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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Vegetable Illiteracy

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  • From: "Kelly Saxer" <kellysaxer AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Vegetable Illiteracy
  • Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:07:39 -0700

Beth,

I completely agree with you that folks are lacking the know-how to appreciate, prepare and eat fresh vegetables...especially anything that's not a "standard" veggie (as I've heard a few of my CSA members say). I run a small CSA in Arizona and have found that to be the biggest obstacle I face to increasing my member retention. I try to grow a wide variety of vegetables and always provide my members with recipes on their weekly veggie shares that feature a vegetable in their bag that week. Additionally, our farm web-site features hundreds of recipes that are organized by vegetable. I'm now debating whether to streamline the variety of vegetables I grow in an effort to appeal more to the masses. I'm contemplating the elimination of okra, black-eyed peas and kohlrabi from my farm as these are the veggies that I most often hear criticism about from my members. Living in a nice, warm southern state I really hate the idea of eliminating okra, especially, and may seek out a restaurant or specialty market that will buy from me during our long okra growing season. While I want to appeal to my market and keep my CSA members interested (I certainly don't want them to feed like I'm forcing vegetables their not interested in down their throats), I kinda feel like I'm contibuting to their vegetable illiteracy by eliminating too much variety from my farm repetoir. Does anyone out there have any unique educational tools (other than just providing recipes) that they've used to get folks excited and eager to try new vegetables.

Thanks,

Kelly
Desert Roots Farm
Queen Creek, AZ


From: "Hook Family" <ghf AT townisp.com>
Reply-To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [Market-farming] Economic-sustain.ag
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:01:10 -0500

Mark said:
"Having said this, I've also noticed some social problems that absolutely
amaze me, and could be at the very root of our problems. Young people don't
know what to do with what we produce! Hard to believe, but true."


Its not just the very young either but also some adults. I'd be interested
to know if this lack of cooking knowledge and increase in take out
corresponds at all to most schools dropping Home Ec. Both Male and Female
students can benefit from Home Ec and shop type courses.

Many heads of household don't know how to cook well and therefore their
offspring do not as well. I joined cooking (and later sewing)4-h at 8, buy
the time I got to HS home ec class I already knew the material :). My
mother also lets us cook. My specialty at that point was sweets :)
Favorites were a Chocolate Cake you mixed in the pan and Whoopie pies.
I could cook meal type food as an older teenager. Food in my household is
home prepared most of the time, although we had great take out Chinese last
night.

My older son live about 4 years in an apartment dorm at college and
developed into a very good cook. He also views it as experimentation and
has cooked things I've never have like fried duck (very good). He had to
move out of state so I think the push to raise birds beyond chickens won't
happen but humorously he told me he'd search various urban chicken sites on
the web should he ever live somewhere where he could keep a small flock,
cracked me up. He also likes to raised plants in pots (apartment living).
This is a kid when he lived here who sat in front of a computer screen.
Example sometimes oozes through.
Youngest son is living in off campus housing and I lived in fear he was only
to cook tv dinners, but he basically cooks a meat, starch and veggie every
night and just told me last night that they had pizza one evening and he
felt he didn't feel as well because he didn't get any veggies. He said he
needs his veggies, where did this kid hatch from, guess all those farm grown
foods oozed in. Both ds are big big fans of the free range eggs.

That was a long way to say that I do think a big part of the prob is lack of
cooking knowledge. I write a weekly newsletter for my CSA and always
include recipes and often simple instructions for example how to cook winter
squash. Beth

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