I am a wee bit behind on my farm practicum posts. Unfortunately, I was sick Tuesday of Week III, but I took the time to finish up my contract as well as begin my annotated bibliography and outline for my research. These posts are soon to come!
Wednesday
We began early in the morning to beat the hot sun. As Wednesday’s are CSA days, we started out by harvesting Lacinato kale (cutting each leaf at the base with a harvest knife) and raspberries. We washed other produce already harvested, including lettuce and beets (a mixture of golden and red).
TJ surveys his CSA members at the end of each season and gets a feel for what people think about the variety and quantity of his produce as well as the flavor. Oftentimes people will offer their opinions with no survey needed. For example, there have already been reports that folks don’t like radicchio, a perennial variety of chicory, because it is too bitter.
I think it is incredibly difficult to find the right amount of diversity and variety of flavor that one’s CSA members will be comfortable with. But, it is good to keep pushing people’s flavor profiles, as I think oftentimes those vegetables people find off-putting are highly nutritious and offer up a new range of minerals and antioxidants. For example radicchio has numerous flavonoids, anthocyanins, as well as anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant compounds. Even Pliny the Elder knew this of radicchio! An objective of any good CSA should be to push people’s limits on the food they will eat, and offer up nutritiously dense produce.
We took a break from CSA preparation and put additional panels on the compost carport. This was a surprisingly difficult task, and we only got so far. We realized the rest of the construction would require self tapping screws as the previous holes for screws did not line up (likely due to the fact that the composting area is on a slight slope). More to come on this in Week IV’s post!
