Wasted Food Epidemic
As Americans, we hold the title of “greatest food wasting nation in the world.” This isn’t the most appealing honor, but perhaps it is debatable. Or maybe some of us waste far less than the average one pound per day while others must be picking up our slack and wasting much more. It really depends on what you mean by waste. Simply having been grown and not consumed by humans, then yes, we waste a lot. Or harvesting and never making it to the table, or perhaps being used to supplement an animal’s feed or compost pile… there is room for interpretation.
By now you have noticed that not all of your veggies are picture perfect. Far from it actually. While we are getting a little better at what we do with each season, we still have cucumbers just a bit bigger than planned, dill with a few dead leaves, potatoes with bits of skin removed, lettuce with brown tips, and the list goes on. We apologize and thank you at the same time. We rely on our CSA members to lower their standards. We hope that you will take an extra second to trim instead of throw the entire piece out. On our farm, if we threw every damaged piece of produce away there wouldn’t be much left! This is the way it is on all produce farms, don’t be fooled.
This past Tuesday at market, we had some oddly shaped, heirloom tomatoes on the sale table. A young girl pointed to the fruit with a disgusted look on her face and insisted her mother look at the ugly tomato. Her mom replied something along the lines of the ugly tomatoes taste better. They went back and forth a bit, but the mother could not convince her young daughter that she too could learn to appreciate flavor over appearance of the ugly tomato if she just tried it. I praised the mother for her efforts and we conceded that hopefully one day the girl would grow a garden of her own and come to understand.
This week’s produce is no different. You might find some insect damage on the cabbage or a crack in your tomato. Please continue to help us waste less by taking time to make ugly food into beautiful, nourishing meals.
Enjoying the beauty of the garden,
