Thursday, December 3, 2009

Bounty

One week's fruit share in 2009
(not including the 2 other grape clusters and
4 plums the kids ate on the way home)


We belong to both a veggie and fruit CSA here in town every summer. It supplies us with a week's worth of fruit for eating; many weeks I bought extra fruit from the CSA wholesale to preserve and also because my kids can consume massive quatities of fresh fruit. It is all coming to fruition now, as the snowflakes are falling (as I write this - yay!) Sour cherries, peaches, pears, apples, all by the 5-gallon bucket or bushel crate. I was a tad busy in the evenings.

A couple days ago, I served the kids canned peaches that I put by this summer.
They were complaining about all the apples I was serving them, and I made a huge flourishing presentation of peaches in (very light) syrup over Greek yogurt. They were properly awed, and we got to discuss how these canned peaches happened, where they came from, how much fun it is to have yummy summer food on our table when it is too cold for it to grow outside. I am pleased that they seem to understand the food cycles of our household, and realized I need to start planning our own garden layout for next spring. Hopefully, we can do more seed starts ourselves and buy fewer young plants. I expect to remain a member of the two CSAs until our own gardens supply us with enough food.

The kids and I make our weekly trip to the farm to pick up our fruit and veggies an event. We see our friends there, pick flowers and tomatoes and herbs and fruit in the u-pick fields, we play with (chase) the chickens and guinea hens, and Monito caresses the tractors (only after greeting them by name. "Hello, Green Tractor. Hello, Big Yellow Tractor with Dragging Thingy" Mommy needs to learn the names of more farm equipment, clearly.) I consider it early homeschooling about food, science, nature and the seasons that we get to do out in the sun.

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