Farms & Gardens

I deliberately didn't write "the last CSA of 2011" (CSA stands for community supported agriculture, where individuals can subscribe to a farm and in return receive shares of produce). Many farms offer winter shares of root vegetables, storage crops, meat, or prepared foods.

Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes that’s the prime thought in my mind, especially when I’m staring at a bushel basket of carrots and the prospect of a day of canning ahead of me when I’d much rather be doing ANYTHING else. Well, this is what I wished for and dreamed about for years, and for the most part, I am not sorry I made the decision to move from the suburbs to the country.

The best part about making apple cider is that it is so easy and fun to make. Granted, there is some equipment that is required such as an apple grinder, press, and a vat to hold all of the cider. But the basic process is simple: get a group of friends together, spend a beautiful autumn day picking apples, turn on the tunes while sorting and thoroughly washing the apples, grind them into mush, let the press squeeze out all the juice, give the apple pulp to the neighbors for their dairy cows, then drink the fresh squeezed cider to your hearts delight.

"When schools become a model of what would be a healthy meal, then we are going to improve overall children's health." --Lynn Mader.

The other day I chatted with Lynn Mader, an IATP (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy) staff member who works on the Farm to School program in Minnesota. We talked about the successes and challenges of the program and how it is working to bring positive change to our community, to our state and to our country.

Weaning time is an autumn tradition around my family’s farm. It’s as synonymous with fall as Football Saturdays and pumpkin patches. Recently, we separated our 2011 calf crop from their mommas. Everything went smooth for the most part. Of course, the calves took it harder than the momma cows but after a day and a half of full-out bawling and whining, peace stepped in and normalcy was restored. As a rancher, I love getting in the new calf crop and evaluating them. 

The weather this fall has been a huge blessing. Weaning time naturally is very stressful for the calves. They’ve depended on their mothers all summer – it’s all they’ve known – and now it’s time for them to depend on themselves. It’s time for them to enter the next season in their lives. The sunshine and heat has made this year’s process much more palatable. 

My trek from suburbanite to flower farmer extends over two decades, dozens of how-to books and magazine subscriptions, and the practical (read “backbreaking”) experience of digging in dirt and watching things grow. My friends and family sometimes question my sanity, but walking to the barn in the early morning, hearing the turkeys call from the wetlands below and watching a bald eagle soar above assures me that I made the right choice. Part of seeking an “idyllic” country life stemmed from the wish to produce and preserve much of the food I eat. From chickens to grass fed beef to chemical free garden produce, I have tried it all and have been rewarded with healthy, abundant food for going on ten years.

It’s beautiful to me to have traditions that tie me to the seasons. Progress has gone to great lengths to insulate us from the natural rise and fall of the year; air conditioning and gas furnaces keep us the same temperature all year; car trips extend that same homogeneity to travel; it doesn’t much matter when the days get shorter because the lights are always on. The cumulative effect is that we feel we can effectively ignore the sun, the moon, and the weather almost all of the time--except as the subject of light conversation. The year grows flat and featureless. 

Making homemade pickles has been a whimsical annual tradition in my family since I was a boy, and when I first lived with my bride-to-be out West, we thought it would be nice to carry on the tradition despite being far from home. The enthusiasm that produced those first few jars of pickles soon begat small batches of jams and jellies, experiments with dilly beans, a few stewed tomatoes, some apple sauce, and so on and so forth. 

We have always cooked and gardened together, and soon found out that canning is very much a logical, aesthetic, and creative extension of those activities. Each year we have done a little more of each, and each year the three pastimes have fed one another, producing always more abundant, delicious, and inventive results. This trend has continued happily and unabated into our marriage and through our move home to Minnesota, but recently I’m growing concerned about its proportions.

A typical pre-dinner conversation in our household might go something like this:

  Me: What do cows eat?

Four year old: Grass!

Me: Are you sure it’s not corn?  

Four year old: No!  Cows eat grass!

  Father: Where does this meat come from?

Four year old son: It was a cow

Father: Where did we get it?

Four year old son: The farmer grew it and then the butcher killed it

If you have not heard the name Laura Greene or Grow, Eat, Share, take note. She is an example of yet another bold and ambitious food lover who is trying to fill the gaps in our food education system. The story starts when Laura was working as a volunteer with a local kindergarden and she came face to face with the realities of what kids were eating.

Knowing that the parents are choosing to pack their kids junk food for lunch did not deter her from trying to teach the kids, in spite of their parents. What really "sealed her fate", if you will, was when she brought one of these kindergardeners to Riverbend Farm, only to discover that he did not know what a farm was. I suppose that when your lunch is glowing with artificial color and absent of vegetables, how could anyone even think that food comes from a farm?