Our Share of the Harvest

I started growing plants from seeds when I was a junior in college.  I’m sure my roommates thought I was nuts with the little plastic greenhouses and the pots out on the balcony but it was fun and I liked not paying for cut flowers.  Plus, with all our neighbors having empty beer bottles and stained hand-me-down couches, our plants and plastic Adirondack chairs made us the classy people there.

I started growing veggies on the balcony of our first apartment and they were sad, leggy tomatoes that only produced 3-4 green ones before frost set in.  But I was determined and figured I better learn something about gardening and growing food.  While researching, a good friend of mine recommended the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and my life was changed.  So many of her words resonated with me as a farmer’s daughter, a grower of balcony tomatoes and an eater of foods.  That year I started changing our food choices, forced Greg to at least think about it and we gave up Hostess snack cakes all together (RIP, Mint Kandy Kakes).

In the next years, we bought our house, successfully planted the easy stuff (tomatoes–red and in July this time, cucumbers, peppers, herbs), adopted two cats, started visiting farmers markets, familiarized ourselves with a variety of cooking techniques, got married, learned how to can, learned how make our own cheese and started making local a priority for almost every reason you can think of.

Last year, we got on the waiting list for a share in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) with Maryland Sunrise Farm and this year we could sign up.  Part activism, part experiment, part ethics, part delicious, our share of the harvest has (so far) been an amazing experience.  This blog is designed to be a resource, a lab notebook and an ode to local food and the people who grow it (plus we hope you find us at least a little entertaining).  Over the next few weeks, we’re hoping to add more to the resource side of things so you can more easily find CSAs, recipes, vendors and more and we hope to provide an inside look at how two people really fit a random box of seasonal produce into their very busy everyday lives.

Thanks for reading!

Lindsey

Lindsey is a molecular biologist from Maryland who likes cooking, entertaining, sports and gardening and hates DC traffic and people who don’t “stand to the right, walk to the left”.  She grew up on a dairy farm but confesses that she had little to do with actual farming.

Greg is a mechanical engineer from Maryland who likes home improvement, television and sports and hates Duke and dogs in sweaters.  In his college diet he considered ketchup a vegetable but he now takes the household Executive Chef role on a regular basis.

The two have been married for about a year and live in Maryland with 2 cats.

Trackback URI |