Johnson's Backyard Garden

Archive for December, 2010

Goodbye to 2010

Monday, December 27th, 2010

Happy (early) New Year from the Johnson Family.

From the Farmer’s Perspective:

With some of our staff and regular contributors on vacation for the holiday, we are sending out a short newsletter this week. We have included a some photos from each month in 2010 – we hope you enjoy them.

Thanks for a great 2010 – we look forward to an even better year in 2011.

January 2010. Seed potatoes arrive by truck.

February 2010. A new seedling goes in the ground.

March 2010. Lettuce transplants await planting.

April 2010. JBG Spring Potluck and Open House.

May 2010. Workshare Julie Webb helps unload onions.

June 2010. Flowers grow at Hergotz now that all of the crops are growing at River Road.

July 2010. Colors of Summer.

August 2010. James in the Okra Field

September 2010. Temo cultivates the rows of green beans at River Road.

October 2010. Cherokee Lettuce thrives at River Road.

November 2010. Our box trucks get a makeover by Ryan Rhodes.

December 2010. Thanks for a great year! Photo by Scott David Gordon

December 2010. Drew, Jimmy, Brenton, and Ada. Photo by Scott David Gordon

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Getting Ready for 2011

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Happy Holidays from Jimmy, Ada and the whole Johnson family. Photo by Scott David Gordon

From the Farmer’s Perspective…

For the last four weeks, we have been very busy mapping our planting schedule for 2011. We had to figure out where in the field — and when on the calendar — to plant each crop. Crop planning is a time consuming and tedious process but very important to vegetable quality and yield. Brenton’s brother, Aaron, designed a custom computer crop mapping program that makes it much easier, but he and Brenton still logged many hours tweaking this year’s plan. For Brenton, the most exciting part of this process is getting all of the new seed catalogs and thinking about what to grow. His desk was piled high with seed catalogs as he worked through the selection process. He concentrated on choosing vegetable varieties appropriate to our climate at the time of planting since getting the timing as well as the variety right on planting is key to high quality.

We have finally completed the planting map for year and finished our seed orders. Here are some of the produce changes and varieties you can look forward to getting from JBG in 2011:

- Snow Peas and English Peas in the Spring
- Lots more watermelons, cantaloupes, and other melons
- New tomato varieties as well as a wide assortment of heirlooms
- Lots of different types and colors of potatoes including a test-crop of fingerling potatoes
- Lots more sweet peppers (yellow, green, red, and purple) and fewer hot peppers (we’ll still plant jalapenos, Serranos, and habeneros)
- Shishito Peppers, a Japanese variety recommended to us by one of our farmers customers – we hear they’re great roasted!

Shishito Peppers

Also, citrus season has started in Texas. In January and February in the CSA boxes, we’ll be including an assortment of citrus from fellow organic growers in the Rio Grande Valley. We wish everyone a joyous holiday season and look forward to a great new year filled with lots of vegetables.

1) Farm News
- JBG is now accepting CSA members
- Goodbye to James
- The Nitty Gritty: Food and Pleasure
2) Updates, Meetings, and Events
- Holiday Closures
- Call for Farmers Market Help on January 1
3) Recipes, by Melissa Vance, JBG CSA Member
- Salad Caprese
- Braised Carrots with Citrus Coriander Sauce

Blue Skies at River Road. Photo by Scott David Gordon

1) Farm News

JBG is now accepting CSA members.

Help us spread the word! Click here to join.

Week of December 21 Box Contents

Goodbye to James

This week, we will be saying goodbye to James Castleberry, former farm intern and invaluable JBG employee. Highly talented and versatile, James did almost everything on the farm — seeding, planting, harvesting, running the JBG booths the Downtown Austin Farmers Market, driving the delivery truck, operating the forklift, driving the tractors — the list goes on and on. James is heading west to Skull Valley, Arizona, where he will be helping his friend operate his farm, Rabbit Run, as well as doing some farming of his own. James will be greatly missed at JBG — we wish him the best.

James seeds with a smile. Photo by Carrie Kenny

Food and Pleasure

We live in an America where eating is foremost about bodily health. Diets, nutrients and calories are considered by eaters to ensure that what they eat will lead to health. According to Michael Pollan in his book In Defense of Food this is destructive. It’s destructive not just to the pleasure of eating, which would be bad enough, but paradoxically to our health as well. Indeed, no people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we Americans do – and no people suffer from as many diet-related health problems at the same time. We are becoming a nation of orthorexis: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.

Let’s imagine living in an America with a vastly different food culture. Here, people eat for pleasure, enjoying meals at the dinner table in the company of family and friends, rather than behind the steering wheel or TV. Local communities are proud of their regional specialities and the farmers who produce them. In this America, calorie counting, dieting and worrying about weight is unnecessary as people are able to maintain health via balance. Low fat yogurts, low carb pasta and Coke Zero are accumulating dust on the grocery store shelves. Eating whole foods and real foods is the only dietary guideline that eaters need. Sales for organically grown fruits and vegetables and pasture raised meats have skyrocketed. Is the picture I just painted a crazy utopia or a feasible reality? Would eating for pleasure make us a healthier nation?

Let’s look at the status quo before we investigate what eating for pleasure would entail.

America’s healthy eating obsession began when the ideology of nutritionism found broad acceptance. Its basic premise is that people eat in order to maintain and promote bodily health. By focussing solely on physical health, the approach fails to acknowledge other reasons to eat such as enjoyment or cultural identity. How we eat and even how we feel about eating may in the end be just as important as what we eat. Focussing on physical health made the act of eating more approachable by science. All that scientists had to do now was to define which nutrients in what quantities promote physical health and then get people to eat them. The era of whole foods was over and the era of nutrients began. Whole foods were diminished to simple carriers of nutrients and then divided into the healthy and unhealthy ones. Americans went on a roller coaster of ever changing diets and dietary guidelines, depending on the newest research results. The question about what to eat — once guided by culture, community, family or spirituality — was handed over to scientists.

However, there are still cultures that have been eating more or less the same for generations, relying on such archaic criteria as taste and tradition to guide them in their food selection. In some cases, those cultures are healthier than we are in that they suffer lower incidences of diet-related diseases. These cultures can show us the way back to eating for pleasure and help us understand what that means.

The French culture and what we call the French Paradox is the most famous such case, though the French don’t regard the matter as paradoxical at all. We Americans resort to that term because the French experience – a population of wine-swilling cheese eaters with lower rates of heart disease and obesity – confounds our orthodoxy about food. The French eat all sorts of supposedly unhealthy foods, but they do it according to a strict and stable set of rules: they eat small portions and don’t go back for seconds; they don’t snack; they seldom eat alone; and communal meals are long, leisurely affairs. In other words, the French culture of food successfully negotiates the question of what to eat, allowing them to enjoy their meals without ruining their health.

Now tell me, wouldn’t you like to live in an America where our food culture was again driven by pleasure, community and identity? Wouldn’t you prefer to stop worrying about weight and calorie counting and use that time for something else? Cooking, for instance? No doubt, a burden would be lifted from many shoulders. As eaters we have control over what we eat. So, so and eat real food, it will be a highly pleasurable experience. Then share it with family and friends at the same table. Everything will fall into place from there!

Brenton shows Jimmy the potato harvest. Photo by Scott David Gordon

2) Updates, Meetings, and Events

Holiday Closures

Friday, December 24th: JBG will be closed for the holiday. Our office will reopen on Monday, December 27th.

Saturday, December 25th: The Downtown Austin, Barton Creek, Sunset Valley, and Cedar Park Farmers Markets will be closed.

Sunday, December 26th: The HOPE Farmers Market will be closed.

All of the farmers markets listed above will be open the weekend of January 1 & 2.

Call for Farmers Market Help on January 1

Several of our regular market crew will be out of town on January 1, so we are looking for a few volunteers to help out that day at the Barton Creek, Downtown Austin, Sunset Valley, and Cedar Park markets in exchange for fresh produce. Volunteers would assist with set up and booth operations from 8am to 1:30. If you are interested, please email the farm at 512-386-5273, and we’ll get back with you on Monday, December 27th to confirm. Thank you!

Farmers Markets will be closed 12/25 & 12/26 but will be open Jan. 1 & 2

Markets will be closed Dec. 25 & 26 but will be open Jan. 1 & 2. Photo by Scott David Gordon

3) Recipes, by Melissa Vance, JBG CSA Member

Recipe Card: Salad Caprese

It seems a shame to do much to these end-of-season tomatoes. They will be our last for a while so enjoy them as they are, preferably in a starring role.

Ingredients

2-3 tomatoes, sliced
Fresh mozzarella, sliced
Microgreens or basil chiffonade
Good quality olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper

Directions
Arrange tomatoes and mozzarella on a plate. Top with microgreens or basil. Drizzle liberally with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Serve.

Recipe Card: Braised Carrots with Citrus Coriander Sauce

These carrots are sweet and floral with the addition of the honey and coriander. Don’t forget the lemon as it really helps the flavor.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
¼ onion, small diced
½ cup orange juice
1 tablespoon orange zest
½ cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon honey
Pinch ground coriander
Pinch cayenne
Handful baby carrots, peeled and tops removed
Squirt lemon juice
Kosher salt

Directions
In a sauté pan large enough to hold the carrots in a single layer, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté until translucent, about 3-5 minutes. Add the orange juice, zest, chicken stock, honey, a generous pinch of salt, coriander, and cayenne. Add the carrots in a single layer and bring the liquid to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the carrots are tender. Remove the lid, add the lemon juice, and reduce the sauce. Season to taste and serve hot with the sauce poured over the carrots.

Brussel Sprouts grow at River Rd. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Brussel Sprouts grow at River Rd. Look for them in your CSA box in a few weeks. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Romanesco Cauliflower. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Romanesco Cauliflower at River Rd. Photo by Scott David Gordon

A butterfly visits the farm. Photo by Scott David Gordon

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