CSA Harvest #3

Picked up another great box of veggies fresh from the ground today—2010's third CSA delivery from New Town Farms in Waxhaw, NC (about 15 minutes from my house). This week there are three large heads of different lettuces, a head of escarole or endive (not sure which), a bag of baby arugula, a bundle of chard leaves, a huge bok choy plant, a bundle of "candy" carrots (Eliot Coleman's term for sweet baby carrots, usually sweeter in the winter), three baby Waxahalia onions (these are the same onions grown in Vidalia, GA, but which cannot legally be called "Vidalias" unless they're grown there, so Sammy combined Waxhaw and Vidalia and calls them Waxahalia onions), a bundle of red kale, and a small broccoli head from the first cutting of the spring broccoli. (New this week as they come on line: broccoli, carrots, and onions—new flavors for the palate as the weeks progress.)

I post these pictures weekly as a chronicle of the seasons. Because food is shipped all over the world today, our grocery store produce sections have "everything" all the time, regardless of season. But everything doesn't grow all the time. Plants have seasons, and I have to think there is great wisdom in learning to eat with the seasons; that our bodies, unbeknownst to us, process different foods better in different seasons. That's a foreign thought given the conditioning we are used to—for example, having tomatoes in winter. But a modern grocery store is a wholly unnatural thing (said the naturalist whose last name means "grocer" in Dutch). If I can ever have a parcel of ground large enough to grow my own food year 'round, I'll pursue eating with the seasons more faithfully. But being part of a great CSA like New Town Farms is a step in that direction.

(Wilbur update: Wilbur was right where I left him last week—snoozing in the cool, green grass; still underwhelmed with my presence, but I'm undeterred in my efforts to be his pal.)