Bounty

by Ellen Kok

Today I picked up my first CSA share from Abenaki Springs Farm in the American state of New Hampshire. I felt giddy, being allowed to pick and choose the six items I was allowed for my Summer Single Share from the beautiful vegetable display farmer Kirsten Anderson had set up in the farm’s washing and packing shed. Everything looked so tasty and fresh that it made me want to bite in it right away.

This family farm and its veggies are very familiair to me. For almost two years I have been making photos of life and work there for my terrafoto story “Build Soil”, which will soon be published on this website. The end (or close to it anyway) of our photographer-subject relationship seemed like the right moment to start a shareholder one. Not just ‘talking the talk’ about supporting CSA farmers, but also ‘walking the talk’ as Kirsten’s husband, farmer Bruce Bickford, likes to say.

So I filled up my canvas tote from the Monadnock Food Co-op, that I’m a proud member of as well and that also sells “Good Local Food”, with my veggies of choice: cute, tiny zucchini; bunches of deep red radishes and white turnips; bok choy; a huge, sturdy napa cabbage, and a bundle of rainbow chard.

While I drove home, I realized I had forgotten to sign the shareholder sheet to let the farmers know that I had picked up my weekly share, but hey, I guess I have to get used to my new role on the farm. And it’s not like they didn’t know I was there: I had been chatting with Kirsten and cooing at her six-month-old daughter Lillian, waking up in her baby carrier on her mother’s back. Easy to get distracted that way.

Since I’d never eaten turnips, which are considered an old fashioned vegetable in my home country, the Netherlands, but are making a come back there under the name “May rape”, I decided to try some of those to start with. They taste much sweeter than radishes, so good! I looked up some recipes right away. Tonight I will be eating an Indian curry with coconut milk, rainbow chard and white turnips.