CSA Harvest: Always Good, Sometimes Too Good

Bucolic. Zen flow. At peace with the world. That’s how this city girl felt last Friday twilight strolling to pick raspberries at Essex Farm, the thriving CSA farm we belong to. From the pavilion where members pick up the week’s veggies, dairy, eggs and such, it’s under a mile to the raspberry field. A pleasant walk over cover-crop grasses, clumpy clods of dirt and small sinks of squelchy mud.  

I pass row after row of blue-green and purple-red cabbage, ferny-topped carrots and red-green-leafed beets, stands of dark green broccoli, forests of feathery asparagus and rustling corn. The two straight raspberry rows stretch south forever before t-boning on Rural Route 22. A few action-figure-sized members hunch over the bushes down there, cars parked by the side of the road. By walking through the fields, I have the north end to myself.

I sweat and squat, plucking ripe berries exposed between leaves and hiding under them, a treasure hunt that stains my fingers deep red. I pop them into my mouth and drop them into a quart cardboard box, into my mouth, into the box, a lovely rhythm.

In the humid air, the sounds of Indian summer swell and fall, fortissimo and pianissimo. Cattle low unseen from a field far away behind a scrim of trees, crickets saw, bees airplane-buzz, and mosquitoes screech and howl as they dive-bomb me from all directions. They are so aggressive, and my swats so frantic, I slap the glasses off my nose.

But nothing can stop me— I am consumed by pick-your-own lust. The raspberries are so lush, so plentiful and so tasty! More! More! More! Once home, I’ll moan: What have I done? For I’ll be up late, freezing all that luscious, extremely perishable fruit.

If I wait even till morning, too many of the berries will spoil. Then I’ll have worked twice, for half the product. Can’t have that.  Pushing myself now insures I’ll enjoy berries for weeks, possibly months (if I hide them from Hubby and Son) when they are out of season, and very expensive to buy.

Picking these berries costs me only my labor. We pay a flat yearly rate for three shares’ worth of whatever organic bounty the farm produces (one share each for Hubby, Son and me).  It makes sense (economic, ecologic and health) to go for it, even if it is exhausting. The concept applies to any part of the harvest that is plentiful.

What happens if you leave your car unlocked in late summer in upstate New York? You come back to find it full of zucchini.

At the pavilion earlier, the distribution fairy had enthused, “Take as much as you want to put up for the winter! Take some for friends and neighbors! We have lots!” waving with abandon at the broccoli trees, three-foot leeks, mountains of cilantro, crates of green beans, stacks of tomato flats and the truck bed loaded with sweet corn.

Suzy, another member, and I surveyed two kinds of cukes and parsley so healthy it was almost jumping out of the box. Suzy muttered under her breath: “It’s enough to make you slit your wrists.”

I burst out laughing. She cracked up. Which cracked me up. And so on, in waves. Finally we wound down, wiped our eyes and took a few deep breaths. Whew.

She said, “Thank god the harvest is slowing down.” It’s reality: added to our over-full lives, the press of putting up produce can become a nightmare. Nonetheless, we’re thrilled and grateful to be caught in this local, green and bounteous food web. It’s absurd to feel guilty that it gets too much, but what appreciative person can help it?

Because it’s unbelievable how hard the farmers work during the growing season. The crushing intensity reminds me of being on call as a resident, with heavy physical labor thrown in.  It’s what they love to do, and they do it year after year. And this beautiful food is the result. Farmers rock!

It’s only fair and sensible I don’t waste their investment (and mine). That I take the baton they’re passing to me and chop, chop, chop, bag, bag, bag, label and freeze. Fast, fast, fast before it spoils. You want to slit your wrists to end it.

As I swat and squat, pop and drop berries in the box, I know I should stop. My doctor had just that day confirmed my self-diagnosis: CBS, Candle Burning Syndrome. I’ve run out of wax. Rest. I need rest. But the berries are here now.

Walking the mile back to my car, bag heavy, I’m tired and satisfied. I love raspberries. An hour later, when I get home, I gently dump them onto cookie sheets I’ve lined with parchment paper. I eat the mushed ones, pick out the already-moldy ones and pop the pans uncovered in the freezer. Now very tired, I put away the rest of the produce, shower, eat dinner, leave the dishes in the sink, and cuddle up with a book in bed.

Just as I’m drifting off to sleep— the berries! They’ll get that nasty freezer taste if I don’t transfer them into freezer baggies. It takes half an hour. I go back to bed, happy I can sleep in.

Saturday morning, a cup of good coffee with a little farm milk goes down easy, as does oatmeal with raspberries and a dollop of farm maple syrup (thawed from the spring stash). Ordinarily, next I would stand at the counter for an hour and chop chop chop for the freezer.  Instead, I lounge, read, scratch the itchy welts behind my ears, on my neck, my arms, my waist, my ankles… and take it easy. Doctor’s orders. 

PHOTO CREDIT: LewinFarms