Tag: vegetables

Involving Others

July 7, 2025

When I started this farm in 2004, I had all intentions of pushing the whole thing along with just my back and good pair of Red Wing Boots. A typical ambitious dude in his 20’s who has energy to burn. I had no intention of working with others or needing the help of others. But, this work being what it is-lots of detailed labor that takes a lot of time-that’s a near impossibility. I certainly never saw myself as ‘the boss’ or ‘the supervisor’ of anyone.

But we age and our energy and ambition wane. Without fresh troops the army just slowly falls apart. But I’ve been blessed these last 20 years with a lot of people in my life who do jump in and take on some effort. We’ve hosted an apprentice each year since 2014 and I’ve done my best to get my own kids engaged in the farm – some days are more successful than others. And when multiple tracks of work are running with multiple people at once, it’s an incredible feeling.

Yesterday I had this feeling like the farm was hitting on a cylinders. Camila was working the pack house to prepare the green onions and cukes for today’s box, Willem was building the lean-to roof, and Graham was pushing stakes in the ground for the tomato trellis. My role was to bounce between them all to help start them and move each project along. Now let’s see if we can finish what we started and hopefully repeat some all-hands-on-deck days this month as it’s clear that the number of tasks is outstripping the capacity of me and Camila to take them all on. Typical for this time of year.

In the box:

  • Green Cabbage
  • Kohlrabi: Weird bulb thing – peel, cut, eat, simple.
  • A Couple Cucumbers: We have both varieties now ready in the high tunnel. The really wrinkly one is an English-type cucumber called Tyria. The other is a long variety called Tasty Jade.
  • A Couple Zucchini
  • A Couple Lettuces: One is a beautiful green butterhead lettuce and the other is a red lollo variety for some color.
  • Green Onions
  • A Bunch of Arugula: Bunch of greens with a red band. You can mix in with the lettuce and cukes in a salad or have on its own like in https://www.loveandlemons.com/arugula-salad/ People also top pizzas with arugula and add to pasta.
  • Daikon Radish: This is pretty mild radish which you can peel and eat just as you would any old red radish. But it’s also very common in Asian cooking like in this pickled Korean recipe: https://urbanfarmie.com/korean-pickled-radish/

Abundance Sells

September 23, 2024

A long time ago, I stepped away from our farmers market stall towards the end of the market, looked back, and thought, I wouldn’t shop at that stand! On the table sat something like one last pint of cherry tomatoes, a bunch of radishes, and two misshapen cucumbers. It was a sad sight, but also explained the adage I learned from a wise greengrocer at Mississippi Market Co-op in St. Paul where I worked for three years, “People eat with their eyes.”

It’s so true. Even if the three items left over on a market table are good, it doesn’t matter. We as humans are attracted to abundance. Whether the piles of turmeric that caught our eyes when Mar and I visited the spice market in Istanbul or the two stories of toilet paper that reel customers into Costco all day long, the attraction is the same. It’s built into our DNA as mammals who scoured a world of scarcity for millennia to feed ourselves.

That’s why my most popular posts of all time are simply piles of produce. One of favorites from years ago was when my apprentice Sarah and I jammed my Honda Fit to the brim with red peppers like it was some kind of circus act. But pet plus abundance works, so does people plus abundance or pickups weighted down with so much squash that the suspension is strained – you get the idea.

In the box: