Farm visit and the first haul

Yesterday I visited the farm that grows my vegetables.  It's primarily a poultry farm, with a small store selling some prepared foods (chicken pot pies, chicken sausage, pies), and for the past few years they've grown produce as well.  We got a tour of the facilities, seeing how the chickens live before "processing".  While they're penned in, there aren't any cages, and the birds all seemed to have plenty of flapping space.  Seeing as I found remains of a bird outside my door in October, probably from some bird of prey that managed to carry it off, I think the pens and overhead netting are probably a good idea.

The vegetable patch was really beautiful, with rows of the most gorgeous lettuce you've ever seen.  The farmer is a recent graduate from an agriculture program, and he explained why they are not doing organic farming.  Instead, they are doing integrated pest management, with consultation from the agriculture folks at his college.  This way he has freedom to handle any pests or weather conditions with some flexibility, and I got the impression that his decisions to use any pesticides would be informed by not only the pests and the toxicity, but also the impact on the pollinators.  Also impressive was his use of irrigation: a slow drip gives constant water directly where needed, with minimal waste.

In addition to the tour of the facilities, there was a lovely spread of snacks for us supporters.  We got an amazing apple-berry crumble, and some amazing chicken salad.  The best part was a surprise early harvest, a mini-share, to be picked up that night!  On offer: arugula, broccoli, broccoli rabe, red or green romaine, red or green bok choy, kale or collards.  I had just made pad see ew with rabe, so we took an extra bag of broccoli florets instead of waiting for them to pick more rabe.  The kale was also temporarily out, so I grabbed a bunch of giant collards.  Two bags full of greens...this bodes very well.

Now comes the fun part: cooking and eating!!