What Should I Expect From My CSA

This week's guest post comes to us from Madeline Guzman, newsletter coordinator and member of Hazon CSA in Rockville, MA.



Tikvat Israel has now experienced almost three seasons of CSA produce.  For most of us, being part of a CSA has been a new experience. The reaction to participating in our CSA has ranged from ecstatic to greatly disappointing.  Those who have enjoyed the experience are
signing up for the next season.  Those of us less pleased are either dropping out or giving the CSA “another chance”. This has led me to think about what each of us is expecting of a CSA.  If one comes into this experience expecting a delivery of the “right” quantity of vegetables in perfect size, shape, and flavor that are most enjoyed by your family, you may be disappointed.  If one comes into this experience learning to accept what the land produces, one might be amazed by what the earth (and our farmer) have to offer. 

As our summer CSA season drew to a close, I reflected on the responses to the produce received by our members.  I’m not sure everyone fully appreciates the meaning of a CSA. To me, it means the shared responsibility for bringing fresh food to our table.  In conjunction with my CSA membership (and inspired by Danny Bachman), my husband and I started a vegetable garden.  Like the experiences of both Danny and Pam Stegall, our CSA farmer, not all has gone according to plan. Some of our produce came out unlike what we expected, some better than expected, and a few crops were even a total loss.  The results in my own vegetable garden were probably a mini-experience of what Pam feels throughout her growing season. The difference is that her commitment is to many more people than my own.

True, CSA produce is not perfect. The pesticides and fungicides used on conventional produce do not protect organic produce. Sometimes this means being very careful to wash away animal pests or cut away a damaged portion of a vegetable.  Like us, animal pests (and even bacteria and fungus) find our veggies tasty!  We need to be a bit gentler and forgiving of what the earth produces.  
 
One particular Hazon CSA in Tenafly NJ, has been hit particularly hard this year. When Steve Golden (Tenafly’s site coordinator) visited the farm, he saw first hand the inexplicable fact that the beets did not grow, despite being planted in the best soil of that particular field.  Indeed, the other rootcrops – turnips, carrots and radishes – did not really produce.  So too the arugula, as well as the broccoli – which looks like it had some leaf disease which limited its growth.  Not to mention the horrible late blight that killed all of our tomatoes and those in neighboring Rockland County and throughout the Northeast. 

Crestfallen, Ted (another one of our famers) brought us the few cherry tomatoes which were not completely rotting in the field even though they too were infected (if you left it on your counter to ripen, as we did, the blight overtook the little fellow overnight). We all sympathize with the Stephens who will now have to pull up all the myriad tomato plants and burn them.  What a great shame – so much painstaking care and tending going up in smoke.  Thankfully, the squash did much better, although the green zucchini harvest was only a fraction of what we would have had if the season were “normal”.  That goes for the first planting of cucumbers and string beans.  All in all, the spring/summer harvest has been a devastating experience for the Stephens family. (excerpted from The Jew and the Carrot blog, “A Difficult Summer: A Letter from the Tuv Ha’aretz in Tenafly” by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster)

Reading afterward about the support provided to the devastated farming family in this situation was heartwarming. My point is simply that CSA members are literally sharing the successes and failures of farm life. So, dear members, thank you for thinking hard before you commit yourselves to this practice and immersing yourselves in it completely once you have.

First year in CSA (St. Louis Tuv Ha'aretz)

Year One as a CSA Family
by Gail Wechsler
Now that my family has participated for over four months in a CSA, I decided it was time to take stock of what we have learned from the experience. Never having done this before, we expected that there would be some challenges but also rewards in being part of such a community effort.
One thing my family has enjoyed about our Tuv Ha’Aretz membership
is that we have tried some foods that never would have been on our radar screen before. High on my personal list is collard greens. I went from not even recognizing what collard greens looked like to missing them when they went out of season. They were delicious steamed with garlic and butter.
Another benefit was that we really appreciated how fresh and delicious
the produce was compared to typical produce purchased from a grocery store. After we polished off the fresh strawberries delivered early in the season, my daughter remarked that there was no way she could go back to eating the traditional store-bought variety we used to get before joining the CSA. I felt the same way about the amazing asparagus that came to us in May.
Of course there were challenges as well. It was frustrating when the size of our week’s delivery was small due to bad weather. I also found it a challenge to come up with different ways to cook zucchini -- we’ve had a lot of zucchini bread and zucchini parmesan the past month or so.
Perhaps the most rewarding thing that has come from our involvement in a CSA is that we have learned about the importance of eating locally and seasonally from a health and environmental point of view. It feels good to be supporting a local farmer rather than leaving a large carbon footprint by purchasing foods shipped thousands of miles to get here. I’ve even resolved to visit the few farmers’ markets that operate from November through April to pick up the slack once Tuv Ha’Aretz ends for the season.
To sum up, being part of St. Louis’s first ever Jewish community CSA in its first year has been extremely worthwhile. We’re looking forward to year two being even better.

Update from Kayam Farm at Pearlstone

By Jakir Manela, Kayam Farm Director


This update from Jakir Manela shares some of his thoughts about the season so far at the Kayam Farm. Kayam hosts one Hazon’s CSA sites. Kayam is part of the Pearlstone Retreat Center located right outside of Baltimore, Maryland. To learn more about Pearlstone and the farm at Kayam visit: http://www.pearlstonecenter.org/kayam.html.


The third season of Kayam farm is going really well so far, at least in my opinion! Our CSA increased in size 250% from last year, from 11 members to 25 members this year. That was a big jump in demand, and in production, for us to accommodate, but we’ve done it! In fact, next year we expect to increase our CSA membership to 36 members (double chai, baby!). The large demand from our CSA consumes most of our produce, so one predictable consequence of that big jump is that we do not have much produce for farmers markets or the Pearlstone kitchen. Even though that is regrettable, we saw it coming and still went for a bigger CSA, because that is our best income source and because it's a great way to build community around Kayam.


More big news from Kayam- this season we established our animal husbandry operation, welcoming ten chickens and five goats to the Kayam family. All of our animals are doing well -- we are harvesting eggs every day, and we plan to shecht (kosher slaughter) 3 of the goats this November (they are all males, we use them mainly to eat invasive species, like a lawn mower but cuter and more edible).


The Kayam 2009 pest of the year award goes rabbits. The weed of the year, for the third year in a row (every year so far) is bermuda grass, an awful invincible crabgrass that seems to laugh at us no matter how much we weed. Many experts have urged me to spray herbicide, but we are exploring other methods of controlling weeds organically, mainly by planting into lots of black plastic mulch (big carbon footprint) and/or by taking some of the weediest plots out of production next season in order to grow cover crops for a year and till regularly, in hopes that the following season will be kindler, gentler, and more weed-free.


Next season we will start growing in our other 2 acre plot, which we have not cultivated during our first three years. That land had been conventionally farmed with GMO, pesticide sprayed corn/soy/wheat for more than 30 years, so we have planted cover crops there for the past two years. Next year we will grow many more crops there, in addition to what we have already on our primary 2.5 acre farm. So in general, LOTS GOING ON! It has been a very exciting and eventful season!


Want to visit Pearlstone? They welcome visitors to schedule a visit anytime. Looking for a Jewish Rosh HaShanah retreat in the Northeast? Hazon is sponsoring a communal Rosh Hashanah celebration this year at the Retreat Center. Learn more at their website: http://www.pearlstonecenter.org/

Life with the Goats at the ADAMAH Farm

By: Aitan Mizrahi, ADAMAH Dairy Manager

This piece comes from the diary manager at the ADAMAH farm, which is part of the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT. The dairy farm raises goats and makes kosher, sustainable cheese and yogurt.

Life with the goats has been busy and fun. ADAMAH Dairy is a collective project of the ADAMAH, Jewish Environmental Fellowship. ADAMAH is a three-month leadership training program for Jewish young adults in their 20s that integrates organic farming, sustainable living, Jewish learning, community building and contemplative spiritual practice. As the dairy manager, I have the honor of holding many of the pieces surrounding the dairy operation here at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT. My first introduction to this lifestyle was as an ADAMAH Fellow in 2004. Since then I have learned herd maintenance and cheese-making.

Around Pesach, in the springtime, our milking does (female goats) gave birth to a grand total of seventeen kids. Since then we have been watching the development of the kids and starting our kosher, organic, artisanal dairy production. While the mothers have been providing enough milk to produce, on average 30-40 pounds of cheese and 10 gallons of yogurt a week, the new kids are still bouncing around the barnyard. All of our products are being sold either through our CSA, which drops off at the Tuv Ha’Aretz Hazon CSA in White Plains, or at local farm stands and markets. Our small batches of cheeses allow for attention to detail. Our Falls Village Feta is a creamy and tangy cheese that is subtly salted, making space for the fresh clean flavors of Falls Village flora to unfold on your palette. Our Holy Chevre is a rich, gently tart, fresh spreadable cheese that is great to share with friends.

As a young Jewish farmer (and goat herder!), I am able to use this opportunity to blend the traditions of our ancestors with contemporary food and sustainability issues. The time I spend roaming with the goats through the woods of Connecticut remind me of the days of old when the Israelites roamed the land of Israel with their herds. With the current demand for local, fresh, healthy food, ADAMAH Dairy is filling a need for hand-crafted, kosher cheeses and yogurt. Come visit us, walk with the goats and taste our tasty treats. We look forward to sharing our tasty dairy products or a tour of the farm with you anytime you are in the area.

To learn more about ADAMAH and their projects visit: http://www.isabellafreedman.org/adamah

Food Justice and Your CSA – a Starting Point

Suzanne Bring, Development Director of Jewish Community Action

In about 1992, I first purchased a share in a local farm. I admit that it had little to do with what the farm offered (organic, local, reduced carbon footprint, &c.) and everything to do with the bare facts of my grad student-y fridge—a half-consumed bottle of wine, a jar of Dijon mustard—you get the picture.
My farm share eliminated the need to grocery shop and plan meals. If there were beets, I boiled them and dressed them with Dijon. Kale was folded into bean soup and accompanied by a glass of that wine. Kohlrabi, however, I always surreptitiously slipped into someone else’s share.
Years later, I’m still a participant in a CSA, now with Easy Bean Farm, owned by Malena Sandeen and Michael Jacobs. Easy Bean has expanded its reach through the St. Paul JCC and Tuv Ha’aretz and is Minnesota’s first Jewish-owned, organic farm.
No longer do I see my farm share merely as a personal convenience. My access to fresh, delicious, nutritious food is part of something far greater. I, after all, could choose from among dozens of CSA offerings in the Twin Cities, and can shop at major grocery stores, farmers’ markets, co-ops, and boutique fooderies.
Not so for some of my neighbors in my inner-city community. They are hindered by lack of transportation, two- and three-job lives, little cash, inability to obtain government food benefits, even location. Walking distance from my house are several tiny stores in which junk food and cigarettes occupy the best real estate and where the very modest array of fresh vegetables and fruit are hidden, expensive, and unappealing. My CSA isn’t really an option for many of my neighbors; after all, it cost more than $300 for a half share, and even though Malena and Michael will accept payment in installments, it’s still not doable for so many.
Together, we can change the problem of “food deserts” that affects so many urban, lower-income neighborhoods. Here is what you and the other members of your CSA, congregation, or community can do:
· Some Hazon CSAs already do this, but if you don’t already, consider organizing your fellow CSA members to purchase extra shares for donation to a local food shelf or shelter. Make sure, however, that you work closely with the intended recipient organizations, to learn what they need.
· Ask your farmer if you can enclose action alerts with the members’ veggie deliveries. Action alerts are an entry point to food justice advocacy, and can encourage CSA shareholders to advocate for a better Farm Bill, for expansion of food stamp benefits, for extension of EBT (debit card for food stamps) use at farmers’ markets, and many other local, national, or even international policy shifts.
· Convene a house party (or a series of them) among members of your CSA, one in which all can share recipes and sample dishes—but also discuss what injustices people really find troubling. Use these meetings as the starting place for building a local campaign for change: Does change involve expanding farmers’ markets into lower-income neighborhoods? Making sure that local banks are lending in under-resourced areas? Working with city and state lawmakers to prevent foreclosure, homelessness, and destitution?
· Support Magen Tzedek, which will encourage excellence in kosher food production, by improving worker safety and training, wages and benefits, treatment of animals, environmental impact, and corporate transparency. Jewish Community Action is undertaking the Twin Cities pilot of this national initiative, but you can be part of its expansion nationwide.

Suzanne has been at Jewish Community Action since 2002, after having worked as a development consultant to a variety of Twin Cities nonprofits. She also attained doctoral candidacy and taught courses in English literature at the University of Minnesota, focusing her research on nineteenth-century Anglo Jewry. Suzanne is a past board member of Beth Jacob Congregation (Conservative) and a current board member of Southside Family Nurturing Center. Suzanne welcomes your comments at suzaane@jewishcommunityaction.org.

Hazon Food Conference 2009!

Join us in 2009!
December 24th, 3 pm – 27th, 1 pm
Asilomar Conference and Retreat Center
On the Monterey Coast, CA

You are warmly invited to join us at the 4th annual Hazon Food Conference on December 24 – 27, 2009 at Asilomar Conference & Retreat Center on the Monterey Coast! We look forward to four days together as a community of Jewish foodies exploring the intersection between ancient Jewish traditions and contemporary food conversations.

The Hazon Food Conference will once again bring together foodies, educators, rabbis, farmers, nutritionists, chefs, activists, students, food writers, and families who share a passion for learning about and celebrating food. Join us for inspiring lectures and discussions, hands-on cooking sessions, family-family activities, an inclusive Shabbat celebration, and delicious, consciously prepared food. You can learn more on Hazon's website www.hazon.org/foodconference. Information will also be available at pick-ups!

The Chicken or the Ache?

By Eric Shumiller

Eric Schumiller is the cantor, shareholder, and on the planning committee at the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore (Plandome, NY).

In my hard-core college vegan days, when I toted around a copy of John Robbins' Diet for a New America like it was from Mt. Sinai, I often wondered how I would approach the subject of meat eating with any future children I might have. The idealized plan that I came up with (while still a bachelor, of course), was that we would have a strictly vegetarian household until my future children reached the age of Bar/Bat Mitzvah. At that point, I would give them a copy of Robbins' well-written argument against consumption of animal products, take them on a tour of the closest factory farm and/or meat processing facility, and then let them make their own informed adult decision about whether they wanted to consume meat from that point forward. If they choose to eat meat at that point, more power to them.

Of course, nearly twenty years later as the (flexitarian? vegearian?) parent of two toddlers, things are not so cut and dry. Nowadays, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma has replaced John Robbins on my shelf, and we are indeed an omnivorous household. Things seemed to be going smoothly - we support our Tuv Ha'aretz CSA, shop at Whole Foods (or at least the organic aisle at Stop & Shop), and try to follow Reb Pollan's core dictum: "Eat Food, Not to Much, Mostly Plants." We try to limit any meat we consume in the home to that produced in a sustainable, ethical manner. Emergency road trip Burger King stops aside, we've done a decent job of modeling the ideals of eco-kashrut to our kids. Until last week, when our four and half year old asked that dreaded question over a free-range rotisserie chicken at Shabbat dinner: "Where do chickens come from?" Up until then, he probably had a vague notion that the chicken on his plate and the chicken in his story book were somehow connected, but that the chicken meat he was eating was somehow freely donated by the animal, like a lamb gives us its wool. But now, as notions of life and death worked their way further and further into his developing consciousness, our son (who is no dummy) was suspecting foul play (sorry, I couldn't resist!).

The challenges in answering his question were many-fold. How do we justify our eating of meat, when we could be satisfying our protein intake (and yummy factor) with strictly vegetarian food? How do we ameliorate (or validate?) the death and suffering of even a well-raised, humanely slaughtered animal, which is now sitting on our plates?

If you want to see my answer, you'll have to surf on over to Hazon's wonderful blog, The Jew & The Carrot (www.jcarrot.org). More importantly, I want to hear your answers! Whether you're a parent or not, a vegetarian or a carnivore, how have you/would you answer this most basic of questions?

Making Vegetable Stock

Stock is a kitchen staple and will make your dishes taste much better than using plain water. Here's a how-to from Madeline Guzman.

Do I have to throw away my vegetable scraps?
Madeline Guzman
Newsletter Editor Tuv Ha’Aretz in Rockville, MD

Here’s a green idea! Instead of throwing away the vegetable scraps you don’t want, save them by turning them into stock.

This is what to do. Collect and save well-scrubbed vegetable peelings, roots, stalks, leaves (NOT rhubarb), and ends that you would otherwise discard (nothing spoiled or moldy!) Be sure to use onions, carrots, and celery as part of this mix. Other good vegetables to use are leeks, scallions, garlic, fennel, chard, lettuce, potatoes, parsnips, green beans, squash, bell peppers, eggplant, mushrooms, and asparagus. Additionally, you can add corn cobs, winter squash skins, beet greens, and herbs like parsley and cilantro. Avoid using cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, rutabagas, or artichokes – all of which tend to have an overpowering taste. Be aware that onion skins will turn the stock brown and beet roots will turn it red. Chop the veggie scraps into similar sized pieces and store in your freezer while collecting them.

When ready to use, add 4 cups of veggie scraps to 2 quarts of water and simmer on the stove for an hour to make vegetable stock. After simmering, remove veggie scraps from the liquid, and press the veggie scraps to extract and save as much liquid as possible. Warning: the taste might be odd (my family and I agreed that the stock I made tasted truly weird!) because it is only the unseasoned liquid made from a conglomeration of vegetables. Not to worry. Allow the liquid to cool; then freeze it. Use this vegetable stock as a base for your next homemade soup. My Chinese Cabbage Soup (recipe below used with my weird-tasting veggie stock came out excellent!


Chinese Cabbage Soup
Serves 12         
 
Hearty and a bit picante!
 
2 Tbsp olive oil                                                       4 large potatoes, peeled & diced
1 large onion, chopped                                            1 Tbsp dried oregano
4 green onions, chopped                                         2 tsp dried basil
1 clove garlic (or 1 garlic scape), minced                  1 tsp black pepper
4 stalks celery with leaves (chopped)                       1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
3 large carrots, cubes (with a few minced greens)     2 bay leaves
1 ½ quarts vegetable broth                                      1 tsp salt
4 8-oz cans tomato sauce
1 (15-oz) can black beans
1 small (or ½ large) Chinese cabbage, shredded
 
Heat the olive oil in a soup pot, and sauté white onions, green onions, and garlic until tender.  Mix in the celery and carrots. Stir in broth, tomato sauce, black beans, Chinese cabbage, and potatoes.  Season with oregano, basil, black pepper, cayenne pepper, bay leaves, and salt.  Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally until veggies are tender.  Remove bay leaves (if you can find them) before serving.   
 
2008- Adapted from a recipe by Wakulachef submitted to allrecipes.com                                             

Fruit In Its Season

by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster

Yesterday was the first day (finally!) of my local farmers’ market here in NJ, and I’ll admit I went a bit fruit happy, coming home loaded with local blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. It took some detective work to figure out what things were not local–the farmer may be Pennsylvania Dutch but those sure aren’t local peaches, not yet. I’m much stricter about eating fruit locally and seasonally than I am vegetables. I can go months without fresh berries or stone fruit, hoping that it counts towards my balanced diet if I eat many servings of fruit in the summer and far fewer in the winter. Sure, there are days towards late February when I am sick of citrus fruit, grapes, and bananas, and look longingly towards the plums flown in from California. But in my heart, I know they will disappoint me.
(As an aside, the Toronto Star had an article last week about the ubiquitous California strawberry, tracing it from laboratory to the store. The comments on the article are an interesting cross section of conflicting consumer values )
Today, choosing to eat seasonally is a values choice. In my brain, I hear two conversations from the days before I had my daughter. One parent explained to me that parenting is compromise, and that meant buying those strawberries in December if your kid just had to have them. Another told me how for her growing up, eating cherries was special, because you only got them for part of the year, and how she wanted her son to know that feeling of specialness when he eat cherries. I understand the first parent (we’ve all been there) but I want to be the second. Just because we can have something all the time doesn’t mean we should. We risk having the sacred and special become mundane.
Seasonal eating keeps us rooted in changes of every year, and that is what makes it such a Jewish value for me. Jewish time is agricultural, with the Pilgrimage festivals linked to the harvests of the year. The reason we have Jewish leap years is to prevent the holidays from coming unglued to the season: Passover can’t be in the middle of the winter and Sukkot can’t be in the summer. The rituals we associate with the festivals are also connected to the seasons: the spring greens on the seder plate, the first fruits of Shavuot, and the harvest decorations of Sukkot. There is some disconnection in the timeliness of it all for those of us who don’t live in Israel: every year, my father reminds us that the reason we eat potato at seder for our “spring greens” for karpas is that it was still winter in April in Poland. Our rootedness in the land is for a land far away, as we see when we pray for rain based on Israel’s climate calendar. And yet Jews all over have also adapted to the land they find themselves in, incorporating the seasonal produce of their new homes into their holiday meals.
Living according to the passage of the seasons also reminds us that we can’t have what we want all the time. I’m sure many kids would love it if every day were another night of Hanukah. But if we lit the candles all year, they would lose their meaning. They wouldn’t be special any more.
One of my teachers taught me that living on Jewish time means living on a separate clock and calendar than the rest of the world. To me, part of that means eating by the real calendar, not the artificial abundance created by technology and our ability to use fossil fuels to transport food. Food is a gift from God, and the more we take it’s permanence for granted, the more mundane we risk it becoming.
One of the traditional uses for the shehechiyanu blessing is the the first time you eat a fruit in a given season (or since Rosh Hashanah). Wouldn’t it be sad if we never had the chance to say it because our food was no longer linked to the seasons? As we head towards a beautiful summer of harvests, I hope we all have a chance to experience foods that are special.

An intro to your Jewish CSA – Hazon’s Tuv Ha’Aretz

Welcome to the Hazon CSA network! Our Hazon CSAs follow the traditional Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project structure with regards to weekly vegetable delivery and a strong commitment to supporting local agriculture. And like some other CSAs, Tuv Ha'Aretz works to build community and educate its members about food, nourishment, and small-scale organic agriculture. What makes Tuv Ha'Aretz different is that in 2009 it is a network of 32 Jewishly-rooted CSAs in North America and Israel.

Through Tuv Ha'Aretz members can expand their understanding of what it means for food to be kosher – food that is not only “fit” for to eat according to Jewish tradition, but “fit” for the Earth, for the health and sustainability of our own bodies and our broader communities.

Tuv Ha'Aretz suggests a double meaning: Tuv Ha'Aretz is both good for the land and the best of the land: good for the land because it encourages and supports small organic farmers who grow their crops using sustainable methods on agricultural land near the city that would otherwise be threatened with development, and best of the land because the produce -- often picked the morning of delivery! -- is fresh, sustainable, sweet, pesticide and chemical free, healthy, beautiful and delicious.

Recent Hazon CSA programs have included:

• Fifty people learning about bikkurim, first fruits, while on the farm for Shavuot in Portland, OR


• Hundreds of people across the country attended Tu Bishvat Seders in California’s Bay Area; Boulder, CO; Rockville, MD; Seattle, WA; St. Louis, MO; St. Paul, MN; Washington, DC; New York, NY; and Long Island, NY (which was maple syrup themed!)


• A Gleaning Day Sukkot farm trip that sites in the New York area have done for years


• A beet haiku competition in Scottsdale, AZ though the day school that hosts the CSA


• Brunches, movie screenings, strawberry picking farm-trips, and potlucks that sites around the country have been organizing.

And the list of events goes on and on!

Shehecheyanu – we celebrate this special occasion -- for your new CSA season with Hazon and TuvHa’Aretz, for all of the first fruits and veggies you will eat as a part of your share and for the new communities you will be a part of this season.

You are invited to take a moment, as you begin your CSA journey, to offer words of thanks, either the traditional ones below or the ones you feel moved to say.

Shehechiyanu



Blessed are You, O Lord, our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has caused us to live, and has sustained us, and has enabled us to come to this time.

Barukh ata Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-olam, she-hecheyanu, ve-kiyemanu ve-higiyanu la-zeman ha-zeh.

The CSA Season Begins

by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster
Member, Hazon CSA Tuv Ha’Aretz in Tenafly, NJ

"How great are Your works, Oh God, How very profound Your designs!"
(Psalm 92:6)

In Michael Ableman’s book Fields of Plenty, there is a moment when he describes looking across a field planted with more than 70 varieties of summer squash, all in bloom. It is a picture of abundance, but what I remember thinking when I read this passage was, “There are how many varieties of squash? I’ve only ever seen 3 or 4!!! Where would I find 60+ more? And how would you cook them?”

Every spring and summer, I am amazed by the new varieties of fruits and vegetables I discover from local farms, expanding my palette beyond the year-round supermarket staples. They serve as milestones in my life: that happened during the August we discovered heirloom tomatoes, or that was the summer I started eating beets and kale. Each new taste leaves me just a little bit more in awe at the wonders of God’s world that I could easily take for granted.

One bracha that is familiar to many of us is the Shehecheyanu, which we say at significant moments in our lives, such as wearing new clothes, lighting the first night of Chanukah candles, or a conversion. One time when say this bracha is when we eat a new fruit or vegetable, either for the first time altogether or for the first time this year.

Imagine, if you are like me, and you only eat strawberries when they are local and in season. When you finally get your hands on a ripe, tasty strawberry, you feel lucky to be able to eat it in its proper time and place. It makes sense to take a moment to translate that gratitude into thanks to God for the blessing of a small, perfect morsel of fruit.

We are just at the beginning of the CSA season, a season when we will be blessed with beautiful produce that tastes the way food should taste. Some of what we find in our boxes every week will be new to us this year; other produce we will encounter for the first time in our lives. Each piece of food will be the result of the partnership between the farmer who grew the food and the Creator who thought to design that carrot or those 70 varieties of summer squash. I invite each of you to take a moment, as you begin your CSA journey, to offer words of thanks, either the traditional ones below or the ones you feel moved to say.

Shehechiyanu


Blessed are You, O Lord, our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has caused us to live, and has sustained us, and has enabled us to come to this time.

Barukh ata Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-olam, she-hecheyanu, ve-kiyemanu ve-higiyanu la-zeman ha-zeh.

Top 10 CSA Must Haves

The wonderful Tuv Ha’Aretz Community-Supported Agriculture group at the JCC Houston came up with this Top-10 list of must have kitchen items in order to maximize the produce from your CSA share.

Turns out, the list is pretty handy for any Jewish food enthusiast - feel free to share with friends and family.


Top 10 CSA (& Jewish Food) Must Haves

1. Evert-Fresh Green Bags - The best bags for storing fruits and vegetables. Possibly ever?

2. Slow Cooker - Slow cook your veggies into a delicious Shabbat dinner (or lunch!)

3. Salad Spinner - A handy salad spinner makes your weekly influx of lettuce and leafy greens a snap to clean - or at least a lot easier.

4. Freezer Bags - Freeze those fresh, local corn kernels to enjoy all winter long.

5. Food Processor- Pesto, butternut squash puree, homemade soup…mmmmm

6. A Food Steamer - Steam your raw veggies into a delicious dinner in no time.

7. An (Immersion) Hand Blender - The best thing to happen to soups since the spoon.

8. An Ice Cube Tray - For freezing that pesto (or tomato sauce, butternut squash puree…) into easy-to-store-and-reheat cubes.

9. Space to put everything (yes, this can even be done in the city!)

10. A Large Stock Pot - For soups, sauces, boiling pasta…you can never have enough big pots around.