Fall CSA Week 7

Dec 07, 2025

Last week we sat around the table for Kade & Michelle’s last field day of the season. We ate grits, pork chops, bacon, roasted butternut squash, and brothy herby kale. We were also supposed to have beans & honey roasted walnuts but my mind is not as sharp these days, so they both got nice n burnt! Nonetheless, the meal came together. In 2024, we spent every lunch together, enjoying something freshly made from the field’s bounty. A routine that I really cherished. This season, I did not have the capacity to cook us all lunch, but I look forward to picking the habit back up.

Maybe six or seven years ago now, I did an interview where I was asked about my opinions on “the farmer lunch”. I don’t really remember what I said at the time, but probably something along the lines of lunch on a farm is a workplace shaping event. Amidst the sweaty, fast-paced, challenge of a July day, lunch is a horizon. Where, the crew sits in the shade to enjoy the company of one another or for a moment of solace. The first ripe tomatoes & watermelons are brought to the table for sharing & ooing & ahhing. At some point in the morning, mid-way through a hefty task, someone will surely ask what everyone has brought for lunch. I love simple curiosities like this. While working on other farms, I had the pleasure of being in the company of old or new friends that were keen on sharing food / co-coordinating the chore of the daily pack lunch. While working at Full Hollow, during peak tomato season, I would just bring oil, vinegar, honey, salt, and a peach for a big bowl of bruschetta to share with a coworker who would make us the fresh goat chevre & focaccia. When I worked at Groundswell, Sammie & I would make extravagant kale salads, adorned with whatever produce was in season. That summer in particular is remembered by the cucumber bumper crop.

I feel lucky that farming has molded my relationship with lunch. I know it differently than dinner, which has been tended to carefully through the years by my own routines & the company of dear ones. Differently than breakfast, which, up until having a baby, I knew as rushed solitude. We filled our plates last Tuesday with food that took many months of watering, planting, weeding, & observing in order to reach the November kitchen. All of our hands knew the kale, onions, garlic, winter squash, herbs that flourished under the beating summer sun. Our bodies labored all season, the field’s granted generous celebration.

On the topic of lunch, the next on my list of books to read is A Really Big Lunch by Jim Harrison.