Mickey Munday at the North Miami Farmers Market today!
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A couple of weeks ago I hosted a wood fired baking workshop at the garden. As is usual this time of year in lovely Miami, the day couldn’t have been more beautiful. We were a quaint group of girls this particular morning, standing around a counter piled with mixing bowls, flour and other bread making paraphernalia. The outdoor oven was ablaze before everyone arrive to keep me warm as I set up the work station. We had a great time and ate lots of cheesy pizzas decorated with freshly picked heirloom tomatoes and nasturtium flowers.
 Slice of cooked malanga. Last week I harvested Malanga. In the past I’ve eaten it only a few times, but have always found it very tasty and easy to cook. Considering potatoes are hard to grow in South Florida because of weather, pest and disease issues, I’ve been wondering if it makes sense to substitute them with malanga; should I plant a significant amount for next season? My experience growing it this past year has been that the malanga plant is very resistant to both heavy rain and drought as well as most bugs and diseases including parasitic nematodes. In my research I stumbled upon this very informative paper in the Sarasota IFAS website, which leads me to think malanga is a good idea in many ways. Malanga is a root vegetable popular in the tropics and South America. In Florida,
 I used a recipe from Alice Waters' "Pasta, Pizza and Calzone" cook book. Substituting spinach for arugula!
 Liberal amounts of flour keep the dough from sticking to the pasta machine.
 Hanging pasta to dry.
 Greek Oregano, a mint relative, has a high oil content and strong aroma. It's a prolific perennial plant and I use it throughout the garden as a border or at the head of planting beds. Once harvested it dries well, but in our kitchen usually makes it into a meal fresh.  Since our chickens started laying, eggs have become a part of the daily routine both in the garden and the kitchen. We have brown eggs from our Black Australorps and Dominiques and blue eggs from our Ameraucanas.  Although lemongrass is at it's best in the summer, if it's planted in rich soil and watered regularly, it will continue to produce succulent bulbs all year. Harvesting this frangrant herb never gets old and neither does cooking with it.  Hon Tsai Tai is a close relative of broccoli raab. It's grown not only for the delicious leaves with crunchy purple stems, but also for it's tender flower stalk with bright yellow petals. According to my records I sowed carrots on October 11th, 2011. Just 8 weeks later and I’m harvesting these beautiful, big carrots for the CSA. They are especially sweet after a cold snap early in the week. It got down into the 30′s for a brief period, a blessing for carrots and greens, but a problem for my young beans, basil and tomatoes. Luckily the burn on those sensitive plants was minor and they’ll bounce back.
Considering it’s my first time growing in this garden I feel lucky the carrots worked out so well, especially because the soil characteristics are so different throughout the garden. Every crop has varying soil needs and I did my best trying to place each crop where I thought it would do best based on my observations during the summer months while preparing the fields with cover crops. The field with carrots was also planted with cabbages and sunflowers, both of which did well too. It has deep, rich sandy soil with native muck deeper below; perfect for carrots, but also good for most plants. John’s banana grove is next to this field, in a similar muck soil and they have been growing at an outrageous speed, producing more fruit than I’ve ever seen before. Harvesting carrots is almost impossible to do without pausing for pictures!  My favorite carrot of the day, bell-shaped!  Found this caterpillar tucked between carrots.  This one caught my attention!
The first book I read when I began my farming research in the summer of 2008 was Sharing The Harvest by Elizabeth Henderson and Robyn Van En. Looking back, it clearly shaped what I do today. By that summer I had developed an interest in organic produce after hosting a buying club pick-up at my apartment for a year. Very other week an embarrassingly loud delivery truck would pull up to our driveway and unload a shrink wrapped pallet stacked with branded boxes of organic produce. It felt and looked like a scene from the back of a whole foods. We did it because we got a free share of organic veggies in exchange for dividing the items into 15 equal shares to be picked-up throughout the day by neighbors who signed up with the owner of the buying club. It was all prearranged and easy so I would spend my afternoon on the Internet reading about small farms, soil biology, holistic pest management and the concept of Community Supported Agriculture. I was mesmerized by images of diversified crops growing neatly in fields, rugged young farmers harvesting armfuls of vegetables, flocks of beautiful chickens roaming on pasture and table displays at farmers markets.
Needless to say, the delivery truck lost all appeal pretty fast as I began to realize that eating organic veggies could be about a lot more than a sticker or a label on box, it could be about an actual person, a smart farmer who thoughtfully and skillfully worked with natural elements to produce the amazing array of colors, shapes and flavors that nourish our bodies every day. It could be an actual parcel of land, actual sunlight, rain and most interesting to me, the actual process of seeds germinating and developing into familiar vegetables. Through tireless research I came to the conclusion that the most effective, efficient and cheap way to get hands on training in growing food was to spend time on a working organic farm, face to face with an actual farmer.
I started volunteering on Bee Heaven Farm, a local organic CSA farm, two days per week in the sweltering heat, laden with blood sucking mosquitoes, picking avocados and weeding. In the evenings I would sit in the barn looking through the mini library of farming books, which is where I found Sharing The Harvest. I ended up spending two seasons full time on the farm managing the production, harvest and packing of 500 shares.
This book was my introduction to Community Supported Agriculture and I’ve been on a steady path towards it ever since. Community Supported Agriculture has a very interesting history and definition, which distinctly sets it apart from other systems of food distribution. The heart and essence of a CSA is the connection and commitment between the land, the farmer and the share holders. The concept was born out of the need for both financial security for the farmer and a connection with the natural process of food production for the consumer. That’s to say, CSAs are not necessarily about being organic or cheap or alternative, it’s about knowing the physical place and the actual person who grew your food. That is what captured my imagination and what keeps me growing food for my small CSA here in Miami. A quote from Sharing The Harvest says it all, “Many people feel a keen sense of separation from nature. The teeming life, the extraordinary beauty, and the sense of wholeness that a farm provides is a precious gift to nourish this spiritual hunger. ” Starting a CSA provided me with the financial stability to begin farming on my own and the garden completely fulfills a sense of wholeness in me and I believe it helps my CSA members in a similar way as well.
The vocabulary we use to talk about food today casually includes words such as organic, sustainable, natural and local, without any real regard to what those words originally defined. The same thing has happened with the concept of Community Supported Agriculture. Sure, if you define those three words independently anything goes, but I feel it’s very important to look at the history of the concept and realize with respect what it represents and what it seeks to accomplish. The term CSA today is being used by middlemen, distributors and buying clubs which have very little to do with actually connecting people with the land and the farmer. It’s being exploited like all the other catch words to get the attention of people who are looking for fulfillment. When I originally created this blog, the CSA page was fixed as the homepage, with the USDA definition of CSA as the heading. I felt then as I do now, that it is important to define and defend the term for the sake of all small farms, farmers and consumers.
-In basic terms, CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm or garden operation so that the land becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Members or shareholders of the farm or garden pledge to cover the anticipated costs of the operation and the farmer’s salary in advance. In return, they receive shares in the farm’s bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from reconnecting to the land.
This afternoon, after a long wait (about 6 months), one of my chickens laid her first egg! I couldn’t believe it!
Also on the list of firsts, last Friday we culled 3 Red Broilers for Christmas dinner. Thank you chickens for a nutritious meal. Chicken soup coming up.
Driving along NE 125th street, two large chalk board signs will catch your attention. No matter where you’re going or what you’re doing, you’ll have the urge to pull over and check out what all the hustle is about.
Under a canopy of towering date palms, over a dozen multi-colored pop-up tents flap in the wind, the smell of fresh citrus and sizzling Indonesian fritters wafts through the air and the soothing, mellow tunes from Buffalo’s guitar fill the plaza.
Every vendor creates an individual atmosphere within their tent and as you approach you’ll immediately notice the carefully displayed hand crafted products. Attention to detail, custom packaging and top quality ingredients are the things that make a difference at a farmers market compared to a supermarket, where everything is mass produced and generic.  Laurie (left) from Laurie's Pantry and Melissa (right) from Arrowhead Grass Fed Beef.  Ava (left), who prepares vegetarian Indonesian food and Maggie (right), a local farmer visiting the market. It’s not about shopping, it’s about sitting back and enjoying the moment. It’s about meeting nice people or spending time with friends. It’s about the smells, the sounds, the fresh South Florida winter air and sunshine! It’s definitely about indulging in awesome home made food.
 Purple People Eatery's octopus ceviche made with all fresh ingredients found at the market, including Little River Market Garden papaya!  Home made vegetarian Indonesian lunch.
See you all next week! Florida grass fed rib eye steak! I can go on for a long time about the importance of eating grass fed beef, but instead I’ll just remind you that thanks to the North Miami Farmers Market, we have a new convenient source of amazing quality beef. Best of all, you can talk to Melissa, the Arrowhead Beef representative, about the cows, their lives and the ranch in North Florida. I can personally attest that the difference between commercial corn fed beef and Arrowheads Florida grass fed beef is beyond measure. Last week I brought home a small rib eye steak from the market and seared it with nothing but a pinch of salt and some veggies from the garden. It took 10 minutes to prepare, another 15 to cook and we surprised ourselves with one of the best meals we’ve had in a long time. North Miami Farmers Market at MOCA Plaza 770 NE 125th Street Every Thursday from 9am-2pm |
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