fruit of our labor. home grown.

Sometimes fresh carrots pulled straight from their underground hollows are all you need to feel just right. Remnants of the dirt you tried to wipe off on already encrusted jeans add the perfect gritty crunch to the carrot's brisk sweetness. No need to roast these fresh moments. No need to dress up these moments into a moroccan carrot salad. The carrot is just perfect the way it is. Sometimes, this is how I feel.


Its something I've learned after the season working at White Oak Farm, tending to thousands of plants that sustain me and my community. Sometimes the food itself, when its grown well (with love!), is the best it can be. The carrots are so sweet. The raspberries a tangy burst. And the spinach is so rich and deep and crisp. I was often seen stuffing lettuce in my mouth like one of the goats while trimming the leaves off for the farmer's market. It just felt right and tasted even more right.

My cooking style has simplified this season, as the vibrant food I've eaten stood on its own. Why make a watermelon feta salad when a plump watermelon, waiting on a juice-splattered cutting board for slicing, is all I crave in the heart of summer? When the lettuce is just bitter enough for a bite and crunching with flavor, a salad has never shined so bright. 



Even the book I am reading, The One Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka, highlights this idea of deliciously simple food from nature. I read these words right as I was writing this post. It was too perfect to pass by. 

"At first people ate simply because they were alive and because food was tasty. Modern people have come to think that if they do not prepare food with elaborate seasonings, the meal will be tasteless. If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.  The first consideration should be to live in such a way that the food itself tastes good, but today all the effort goes instead into adding tastiness to food. Ironically, delicious foods have all but vanished...

...The art of cooking begins with sea salt and a crackling fire. When food is prepared by someone sensitive to the fundamentals of cookery, it maintains its natural flavor."

Though Fukuoka is quite austere on his view of natural cooking, these words at least give us a moment to think of the actual food, and what it tastes like. What does a delicious spinach leaf taste like on its own, maybe sauteed with but a pinch of salt and a mere pat of butter? 

This is a different distinction in "healthy eating." This mindset does not ask, "Are you eating spinach instead of pasta," but instead asks "What kind of spinach are you eating? Is it grown organically, close by, by your own hand?" It really does change the flavor of the food, the spirit, and the value of it. I can't get enough of the fresh, tender spinach from the field. It's so alive, and naturally delicious.

So this is for the food, and for the plants that provide for us; a 'thank you,' from me to all that has expanded and contracted throughout the season. These literal fruits of our labor, be them actual fruit like grapes or figurative like community bonds, are a result of our cooperative work here. We toiled under the sun for the plants and the animals and the humans too. Let's start with spring. 




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