vegetables

It must be mid-summer...here's a picture of one week's haul from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share at Honeybrook Organic Farm. For those not familiar with the concept, a CSA is sort of a group investment in a farmer's success. Share members pay a lump sum prior to the growing season, fronting the farmer capital to run the operation, and reap the benefits in the form of weekly vegetable shares all season long. It turns out to be a great deal...ours averages under 30 dollars a week. Of course earlier and later in the season the volume is nothing like the picture above, but I've been consistently impressed with the volume of food we've received. If you're interested in buying your food local (which you should be) it is a great way to keep costs down.

Posting about vegetables may seem like an aside from my blog's focus, but it really is not. In fact, I made this post so I could discuss exactly that. I've touched a little bit on how connected our food production is to the natural world in a previous post about grassland birds. Lately, 'buy local' has been heavily touted throughout the green world, though usually in reference to savings in energy (the amount of oil involved in producing food on an industrial scale and shipping it from centralized growing locations, often not even in this country, is truly astronomical). However, small operation organic farms can also act as exceptional natural places, particularly for pollinating insects. The plight of the European honey bee has been well publicized. The major declines in our native pollinators; bees, wasps, beetles, butterflies, moths, bugs, etc has not. Where are these native insects going? They're succumbing to habitat loss.

Suburban sprawl has all but vanquished the meadow from New Jersey's landscape. What little of such habitat remains is usually (you guessed it) choked with invasive species and non-native weeds that provide substandard food for native insects. I'm sure you wont be surprised if I say that deer don't help, following the same pattern as with woodlands, eating the natives and passing up the invasives. Of course, you see little patches of native flowers here and there, especially this time of year, but crucial links between these habitats have been destroyed. These little isolated patches of flowers are inhabited by little isolated populations of insects. Without the ability to mix with other populations and breed the survivorship of such insect species is greatly diminished.

This example is illustrative of an ecological concept called the metapopulation; essentially a 'population of populations'. The interactions between populations, also called metapopulation dynamics, is crucial to species survival. Individuals leave one population and travel to another. Upon arrival, they breed with individuals outside of the population from which they came. Such links are crucial for maintaining genetic diversity and are severely compromised when habitat is overly fragmented. The very reason grassland birds are doing so poorly in New Jersey is because we have severely damaged these links by isolating populations beyond distances individuals are capable of traveling. The exact same thing is happening with native pollinating insects. The difference is that the path to their conservation is much clearer.

So this is where the organic farmers and backyard gardeners come in. We can't all create a grassland, but we can all provide pollinator habitat. Field margins on small farms can can easily and cheaply be planted with native wildflowers. In exchange, insects will be happy to pollinate vegetable crops as well. These patches of dense native vegetation also serve as shelter for predators, beetles such as ladybugs and others, that devour plant pest insects by the thousands. Free pest control! The same principles can be applied to a home garden, plant an edge of native vegetation on one side and reap the benefits. Before long you'll find yourself making a bee line (ha ha) for the flowers as soon as you get home, just to see who's hanging around. A lot of these little critters are really, really cool looking.

Our culture has a tendency to separate the natural world from the spaces in which we inhabit, whether its through rejection or assumption that nature can't integrate. That simply isn't true and the survival of our local biota depends on that notion coming to an end. We need to bring nature into our yards and farms; to de-sterilize our lawns, landscapes, and row crops. Doing so will help reconnect the 'wild areas', the green spaces and preserved natural lands that dot New Jersey's landscape.

The way we produce food in this nation currently is a deliberate attempt to step away from the natural world, to remove the vagaries of environment from the equation. I don't think its coincidental that as an industrial food chain fed the suburbs, the suburban landscape likewise became obsessed with symmetry, cleanliness, and an obsessive desire to simplify the environment as much as possible. Boiling down the incredible, wonderful complexity of the natural world into a series of logical, orderly steps is a failing enterprise. If we accept what I said at the beginning of this piece, that our food is inexorably linked to the natural world, than the same is true of the industrial food model. In the future, buying local may cease to be a virtuous act of those concerned with such issues and instead become a practical necessity.

So what do you do with three bowls of tomatoes, weighing in at 8.5 lbs (especially when you expect the same amount next week)? Slow roast and freeze them for the winter! Winter tomatoes always come from Mexico or somewhere else where food eaten in New Jersey really shouldn't. Besides, shipping a tomato that kind of distance really results in a tasteless and mealy experience. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Half small tomatoes and quarter large ones, and arrange them cut side up on the sheet. Preheat your oven 225 F. Sprinkle tomatoes with olive oil and salt, pepper, and herbs (thyme or oregano) to taste. Let roast until they're done (trust me, you'll know). This is a project to start in the morning when you have all day. Pack in quart-size tupperware containers or ziplock bags and freeze. The insects will thank you.

If you're interested in reading a more thorough and better written account of the ideas I've begun to lay out here, check out Bringing Nature Home by University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy.