Word of the Day

My fellow farmers like to tease me about my eclectic vocabulary. I collect words the way my older brother used to collect Star Wars figures: greedily, giddily, and very, very geekishly. (ok, so maybe he wasn't giddy. But geekish? You decide.) For example, when the Oxford English Dictionary crowned "locavore" the word of the year in 2007, I was among those who not only noticed, but also became rather excited.

I may have found a new favorite, however, one which could give "locavore" a run for its money: "eth•i•cu•re•an n. (also adj.) Someone who seeks out tasty things that are also sustainable, organic, local, and/or ethical — SOLE food, for short." Be still, my heart, there's a whole blog devoted to this wonderful new word!

In writing about the psychological and cultural roots of totemic animals in many tribal cultures, anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss* noted that human beings found animals "good to think" as well as "good to eat." By that, he meant that tribal society used individual and tribal totems as metaphors for the internal differences within human culture. Animals were more than just dinner--the idea of a bear or an otter could represent something abstract and, in fact, intrinsically human. In a way, ethicurianism (If we can go ahead and make this word an -ism already) is our new totemism. It makes our food "good to think" on a number of levels. At its simplest, it is a statement of values served up with a sides of raw milk cheese and fair trade organic coffee. More than that, however, ethicurianism is a metaphor for how we want to live our lives: consciously engaging with the wider ramifications of our most fundamental decisions, from "what shall I have for dinner?" to "what should I do with my life?" I can usually figure out the first one; I'm mulling over the second.

Sometimes, when it's 1 in the morning and I'm still poring over cookbooks or fishing the last jar of jam out of the water bath, I worry that I might be taking this whole food business too far. What value am I adding, really, in following a process from start to finish when I could easily pick up in the middle? But then I realize that I do it because it gives me joy to present a ratatouille the contents of which I have nurtured from seed to table. And I realize that the food I consume represents the values I have come to cherish (the listing of which I borrow from Barbara Kingsolver): honesty, cooperativeness, thrift, mental curiosity, and physical competence. Make my totem an onion.

*Levi Strauss is also remembered for his (perhaps familiar sounding?) volume, The Raw and the Cooked. When I finally get hold of a copy, rest assured that I'll blog it...

What's Cookin' Good Lookin?

It occurs to me that some of you, not having the benefit of daily contact with veggies, may be curious as to what exactly is in season here in Georgia. Most folks could probably match pumpkins with October or tomatoes with July, but what about the rest of the supermarket's bounty? In the grand tradition of 24 hour one-stop shopping and all-you-can-eat, the average grocery offers all "staple" crops and a gracious plenty of the fancier stuff year 'round. Often, the only clue as to seasonality comes from the price--the more expensive it is, the less likely it is to be in season. But even this can be misleading. With countries like Chile and Argentina operating on the Southern hemisphere's upside down seasons, this week's special might be a fruit no one outside of California could actually be growing.

Why would you want to eat with the seasons? The reasons are myriad, and if you've read this far you probably have at least an inkling. Flavor is perhaps the most straightforward reason; I won't even touch a peach (my all time favorite food) outside of peach season as the mealy, flavorless rocks that populate the grocery the other 10 months of the year are altogether useless, except perhaps as projectiles. The degree to which season and freshness affect taste varies from species to species, but it is not a stretch to say that produce always tastes better in its natural ripeness time after minimal transport.

As I put the trays of transplants in the bed of our truck to drive them out to the field for planting, I tell them to enjoy the feel of the wind in their leaves, as the 5 minute ride will be their first and last fossil-fueled journey. If you are the environmentalist type, the carbon footprint of a food increases exponentially as you eat it out of season. If it can be grown here, why not eat it when it is?

On a more philosophical level, anticipation breeds appreciation. After waiting all year long for those luscious peaches to ripen, I want to write hymns of praise to the first juicy orb that crosses my plate. I never do, though, as my mouth is always too full. Barbara Kingsolver says it best in her recent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:

The main barrier standing between ourselves and a local-food culture is not price, but attitude. The most difficult requirements are patience and a pinch of restraint--virtues that are hardly the property of the wealthy. These virtues seem to find precious little shelter, in fact, in any modern quarter of the nation founded by Puritans. Furthermore, we apply them selectively: browbeating our teenagers with the message that they shoud wait for sex, for example. Only if they wait, to experience intercourse under the ideal circumstances (the story goes), will they know its true value. "Blah, blah, blah," hears the teenager: words issuing from a mouth that can't even wait for the right time to eat tomatoes, but instead consumes tasteless ones all winter to satisfy a craving for everything now. We're raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indescriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket, ignoring how our sustenance is cheapened by wholesale desires.

Though I could go on, I'll get to my point. I'll try to do this semi-regularly, both to keep y'all apprised of what we're pulling from our fields and (I hope!) to facilitate your developing a locavore's palate. If, on your next foray to the grocery, you decide to give this whole seasonal thing and shot, here is what to look for:

• Spinach
• Kale
• Turnips (I'll eat Hakureis like apples; I'm not even kidding)
• Swiss chard
• Beets
• Asparagus
• Arugula
• Spring onions, aka scallions
  
• Lots of cool Asian greens for salads or stir fry: bok choy, tatsoi, tokyo bekana, and mispoona
• Mushrooms

Or better yet, hit up a farmer's market this Saturday and see what treasures some local whiz-farmer has managed to coax from the soil!

An Agriculturalist's Credo

I believe in America’s agricultural revival. I’m 23 years old, the product of a small liberal arts college and a bustling, cosmopolitan graduate school, and I’m comparison shopping for work boots and overalls in preparation for my first day as a farmer. I’ll be honest; I don’t entirely know what I’m getting into. I grew up in the city, have never grown so much as a tomato. Call me crazy, but I actually believe that I can do this.

And I believe that I am not some fringe element, a Luddite burying my head in the compost and refusing to acknowledge the globalized world in which I live. I know this because of the response I hear when I describe my new job. Where I expected incredulity, I have been met with excitement. Again and again, my conversation partners confided in me their own dreams of living off the land. I received book recommendations and reminiscences, and I learned just how many people are thinking local, even if their refrigerators suggest otherwise.

As for me, my reasons for this abrupt change of scenery are simple: taste and integrity. I want to eat well, and I want to practice what I preach regarding food. What better way to promote gastronomical mindfulness than to construct my daily routine around stewardship of the very earth that sustains me? Time invested yields richness of experience. That richness grows out of following a process from start to finish, something infrequently facilitated by a conventional, industrial food chain. My food chains are about to become dramatically shorter, slower, and more interesting.

I’ll punctuate this record with matching recipes and pictures as often as I can. Check in, dear reader, if you’d like to remember what sunrise looks like, or if you’ve ever been impressed by the verdant abundance encoded in a seed.