Salad days: CSA weeks 3 and 4

Summer is here.

I just pulled some pie dough that I mixed up yesterday from the fridge, and am getting this post started in the time it takes to soften enough to roll into the crusts for a couple of cherry pies. I did my annual shift on Tuesday at our CSA pickup site and came home with 2 quarts of cherries, about 10 lbs. of apples, and two bunches of flowers

(one of which I gave to a complete stranger on the train on the way home, an act that while not quite as selfless as it may seem--I did deliberately sign up for the final shift of the evening, after all, knowing that in doing so I'd boost my take--was really fun. God bless you too, honey. And while I'm confessing, I ought to mention that th'usband pitted all the cherries for me, and in return I'm heating up the house on him)

over and above our weekly share.

A few days before that, on Saturday, th'usband and I drove out to Water Mill at the very tip of Long Island (just barely in our 100 mile foodshed radius if you want to know the truth) to take advantage of the annual invitation to pick strawberries and visit the farm that supplies our CSA.

Now there's a happy story. Green Thumb farm has been in the Halsey family for over 300 years. The last of its 95 acres was certified organic about 20 years ago, though as Bill Halsey pointed out, all his generation did was to convert the farm back to the kinds of practices that had been used through the middle of the 20th century.

(For a great story connecting the dots between modern agricultural production, World War II, and Muscle Shoals, read this article by Michael Pollan, originally published in Smithsonian Magazine. When you feel sufficiently disgusted, click here to sign a petition to request that Farm Bill subsidies be extended to organic farmers. The goal is 30,000 signatures by July 15th, and as of this writing, they're about halfway there.)

In the mid-70s, around the time that Bill, his two sisters and one brother were in college and trying to figure out if they wanted to spend another generation on the farm, their father had an accident involving pesticides. He wound up in the hospital, and though he almost died then, thirty years later, he's still working the farm with his kids, and lately, his grandkids. In addition to a farm stand adjacent to their land, a favorite with personal chefs for the Hamptons crowd, the Halseys produce enough organic fruits and vegetables to feed 450 families participating in 7 CSAs.

Importantly, they also sustain themselves. In the 60s, like all of their farming neighbors, the Halseys grew nothing but potatoes, and were finding it harder and harder to get by. Before the organic conversion even began, they found that they could increase their revenues by planting tomatoes, corn, peppers, and eggplants to sell at the farm stand. Today there are about 400 different varieties of maybe 150 different types of crops. (We walked through just one patch of lettuce with Bill Halsey, who encouraged us to pick whatever looked tasty--and by the time we stopped with heads of iceberg, romaine, salad bowl, and a red-leafed something, it was only because we knew that there are physical limits to how much salad a person can eat.)

With limited yields, prices stay higher and the family is protected from catastrophic crop failure; though this wasn't the best year for strawberries, there's always the

swisschard(yesi'mtryingtobegratefulforswisschard)bokchoitoma
tillosfavabeansblackbeansgreenbeansleeksbroccolicauliflowercab
bagesummersquashbasilpumpkinsbeetscollardgreensrosemary (etc)

to look forward to. It's a far cry and a far better life from that of farmers stuck growing nothing but corn and soybeans for the subsidy payments while moonlighting as truckers or what have you to get by. And it's just one more reason that we're enjoying what's on our plates this summer.

Caesar dressing

I keep meaning to pick up a tin of anchovies, but even without them, there's nothing like the rich, lemony decadence of homemade caesar. Per person, in a large bowl you'll later use to toss the lettuce, whisk together:

• 1 egg yolk
• a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice
• an equal amount of cider vinegar (balsamic is just fine too)
• a dash of Worcestershire sauce
• a pinch of salt (probably not necessary if you've got the anchovies)
  
• minced garlic if you want it, or mix some with olive oil, coat cubes of stale bread, and bake them to make croutons
  
• Grate in some fresh Parmesan cheese, and sprinkle some more with a good bit of pepper over the salad

nose to toes preparation

Read this. These are the kinds of lives that simultaneously inspire my thinking about food and creativity and make anything that I've imagined so far seem small.

local vs. organics, round two

A recent post about organic and/or local produce drew this comment about another certification option:

...Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), a certification program created in 2002 specifically for farmers who grow organically and sell locally but may not have the time and/or money to pursue USDA Organic certification. Certified Naturally Grown is designed to supplement the agri-business focused National Organic Program by recognizing small, local, organically committed farmers for their sustainable practices and giving customers assurance that CNG farmers adhere to specific, publicly-documented standards.

Certification through our program requires an application process, an annual inspection, and publication on our website of documents signed by the farmers and their inspectors. Certified Naturally Grown bases its standards on the National Organic Program, but improves on these standards where necessary (particularly with respect to livestock living conditions and access to pasture).

Currently almost 500 farms in 48 states are Certified Naturally Grown. CNG is a private, independent, non-profit grassroots effort that runs primarily on free-will donations from farmers and supporters, it's nationally recognized and endorsed (http://naturallygrown.org/supportive-orgs.html), and it is a legitimate alternative to the "non-local certified organic vs. local non-certified” conundrum.

Meanwhile, the May/June issue of Eating Well features an interesting article comparing and contrasting organic and conventional agriculture, particularly with regard to the impact of pesticides on food safety. Cited are a number of other organic certification alternatives, including

...Food Alliance, an Oregon-based group that has created its own alternative certification program for farmers committed to sustainable agricultural practices.

Part of the impetus for creating local certification bodies is a practical one; certain heirloom strains of apples and tomatoes, the article points out, are extremely susceptible to pests that require management practices off limits to organic farmers. Other farmers, like the ranchers behind Food Alliance, reject the kinds of compromises that overly strict organic regulations can occasion:

Doc Hatfield, a veterinarian by training, [explains], “We’ve got 14,000 acres of our own, but our cattle also range over land maintained by the Bureau of Land Management, and the BLM sometimes uses pesticides to clear weeds away from the roadside.” For that reason, his cattle can’t qualify as organic. But the Hatfields have come to believe that letting the animals roam over as much land as possible is more important to their health—and contentment—than restricting them to organic acreage.

Still others ask the kinds of questions raised by environmental journalist Michael Pollan in Omnivore's Dilemma and elsewhere about what organic labels mean when they are applied on a large, commercial scale. From the EW article again:

...a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group called the Cornucopia Institute reported in April that at least some organic milk sold by a major nationwide brand comes from industrial-style dairy farms with thousands of cows who are kept confined rather than being allowed to graze. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, recently announced that it will double its organic produce offerings—sparking new worries that the original notion of organic farming as small and local has been lost to big business.

I'm worried about all these certification tiers. I think that all or most--even the federal organic guidelines--are designed with the best of intentions, and provide important information to consumers in the absence of direct contact with producers. The danger, though, is that faced with a dozen different virtuous-sounding labels, a lot of people are going to get confused, and then cynical.

My guess is that the organic standard will soon really only be meaningful at the national level (when choosing between oranges, for instance, all of which are raised far outside of my foodshed), and as a gauge of the relative nutritional value (as in EW's focus on pesticide residues) of items within a category. For all the things that I eat that can be produced closer to home, meaningful choices are going to require a correspondingly closer look at the standards applied. Really, though, I'm back to the same realization that I made a few weeks back when trying to figure out what my food goal for the summer should be: it's only once I've completely adopted a locavore lifestyle that I need to worry too much about the relative merits of this apple vs. that one. And that's still a long way off.

brew news

On Thursday I kegged the batch of Belgian Witbier that I made the week before. Like all 'white' beers it owes its light color and refreshing taste to the partial substitution of wheat for barley. I also brewed up a batch of Porter, based on a standard English Sweet Porter kit but with chocolate malt (the grain, not the ice cream drink) added. It smelled great as it was all going into the pot, and when I took it off of the boil, I noticed an extra creaminess owing to the rolled oats in that recipe. There was a bit of a sanitation breakdown towards the end when I was trying to strain it all into the fermenter--first the doorbell was ringing ('Do you want an exterminator, Mami?') and the dog was barking and then the phone was ringing (twice) and both the dog and the cat were running crazed circles around the kitchen past the open lid of the fermenter--but hopefully I'll get away with it. If you're nervous about it and you stop by, you can have a nice summery glass of the Wit instead.

Meanwhile, th'usband has ordered me some more brewing gear for my birthday, namely a fourth keg and a second fermenter. This new fermenter is to be a glass carboy, which is purportedly better when you can't keg right away because the glass protects the beer from oxidation. Having a second will also allow me to space batches closer together and to clarify them with a two-stage fermentation process.

Many beers with a hoppy aroma get it from an addition of hops to the secondary fermentation stage, 4-7 days prior to bottling or kegging day. What I'm wondering is how that works given the narrow neck of a glass carboy. I guess I can't use a muslin bag with plug hops or it will expand like a sponge in there and I'll never get it out. If anyone out there is a brewer, I'm asking what may seem obvious to you: what do I do? Just throw the hops in there loose so I can rinse them out later? Am I missing something?

Fun ag/local econ. facts from July Harper's Index

• Amount that a Colorado state prisoner is paid to work a day as a field hand at a local farm: $0.60
• Amount the prisons are paid by farmers for each inmate's daily work: $77.20
• Amount the USDA's Rural Development program has given in aid to distressed rural areas since 2001: $8,600,000,000
• Amount the program has given to metropolitan areas, retirement communities, and resorts: $39,100,000,000
• Percentage of every dollar spent at a locally owned Chicago store that is retained or recirculated in the city: 68
• Percentage of every dollar spent at a chain store in Chicago that is: 43
• Portion of the worldwide revenue from food retailing accounted for by ten corporations: 1/4
  

What's Fresh Now: CSA week 2

Here's a picture of this week's harvest, avec chat. I figured that if I let her momentarily indulge her taste for green leafies, she might leave my basil plant alone for awhile. Here's the list, L to R:

• romaine lettuce
• mizuna (a Japanese stir-fry green)
• leaf lettuce
• strawberries
• rhubarb
• more curly cress

Last night's dinner already made use of the mizuna and rhubarb (which I cooked with duck breasts, to mediocre & mushy effect; if there's any more rhubarb next week, I'm going with this instead) and the strawberries, for strawberry shortcake. I also neglected to mention the other day that I made a soup out of last week's sunchokes.

the organic/local food conundrum

I take a hobbyist's approach to many of my greatest passions--something I ought to discuss with a skilled therapist, perhaps--but lately, I have no trouble finding confirmation of their relevance in the daily news cycle.

While the mainstream media often discusses local and organic foods as if the two were in competition with each other--or suggests that the choice to buy one's food from anything but a supermarket stocked with the products of conventional agriculture is most basically a romantic one, as Time magazine does here--there may be even more reason for consumers to question the significance of their choices if the USDA continues to relax organic standards. I share grocery industry analyst Kevin Coupe's rejection of such actions, even in the face of the complications he acknowledges, like the shortage of organic feed crops relative to rising demand for organic dairy products. If giants like Anheuser-Busch want access to the lucrative organic market, they should be the ones funding the full conversion of their suppliers to legitimate, 100% organic farming practices. Smaller producers are doing it.

And, if we apply the analogy a little more personally, if the wealthier citizens of the wealthiest nation on earth want access to quality food, we have to be willing to put our dollars into the farmers and systems that can deliver it to us. And we have to use our brains to navigate the choices we may encounter along the way.

I had an interesting conversation about this the other day with my brother-in-law, a Denver area chef. His wife's family owns and operates a crop and dairy farm in southern Missouri. While still not convinced it is worth it for him to go for organic certification, B's father-in-law routinely pastures his dairy herd and is committed to many of organic farming's basic aims. It might make more sense both from an environmental and an economic perspective for consumers in the Ozarks to buy their milk from this or a similar local family farm than from a big organic producer like Stonyfield, which is located in New England.

An earlier draft of this post ended with a chirpy story intended to show how the organic or local question is often a false dichotomy. I wrote about laying in a small supply of ground beef for my party on Saturday from the meat guy who sells his wares at our CSA pickup each week, and who I believed was both a local and organic farmer. Make no mistake; the beef was good. One guest came up and asked me what we'd done, because that was about the best burger he'd ever eaten. That inspired th'usband to make a funny about my "college-educated cow meat," which I've gone on to repeat, smugly, several times.

But a conversation yesterday with the man also cited by the NYTimes for his incomparably delicious all-natural hot dogs revealed a stance very similar to that of my sister-in-law's dad in Missouri. Dines Farm is a 100% natural operation: that is, the cows (and lamb, pigs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys) are pasture raised on 120 acres without antibiotics or growth hormones, and their grass-fed meat is leaner and more complex in flavor than the cloyingly buttery corn-fed feedlot stuff. It is also fresh, very fresh: they have a processing plant on site, and do most of the cutting for the week on Tuesdays. But Dines is not an organic farm. "No need," said Mr. Dines. "I've got a top-quality product. I've been doing this for 20 years. But with 15 new plants going up to produce biofuels, the price of feed is already going through the roof, let alone certified organic feed. It would mean a lot of paperwork and a lot of expense, and it wouldn't make the meat any better."

Honestly, I was a little bummed to hear this. Like the well-trained, prestige-driven consumer that I am, I am drawn to the word "organic" on a label as to a favorite brand. But I'm going to use my brain here, as I exhorted everyone else to do just a couple of paragraphs back, and stick with Dines Farm meats. I'm persuaded of its quality and value, including its value for the community I live in and the reduction of our local dependence on fossil fuels. I do find that my confidence in the superiority of organic agriculture has clouded over a bit in the last couple of days, however, and for the first time I'm seeing the organic label as something of a gimmick.

If it is, then at least it's a gimmick I am happy to see succeed on a national scale. By all means, let big processed foods concerns pay for the right to stamp the word "organic" on their cheese doodles and salsa verde. Let Anheuser-Busch pour money into Yakima Valley to support the organic conversion of hops farms, and let Frank Purdue create a huge & compelling demand for organic corn. My freshly-minted feeling, though, is that until changes of this magnitude occur (and they can and should and will occur rather quickly, I do expect) to our systems of agricultural production, it is best for me to make a distinction between local and organic, and to choose local in every possible instance.