Farm:
Today was SO BEAUTIFUL. The warm, sunny weather reminded me why I enjoy my Thursday mornings at the farm. I started out the morning with Mary Charles and Amy, harvesting escarole and feeding the chickens. It was very peaceful and we chatted about our weekends while we worked. No chicken sex this morning, but I did get to hold a bunch of fresh brown eggs that they laid. Afterwards, we reconvened with the group and did a ton of random cleaning and lifting, bringing veggies into the cooler or up to the farm shop. Then we grabbed some squash from the greenhouse. We spent the last hour harvesting carrots.The carrot harvesting was interesting for me because I realized how much I resent laziness. I was grouped with two others on one end of a row, and the person who was forking the soil so that we could pull up the carrots was doing it slower than a toddler could have. They kept gossiping and NOT working to the point that I said something, and they said that this was a social activity. I got frustrated and proceeded to take the fork and be a soil-loosener for the whole hour. I couldn't deal with the unnecessarily slow pace, especially when Amy, who is very pregnant, was moving three times as fast as we were. I love to talk more than anyone I know, but I can do two things at once and just feel like while we are on the farm, especially when its SO NIC
E out, we should be working pretty hard.
After we forked the whole field, I helped pick the carrots which was a lot of fun. I just felt very "farmer" sitting on the ground, hands caked in soil, digging carrots from the earth, while Boon (dog) munched on a carrot a few feet away.
To refer to the title of this post, I was talking to Amy about food and somehow baby carrots came up. She HATES them, saying that its creepy how a machine takes a carrot and turns it into this little weirdly textured unnaturally shaped baby carrot. I never thought
about quite how baby carrots are really made, but I only eat baby carrots because they come all washed and bite size and are very easy to deal with.
So I read this article: http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-08-11-baby-carrot_x.htm and learned that baby carrots are created from ugly carrots and currently make up 1/3 of sales in the fresh carrot market. Another person wrote about baby carrots and decided that "The success of baby carrots speaks to two things about American culture that sort of bug me: 1. The desire
for food that is uniform in appearance and taste. 2. The desire for food to be sterile, already prepared and washed, and packaged for quick, mindless eating
." Well... true. She also support her argument with the points that baby carrots do not taste
like real carrots, are more expensive, and waste food. Her article can be found at:
I don't think I have been convinced to switch my carrot preferences, but I promise I will buy a REAL carrot next time I go to price chopper. Happy Amy?
Oh and by the way, Amy's carrots, while delicious, are often ugly carrots. Also, when I google-imaged "ugly carrot," a rather unattractive red-headed male was the 2nd picture.
(example of a Common Thread carrot)
Food:
I have been TRYING to eat healthier and I'm doing okay I think. I COOKED myself an omelet yesterday with mushrooms, tomatoes, broccoli, and cheese. It was delicious but looked kind of disgusting (I guess I have to learn presentation). Today I had half a protein bar for breakfast, a lean cuisine which was some Asian dish with noodles, edamame, and chicken for lunch, and stir fry for dinner (more noodles and chicken but also carrots and baby corn and broccoli. I have also eaten a little trail mix nuts thing, two sugar-free fudgsicles, a medium sugar-free vanilla latte, and a biscotti. Not too bad considering I ran 3 miles and worked on the farm for 3 hours.
That is all for now.
-Jenna
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