July 2000 Letter

MY PERSONAL FARMER

A neighbor from down the hill first told me about him. She leaned out of her jeep in a parking lot to yell, "I'm getting the best vegetables from Peter, right at the bottom of your driveway. He's starting one of those whattayacallits, where you pick up a basket every week. You should do it." And she was off.

The whattayacallit turned out to be called community sustainable agriculture. That translates to a small farm which takes subscribers. Rather than shopping at a farm stand, you pay a set amount for a period of time and, as my neighbor succinctly explained, pick up a basket every week.

A few days later I widened my turn at the mailboxes and instead of going uphill I pulled into Peter's drive. I knew the house. I passed it every day on my way up the hill, but I hadn't looked in past the large, overgrown roses.

I saw a wide slope laid out in neat raised beds, lush with leafy greens, onions, pole beans, and young tomato plants. On one side of the drive there was a tidy compost heap. On the other side, an adobe-based greenhouse was under construction. Flowers spilled onto the driveway in a less disciplined way, and fruit trees were tucked into available spaces.

A fresh-faced young man in jeans and an old tee-shirt stepped around from behind the gray clapboard house and walked toward me, smiling. His face was tan, his eyes bright, and he was wiping dirt from his hands. He didn't look much older than my teenaged son.

"Are you Peter?"

"That's me." The smile broadened.

"I'm Anna, I live up there." I pointed up the hill. "Melinda said you were selling vegetables. Where do I sign up?"

The grin wrapped right around his face. Then, with the slightly bemused expression that I would see so often, he told me about his business. A limited number of people signed up to buy shares of the various crops he grew. They committed to a season at a time, and could have a large weekly basket or a smaller one. The basket would be filled with a selection of whatever he was harvesting that week.

In this way, he told me, the farmer growing the produce had a steady customer base and a predictable income, so he was not as likely to be put out of business by a spell of bad weather or a pest. The customers got their weekly share: if the harvest was good we got more, and if not so good we got less - though in the months that followed I found my bushel always overflowing.

It was an idea that made possible a tiny farm such as his, which otherwise would just not be economically viable.

The following Friday I pulled in to pick up my first share. On a sturdy trestle table in front of the shed the cheery, red-banded bushel baskets were lined up, each loosely covered with damp burlap, and each with a name painted across the side.

I found mine and folded back the burlap. I saw giant glossy chard leaves, a couple of varieties of tender spinach, a bundle of snap peas, an assortment of radishes, young beets in different colors with their luxuriant tops, and perfect lettuces. Underneath, I would find out at home, were the heavier things - carrots, turnips, and superb potatoes. A few lemons were nested on top, between the chard and the spinach, and long green onions arched out over the rim. All of it had been picked just hours before. The green and earthy smell of it made the air alive.

At one end of the table there was a bucket full of flowers, and a hand-lettered sign propped against it said: "Take some."

As I was shouldering the basket, Peter came up the path from the back. His eager smile had the look of a kid who wanted to know how his science project had done - was it an A?

"It's beautiful," I said. "Everything looks so perfect, and it's so nicely arranged."

I swear, he blushed.

"Well - presentation is important," he said.

The vegetables were delicious. They were the tenderest greens, the sweetest sweet peas, the creamiest potatoes. When I came back the following week to trade my empty basket for a full one, Peter was there again.

"How was everything?" he asked, as solicitous as a waiter in a nice restaurant.

"Fabulous," I told him with perfect honesty. "The sweet peas didn't even make it to my house. I ate them all in the car. You should grow more of those."

"Yeah - I will." He beamed. "That's good. Tell me what you'd like me to grow, what you want more of, or different."

"OK," I said. "I'll think of you as my personal farmer."

As the weeks went by, I found that Peter was almost always there, appearing quietly from the garden, or the house. "How was everything?" he invariably inquired. It became a weekly ritual. We stood in the sun by the shed, and talked about the vegetables. He wanted to know which variety of spinach I liked better, and how did I cook the mustard greens. I told him that I could use more arugula if it came my way, and that no amount of tomatoes was too many tomatoes. We discussed stir-frying, and dry-farming.

I found out that he'd gone to school at the University of California at Davis to study agriculture, and then had worked on farms in other states. When he inherited the property from his father - a modest house on two acres - he decided to try his hand at a small business of his own. He would only take twelve customers the first season, until he found the rhythm of it. This was a man who didn't want the worries that came with a high tax bracket. But I wasn't complaining; his quixotic mission was a gift for me.

In midsummer I mentioned that I was having a party the following week, and could I have a few extra beets for a roasted beet salad. He said to come by on the weekend. I came, and found a basket nearly filled with perfect, scrubbed beets. No extra charge.

When the tomatoes began appearing, I was amazed. They were even better than my own, and I thought I had the best tomato-growing spot on the planet. He was dry-farming them, he told me. The flavor was incredible, but there weren't very many. I ate them all the first day.

"Grow more tomatoes," I suggested. "Like, a hundred times more."

"Sure," he said.

In the autumn, squashes began appearing in the baskets - butternuts, kabochas, acorns. Peter had converted the shed to an indoor pick-up area by then, and an old wooden workbench held the ready baskets. By November, another table was piled with a mound of extra squashes, and the sign was back - "Take some."

I had always found it liberating to begin my food planning at the farmers' market instead of with a grocery list. Now I was finding it even more freeing to simply pick up that basket. No decisions.

I didn't realize how much I'd love the element of surprise - pulling things out of the basket every Friday and laying them on my kitchen table, saying, "Oh, look and this - and what's this?"

There I was, with baby turnips, mizuna, cabbages of unprecedented declicacy and sweetness, green and purple snap beans, pink radishes, peppers of the oddest shapes, some sweet and some hot. Who knew if I would have reached for them at the market, but now I reached for them in my refrigerator and cooked something I might not have cooked. It was a seasonal voyage of discovery.

Since I started picking up my weekly basket, my salads have become more interesting, and my green soups appear weekly in stunning variety. A new favorite is one made from mixed beet greens and a large bunch of basil, sometimes spiked with a few leaves of mustard. The potato salads, potato pastas, and potato pizzas I've concocted are a direct result of Peter's lovely potatoes. which have a density and creaminess that I've rarely encountered. And the carrot and lemongrass soup I made was a solution to his abundant carrot harvest - each week a larger pile of them lay like ballast in the bottom of the basket, until something had to be done!

I've also made stir-fries using his young bok-choy, crisp Napa cabbage, and something he calls vitamin green, though I'm sure it must have another name.

I still shop at the farmers market, to buy fruit and flowers, and to fill in the gaps, because Peter doesn't grow everything. He doesn't have artichokes, or asparagus, and his tomatoes are not a year-round supply. He hasn't grown raddichio yet, though I'm planning to request it. But I wouldn't stop picking up my basket from Peter's shed, even if I sometimes have to give away some carrots. I've always said that we should eat seasonal and eat local, and this is about as local as I can get. If I threw a stone from my terrace, it would roll down the hill into Peter's garden.

In my last basket, I found beautiful summer squashes, about five varieties, including some brilliant yellow zucchini. I also had the first taste of this year's tomatoes. My son and I stood right there in the shed and ate a basket of tiny golden heirlooms, as sweet as candy. (Peter has assured me that he has about eighty tomato plants this year.) There was a bonanza of slender green beans, and on top of everything there was a bouquet of crisp basil, peppery from the recent hot weather.

For dinner that night, I roasted the green beans for an appetizer, then made a golden zucchini and tomato risotto with basil strips and a few leaves of sorrel from my own herb garden. It's an easy dish that tastes just like summer, and you can have it too - see "New Recipes."

And whether you do your shopping at a farmers' market, in a store, or at a roadside stand, be sure to get fresh, firm zucchini, and very red tomatoes. You don't have to have your own vegetable garden, though I certainly wouldn't discourage you, but do try to find the source in your neighborhood for the best summer produce. It's worth the effort.

July 2000 recipe