I’ve been working this semester on some new ideas, which are still being fleshed out. In a nutshell, after reading “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver, I decided to volunteer at a local CSA Farm this past summer and fall. I had also just started reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma for my book club last spring, which confirmed my need to explore local food and eating.
CSA stands for Community Shared Agriculture, and is very much like a Co-Op, with a few differences. I chose one outside of Towson for a number of reasons – it’s sustainable and has been around for quite some time. They had a website I could review and read more about how things were done, and they had both full and partial “workshares”. And, it meant that I could get a good deal of my vegetables from a local farm. Reading AMV opened my eyes to how important is to both your general health, as well as the local economy, to support local agriculture, farms and ranches. This has become a personal interest of mine, and became something for me to explore artistically this semester in grad school…
What is a CSA really, you ask? Members purchase a “share” of the crops – basically, you pre-pay for a share of everything that’s grown and harvested on the farm. This normally supplies you with vegetables (and sometimes fruit) for 6 to 8 months. Shares range in size and content, depending on the season, the weather, and infestations (pests, ground hogs, deer), etc. I was looking for a farm that was farmed sustainably (didn’t destroy the surrounding land), organically (using only natural, traditional methods), and one that used the land traditionally (grew many crops, instead of just one bumper crop like corn).
A workshare is essentially where you volunteer for a set number of hours on the farm, in lieu of all or part of your share. I chose to do a 1/2 work share, which meant I would work 40 hours and pay 1/2 the member price. 40 hours, you say? Piece of cake! Wrong. I now know why my ancestors (who were farmers up until my grandfather’s generation) died so young.
I volunteered, on and off, from May to November, experiencing a number of growing seasons, weather conditions, and funny / dangerous experiences. I got to know the interns, volunteers and the farmer. It was interesting to meet these people, find out where they came from, and why they were there.
I picked strawberries with a group of interns / volunteers and we ate so many bruised ones that I was sick for 2 days (not to mention my husband reminded me that snakes LOVE strawberry fields). I rode on the back of a tractor and planted beans and herbs, while one of the interns drove 30 miles per hour (exaggeration) as we tried to drop seedlings into holes (imagine I Love Lucy’s chocolate factory scene, only I was on the back of a tractor in 100 degree weather).
I weeded raspberry bushes. Made me appreciate those damn raspberries later in the season – I bent over those things for hours, and managed to weed perhaps a 5 foot line. I felt like I had accomplished so much, until I looked down the row that was about 500 feet long – and there were 10 rows or maybe more. I don’t remember. It was hot.
Do you have any idea how sticky thistle is? I HATE thistle. It’s the stickiest, prickliest, nastiest shit on earth. It grows up between EVERYTHING, and strangles what it can, takes all the nutrients and light it can, unless you come along and yank it out of the ground. It has fantastic spines that wedge themselves in your hands.
I learned what happens to potato bugs who try to eat our potatoes. You have to drown them in soapy water. Apparently, drowning them in regular water just won’t do. Soapy water. You pick them off the plants one at a time. Have you ever eaten a blue potatoe? I have. Deeeelicious.
Have you ever staked a tomatoe? It’s a little like staking a vampire, except it’s much easier for you to be the one covered in blood. I staked a huge row of tomato plants (on two separate days). You take old wood slices (untreated, so they easily splinter and break – fun!), cut a sharp end on one, dig a slight hole, and then take a large metal cylinder, with handles, raise it above your head and slam it down on the stake – perhaps ten times or so.
Try doing this about four hundred times, and see how your arms feel the next day. Gym membership? Who needs a freaking gym membership? I watched an intern bust herself in the face, breaking her nose wide open doing this. You might laugh at that thought – until you try it yourself. Then see if you’re still laughing 
Then, I spent 4 hours picking tomatoes in August. It was about 120 degrees (OK, not really). But damn, they were pretty tomatoes. Huge, and after all that staking, it was totally worth it. I picked squash, eggplants, cucumbers, beans, potatoes, and more. Lettuce grows up in a point, and looks like a miniature Christmas tree. I learned to cook things – like bok choi and chard – and my husband actually ate them. I made soup. I canned tomatoes. I roasted eggplant and made homemade sauce for pasta. I picked wildflowers, basil, oregano, and fresh mint.
Because it was so mild in September, we had raspberries for weeks. Same with tomatoes – I was still getting tomatoes in October. I worked at the farm’s annual Harvest Festival, selling rides on the tractor to kids. The farm grew pumpkins, and I brought the biggest, narliest looking one home to carve and sit on my doorstep. We cooked the pumpkin to make pie with later and roasted the seeds. I learned to cook Delicata and Butternut squash. Do you know how good those are roasted? Delicata is an heirloom, and is impossible to even find in the stores. It tastes like roasted sweet potatoes, only firmer.
I learned about the Ying and Yang of eating seasonally. About how your body craves certain things at certain times of the year, depending on the weather, the temperature, etc. I washed fresh spinach in freezing cold water until my hands were blue. I worked the shed, cleaning and putting out vegetable shares for people coming and picking them up.
And all of this became inspiration. It ties into my exploration of the bottled water industry, in that it runs along the same lines in our society – that people need to be more responsible for their decisions (do you know how much fossil fuel is burned when you eat a strawberry in January); that often, it costs money to be responsible and often, our government encourages people to make bad choices that benefit them the most (processed food, which contains ungodly amount of government subsidized high fructose corn syrup).
Soooo… I’ve started working on a few ideas. My concepts are based on a few quotes that I’ve found in some of the reading I’ve done. The first quote being:
American culture doesn’t allow much room for slow reflection. I watch the working people who are supposed to be my role models getting pushed to go, go, go and take as little vacation time as possible. And then, often, vacations are full of endless activity too, so you might come back from your “break” feeling exhausted. Canning tomato sauce isn’t exactly a week at the spa, but it definitely forces a pause in the multitasking whire of everday life. It’s a “slow down and do one thing at a time” process: now chop vegetables, now stir them until the sauce thickens, now sterilize the jars, make sure each ring is tight. If you’re going to do anything else at the same time, it had better just be listening to your own thoughts. Anything else could cause you to blow the entire batch. Canning always puts me in a kind of a trance. I reach a point where stirring the bubbling sauce is the world’s only task, and I could do it forever. Whether you prefer to sit on a rock in a peaceful place, or take a wooden spoon to a simmering pot, it does the body good to quiet down and tune in.
I found I could relate to that quote in so many ways. I had photographed my experiences here and there throughout the summer, and started thinking about what that quote meant, and how the words could become part of the image itself.
Tomato Quote
I separated the colors in my first photo and started recreating it as type using parts of the quote. I thought about how this might become a display of sorts, mounted sheets of glass on top of one another, that might give it a three dimensional look:
Detail, Green Layer
Detail, Dark Red Layer
Then I brought the details together, to create the piece above:
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More to come …
