watershed Revolution at the Ojai Film Festival? The GOZO CSA was in it. Another good film to have seen was Ingredients. Both are worth buying and sharing.

Pot Nic Luck Pic: or as you say in your country potluck picnic, at the farm, 370 Balwin Road, just off California Highway 150. November 21^st from Noon to 3PM. Let us know what you are planning to share. Something tells me winter squash is featured already. Write to farmerandcook@gmail.com to RSVP.

FORAGER 3 November 2009

 

F O R A G E R

This issue is brought to you by VITAMIX, probably the World’s Most Wonderful Blender

You can obtain a VITAMIX at a ridiculously reduced rate by calling 290-0988

3 November 2009

 

 

It takes a lot of hands to put the CSA share boxes together and many are leant voluntarily because the CSA is a good thing, the farm is sort of a crucial thing, the store is a yummy place, the outdoors is good for oneself, and there be fine camaraderie found in the kale patch. The communion of work allows the harvest to be remarkably effortless.

 

Jeff Sanders has been helping us at the farm and the store for a number of years now, pro bono, except for a salad, soup, or a bunch of beets and a few tomatoes here and there. There is no money to pay him for what he really provides, which is quiet leadership, humor, wit, physical strength, preparation, effortless ability, selflessness. He does so well you want to do well too. Now that he has his therapy and counseling practice going, we really miss him on the days he has clients.

 

Johanna Zee has been working at the farm for over a year now. I wanted to be able to rely on her on days I couldn’t be here or Jeff was busy so we hired Johanna to harvest and make sure that full boxes are in the right place when they are so supposed to be. She is a good planner, registered nurse and natural health advisor, mother and harvester. She wrote a book. She is involved in quality control and sanitation. When she asks if some fruit or vegetables should be washed it is a foregone conclusion that it should be.

 

Francisco Tirado works on the farm every day but Sunday. Small farms need at least one person like him to move about the place, performing small tasks all day long to pull the product forward toward harvest, and then to harvest as well. He is a multitasker of the highest order. He can focus on the priority while assuring that many other tasks, like irrigation, are accomplished on one crop, while he is weeding or harvesting another. I enjoy working with him so he won’t have too much to do. I hired him so I would not have too much to do, so you can see how things worked out. I consult with him all day long because his eyes see things when I am not there. He has a farm in central Mexico twice as large as Gozo Farm, but it does not pay to farm it now, so he works here. I wish I could work on his farm sometimes, and not lead such a complicated life.

 

John Phaneuf’s wonderdog Seed is the only dog to be granted a full exemption at Gozo. Normally dogs are not allowed on the farm. Greg Prinz’ dog Felvis seized his exemption rather than wait to be granted one. That is kind of the way he is, Napoleonic, that is. Felvis, I mean. Greg is more like Peter the Great. Some kind of royalty. He looks like the Jack of Clubs.

 

My wife Olivia works on the farm even when she is just looking through a seed catalogue. She buys seeds. She also plants them in trays full of peat moss and in my brain. Cooks are good inspirations for farms and farmers. Her birthday was last week and I promised her I would take her camping on Santa Cruz Island. I am glad I did not go last week because it blew a gale out there on the days we had planned to be on the island. The tent would have ended up in the ocean. We are on Santa Cruz while you are reading this.

 

Today’s harvest is a lot like last week’s. There are some surprises, and some redundancies. I am not sure if that last sentence, if posed as a question, would end up on an IQ test to determine if surprise is to redundant as shoes are to socks, or electricity is to a vacuum cleaner.

 

The collards are just like kale. Eat your collards and you will grow up to be big and strong like me. And a little crazy. Maybe if we spelled it kollards it would remove the poverty onus and remind one more of Old Vienna, of Kohl rabi and Mozart, and not so much of corn bread, ham hocks and Bear Bryant.

 

 

 

Paul “Bear” Bryant, now deceased, it the former football coach at the University of Alabama.

ARTICLE FOR WHOLE PERSON

Let Them Eat Kale: A Tale of Unintentional Community

I am a farmer. My wife Olivia is a cook.  When our dating turned more serious, she said: “ Well, so its going to be the “farmer and the cook”. Later we decided to start a “store”, where we would sell my produce and some prepared food. We call it The Farmer and The Cook. It’s a really good branding idea, and so obvious. Olivia actually wanted to just have a fancy candy company. She had a very clear concept and had done enough research to be convincing. She took me over to a derelict building her mother owned in Meiners Oaks, a neighborhood near Ojai. Olivia said we could rent one of the back rooms to make candy in because the tenant was eight months in arrears. I kicked the tenant out and took half the building because I wanted to sell produce. Then I started to fix the building. “ Delayed Maintenance” is the operational euphemism here. You could see the stars at night through the holes in the roof.

Maybe we should have just focused on that candy business idea.  Slowly we piled on the products. First we made bread and soup. Then a magnanimous grocer in West Los Angeles gave us a salad bar when one of his stores was being liquidated to make room for a PETSMART. Then the salad bar cook started making chocolate chip cookies. They went over big because we use maple syrup as a secret ingredient. Now there are twenty-seven kinds of cookies, nut balls and fruity bars-no hyperbole intended.  We made muffins and empanadas. Then we piled on the groceries and personal care yada. Then it was lunch specials like Nut Loaf, Fresh Corn Tamales and Pizza. Then people wanted it all for dinner so we started staying open later.

I think it’s important to note the implications of the last sentence. “ People wanted” quite a few things, and lacking an ironclad business plan, and having been trained to please, we gave them what they wanted. Smoothies, fresh kale juice, bulk shampoo, bootleg almonds that have not been steamed. We made organic, raw, vegan nut lasagna for months even after we realized it was impossible to break even. Whatever. Now when people ask me a question that begins “ I wonder if…” I stop them in their tracks and say something like “ You are under the impression that this is MY store, when indeed, this is your store. It is here for you, not me.”

Of course we always purchased local produce first, and a lot of it came from locally overburdened souls with severe wasted-fruit guilt. We gave people spelt bread, not wheat, because so many did not want wheat and we had grown weary of the Wheat Question. We also eliminated dairy because of the many vacaphobes who sought us like pilgrims, and canola oil because far too many people believed erroneously that canola oil was “invented” to replace hydraulic fluid.  Mustard oil is the ubiquitous oil of choice throughout India, but I could make no headway against such a brutal urban myth. Yes, we went with olive oil, virgin, organic, of course.

At some point I need to make it clear that the Farmer and The Cook is an all-organic, vegetarian kitchen. Much of what we create is de facto vegan. This program sounds insane because it is, but we were so certain of our convictions at the time, and later when we realized the folly of our plan it was too late. Hypocrisy was not on the menu. We sell frozen meat to “people who want it”, and have on rare occasion supplemented conventional beer for organic beer when I forgot to order organic beer. We also sinned with the conventional Parmesan, only once, when the price of organic Parmesan seemed outrageous. We gave ourselves a pass at the time because Italy does not allow bovine growth hormones in dairy production, but the cheese kept us awake at night, so we went back to the pricy Italian. It really does not matter. We overslept as a result, and felt no guilt.

You should also know that The Farmer and The Cook is not some place you drop by, unless you are on your way to Taft or New Cuyama on California Highway 33.  Even Huell Howser has not seen Taft, so don’t feel deprived. We launched our idea well aware that Rodeo Drive was not just one block west of us. Spanish is not the second language in our neighborhood. Cilantro and chile peppers are popular and make us a profit. We grow so much Mexican food and work with so many Mexicans we changed to a Mexican Café. Intuition has naturally never been our strongest trait, but we felt this was something we felt we could trust. Lucky for us, many Anglos love chipotle and rellenos.

Intelligent people apt to eat organic food live in the Ojai Valley, to be sure, but many of them are so smart they grow their own food. It may come as a shocker, but many actually cook meals for themselves in their own homes. We have always sought out the boondocks, because one has a better chance of finding cleaner air and water, and here on El Roblar Drive, there is nothing but boondocks all around us. Nothing stands between us and Bakersfield but the nearly impassable ridges that cut the Los Padres National Forest. To be fair, the people who swing by the store are in Ojai because of the environment. Eating clean is like breathing clean.

Because birds of a feather tend to roost here, there have been hundreds of friendships found and numerous hookups made, many of them long lasting, and some having yielded numerous offspring. However it is far from the sort of drive-by-dating scene one might mistake for the produce aisles at Gelsons or Whole Foods. We use to have a rule that we never hired mates, legal or not, but love in-house made that unrealistic.  One wedding planned for next spring took nine years to be arranged, when once untenable circumstances were finally resolved. The story could be made into a major motion picture starring some of the actors who slide in to The Farmer and the Cook on occasion because they know we will do our best to ignore their celebrity.

The store is a noted hang. But it’s far from a scene. Our beer and wine menu is like a state secret. An elite few call it “ Rainbow’s End”, not to make fun of the fancy, orderly, well lit, uncomplicated natural food store across town called Rainbow Bridge, but because there is fool’s gold in the pot over here at the F and C. This is where the rainbow chasers and bead vendors come to recharge.  We are on the Mystery map to those who travel the uncertain road between Sedona and Bolinas in the Jerry Garcia nation, seeking figs and mulberries and those bootlegged almonds. This is where some of the world’s best oranges get juiced, the pita bread is homemade and the humus it accompanies was scratch-made onsite, just like everything else. The salad dressings do not come on a truck from Pacoima.  If we fixed the parking lot, people with notable, low-slung imported units might pull in, but the holes are better suited to pickup trucks and VW vans that have already been thrashed. Folks with money come here; it’s just that we have never gotten around to making things safer for their cars. It’s also wise to wear boots, or sandals, but not heels. More than one pair of Manolos has been ruined in the cracks here.

We have been at it now for nearly ten years. Nearing sixty years of age, one might be inclined to sell out. I can still surf and walk without much pain, so it seemed wise to bust out early while I could still stand up without a walker. Moving on has occurred to us more and more frequently, but the idea of selling the store has already been used as a major April Fools Joke-twice. Once I claimed in our weekly newsletter that we had been bought by Whole Foods (as if!). This fable was so good it caused loud wailing and even anger. The next week, I wrote that there had been a grave error. We had been bought instead by Trader Joe, not Whole Foods. Not everyone got the joke even the second time.

We have been approached from time to time by parties interested in buying our business, but we are too honest to sell the shell. . If my wife wasn’t here to throw out soup that was rank or fine-tune the scones and brownies, things would not be the same and we know it. She is pretty funny to watch in the kitchen when some food product has gone south. She will doctor it up with lemon juice or sugar or wave a magic wand and if its no good she doesn’t care how much organic half and half is in it, it’s going into the compost buckets! Bloosh!

The store would be nothing without the farm and all the free produce it provides as well as the fresh cachet and organic halo. If we charged according to real world costs, our price point would really be Rodeo Drive. It was such a silly idea. I gave up on making a real profit out of produce a long time ago. There is no way the store can use or sell ten acres of vegetables. I have a sixty member CSA ( weekly produce buying club) and we go to the farmers market to make a living.

We may have finally given up on the idea of selling the store. Maybe we will just travel more and let the kids run the asylum. The teens are pretty good at it. For many it is their first job, they strive to do well, do not have too much extracurricular drama and are not jaded or disillusioned by the world yet. Happiness tends to be their natural state.  Besides, if we did not have the Farmer and the Cook, what would we do? Who would we be? We are defined increasingly by all the people we know and serve.

How might all this have been planned? We have had over 300 employees and I have only fired seven of them. And a few of them I have hired back-one three times! People think they are getting love out of us, but it’s more like loyalty, or tradition. Its definitely not infatuation. That ended the first time I had to tell somebody to leave and never come back.

This mushroom that popped up in Meiners Oaks was not intentionally meant to be the basis of community, but that is the result. We know everybody in town a little bit. If I have seen them routinely of late I will probably remember their name is Joanne, not Judy. If not sure, I know I can get away with mumbling. The same guy has been coming here at 8:30 AM for an apple, a yogurt and a cup of tea for nine years.  We don’t have the makeup to charge poor seekers who want to preach their yoga and bliss protocols in the café late at night on a Wednesday.  People will buy a cookie, right? Our sense of ownership is fuzzy. We don’t serve meat because of a handful of local vegetarians who are ahead of the curve. Then because of that decision, people come here from miles away, like Toronto, because it’s a meatless vegetarian kitchen. Our people don’t know it but I am always counting their votes, polling their opinions, listening to their hearts. If this practice were intentional, if we had committees and were a formal cooperative as has been suggested, things would be different and maybe not better. It might not fail because most good co-ops succeed because they have benevolent dictators like us. Strangers come into the store and they say “ Gee, this place reminds me of the 70s” or “I was a member of a co-op like this in Austin.”

They have no idea how proud that makes us.

forager October 21 2009

FFFFOOORRRAAAGGGEEERRR

YEAH, I WAS HOPING FOR A FREEWAY SERIES

YOU THINK I WANT TO WATCH THE YANKEES BUY ANOTHER CHAMPIONSHIP?

Let ’em play Philadelphia in the snow!

21 October 2009

Many of you are so very not interested in baseball, so I will spare you more puerile dysfunction. Instead, let me tell you to eat your beet greens first. Cook them with the chard and eat them warm. Chop them fine after cooking and sprinkel over your salad when cool for a little exotic flavor. Chard same as beet greens! Soy sauce! Butter! Olive Oil and garlic. All One World United by The Green! You can cook the beets themselves tomorrow or next week and then slice over salad, but let not thy greens decay in yon reefer! Perishables abound, so just put the thought of slamming a burrito at Jim and Rob’s out of your mind for a while.  You have collards and kale to deal with. They rhyme with raw. If you were one of the lucky shoppers who bargained with Olivia for a VitaMix or have a spiffed juicer, then the sight of all that verdure will not intimidate ye. But check it out and move on those leaves quickly. One of the key attributes of the CSA is the fresh. This ain’t no farmers market set up. Hardly nobody picks and sells the same day as a market, so grab the exquisite vitamins and phytonutrients while fresh.

I can eat a kale stem a day after it was picked and I can already test the carbohydrates.  You try eating it while picking, then you’ll know. One of the benefits of having a big garden like I do is getting to munch all the raw stuff out there. I ate 400% more corn raw than cooked this year. Sounds gross, I know. Erudition and comedy are no smokescreen for my cromagnonesque qualities. Hope you didn’t get any ears with a big bite taken out of it. Its happened, but only to a dear friend. And it’s the last of the corn. It was either CSA or farmers market, and Olivia said   “CSA!”

You have a friend in the kitchen, campers.

Hey. News Bulletin! Farmer Hit With Huge Property Tax Bill. Dateline: Meiners Oaks, California.  Steve Sprinkel, a local organic farmer, was recently presented a bill for over $7,000 for two years of property tax on property he does not own. The owner, The County of Ventura, is also the agency billing Sprinkel.

“ Like, I tried to get that property tax deal out of the lease before I signed it, but they insisted, and I really wanted to farm there, so I signed it anyway. They said at the time there was a chance I would never get billed anyway.”

As it turns out, Sprinkel was wrong. When asked what he would do, he replied “ Grow more vegetables I guess. Maybe get a second job working nights at the Farmer and The Cook. I hear they are hiring. Oh, heck what am I saying? I already work there. Here. Whatever.”

More news from inside the box: The Meyer lemons are from Seven Oaks Ranch. Greg Prinz, local surfing champion, is working there now and he picked them for us. Greg and Emilie, wife and salad bar cook at the F and C, also provide us the best eggs in the region, available  exclusively at The Farmer and The Cook, which was recently voted Ojai Number One Best Produce Department by readers of the Ojai Valley News! Better than Starr, Rainbow or Westridge? It’s a stretch but we’ll take it. You know why? Maybe because the people voted on the basis of local and organic. Starr has got the beauty and endless aisles of variety. Rainbow does organic fairly well and has papayas and plantains to boot!  In any case, we are grateful for the accolade and will reinvest our energy so we might be better deserving of this high honor.

Boxing Update! You also got yourself another winter squash. You might be saying “ What gives with all the winter squash?” But get used to it. I have five tons of it and its mostly all yours. That is five Dodge 350 trucks full, hun-bun. You’ll be happier during the holidays when you can make pie out some of it. Its real food. Not some measly head of butter lettuce or a bunch of arugula. Maybe President Obama thinks that is a meal, but he doesn’t have to kill weeds all afternoon. Give me the hardcore alimentary power of hard squash! You may survive on such things as Chirimen, Kabocha or Butternut because they have substance, and vitamins, like A and C. Half as much A as a sweet potato! And it’s got more protein than a turnip, I can tell you that.

Next week we will be providing a carefully vetted Winter Squash Cook Booklet. You can wait until then if you want because the squash will be good for months. But BEST when eaten fresh! Once something is off the vine, its all downhill from there.

forager August 27 2009

F  O  R  A  G   E    R

Tales of Swindlers and Dupes, Chicanery, Chicory, and Fraud with Spoons

27 August 2009

Fridge that melon. We hope they are all good. Its not exactly pig-in-a-poke selection, but we are new to the science. If your melon is not at all good (and some may be mediocre while others spectacular) feel free to come by and get another one off the shelf at The Farmer and The Cook. We planted fall leaf vegetables this week. Tomatoes are going down early. More corn to come.  Four current members still have not paid as of the last week in August. Can you beat that?

Over time Julia Child continued to purchase items from my stand at the Santa Barbara Farmers market into the late 1980s and some of those leaves no doubt continued to appear on her cooking program and her magnum opus, The Way To Cook.  During that time I was drawn into a rather dark affair involving Julia Child, Robert Huttenback, the Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara and the infamous Adnan Kashoggi, international arms dealer, Iran-Contra figure, and, at the time, one of the dirtiest men in the world next to Idi Amin and Hnery Kissinger. Julia Child and Huttenback were friends, and ran in the same rarified circles as Kashoggi, aka Spoons*.  When Huttenback proposed that a Wine and Food Institute be created at the UC Santa Barbara campus, with Julia Child as its creative genius, I was sought out as a potential gardener extraordinaire, to fill the grounds of the former Devereaux mansion at the far west end of the campus with all the spiffy gourmet items I had gained such glorious acclaim for producing.  I felt from the beginning a portent of foulness, in that, while with Julia Child and a number of forgotten characters, I strolled the abandoned grounds behind the mansion, decrepit with overgrown landscape, pathways askew. I was burdened with misgivings. Was this right,  to use public funds from an egalitarian institution like he UC to foment wine parties and enliven them with fondue infused with green garlic fresh from my hand? My friends from the university art department

forager August 17 2009

F O U R R A G E

LE JOURNAL SEMENAL DU CLUB MANGE “ FERMIER ET CUISTOT”

17 AUGUST 2009

I kinda made up that French stuff, but as I say, somebody has to make up words or all we would do is point and grunt. Not to be too critical of grunting though. Tomato Bulletin: We have tomatoes and we will have tomatoes but we will not have a lot of tomatoes in the future. Disease is on a rampage. We have had blight, fusarium, perhaps alternaria. Fungus and bacteria. Not the kind that harm humans, just those that kill plants. At this point the culprit is not materially important. From far off Maryland Pierre Constanz reminded me that I might have applied neem, the juice of  azideracta Indica, a tree that is native to India, as a preventative when we had those lingering fogs in June.   I estimate that seventy percent of our tomatoes have succumbed to whatever is apparently affecting tomatoes from coast to coast. Allegedly the tomatoes on the East Coast are toast.  Its no consolation that I am not alone with my problem.  These are the perils of planting and similarly of CSA box fare. And that’s why diversity is nifty. Below I continue my Julia Child saga. In the previous episode, we were drinking beer in her kitchen.

The next time I met Julia Child, I was selling vegetables at the farmers market in Santa Barbara. It was in the mid 1980s. One morning, I saw her strolling down the aisle, somewhat incognito. Nobody was going ape with the doyenne gastronomique in the hood. She had just moved to town.  Julia Child walked up to my table and said: “ These look like nice carrots.”

They were nice carrots. I had made an effort to grow carrots because no one at the time grew them as a practice. They were French carrots too, Nantes carrots. It was my punitive niche. The carrots, as my fellow farmers perhaps learned later, were a good draw. People usually don’t just buy one thing from the table. They may gather lettuce and radishes, even gamble on something exotic like Painted Pony beans, even thought there is a slim chance they will ever cook them. It’s the carrots they really want though.

As she was rummaging around on my table, I said: “ You may not remember that I once had lunch in your kitchen on Cape Cod.”

She stood up and cocked her head to one side, observing me carefully. “ No, I am afraid I don’t. What was the occasion?”

It was a logical answer. My hair was a lot longer then.

“ I came down from Harvard with Gordon Smith. You served us some Beef Stroganoff.”

“ Oh Gordon! Do you hear from him? What is he doing these days?”

“ I lost track of him.”

“ Hmm. That’s a shame. Did you grow this radicchio?”

Over time, Julia Child visited my table frequently at the farmers market. I had already started growing more exotic products, chiefly from France and Italy, in order to steer clear of the tomato panics. I was then in Carpinteria, where one may plant lettuce seed on the 20^th of December or the 20^th of July. I determined to grow salads. I also had a light smattering of herbs. All of this was done much before the market place was overwhelmed with competition. Now if you drive through Watsonville you may see radicchio on fifteen acres, which is an avalanche and a panic in its own right. Mexican basil stomps the shipping market year round. They can have it at a buck-fifty a pound.

Julia Child eventually began to request certain things and I would grow them. She sent her personal assistant to the farm on days when they were going to film one of her television shows and we would wander around picking this or that, especially flowering herbs or particularly beautiful summer squash or tomatoes. Julia Child came once to the farm, but though the variety was impressive I think she was underwhelmed with my scale of production. I was growing on three acres at the time.  Eventually the trip out to Carpinteria became a drag so they discontinued their visits. But once upon a time my arugula and red oak lettuce was National. I never saw the shows though.

forager July 29 2009

F   O   R   A   G    E    R

GETTIN’ THROUGH THE SUMMER AND WAITIN’ ON THE CUKES
BUT COOK YOUR CORN TODAY-IT’S THE TAILENDER

29 JULY 2009

I once had a farm on Oahu, in a canyon above a temple. It was quite a long time ago. I grew cucumbers there, and tomatoes and pole green beans. You could see the waves breaking off Goat Island from the top of the hill. Montoya helped me get the land. His partner Kamiya had already taught me how to do it. Kamiya said I had to spray. “ You gotta spray, I’m telling ya,” Ken said.

So I sprayed. I sprayed malathion, and kelthane and diazinon. I sprayed dieldrin, guthion and even a bit of paraquat. This went against all my earlier practical training as well as Redwood  Morning ethics. But Kamiya was a pro. This was no chard patch. Kamiya warned me that I would fail if I didn’t spray. He sprayed, and he was successful. I was working with my mother’s money, so I could not finesse it. And I had seen what the bugs can do. The leafminers were the strangest pest. They are small, like gnats. They lay small eggs on the leaves of beans and cucumbers. The eggs hatch and larvae motor around within the leaves, leaving empty lines behind them. In the tropics, leafminers live year-round. They will kill a crop before it fruits.

“ The leafminer will bring you down, so you gotta use the systemics,” Kamiya had warned.

Systemics are the chemical pesticides that are used early in crop production to bring long-term protection from insects. They are used widely, and usually carefully, because the authorities test food crops specifically for the presence of systemics. On the bottle or bag of poison, one notes that the material can be used within 7, 14, or 21 days of harvest. You can imagine how lethal a toxin must be if the government will allow it only if used 21 days before harvest. The poison is applied and then it remains in the system.  THE PLANT SYSTEM.  That’s a long time for a chemical to sit out there in the sun and wind and rain without being volatized.

It’s a double caution because the government has been in collusion with the chemical companies despite laws created to safeguard the public health. The chemical companies even park their executives in positions of power at EPA and the FDA in broad daylight. That’s why organic was invented. And because government and business are involved in organic now, protecting organic integrity has become more difficult.

The problem with insect pests is nothing compared to dealing with vertebrates, from my point of view. I have rarely been overwhelmed by bugs. Disease, like what is happening to our tomato crop with blight, is  more troublesome. I had to quit growing carrots once because of alternaria. Then I started growing lettuce instead and made more money.

I eventually adopted a strategy for dealing with the worst pest in Hawaii, the Mediterranean fruit fly. The fly stings all the fruit and lays an egg that rots the fruit as the buglet thrives within. It’s a tragedy. I stopped spraying all those poisons fairly soon after I started.  Instead of spraying the crop I put the poison in a big bottle filled with molasses and the flies went in there and never came out.

Potato in hand, you may wonder what other produce may be in your future. We can announce the presence of melons and green beans in the field. But are there bees to pollinate the melons? Will the squirrel leave us alone? We replanted corn twice. We have beans and basil, and still do plant tomatoes. But where are those cucumbers anyway? What is it going to take? First it was the mice. Then the squirrel. Squirrels have eaten nearly half the plants again, even while we nab them and lay them out for the coyote at dusk. Cukes are what I produced the most of in Hawaii. I used to make 2000 dollars a week in 1977 money growing cucumbers.  Hawaii imports 90% of everything that is eaten there, which is why I made so much money.  Everyone else in Hawaii works for the state or a hotel.

When saints start talking about money I know it can sound like sacrilege, and being pure is a burden, I can tell you. But money is just a tool like a hammer, a measuring stick that tells you if you can buy more gas at the next town. So I think nothing of it, since I have nothing to brag about except my niche in heaven.

In Laie, I would harvest three times a week, surf or no surf. My calvinism disurbed my surf-buddies tremendously, and more than once I sent them away so I could pack out. Fred Ishikawa would send his truck all the way to Laie to pick up my cucumbers and leave me more wire-bound boxes for the next shipment. The only competition at the time was usually Texas or Arizona, before NAFTA and the movement of Mexican produce into the United States on a major scale.

I also grew many other vegetables at sea level, despite the dire predictions of the armchair agronomists who don’t really know much about the subject other than what the chemical companies teach them. I found it easy to grow spinach even. It was huge and made the specialists squirm to see it. But there was no use in scoffing. Still, to this day, such farming is not found much in Hawaii. But it can be done.

F  O  R  A  G  E  R

WE’LL TRY TO KEEP IT SERIOUS, BUT YOU KNOW HOW IT IS

THE NEWSLETTER FOR THE COUMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE PROGRAM OF
THE FARMER AND THE COOK
WHOSE MARKETING PROGRAM IS SO FAR AHEAD OF THE CURVE THEY CAN’T EVEN SEE THEMSELVES
8 JULY 2009

THE POTATO HARVESTING PARTY WAS YESTERDAY, WEDNESDAY, 8 JULY, NOT TODAY. WE ARE VERY SORRY FOR THAT ERROR, BUT WE HAD TOO MANY CONFLICTS WITH THURSDAY. WE HOPED TO SEE YOU THERE. IT WAS A POT-LUCK FEATURING WHATEVER YOU  MADE FROM THE CSA SHARE, OR PRODUCTS PURCHASED ELSEWHERE. WE HAD THE POTATO SALAD COVERED. WE SET UP AT THE FAR SOUTH END OF THE FARM BY THE LITTLE GREEN AND WHITE BUILDING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CORN. IT WAS A GOOD GIG, A LITTLE UNDERATTENDED, WHICH IS NORMAL AND MORE SO BECAUSE OF OUR COMMUNICATIONS ERRORS. WE WILL HAVE MORE PARTIES THERE IN THE FUTURE. IT WAS FUN ENOUGH.

That’s quite enough bold, italicized capital letters, thank you. We obtained some fruit from Sonny, Bruce, Jim and Dave. Jim Churchill’s MacArthur avocados are a light alternative to the ubiquitous Hass avocado. He grows them with Lisa Breneis. Dave Rydell grew some peaches up in San Luis Obispo. Bruce is this other guy that has a nice mixed orchard here locally. I think he is retired from some more cerebrally challenging occupation, and now cares for his fruit. I bought Asian pears from him quite frequently, and other odds and ends, like those greenish cling peaches-good flavor and locally grown. I run around the farmers market making deals with people who have produce left over because it is a shame to let it rot and I have a big cooler. Those MacArthur  avocados, like their compadres the Pinkerton, the Bacon, the Fuerte, the Reed and the Rincon have all been vanquished by the oily Hass. The Hass, it tastes better I guess, but its not right to depend on one variety. Many avocados flower at different times and ripen at different times.  Last year all the Hass avocado flowers burned up in a heat wave in April, so we didn’t get any fruit. But the also-rans produced. This year the weather has been abnormally perfect for fruit-set, so all the avocado trees are laden with the coming crop, and it looks like a real branch-breaker.

Sonny brought us the Green Gage Plums. The Gage is a rare variety. Sonny started selling fruit with his mom nine years ago. Sonny is rare boy. They live in Carpinteria. Now Sonny is 16 and he is the official farmer of the family. He calls me on his cell phone and sells cherimoyas, plums, avocados, passion fruit and guavas. Its fun to have observed him grow up and take charge of the trees.  We want him to succeed so I bought a hundred pounds of those Green Gage plums. I know it’s a hard sell, right in the middle of the fruit panic, so I bought ‘em all. Sure, load ‘em up! Don’t think I am such a nice guy though. Part of the reason why I buy his oddball fruit is that I want him to call me first when he has the passion fruit and the guavas.  That’s the way things get done in the produce world. You gotta buy the zucchini if our want the red bell peppers later on, capiche?

You want to know what happened to your chard, don’t you? Well, we are throwing it a life preserver filled with water just as these words flow from my stubby fingers. We will not let it die. We need it, you need it, the world needs its chard. We are making up a list of good things to grow. We have never been very good with the sugar snap peas or the green beans, and we now officially repent. We do a fair job on the broccoli, but there is more to life than broccoli, though it is in the top five all vegetables consumed by humans in North America. And we know its not really a fabulous day when you open up your CSA box and it has way, way too much curly endive ( frisee) in it again.  But onions? Can you ever have too many? And, for the first time in my entire career, thanks to Olivia Chase, we will have a decent chance of having a Brussels Sprout Thanksgiving.  Variety, that’s our new motto.

What?   Why start talking about November when we haven’t had a summer yet? Because you have to live life three months in advance if you plant plants for a living. You just can’t go out and plant a tomato plant in September because its still hot. And you can’t plant lettuce just because its been foggy for a few days in June. Roasted is what you are going to get, no matter what the Madden-Julian Oscillation Syndrome indicates.  Sun flares and Jupiterian wobbles, butterfly die-offs and a steady stream of angels jumping ship as it swings by the planet have as much to do with droughts and deluges, most likely.  I just hope there is water in my pipe when I turn the handle. Don’t sell your rubber boots in the garage sale, hun-bun. We are so due.

I am glad people still get hungry. Your hunger may turn my ambition to genius, once all the potatoes have been consumed. It’s a bit lucky, Maybe I had the smarts to listen to the muse muttering onions-potatoes-onions-potatoes, last winter, because they are some of the few things our major pest, Spermophilus beecheyi, the ground squirrel, ignores in its quest to destroy the farm. So far they have decimated around $4,000 in crops we would have enjoyed, including all the pumpkins, much of the winter squash, and a nice portion of the carrot and zucchini crop. My long standing enmity with them goes back years now, so if they have surfaced to havoc upon me once again its my own fault for not being better prepared. I have promised Mr. Tirado that I will eliminate them from the farm. Its sometimes better to make promises to others in order to fulfill one’s desires. In this case, I feel sorrier for Francisco even though he will get paid no matter what happens because he cares so much for every single plant. Everything, he says, has a heart.

So far, so good.

15 April Forager

F  O  R  A  G  E  R
The Weekly Newsletter of Mano-Gozo CSA
Where Beet Greens Are Reputed To Be As Good As Or Better Than Chard
April 15 2009

Greetings, once again, from the Command Center of the Gozo Galaxy. We will only mention the Wind in passing because the stiff breeze out of the north is such a vexingly dry nuisance to those of us who really care about the tender leaves of plants. There.

Now to business we can do something about. We need to reiterate the produce handling protocol, as is our practice from time to time, so bear with us if we bore you. Wednesdays and Thursdays should be appraised as Mid-Week days of Feasting and mini-Thanksgiving, for those are the days when you pick up your CSA box and consume the Freshness of the Field. On Tuesday, after listening up a little Bach or Arcade Fire, you wistfully begin to peruse the tattered pages of the old FORAGERS you have faithfully kept safe, or a Vegetarian tome written by Molly Katzen, Deborah Madison or Olivia Chase.

You know you are getting something green to cook unless it says August on your calendar. And for months you have benefited from carrots, reputedly some of the best carrots available in the greater Ojai area. Let not the carrot wither and slime! Begin grating them on your salad immediately. They are so good because they are so fresh! Pre-cook them in bitelet cubes for inclusion in that frittata or quiche you are dying to make with chard and beet greens. Fry up some of the Torpedo onions first, and use as much of the handle as you can. Nothing is true garbage in your box but the carrot tops, unless a tiny bunny is part of your family.

Generally speaking, the best way to utilize the contents of your CSA share is to Do It Now. Boil up them beets while you are eating dinner on Wednesday/Thursday and have them cold the next day. Whip out an unusual slaw recipe for the cabbage and grate carrots into that as well. Don’t let that fennel scare you! Clean and sliver-cut the root end and get to grating this feathery friend into your salads. Its also an ingredient for the quiche, mais oui!

For some time now, your shares have been redundant. We know. We eat this way too. But there is no respite from the dictates of the season, nay, from the vagaries of nature. Gone are the Asian Greens! Gone the arugula, the turnip, and the now the kale! It is said that CSA membership educates the consumer in the nuances of farm production, and we are happy to invoke here for you a CERTIFICATE OF KNOWLEDGE, because you have learned well that tomatoes do not rhyme with January, nor will lettuce easily appear during the searing days of summer. But soon the repetitions will cease and cucumbers will be here, and the squash, corn and beans that you so richly deserve.

We enjoy working for you. The CSA is a sane effort. We do not use a lot of one-way-trip packing materials. You receive perfectly edible products that might not otherwise be acceptable to the rigorous oversight of Quality Control freaks lurking in dark warehouses. Which reminds me: You may observe some tiny green balls in or on your cabbage. These are the, ahem, residues of the cabbage looper who earlier had been enjoying a nice snack at our expense. We meant to wash them off, but were unavoidably distracted while the boxes were being filled and stacked. So I must instead advise you that such, ahem, deposits, are nothing to fear and yet proof of the natural environment which the cabbage, and you now by extension have enjoyed. I understand that an emerging new food cult involves the shepherding of insect larvae which have consumed and then condensed the food value of their favorite plant, thus providing to faithful nutrition-minded consumers an opportunity to maximize their intake of magnesium, Vitamin A and the all-important phytonutrients and omega-alpha-epsilon anti-oxidants which have become so popular in the west, but of course in Asia have long