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Roxbury Farm CSA 2011, Week 12

September 1, 2011

My CSA, Roxbury Farm, was hit hard by Irene. In this week’s newsletter, the farmer wrote eloquently about what he and his team had done to prepare for the storm, and what he witnessed after:

Driving over to the farm I noticed that the road was littered with branches and leaves leaving evidence of tropical storm wind force. I drove down the hill to confirm my worst fear; the creek had almost reached its 2009 flood levels. Parts of the field had turned into a lake again. I stood there, speechless, developing a pit in my stomach as I mourned for all our lost labor and the loss of massive amounts of food as it was now standing under a few feet of water. I drove over to the closed bridge at Kinderhook to be close to the culprit of our misery. I walked through the barricades and leaned over the railing. Massive amounts of water surged down the Kinderhook creek. Water, our first and basic need for life on this planet, proved an old rule; too much of anything can be fatal.

If you click on the link to the newsletter above, you can see photos of some of the devastation. Fields of mature crops were underwater, and now they cannot be harvested because of fears of contamination from the flood. Other parts of the farm became islands, unreachable by tractor. On a personal level, I’m sad we’ll be receiving fewer vegetables for the rest of this season. But I’m even more unsettled by this additional evidence of how at the mercy of nature we are. As I write this, four days after Irene came and went, I still have friends without power in my own village, not to mentioned those in New Jersey and Connecticut. Relatives in Vermont had a massive flood in their home. A huge sinkhole developed in a main road in my village, and they had to close the road indefinitely, which will impact the way we move around town for months to come. The reminders of the wrath of this storm will be here for a long time.

Weather aside, we still received 1 eggplant, 1 bunch of beets with greens, 1 onion, 1 bulb of garlic, 1 quart of beefsteak tomatoes, 5 Carmen peppers, 1 pint of Juliet tomatoes, 2 other tomatoes, and 1 delicata squash. The delicata, which Roxbury distributed early this year, has reminded me of Rosh Hashanah ever since I made Maple-Glazed Delicata Squash Rings for the holiday a few years ago. At this point in the summer I am so eager to get back to the routine of the school year! Thinking about the holidays is a big step in that direction.

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Filed under: CSA

Tags: csa, food, greens, Roxbury Farm