Vegetables or Cake?: Crossroads Veggie Share – Week #1- 6/8/22.
Welcome! Happy season ’22!
It was a long, cold, late spring. Sometimes I wondered if the sun, heat, or food would arrive. We kept seeding and planting, trusting in the cycle of things. Now here we are, and the food is harvested and ready to pack for you tomorrow.
It’s a hectic week at the farm – new employees to be trained, wet ground and forecasted rain that challenges us to be nimble with our planning – but there are still times to breathe, experience joy, find calm.
Yesterday evening, while a freezer clean out potato corn chowder was simmering, I found a moment of calm to play a game with my two younger children. They love the game Picwits – it’s basically like Apples to Apples, except with pictures instead of words and phrases. In one round of the game, I had to choose what felt most ‘dreamy’ to me. One card was a picture of a smiling child holding a full plate of vegetables. The other was a rainbow striped cake, in all its glutinous glory.
Both of these cards seem amazing to me.
Children who are happy about eating vegetables – yes, dreamy. Many folks mistakenly think our children, having been raised on the farm, happily and willingly eat lots of vegetables. It is true that they eat lots of veggies. It not true that they do so happily or willingly. Building an ethic to eat lots of vegetables has been years in the making. It seems around age 9 or so, the resistance finally stops – though only to be picked back up again around 13, when puberty kicks in. In other words, with 3 kids, it is a constant issue to make sure the veggies end up in their bellies.
The other card – a glutinous vanilla piece of cake – also dreamy. About a year ago, I finally figured out that I can’t eat gluten…. or raw carrots, melons, apples, or fluid dairy. My diet has had to be drastically altered, and I miss so many things! And to be honest, I mostly miss not being a pain in the butt for friends to cook for. One of the things my mouth misses most is bread, and well glutinous treats of all kinds – like cake! Oh, cake.
I examined the two cards for a long time – long enough that the kids got impatient with me. Finally, I decided that children eating vegetables with enthusiasm would definitely be the dreamiest. I mean, I’m a farmer, not a baker. The choice is clear… if only it was something I could actually choose in real life!
Cheers to all of you as you embark on your seasonal veggie adventure. I wish you all the best as you aim to get more vegetables into the bellies you love, whether yours, your partner’s, or your kids.
Sincerely,
Farmer Cassie
