Know Your Food, Know Your Farmer

We in the Au Naturale/organic world often say it, but the other week I actually did it.

Two weekends ago my boyfriend and I eagerly jumped on the "Farm Day" invitation extended to us by my CSA purveyor, Iron Creek Farm. Having never done a farm visit like this, and eager to see the fields from which my weekly produce springs forth, of course I RSVPed in the positive.

The Saturday of the apponted day was an unusually cool fall day for so early in the season. DISCLAIMER: Having been in Israel for a good chunk of September, where the weather was most decidedly mid-summer or "desert-hot INSANE", it's been a really wierd transition to be back here. I walked around for two weeks when I got back saying "What happened to September? Did anyone know where it went and how I managed to completely miss it?" I kept expecting that October 1 was September 1. This has been alternately confusing, frustrating, and I'm sure amusing to anyone who has come across me when I've been holding a coat like I've never seen it before and simulaneously scratching my head.

Anyhoo... maybe the day was seasonably cold, despite my screwed-up internal calendar. But off to LaPorte, Indiana we went, and because the wonderful BF was at the wheel (my car having suddenly decided to die a few days prior), we were early. Very early, in fact.

We arrived at an enormous barn just as they slid opened the door to reveal a table with a thermos of hot apple cider (made fresh, of course), donuts, and a crock pot of homemeade squash soup; and really, making squash soup from the squash you grow yourself just cannot not get any more homemade. The boxes of fresh-picked squash sitting in the background and waiting to go to market, ranging from acorn to butternut, just made the setting that much more perfect. The cider warmed my confused and cold extremities and the whole scene warmed my heart and reminded me why Fall isn't so bad after all.

We sipped cider and chatted with Tamera, one of the owners of the farm, as people streamed in, mostly parents with very young children and I wondered if we missed the whole point of this farm day. They did mention a hay ride, which I'm sure attracted the families, but I was there for research, damnit! All was not lost, though: the hay ride, which was almost cancelled due to a week's worth of rain turning the fields into a mud pit female wrestlers only dream of, went off without a hitch. We, being the non-children bearers of the group, sat on a metal rail at the front of the cart with Tamera to allow the children to enjoy the hay. Oh, and to make sure they wouldn't fall off into the mud. That would have been hilarious, though.

Perhaps I wasn't the only one who was cold

The first thought that struck me-- and surprised me-- was that the fields weren't, well, as "pretty" as for some reason I expected them to be. Granted, there was the mud; and it was getting to the end of the season; but considering that Iron Creek is an organic farm there were some weeds beginning to appear in some of the plots that had been fully cultivated for the season. The mud was a deep, rich black and has more organic component than many farms (I don't remember the percentage) so everything grows strongly there. I'm not complaining though- on the contrary, I'm glad that a farm can just look like a farm and not something out of Home & Garden magazine, although I did catch myself looking closely for baby faces in the perfect rows of cabbage. (Cabbage Patch kids? Hello? Anyone? The packaging artists definitely spent some time on a farm.)  After all, what matters is what's going into my fridge and body, right?  As we bounced along the rows, the beautifully pungent smell of broccoli wafted into my nose and more than a few times I wanted to jump off the hitch and grab some of that gorgeous produce. My BF nudged Tamera and told her to just drop him off in the hot pepper section and he'd find his way home.

I learned something more, though, than just what rows of brussel sprouts look like. Tamera mentioned, as we passed some bee containers, that they have a bee keeper who brings over his bees to help with pollination. You may or may not have read in the news that bees are dying off at an alarming rate, signifying problems on an agricultural scale that lead to much larger wordly problems in the food chain. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out this article.) Nobody knows what is causing this phenomenon, but this particular bee keeper has had no problems at all with his bee colonies. One potential reason why?  He only uses his bees to pollinate on organic fields which don't use pesticides. Bee death as yet another consequence of the overabundance of pesticides? Hmm, food for thought, me thinks.

Back at the main farm, we wandered through the enormous greenhouse housing an excellently nifty hydroponics system and the plants that had treated me to early summer tomatoes.

hydroponics in the front

These make my back deck peppers look so pathetic...

We visited with some pigs that Tamera's family keeps for themselves, who were more than friendly and willing to say hi in between happily foraging in the mud.

Sharing a tender moment...

Finally, we had the opportunity to pick our own pumpkins. Originally we were going to actually pick pumpkins from the patch in the fields, but due to the almost certain death-by-mud scenario they had brought up a selection by the barn. All the pumpkins were gorgeous, and as we later learned, ENORMOUS. In a big field, sat up against other brethren pumpkins, they looked proportional. In my dining room, they look mutant.

3 hours, 4 cups of cider, 2 donuts and a bowl of soup later, we headed back to the city. (Disclaimer #2: watch out for that cutoff on 94 from Indiana back to Chicago. We missed it and had to head all the way over to 55. Ugh.) Besides having a fun Fall Saturday activity, I was thrilled to have a chance to chat more with my farmer, learn how much effort it takes to do what she and her family do (Tamera mentioned that her summers are 80-100 hour work weeks) and see for myself how what I'm putting in my body is cultivated. It truly made my CSA experience more personal. Case in point: the next day, at my regular CSA pickup day, I took a few minutes to chat with Tamera and her husband and inquire about the expected overnight frost about which they were concerned. From that conversation I learned that it really, truly was the last week to get any sweet corn as the frost, which had indeed arrived, killed off the rest of the remaining crop. It was a much more enjoyable and fulfilling conversation than my typical, "Hi! I'm here to pick up my half share." 

Really, we all should take these field trips. I think if more Americans saw where their food was coming from and how it was grown, we'd be more conscious of our decisions to buy from Big Ag.

That evening, despite our exhaustion and bad mood from having to drive completely out of our way only to get stuck in inbound Chicago Saturday night traffic (if you know the city, you know the frustration), we decided to stay in and cook even though it would have been easier to just go out and grab something. We were inspired.  Truthfully, I don't remember what we ate. I just remember that it tasted good, and probably even tasted better since I could picture where it came from, just an hour and a half-- and a whole lot of care and love-- away.