When not working at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Carpinteria, I volunteer at Shepherd Farms in the same town, located on Highway 192 at the base of Shepherd Mesa. It's a somewhat small farm, nothing industrial, and the owner, Tom Shepherd, has been farming in Santa Barbara since 1973. The farm has crops of melons, strawberries, squash, root vegetables, avacados, tomatoes, beans, herbs, salad greens, four brown goats and a four-story chicken mansion located in the green house. It's mid-summer, so sunflowers are out, and rows of hollyhocks are blooming in Tom's garden of "Herbs de Provence."
On Monday morning I came to the farm and with a shovel, removed weeds from the melon patch. It then occurred to me that I drive 15 minutes in the morning to weed a garden, a task that as a youth I could only justify as part of my weekly allowance.
My mother would be proud.
The previous week, Curtis, Molly and I spent about an hour squishing small green bugs with our fingers. They eat at the melon in its early growth stages, preventing it from maturing into a strong plant. You have to try and kill them before the afternoon hours, because somehow they get faster later in the day and are impossible to catch. It seems entirely futile to try and kill these pests by hand, and I'm curious if Tom, the owner, desires to use an organic chemical, or an alternative to pesticides, in the effort to save his melons. I suggest scarecrows, the kind for bugs. I'll be bringing it up at the next board meeting.
Thursday is CSA day, when cardboard boxes sit on long carts in the barn, poised for packing.
CSA means Community Supported Agriculture and you can register to receive a box of seasonal vegetables weekly. We were short on yellow squash, so Francisco and I went to pick a box-full in time for the delivery. We were clearly behind this morning, because we also had to collect flats of strawberries from the fields to be delivered to Backyard Bowls.
While snapping yellow squash off plants that have large, bladed leaves, I spoke only in Spanish for twenty minutes with Francisco, who does not speak any English. He's worked at Shepherd Farms for eight years and is from central Mexico. My rudimentary knowledge of Spanish enabled me to learn that much, as well as the names of plants, flowers and farm staples: buckets, boxes, pipes. I had the most trouble responding in Spanish to his twice-spoken, two-part question, "Tienes un Novio? Y porque no?" I told him, "No tengo un Novio porque no necessito," which was truthful enough for the circumstance.
Once we had the necessary amount of vegetables and fruit, our crew of three filled the boxes- two big Persian cucumbers, three small; six Early Girl tomatoes, two avacados; three shallots, etc.- and then loaded them into the van. Twenty seven of the boxes, including four flats of strawberries, would go to Backyard Bowls, and the others were designated home deliveries and for a small deli in Montecito. Loading the back-kitchen at Backyard Bowls took the longest. Both Kjessy and I find it interesting that this business buys local strawberries, but specializes in a business that buys a fruit, Acai berries that supposedly have fantastic nutritive properties, from the Amazon rainforest.
Shepherd Farm grows my groceries: I earn my pay in produce, including beans and eggs. Some of the eggs are smaller and blue, and those are my favorite. From my vegetable box this week, I have been sauteeing yellow squash and shallots in olive oil, garlic, red wine, cinnamon, dried basil and oregano. I make pico de gallo out of fresh chopped garlic, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, habeneros (not from the farm) and cilantro. Oh, don't forget to add lime!
I have also been sauteeing Shepherd's apricots and peaches in butter, chopped almonds, cinnamon and nutmeg, with fresh mint on top.
I am from Oregon and have spent all of my summers in the Rogue Valley. So, though I am missing Oregon's raspberry season, and soon to be blackberry season, I am undeniably living well with what is in season here in southern California's temperate climate.
Here's a footnote: the word sautee is difficult to spell. There's an accent on the first e, if you want to spell it properly.
Link to Shepherd's CSA webpage: http://www.shepherdfarmscsa.com/faq
