The 47th Av CSA just installed a new fridge, or perhaps I’ve just noticed it? The barn is old, dusty, and romantically decrepit. The fridge is gleaming, immaculately clean, and very large.

I didn’t sign up for a CSA this year as I had thought the food cart would be open in June. I’ve been mulling the idea of signing up for a winter share for a few months, and when Nolan at Wealth Underground mentioned that they had an opening I jumped right in. This is the first of two, and it’s just a humungous quantity of food!

My friend Jen just spend a few weeks in Denmark at a biodynamic farm. It’s run by Per and his son Kristoffer. Here are some of Jen’s descriptions:

‘It was run by this true hippie, Per, who had a fetish for odd hats and talked all about the “ether power” of his grains… I had a small cottage to stay in, and everyday we did various things around the farm. First we ate breakfast of make-your-own muesli. Then things like weeding, which was my favorite thing to do. Also tying up cucumber vines and caring for tomatoes in the greenhouse, and baking rye bread for smorrebrod. These are open-faced sandwiches that we ate for lunch everyday. The bread was made from Per’s rye and also this flour made of ground “Urland grass”… beyond that it was just honey, salt and water. Oh, and it wasn’t yeasted… I also had a few days off to ride a bicycle along the shore in search of ice cream. Danish ice cream cones are so oddly proportioned and delicious, with fresh, humungous waffle cones, small scoops of ice cream, delicate slices of strawberry, a drizzle of strawberry sauce, all topped with this raw, dense meringue, called “guf”… It’s interesting that such a small and heavily taxed country as this makes for a really well-maintained, wind-powered, and ecologically farmed economy.  Everyone is so happy there, too, and healthy seeming, the pace of things isn’t just slower, the attitude with which everything is done feels joyful, almost leisurely.  There’s definitely something strongly socialistic about Denmark, and though I admire it it brings out my understanding of the American in me, who is competitive, private, loud, individualistic.’

Sometime in the last two weeks the 47th av farm plowed their fields at Zenger. There are lots of stones in the soil, but that’s probably fine for the machine they use.

September

March

I’m looking for grapes. I want to do just one type of wine this year. Last year was just overkill, and I’m still suffering from that. Dozens of carboys, so many different decisions. If I can just have one wine to focus on; just as sometimes I wish I had only one cat, who could receive 5 times the love and attention! I checked out Utopia Vineyard yesterday. It’s on the very southern tip of Ribbon Ridge. Looks good. 500 foot elevation, nice slope with southern exposure, no irrigation, no fertilizers. It’s all Pinot Noir on about 12 acres. It’s run by Daniel Warnshuis, who worked in California wineries for 25 years but wanted to get away from the craziness.

I’ll try to look at a few others and then choose one. Harvest should be the end of this month.

I visited the Wealth Underground Farm today. Brooke and Nolan cooked me a huge lunch of fried rice, beans, plantains, spinach, guacamole, and guava juice and then we spent the afternoon tending to the field. I cut grass with a sickle, planted squash starts, and weeded in between the beds.

I bought a dozen eggs from Wes today at the PSU farmers market. You can see a few blue eggs, these are from Araucana chickens, and I wonder if the few blue eggs at the co-op are from the same breed. He has 800 chickens he tends at his uncles farm. They are all kept in 7 mobile coops, ranging in size from 5 by 7 to 8 by 16. Instead of wheels they sit on skis, and are towed around with a tractor. He doesn’t use fences, I was surprised at that. Apparently the chickens sometimes wander off and lay their eggs in the woods, sending Wes hunting for them.

Curly at Osmo Gaia farm grows the most amazing greens. In the background on the table are some bok choy starts, and he’s also selling some harvested mature ones to eat. They are very tender and bursting with a kind of sweet and slightly spicy juice in the stalk. The leaves are crisp and very tender, it seems a crime to cook them as they taste so pure as is. He has mustard greens with a very rich but not overpowering flavor; also: wild spinach, nettles, collard greens and mizuna. We chatted about photography, discovering that both our fathers are photographers.