Food Connection
I’m a member of the Growing Washington CSA, and its been a good experience overall.
The past week was a bit rough. The food box that we should’ve gotten for the Monday before Thanksgiving never came, because the roads just weren’t safe. This Monday’s box came, and it was a little thinner than past weeks.
The farm manager had let us know the week of the huge amount of snow that “there will be fallout from this weather to be sure, though we won’t know the full effects of this storm until the snow melts later in the week. Expect options to be limited as we are receiving e-mails from all the farms in the area saying they all got hit hard too.”
I know weather is a pain when it comes to produce, I’ve dealt with all sorts of weather problems when I used to work for Chiquita, but we almost always got our produce through. Grapes, Melons, Pineapples, and Bananas all year round to our customers just like clockwork.
When I started with the CSA I had two goals:
- Eat more produce.
- Eat locally.
Mind you the weekly box that I get is a “size small” but sometimes its a bit like eating produce from a fire hose, and more of the items than I’d like go to creating high quality dirt, but thats part of using the box. I’ve gained some wonderful knowledge about myself and cooking. I love Kale, I think eggplant should be banned, and carrots are a great snack. I’ve made progress in cooking all of this stuff, and its great to put your hands on raw unprocessed produce.
But all of those things aren’t what I value most. Its the fact that I’ve got a connection back to the plants and the earth. Most of my normal life is spent practically disconnected from the earth. Sure, I see the weather, and put on an extra coat. There are nice little planted shrubs around my apartment. But those things are not really nature. I once listened to either Greg Nickels or
Ron Sims on the radio and he said that the biggest clear cut area in the State of Washington is the City of Seattle.
So the produce box that I didn’t get last week, as well as the thiner one that I received this week is the point. Its a larger manifestation of my meager connection to the earth and the greater world. Its a small connection, but its one that I cherish and celebrate.