To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd ~ Wendell Berry
Cooking with the Harvest
There are so many aspects of farming and growing food that I love, but without a doubt harvesting and cooking freshly picked vegetables is one of my favorites. This has been an abundant year, with over 300lbs of tomatoes in the books, with more still on the vine! This abundance has translated into a freezer full of homemade marinara sauce for us! I look forward to tasting the ripe juicy tomato sauce when the frigid temperatures of winter set in. It’ll be a delicious reminder to us that spring will soon be upon us again. We have also made countless stir fries with the eggplant and zucchini, and just this week we made homemade Louisiana style hot sauce!
Cooking is an important part of living healthy, and cooking with fresh, organic produce is as healthy as you can get. When we as consumers know where our food comes from, and how it was grown, we can all be confident that the food we ingest is not coated in chemicals and has been grown with the health of the consumer and the health of the earth in mind. Virginian farmer, Joel Salatin, makes a really great point when he notes that our food system today looks a lot different than it did only 70 years ago.
“The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
Thought you might enjoy this poem:
Poem of the Day: Believe This
BY RICHARD LEVINE
All morning, doing the hard, root-wrestling
work of turning a yard from the wild
to a gardener’s will, I heard a bird singing
from a hidden, though not distant, perch;
a song of swift, syncopated syllables sounding
like, Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
And all morning, I did believe. All morning,
between break-even bouts with the unwanted,
I wanted to see that bird, and looked up so
I might later recognize it in a guide, and know
and call its name, but even more, I wanted
to join its church. For all morning, and many
a time in my life, I have wondered who, beyond
this plot I work, has called the order of being,
that givers of food are deemed lesser
than are the receivers. All morning,
muscling my will against that of the wild,
to claim a place in the bounty of earth,
seed, root, sun and rain, I offered my labor
as a kind of grace, and gave thanks even
for the aching in my body, which reached
beyond this work and this gift of struggle.
Poem copyright © 2010 by Richard Levine, from his most recent book of poetry, That Country’s Soul, Finishing Line Press, 2010, by permission of Richard Levine and the publisher.
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That is absolutely lovely! Thanks so much for sharing David 🙂
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I so love all the photos you shafe. Your crop is a amazing!!!
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