A fridge full of fine food

As we approach the first harvest week for our 2024 CSA, I am pleased to begin thinking about the meals people will prepare over the next several months from the bounty of our farm. But this past weekend I had the pleasure of harvesting not for our CSA membership, but alongside my daughter who had come home for a few days and was eager to stock up for her return back to school.

This is the first summer Emma will be spending away from home. She is doing university research with marine isopods, and is also working as a summer resident assistant on campus. On-campus summer housing involves living in her own apartment for the first time, and Emma is particularly excited about the kitchen, with its stovetop and oven, and an entire refrigerator/freezer of her own.

After many semesters of campus food, she is elated for the opportunity to cook for herself – and host her friends.

I was deeply satisfied by her eagerness to see what treats the garden is offering these days. We found plenty to fill a couple of bins, thinking ahead to all the possibilities of meals she can create.

Back in Seattle as she showed us her cute little apartment, it was quite gratifying to watch her load the first shelf of her otherwise empty refrigerator with a few broccoli sprigs and a dozen farm fresh eggs while the second shelf is now bursting with spinach, garlic scapes and bok choy. Deer tongue, butterhead, red leaf and merlot lettuces fill the vegetable drawers to the brim.

Ground pork, ground beef and sausage are now neatly stacked in the freezer along with some pepperoni sticks for long days of research and a hearty roast for carnitas when she has time to invite friends over for tacos.

She also brought back a pot with two Genovese basil starts from our nursery, so she can tend to her own food supply from her sunny windowsill.

We’ve been getting daily reports on the meals she and her friends have prepared with these farm fresh ingredients. It seems like they’re getting a good taste of seasonal bounty.

Back at the farm, we look forward to filling more refrigerators with fine food in the summer weeks to come.