ReadyMade: Instructions for everyday life

This past Sunday afternoon, I ventured to the nearby town of Grinnell, Iowa, for an heirloom tomato tasting/local food potluck/farm tour at Grinnell Heritage Farm, where I am a CSA shareholder. I brought a quiche with squash, goat cheese, and caramelized onions (which was yummy, though it would have been better warmed up!), but I was most excited about seeing where all of my delicious produce is grown. I know next to nothing about farming, but I could immediately tell that GHF stands for everything I am hoping to support about local agriculture. Want to know more? Let’s go on a little tour!

The farm has been in Andrew’s family for over 150 years and he and his wife Melissa have been farming on the land for the past three. They have a very complicated schedule of rotational planting to keep the soil productive and healthy, and because of this,  the soil is getting better and better each year. We’ve been getting some of those lovely salad greens in our weekly boxes, and you can see a bed of kale (both the familiar kind, and lacinato, one of my favorite varieties, as well as rainbow chard). The colors of the vegetables in the field were bright and so fun to see—they reminded me how easy it is to forget what these foods look like before they arrive in my kitchen. I didn’t take a picture of their fields of carrots, but they have a TON of them planted and expect to sell 30,000 pounds of them this fall. Amazing, I know! The image on the bottom left of the above quad is an enormous amount of basil, which, fingers crossed, I will get more of soon since I am on a bit of a pesto bender.

The cows (it’s hard to tell, but there’s a baby drinking milk in that photo) are being raised for beef which Andrew expects to be ready for sale in about 2012, and the chickens are nearly ready to be sold. I didn’t realize that they are raising animals and I am even more impressed with their efforts to make their farm sustainable and holistic. The two images on the bottom row are of their beautiful flowers that they sell at farmers markets. Love those huge sunflowers!

One of the many highlights of the day was getting to try all of the heirloom tomatoes. They are growing 43 varieties this year (mostly seeds from Seed Savers) and I have decided that my favorites are the ones that are a sort of red and green combination that’s vaguely purple and almost brown. I don’t know what the varieties are (it was hard to keep track!) but they were heavenly. I, ahem, went back for seconds on the tomatoes. The had the Too Many Strings Band playing during the potluck dinner (there was so much great food including cornbread with quinoa in it and a green bean salad with red onion and feta). And there are the farmers!

These two parting shots to give you more of a sense of what it felt like to be there. I definitely have a better understanding of where my CSA money is going and I now know this for sure: It’s just as much about the produce that I recieve each week as it is about supporting this family and a way of farming that works with the land and the community, rather than against it.