From the Farm, Animals Too

The last week has been spent processing vegetables that arrive in copious quantities from the CSA, but my husband doesn't eat. This last week turned up a red beet coulis, which worked great as a sauce over cheese ravioli and for pork chops. The second batch of beets got turned into that and hit the freezer today, with the garlic and ramped up from the original version. Some of the collard greens were hidden in a kimchi soup, and the rest may find their way to tonight's fish.

Today's recipe was to use something that he does like, but Ma Nature tends to pre-package in a quantity that is harder for two people to kill in a single meal - butternut squash. Aside from having overshot the mark a little on the curry, which will not be an issue when I add the cream tonight, it came out well.

I was struck by how much of what I used came from a local farm, including animals. All of the vegetables as well as the pears came from this last week's visit to pick up our farm share. The stock came out of the freezer, made a few months ago from the backs of the whole chickens from another local farm. I buy them fresh and cut them up for our purposes. The vegetables that went into that stock came from the same farm as the squash and the pears.

The only things that did not come from a local farm were the butter and the curry. The cream I'll add later is also from a local cooperative.

Some years ago, I'd have thought that this kind of habit required that I live in a very rural area. But we live in a cluster of small cities with over a dozen colleges and the seat of state government under our noses, in a traditionally industrial valley. The produce and animals that contributed to this soup all came from smaller family farms, tucked into the rolling hills north and east of here.  The local food movement is alive and well around here.