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Glorious FoodNovember 25, 2006 This past growing season there were more comings and goings than usual at Thimble Farm, across the road from my barn. Under previous ownership Thimble Farm was locally famous for its tomatoes and other produce; you could pick your own strawberries in spring, raspberries in summer, and other things at other times -- my mind is hazy on the other things because I never picked 'em. Thimble Farm met the same fate as many another concern in a skyrocketing real estate market: the people with the money to buy it usually don't have the skills to run it or the sense to hire someone who does. Now it's up for sale again, and we're hoping that the agricultural restrictions on the land will protect it adequately against subdivision and development. Meanwhile Andrew Woodruff, who does have the skills and the sense to run anything agricultural, has been leasing the fields. Woodruff pioneered community-supported agriculture (CSA) at his Whippoorwill Farm, off Old County Road in West Tisbury, and this summer CSA came to Thimble Farm. Hence the increased comings and goings. I don't do CSA. The upfront contribution is considerable, and the bounty is more than a single person could eat, can, or freeze, especially a single person who lacks a kitchen. This particular single person likes the idea of fresh fruits and vegetables more than the reality: the reality includes fruit flies and a built-in deadline to "use it or lose it" before it turns to gelatinous mush. Once upon a time all but the blackest of bananas were grist for banana bread; now it's into the trash with them if they're too gooey to mix into my Irish oatmeal. Mostly my taste runs to fruits and vegetables with a very long shelf, drawer, fridge, or hanging-basket life: potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and raisins. My current horse-sitting clients left me a cantaloupe, noting that it would be well past peak by the time they returned. It reminded me how much I love cantaloupe, and melons in general, so why don't I ever buy them for myself? I'm at the grocery store. I'm in the mood for cantaloupe, but the cantaloupes won't be perfect for another two or three days. What if I'm not in the mood for cantaloupe when they're in a mode to be eaten? Then they'll pass their prime and be well on the way to gelatinous mush. When they reach it, they'll be trash bait, and I don't even have a compost pile. I like pineapple. Fresh is out of the question -- how long would it take a single person to eat a whole one? More to the point, what shape would the remainder be in when I was a third of the way through? -- but canned is pretty good. There are usually a couple cans of pineapple chunks on my shelves. But guess what? I rarely open them. An unopened can of pineapple chunks will probably outlive me, but once I open it the clock starts ticking. In their bowl on the refrigerator shelf, covered in plastic, they tsk-tsk; Better finish us off soon, eh? or the juice will evaporate and we'll dry out, or we'll take on the taste of the broccoli that's yellowing in the crisper while you try to find time to make a big bowl of salad. OK, so the thought process is a tad convoluted, if not outright neurotic. The upside is that although single and kitchenless I do manage to feed myself pretty well. The broccoli is still green when I make it into salad, with shredded carrots, purple onions, raisins, feta cheese, and garbanzos, and the salad in the big bowl nearly always lasts the week or so it takes me to eat it all -- with Chatham Village garlic & butter croutons and Newman's Own parmesan & roasted garlic dressing. What I have to fight is the notion that the faster I eat it, the sooner I'll have to make more; so eat it slowly and defer the hard labor till some future date. Part of what bugs me about local agriculture, community-supported or not, is the fetish some people make of it. An hour or two after you land on Martha's Vineyard you'll hear someone going on about "the rural character of the island." The island is even home to the state's "first rural health clinic." Hello? Just how "rural" can a place be where land goes for $350,000 an acre and up? Where "farms" change hands at such astronomical prices that single onions and ears of corn would have to go for $100/per to buy gas for the tractor and seed for next year, never mind pay the mortgage. If the land isn't already in your family, only gentleman and gentlewoman farmers need apply -- or, in the case of Thimble Farm across the road you can scratch the "gentle" part and just bring money. The guy who's trying to unload it just might be the real "rural character of the island," and if so it's not a pretty sight. Over the last year we've watched a big barn a-building up the road. We buzzed about the roof, which was framed in what looked like toothpicks. Now some alpacas have moved in. Word is that an alpaca "stallion" goes for $20,000. You want fries with that? We've got designer farms, and a designer farmers' market, and "teaching farms" so that more people will know what we've got when it's gone. The designer supermarket is making a big show of supporting "island agriculture," and -- no surprise -- the "slow food" movement is taking hold here. ("Fast food," at least as the rest of the civilized world knows it, has never arrived on Martha's Vineyard. Sure, the nutritional value is negligible and the fat content appalling, but wouldn't I love to get anything that sort of resembled a meal for less than five bucks?) OK, so I'm so jaded you could carve me into a Buddha, but this born-again agriculture movement looks like yet another case of the market -- or the culture, or God -- destroying something while oblivious to the possibility that the something was worth having, all because that "something worth having" couldn't be reckoned in dollars and cents or factored into the GNP. Once it's nearly over the brink, we try to prevent its destruction, or bring it back, or grow it again from the few surviving vestiges, but somehow the new restored version is only available to those with the price of admission. At the same time -- I have to admit it's worth doing; it's better than nothing. As a means of transportation and a source of brute hauling strength, horses have been long since replaced by cars, trucks, tractors, and bicycles. (Long time ago in Washington, D.C., I called my Peugeot 10-speed, the trusty Blue Mist II, my "urban horse.") But working around horses -- tending to their needs, learning their ways -- keeps something alive in the humans who do it. Thirty years ago I taught myself to bake bread, even though I'd never seen my mother or either of my grandmothers do it. A year in England, buying bread from local bakeries, convinced me I was missing something. I was, and it wasn't just in the eating; it was in the baking. For many, many years bread was my specialty, the thing people urged me to bring to potlucks, a sure-to-please gift for anyone who invited me to dinner. I haven't baked bread once in the last four and a half years because I haven't had an oven. That's probably what really bugs me about the designer agriculture crowd: I can't play. My current cooking facilities are rudimentary, and short-term rentals don't encourage gardening. I have nothing to put in the pot. For years my primary contributions to my community were of a literary or generally support-the-arts nature. That pot doesn't exist any more where I live. (Who knows -- maybe it's coming back with the slow food movement??) What I have to offer, and what I think I'm supposed to be offering, is my words, and my words seem to be turning to gelatinous mush with no one to eat them. If food isn't eaten, it's wasted; if the words aren't heard and answered -- ditto. Something caught my eye in this past week's paper, though. The local agriculture people sponsored a program by a Virginia farmer, one Joel Salatin. What he says about food is what I think about writing, music, theater, neighborhoods, and a bunch of other things: local is best, and having a hand in the creation is good. Integrity can't be legislated, he says. Our best guarantee of a thing's quality is to know face-to-face the person who produced it, and if we know who's going to be eating, reading, or otherwise trusting whatever we produce, we're less likely to cut corners. OK, OK -- community-supported agriculture is going to be part of The Squatters' Speakeasy. I already know the character who's going to reorganize the kitchen. Maybe one of these days I'll be reading my work at a slow-food banquet. Ain't nothing slower than writing.
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