I attacked my refrigerator in a spring cleaning frenzy the other day, pitching outdated condiments, scraps wrapped in aluminum foil, and salad dressing bottles with less than two tablespoons remaining. I’ll note that I was away from home for a good portion of the winter, so I can’t be held responsible for many of these refrigerator mysteries.
We’re in the pause between when our winter Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share ended and the spring one begins, so I made short work of the produce drawers. All that remained were the greenish-black traces of what I believe was once cilantro, along with a shrunken lemon, and bits of feathery, dried carrot tops collected in the corners. The ceremony was complete when I tossed a shriveled, leathery beet into the back yard for the squirrels.
I scrubbed and polished everything to a shine, and even slid the lever back and forth a couple of times on the crisper drawer, landing on the picture of a head of lettuce, just in case it actually does something.
This year marks my seventh season as a farm share member of Missoula Grain and Vegetable Co. (MGVC), a relationship that began on a street corner on a warm spring evening in 2015.
It was March 6, and I was downtown for the First Friday art walk, a monthly Missoula event where galleries and local businesses host a variety of artists and their work. On the busy corner of Higgins and Broadway, two grinning young men sat at a card table with a few clipboards and several small booklets. They were wearing threadbare t-shirts; whip thin, deeply tanned, and dirty. At least, that was how I described them in my journal entry from that day.
Max and Kenny had written and illustrated a comic strip about a farm they had started, an invitation for community members to join their CSA. That evening, theirs was my favorite stop, partly because I’m not sure they were even officially part of the event, and mostly because their comic was so creative, funny, and sincere that I probably would have bought anything they’d tried to sell me.
There was a sign-up form for the CSA, maybe at the back of the comic, or maybe I’m making that up. All I know for absolute certain is that I wanted to be part of the farm. I remember going home that evening and cutting out characters from the comic, and pasting them into the scene on a postcard I’d bought on a trip and never sent. I made some sort of visual story out of it, then glued the completed sign up form to the back, officially throwing my hat in the ring.
A text arrived mid-March from farmer Max. It was a photo of the postcard I’d sent back in 2015, when I originally signed up as a CSA member. “Had to share: Today is this postcard’s anniversary!”
I worked on a farm once upon a time, in the summer of 1996, in France of all places. Back then, I had dreams of living off the grid in a straw bale house with solar power, and acres of vegetable gardens. The dream involved showering with rainwater collected in barrels, and spinning wool into yarn to knit my own sweaters, socks, and underwear: That kind of thing.
On the farm in France, I fell hard for the romance of milking goats, harvesting raspberries, and snipping parsley, lavender, and chervil into cloth-lined baskets, but wasn’t as enamored with long days at the working end of a shovel, or mucking out stalls, or weeding garden rows on hands and knees. My thoughts were always under the pear tree where I longed to lean against its trunk and write in my journal, or devour the English language copy of Trainspotting, a novel that another farm worker had left behind.
I realized then that farming is not a summer fling; it’s a marriage. I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment.
(Source: Missoula Grain and Veg Co.)
A CSA farm share was the kind of commitment I was ready to make in 2015, essentially a handshake deal where one party takes up the heavy end, the responsibility for growing the food, and the other party invests cash in the effort ahead of time, with the promise of a share of summer’s bounty. There is a distribution of risk and reward between both the farmers and the consumer. Sometimes you’ll get a bonus bag of frost-sweetened carrots, and sometimes the spinach crop bolts early. One day the kale will be beautiful, the next day, grasshoppers.
On one of the pick-ups during that first summer after I joined, Kenny and Max looked like they’d been wrestling feral cats, their arms scratched all the way to their hands, which were stained purple. “Blackberries,” they smiled, indicating the brimming quarts of juicy gems the size of the end of your thumb. The two farmers had driven to Washington to pick up a greenhouse and came home with gallons of blackberries gleaned from secret wild places along the way to supplement each member’s weekly farm share.
Over the years, the cast of characters at MGVC has grown and changed, but the group remains resonant with the original mission. What started as a worker cooperative that consisted of Max, Kenny, and a crew of dedicated volunteers, has grown into an impressive operation led by the collective muscle and brain power of Barett, Katie, and Max. This trifecta uses innovative, sustainable methods of growing nutritious, delicious food hundreds of people. They do this year round, in Montana, all while keeping up an incredible sense of humor.
(Source: Missoula Grain and Veg Co.)
When you know the names, faces, and the dirt under the nails of the people who grow your food, it becomes a moral obligation to eat, share, and otherwise honor thy vegetable. This baby kale will not go bad on my watch. Yes, we’re eating beets three nights in a row. And, I will even learn to love Claytonia.
A few seasons ago, we started receiving bags of something called Claytonia in our weekly farm share, a nutrient-dense cover crop otherwise known as Miner’s Lettuce. It tasted like a bowl of grass. Google told me to disguise its weedy greenness in a smoothie with mango and banana. This felt like cheating though, like baking zucchini into a cake so children will eat it. But in an email newsletter from MGVC titled, “Samuel L. Jackson Calls Claytonia the Royal Green,” I clicked on a link to a video of someone named Krazy Kat holding a bright green handful of Claytonia, saying, “I don’t know what this plant is called, but I am told it is edible.” Then, with admirable pluck, she began throwing it by the fistful into a sizzling wok with garlic, oil, and fish sauce. Not to be outdone by a YouTube star, I did the same. Delicious. Take that, smoothie: Let me introduce you to my new favorite bowl of grass.
The MGVC newsletters alone are worth the price of membership: Recipes, witty commentary and jokes, photos from the farm, and wisdom from the farm mascot, Wizard the dog. The newsletter also keeps the farm share members informed of how their dollars have been put to work: A wind turbine, solar panels, a new tractor, a flatbed truck, and worker’s wages raised to $15 per hour, to name a few.
(Source: Missoula Grain and Veg Co.)
Countless times I’ve promised myself I’ll bake cookies. I picture myself showing up on a cold morning at the Farmer’s Market with coffees for the crew, and cookies, and treats for Wizard. I’m not sure what happens between those heartfelt impulses and my failure to deliver.
I dream of gifting this farm that has fed me in so many ways with a big ticket item, like a piece of equipment, or acres of land. In light of that, baking cookies seem insignificant, even though actual treats are more delicious than dreams or good intentions.
I do believe I will bake those cookies someday, but for now I plan to write a long overdue note of gratitude and appreciation; but more than that, a love letter of sorts.
Maybe that’s what I just did here today.
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Teaser photo credit: (Source: Missoula Grain and Veg Co.)
