|
Sarah
Fran Wisby, Rainbow Produce Worker |
Winter is my favorite time of year to be a produce worker at Rainbow,
especially in January and February after the madness of certain
holidays has abated and people get back to the business of eating
for pleasure, comfort, and sustenance. The bounty of winter produce
in California is calmer, less ostentatious than the endless flash
of summer crops. Production slows, in some cases stops. Cold weather
produces smaller, sweeter vegetables; frost gives kale, artichokes,
and broccoli that purple tinge that means flavor as well as beauty.
Rain causes gaps in availability, as the fields turn to mud. You
can't pick in the rain, you'll ruin the field. Sometimes farmers
even go on vacation in winter. If they get a vacation at all, now
is the only time that makes sense. I hope they can afford to go
someplace warm.
Sometimes we get impatient with winter. It's long and wet and
cold-this is supposed to be sunny California! And certainly if you
shop at Whole Foods or almost anywhere besides Rainbow you can pretend
it isn't winter. Why, they have cherries! grapes! berries! What
gives? Well, the cherries come from Chile, the grapes from Argentina,
the berries from New Zealand. We pay an enormous cost for produce
that travels from another hemisphere, and I'm not just talking about
what you pay at the cash register. Pollution from burning fossil
fuels takes its toll on our environment, the same one we expect
to grow our organic food. Also, buying produce from overseas takes
money away from local farmers who could really use our year-round
support. Third, eating out of season affects our bodies in negative
ways. Summer fruits and vegetables tend to have a cooling effect
on the body, exactly the opposite of what we need to get us through
the cold season.
So, what do our bodies need in winter? Just take a look around Rainbow's
produce department at the endless varieties of orange fruits and
green and purple veggies. It's no accident that tangerines come
into full force just as the most dreadful of winter colds start
making the rounds. Royals, clementines, honeys, dancys, and orlandos
are among the many popular mandarin varieties loaded with vitamin
C and sparkling with juice.
Take a look at our bins of winter squash. Right now we have butternut,
sugar pie pumpkin, delicotta, kobocha, red kuri, carnival, sweet
dumpling, and spaghetti squashes, all with their distinctive colors,
textures, shapes and subtle differences in flavor. Hard squash can
keep for months and is incredibly easy to cook. Just pop one in
the oven at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes (longer depending on
size), cut it open and scoop out the seeds. Mash with butter and
maple syrup, eat plain, or add to soup.
Winter is also when you should really be getting to know your
various root vegetables. Everybody loves carrots, and they are pretty
much available year round, so why not try something different? Beets,
parsnips, turnips, rutabega, sunchokes, celery root, and daikon
are all at their crisp sweet best this time of year. Also, don't
miss out on shorter season roots like green and purple kohlrabi,
lotus root, and water chestnuts-all of which can be eaten raw or
cooked-to add some excitement to your stir-fries, soups, and salads.
Just remember, when you buy root vegetables with the greens still
attached, to cut them off and store them separately. If you're not
going to eat the greens, take them off and compost them at the store.
Since a root's job is to feed the rest of the plant, it will continue
to send its nutrients up to the leaves until it is forcibly parted
from them-which is your job, you brute, you.
Another thing I love about winter is the annual Ecological
Farming Conference at the Asilomar conference center in Monterey.
Every January a couple thousand organic farmers, wholesalers, retailers,
activists, educators, and other interested folks gather here to
share success stories, compare notes, and build support systems
for spreading the word about sustainable agriculture. There are
often intense moments of despair, such as those I experienced at
Thursday's plenary talks:
Michael Pollan, writer for the New York Times Magazine and author
of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, talked
about standing in a feed yard at a slaughterhouse watching cows
forced to stand knee-deep in their own feces eat from a trough containing
a mixture of corn mash, urea, tallow, and antibiotics. Their misery,
he said, was palpable.
Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream and Having Faith:
An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, spoke about the many possible
effects of pesticides on developing infants in the womb as well
as after they are born, before the blood-brain barrier is in place
at six months. How can we continue to live and have children, I
wondered, in a world where even amniotic fluid is contaminated by
insecticides, where even breast milk is tainted by weed killer?
Even now, walking on the beautiful white sand beach among rocks
and tidepools alive with barnacles and anenomes, hermit crabs and
fish, I am in a state of morbid attentiveness: how long before we
let the corporations kill off this gorgeous chunk of biodiversity?
But I don't come here for the despair. I come to hear people like
Maria Ines Catalan speak about her family-operated CSA farm, Laughing
Onion Farm in Hollister, California, and how when she moved to this
country she was determined to teach her children to farm and respect
the earth according to the old ways of her ancestors, but that she
never dreamed she'd one day earn her living by selling produce at
organic farmer's markets.
I come to hear people like Ed Pata of the Potawot Indian Health
Village in Arcata, CA, talk about growing food and giving it away
to people with diabetes and other health problems, about teaching
children the joys of growing heirloom tomatoes, about their annual
picnic in the garden where the whole community gathers to enjoy
just-picked salads and celebrate the amazing work that they do.
I come to hear people like Shyaam Shabaka, founder of the Eco-Village
Farm Learning Center in Richmond, CA, an urban oasis in the middle
of a community hard hit by poverty, racism, and the accompanying
challenges of violence and drug abuse. Local and regional residents,
from schoolchildren to retired seniors, can learn the art of organic
farming and environmental stewardship, and take a break from the
stresses of city living to enjoy the peaceful sounds of creeks flowing
and birds singing.
I come to remember that we in the incredibly fertile Bay Area
are part of a larger movement, and that movement is wildly diverse
and strong -it will pollinate, it will seed, it will spread.
your friendly neighborhood produce worker,
Sarah Fran Wisby
Rainbow Grocery Cooperative
|
