Farm Food Update #2

Well, it’s the middle of the month, and this project has been quite a project so far! With all the snow, things have gone not quite the way we expected, but we’ve gotten through. Our Meat CSA delivery from Chestnut Farm was delayed again due to Snowpocalypse: The Return of the Revenge Part 4, so again we’ve been relying on Farmers To You for meat. Speaking of which, the meat farmers there didn’t get a mention in our Thank Yous at the beginning of the project, so let’s do it now!

Thank you, Tom Cope and Family, Jacob and Justin Finsen, Ben Machin and Grace Bowmer, and John Palmer and Rob Litch. Thanks for rescuing us with tasty meats!

All this snow has been really hard for local small farmers – of course like all of us, they have to shovel out of the drifts, but because of the snow, farmers markets have been closed for weeks, and if you can’t get to market, you can’t sell your goods. So let’s all cross our fingers for the reopening of the markets next week, and please: skip the grocery store and go support a local farmer!

This past week we’ve come up with some very surprising things! We don’t typically eat beans at all, and we very rarely eat corn, so when beans showed up in our Red Fire Farm share last week, we didn’t quite know what to do. But when I realized there was local organic sweet corn available frozen from Farmers To You (as well as frozen local organic bell peppers), of course chili was the answer! We made a giant batch of chili, and were even able to augment it with local Tomatillo Hot Sauce from Real Pickles! We gleefully ate chili breakfast, lunch and dinner until the crockpot was empty!

Again this week, we ran out of meat. On Monday, when I was telling Amber that all we had left until our Farmers to You delivery on Wednesday was one package of (juniper rubbed) bacon, her response was “well, we better make it last then!” Some other kid would have seen it as an excuse to cheat on the project, but she didn’t – I was really proud of her! As it turned out, we were able to pick up a nice piece of local fish, which while not her favorite thing, she actually quite enjoyed, especially with finely chopped Real Pickles dill pickles as a relish!

I still want paleo blueberry muffins, and I’m definitely dreaming of a GIANT batch of paleo not-granola once this project is over. But I’m finding myself so much more grateful for food, so much more aware of flavors and textures, and of how fortunate we are to have so much food available to us (even with the snow delays). Yay, farmers!

You don’t have to do a whole big project like this to support local farmers – all you need to do is go to the farmers market or sign up for a CSA! It’s not quite as convenient as going to the grocery store – there’s a little more planning involved – but real, fair, sustainable food is totally worth it!
Here are some listings of the farmers markets in and around Boston:
https://bostonfarmersmarkets.org/
https://www.massfarmersmarkets.org/

And here are some listings of CSAs that deliver in and around Boston:
https://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/csa_farms.htm
http://somervillebeat.com/food/2985/a-guide-to-csas-in-somerville-and-cambridge/
Farmers to You

Don’t have time to pick up your farm share? Let Metro Pedal Power deliver it by bike! They deliver for many of the local CSAs.