“...And we pray, not for new
earth or heaven, but to be quiet
in heart, and in eye clear.
What we need is here.”
― Wendell Berry


Pictures below from last week's harvest (Megumi Sugihara):

New producer this week.  Seth Roberts from Weathervane Farm, Buena Vista called this week as they had quite a bit of broccoli going off all at the same time.  Now, this broccoli is like nothing I've ever seen before, especially for a high mountain grower.  We're psyched to get this very complimentary crop in the freshboxes and we're also gonna make a bunch of cream of broccoli soup and freeze a bunch for winter use.  Thanks Seth!  http://www.weathervanefarmbv.com/farming-practices/

• 1 bunch Orange Carrots, White Mtn Farm
  
• 1 bucnh Purple Carrots, WMF
• 1 bunch basil, WMF
• 1 cucumber, Ab Yoder
• 1 clamshell spring mix, Ring a Ding
• Power Greens, RaD
• 1 lb Broccoli, "Gypsy," Weathervane Farm, Buena Vista
• 1 bunch red onions, WMF
• 2-3 peaches, Black Bear Orchards
• couple pears, Black Bear Orchards
  
• Beans, Dragon's Tongue, WMF
• 4 ct Veggie Tamales, Tamale Connection, Antonito. Yum!
  

“It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.”
― Wendell Berry, The Collected Poems, 1957-1982

It is a privilege to know and be close to Megumi Sugihara and McGregor Gaines.  Not only do they cook and eat like champions (see above), but they are excellent people: McGregor has more passion and creativity than many artistic districts combined (check out our wood chip gasifer kiln coming soon) and Megumi is committed for the common good where thy pen, camera, and ladle are mightier than any sword!!  Thanks for the documenting and great recipes!!

So this week I had the pleasure of getting 100 dozen eggs from David Toews and Stagecoach Organics, LLC in Saguache County.   This is the OTHER egg farm we are procuring the Organic eggs for our distribution.  Ab Yoder does our GMO-free egg line, and David does our Certified Organic line.  4 pm every day is egg collection time.  Who runs the show? Five kids from 12 down to maybe 7 or 8.  Is the fact that these farmers have common faith, Yoder's are Amish and the Toews are Mennonite, that keeps their farms functioning and kids in useful service?  These kids do not only do an excellent job, but they are eager to work and help each other.  As I am half way through loading eggs, another group of cousins come in and say "Can I help?"  I am amazed, confounded, and comforted.  Makes me reconsider the connotation that Karl Marx offered:  "Religion is the opiate of the masses."  Maybe its also the place where food, family, and farm still sustainably function.

Today's Fresh Box:

• 1 bunch orange carrot, WMF
• 1 bunch purple carrot, WMF.  Wow!
  
• 1/2 lb crimini mushrooms, CO Mush Farm
• 1.5 lbs green beans, WMF
• 1 Clamshell of Mixed Baby Greens, Ring A Ding Farms, Howard.  I am not quite sure why this line makes me so excited.
• 1/4 lb baby arugula, Ring a Ding.  Did you know that arugula is one of nature's love drugs with references to its effect on the libido since Greek times?  Modern science confirms this from its combination of minerals and antioxidants that keep the libido up, but also arugula is effective with keeping the liver healthy and improving blood quality.
  
• 1/4 lb Braising Mix, Green Earth Farm
• 1 head butterhead lettuce, GEF
• i bag Jackson Honest Chips, Crested Butte.  This is exciting because White Mountains Farms Yukon Golds will be going into this nationally distributed chip line as soon as fields are harvested.  I like to eat and work in local foods, but its still exciting when when of our own goes national in style!!

Rest up this week.  We got the Gentlemen on the Road concert in Salida next weekend, and then the 26th Annual Crestone Energy Fair hosting the Collective Biodiesel Confernce August 27-30.



http://www.gentlemenoftheroad.com/

http://www.collectivebiodieselconference.org/

“Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”
― Wendell Berry

Hats off to Megumi Sugihara and McGregor Gaines for taking the CSA boxes to the highest art, and documenting it and sending it to me.  What a pleasure to know people are using this food in such ways! 

Please visit the CSA page for a viewing of a short film with music covering their wonderful dishes of local food.

For the distribution last Friday, here's the list:

• 3 Peaches, Black Bear Orchards, Palisade.  We are really loving working with this orchard.  Great fruit, excellent people!         http://www.blackbearorchards.com/sustainable-farming/
• Small Head Frisee, Green Earth Farm, Saguache
  
• 1 Bunch Beets, White Mtn Farm, Mosca
• 1 bunch Grilling Onions, White Mtn Farm
• 1.25 lb Snow Peas, WMF.  Yumm!  And finally!  I am not one for too much shelling, I like to snack on the whole thing.
  
• Turnips, WMF.  Recipes anyone??
• Daikon Radish, WMF.  Our regional Cambodian chef, Nath, uses a lot Daikon in many of her dishes.  Permaculturalists use it as a green manure to penetrate deep into the soil and break up hard pan.
• 1 Cucumber, Ab Yoder Family Farm, Alamosa.  I went to pick up eggs and cukes last week and there were no adults on the property.  Just 5 Amish youth, the oldest about 12, the youngest about 4 or 5.  They were all Yoder cousins running the place while Ab and Elise were back in the Midwest at a family gathering.  They were milking cows, feeding chickens, gathering eggs, weeding the garden, harvesting tomatoes and cukes, and serving customers.  Experiencing this youth gave me hope for the future.  It also deeply made me question my own culture of indignant and entitled teenagers that have the world at light speed in their palms and access to a rampant cultural permissiveness of crudeness, drugs, and sex.  It also gave me an idea for a novel.  Ya know, the kind where the power stops, the diesel is no more, and wide-bread America has to turn to the depository of people like the Amish for their survival!  Stay tuned for that one.  Back to the food:
• Fava Beans, WMF
  
• Chives, Green Earth Farm
  
• Sliced White Mushrooms, CO Mushroom Farm
  

“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality.”
― Wendell Berry

Photo of last week's harvest from Megumi Sugihara.

This week:   

• 1.25 lbs Tomatoes, Graber's Produce
  
• 3.4 lbs peaches, Black Bear Orchards
  
• Apricots, Arkansas Valley Organic Growers
• 1 Cucumber, Ab Yoder Family Farm
• 1 Zuchinni, Millibeger Farm, Pueblo via AVOG
• 1 Raddichio, Green Earth Farm, Saguache (This is another chicory, sometimes called Italian Chocory, see below)
  
• Genovese Basil, Hobbs Family Farm, Avondale
• 1/2 lb Baby Spinach, Ring a Ding Farms, Howard OR Lacinato Kale, Eat Fresh Farms, Alamosa
• Fava Beans, White Mountain Farm, Mosca
  
• Lemon Verbana, Green Earth Farm, Saguache    
  

Here's some info on Raddichio from Wikipedia:
Pliny the Elder claimed radicchio was useful as a blood purifier and an aid for insomniacs in Naturalis Historia. In fact, radicchio contains intybin, a sedative/analgesic, as well as a type of flavonoid called anthocyanin which is used for making dye-sensitized solar cells.
Modern cultivation of the plant began in the fifteenth century, in the Veneto and Trentino regions of Italy, but the deep-red radicchio of today was engineered in 1860 by the Belgian agronomist Francesco Van den Borre, who used a technique called imbianchimento (whitening), preforcing, or blanching to create the dark red, white-veined leaves: radicchio plants are taken from the ground and placed in water in darkened sheds, where lack of light and ensuing inhibition of chlorophyll production cause the plants to lose their green pigmentation.

More to come on this week's Fresh Box, but more deliveries now to make!!