I was thinking while I was preparing a fairly delicious meal
made with some of the greens in this week’s harvest that the CSA season is kind
of a bell-shaped curve, with lots of greens at the beginning, building up to
root vegetables as we’ve had this week and last, and then starting into the
season for things like squash, then we head into the high season for tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans, eggplant, melons. As summer ends, we wind down to some more root vegetables, and then we're back to greens in the fall. Or
you could think of it as The Semi-Circle of Harvest, starting and ending with
greens, greens, greens.
I also had the thought that it kind of echoes the diet of
life. That is, we start with high-vitamin greens, which is the adult equivalent
of fortified formula, then we start to get semi-solid food (mashed root
vegetables and sautéed squash would qualify), and then we move into the solids
and introduce lots of variety into our locally sourced meals, with all the
abundant vegetables of mid- and late summer, enjoyed by our “grown-up” palettes.
Then, as we (and the harvest season) age, we start to eat a lot of mashed up
food again, finally relying in old age/fall on fortified and vitamin rich
greens (or Ensure!).
Okay, it’s not the greatest metaphor ever, but you get my
point . . . I don't want to get too heavy or philosophical here, but the harvest is a reflection of life, and the year at a local urban
farm brings you face to face with the abundance and variety of life as well as
its stages.
I hope you are enjoying your greens and mashies right now,
and also are looking forward to more variety and "solid foods" coming soon!
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