A Love Letter to the Farm Share
(Source: Missoula Grain and Veg Co.)
I attacked my refrigerator in a spring cleaning frenzy the other day, pitching outdated condiments, scraps wrapped in aluminum foil, and salad dressing bottles with less than two tablespoons remaining. I’ll note that I was away from home for a good portion of the winter, so I can’t be held responsible for many of these refrigerator mysteries.
We’re in the pause between when our winter Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share ended and the spring one begins, so I made short work of the produce drawers. All that remained were the greenish-black traces of what I believe was once cilantro, along with a shrunken lemon, and bits of feathery, dried carrot tops collected in the corners. The ceremony was complete when I tossed a shriveled, leathery beet into the back yard for the squirrels.
I scrubbed and polished everything to a shine, and even slid the lever back and forth a couple of times on the crisper drawer, landing on the picture of a head of lettuce, just in case it actually does something.
This year marks my seventh season as a farm share member of Missoula Grain and Vegetable Co. (MGVC), a relationship that began on a street corner on a warm spring evening in 2015.
It was March 6, and I was downtown for the First Friday art walk, a monthly Missoula event where galleries and local businesses host a variety of artists and their work. On the busy corner of Higgins and Broadway, two grinning young men sat at a card table with a few clipboards and several small booklets. They were wearing threadbare t-shirts; whip thin, deeply tanned, and dirty. At least, that was how I described them in my journal entry from that day.
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