Christmas every friday
Today is Friday, or as it is known in my home, Christmas. Every Thursday night I go to bed with a certain glee that in the morning I will awaken, step out of the warmth of my bed and go to the front door where my CSA box awaits me. For those of you who don’t know, CSA stands for community supported agriculture. It consists of a group of local farmers who form subscription packages. The consumer pays a weekly price and each week the farmer harvests whatever is growing in their garden then delivers the fruits and vegtables and sometimes grains, meats and dairly, to their patrons door. You never know what will be in the box. It’s a brilliant business model that maintains a steady income for the local farmers and provides the very freshest produce, often picked that morning, to the consumer. No middle men, no food designed more for shipping and shelf life than for taste, no destroying the land to obtain the greatest profit.
My farm box comes before 8AM, which I love because it means I can leave my warm bed, open the front door and bring my Christmas present into the kitchen to be unwrapped. In the winter there are butternut squashes, different kinds of lettuce, root vegtables like beets and turnips and citrus fruit like lemons, oranges and grapefruits. In the spring, today, there are strawberries, rhubarb, baby turnips, arugula, lettuce, sprouts and radishes. The farm box has challenged me as a cook to try new ingredients. I pull out one of my many well used cook books to see what other people have done with rhubarb or rutabagas. The nerdy scientist in me delights in the opportunity to experiment with unchosen ingredients, a different kind of fun than picking a recipe and going to the market with a list of ingredients.
In these terrifying times I find myself drawn to the basics-food, shelter and community. We have been sold a bill of goods that happiness comes from the next gadget, the next purchase or entertainment. But, honestly, I get as much entertainment value from opening a CSA box as anything else and, on top of that, the CSA box meets my basic need for good healthy food while stimulating my curiosity and sense of joyful play. There is plenty written these days about the ugliness of greed, hatred and delusion and its important to be aware of the rising up of these parts of our humanity and doing what we can to turn the tide. But it is just as important to remember what is beautiful, what is necessary and basic. We mustn’t let them steal the narrative of what it is to be a human being or to steal our daily joy.
My farm box reminds me every Friday that, although I feel helpless to stop the unfolding of this dark karma, I can choose to honor and be grateful for the farmers who grow my food, for the artists who express the pain of the moment and show us the light within the darkness, for those who speak up at their own peril and for those who take the high road even though going along with what they know is not good for future generations will bring the most profit. There are so many heroes rising up and I celebrate each one of them. The farmers who care about sustainability, who work the soil with care and provide the most delicious resistance are the heroes I honor every friday.