The Wisdom of the Radish

by Lynda Browning

  Morning beans, afternoon beans—and beans featured prominently at dinnertime, too. In those early days, I couldn’t contain my delight at their flavor, sautéed with a bit of olive oil and garlic, seasoned with sea salt and black pepper and perhaps a splash of balsalmic vinegar or the squeeze of a Meyer lemon, just at the end.

  But the bounty was quickly turning into an all-out produce profusion. And while we did have a few too many cucumbers, crookneck squash, and chard leaves, our angst centered around the beans. The once-treasured beans, the once-poeticized beans, the once shake-your-moneymaker gourmet beans now engendered a certain level of vitriol in our hearts.

  Emmett, unfortunately, had been cast in the role of Enforcer—the person who, day after day, reminded me that it was once again time to pick the beans. This left me to play the Dennis the Menace, “A w w w , shucks, not again” character. When bribing didn’t work (“Hey mister, want some gelato?”), I dragged my feet like a petulant preschooler all the way to the field.

  Emmett began, “Really, when it comes to the beans, I’m just about ready to ...”

  I jumped in: “Rip them all out and burn them?”

  To be fair, the beans did not entirely choke out our heirloom tomato harvest. They merely slowed it down. In mid-August, as the first of our heirloom tomatoes readied themselves, we harvested the ripest ones the evening before market and arranged them carefully in cardboard fruit boxes we’d picked up at a local grocery store. Compared to bean harvesting, tomato picking was a breeze—the fruit piled up quickly. Unlike beans, however, it required a deft touch.

  Our heirloom tomatoes were staked, tied onto wooden poles with lengths of stretchy green plastic. And here’s the thing about heirlooms: if they’re not diseased, split, moldy, stunted, punctured, sun scalded, infested by ants, or prematurely gnawed by overeager deer/rodents/teenagers, then chances are they’re stuck between the vine and the stake. The biggest, most beautiful ones are of course the most likely to be inextricable, which means that after several frustrating minutes of trying to gently pull them out from every possible angle, you will inevitably go for the big yank technique, impaling the most beautiful tomato in the world on its own vine. Of course, the moment the tomato has been mortally punctured, the offending vine will once again seem soft and pliable, and you’ll never quite figure out exactly what part of the vine inflicted the wound—a mystery no doubt related to its nightshade witchcraft roots. Edible wolf-peach, indeed.

  In my sweaty hand was a fatally wounded Cherokee Purple. Damn, I thought, and then, More bruschetta for us.

  As Emmett and I filled the fruit boxes, they transformed from a drab cardboard backdrop to a lively mosaic of red, purple, orange, yellow, and green. It was spectacular, this splash of summer, and the sheer number of plants meant that our failures were not nearly as important as they would have been if we were only tending a few bushes in the backyard. We could take a hit, lose five plants, pass over the sunburned, wormy fruits, suffer through the shade of the bean trees, and still bring three cardboard boxes full of plump fruit to the farmers’ market.

  Correction: Two cardboard boxes full of plump fruit to the farmers’ market. In the morning, when we peeked in the tomato boxes as we loaded them into the car, more were lost. Overnight, the perfectly ripe tomatoes—which were not, by our estimation, overripe—had split. Tomatoes that were slightly overripe upon picking—those that had sported small splits but seemed saleable—had sprouted fuzzy gray mold. Three boxes shrank to two, but it didn’t matter.

  While we didn’t quite rip out the bean hedge and burn the plants, part of the reason that I was able to stand at the farmers’ market gleefully lording over my piles of beans—and our first display of heirloom tomatoes—was this: we had declared an end to the bean tyranny. We had decided to reduce our harvest to one row of beans. The rest would go to seed and dry for use in winter soup.

  And for the next year, we had plans.

  Plan number one: Don’t plant beans next to the tomatoes like novice dolts. Plan number two: Plant them in succession, so there’s always one group of beans at their peak. The beans are stringless and most tender early in their productivity cycle; later, they’re quick to pod out and grow woody, which is partly why we found ourselves harvesting beans morning and night. Plan number three: Engage Leviticus. Plan number four: Get wwoofers.

  Leviticus 23:22 reads, “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien.” The spirit of this verse has inspired some charity groups (not all of whom are religious) to start up gleaning programs around the country. Many farmers, like us, leave some harvestable produce in the field—but these days, it’s a bit of a faux pas to walk onto someone’s land and start gathering their gleaning. It takes a helping hand to bring that produce to the poor and to the stranger.

  The Society of Saint Andrews, which takes its name from the disciple who played an instrumental role in Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes, is the largest gleaning organization in the United States. According to organization spokeswoman Carol Breitinger, they “salvage twenty to thirty million pounds of produce a year, and all that food either would have been plowed under in the field or dumped into the landfill. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just either commercially not marketable, because it is blemished or the wrong size or wrong shape, or it’s excess.”37 In California alone, Society members gleaned and distributed 13.5 million pounds (or 40.5 million servings) of potatoes and other produce as part of the statewide Potato Project.38

  In Sonoma County, there are three local gleaning organizations that take from the field to give to the poor: Farm to Pantry, Grateful Gleaners, and Petaluma Bounty. Dedicated individuals volunteer their time to harvest extra produce from farms and bring them to a local food pantry, or to take unsold farmers’ market leftovers to soup kitchens. Next year, we hoped to invite the Healdsburg-based Farm to Pantry to glean our off-peak beans. It would take the pressure off us at a time when we really didn’t have extra hours to spend harvesting food that wouldn’t bring income but would still give valuable calories to folks who needed them.

  While it’s spiritually sound to commit a portion of one’s produce to the less fortunate, there’s also something to be said for maintaining economic viability. And for small-scale organic farmers, there’s a second, more economically beneficial way to deal with overabundance: exchange it for free labor. Economists might insist that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but at WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farmsk) that axiom simply doesn’t hold true.

  The philosophy of WWOOF is simple. The organization establishes approximate ground rules for a labor exchange: half a day’s work in return for food and lodging. For a suggested donation of five dollars, farmers can publish information about their farm in a WWOOF guide (also available online). Interested “wwoofers”—typically young travelers—then contact the hosting farmers to determine availability. If all goes well, a host will receive four free hours of work each day. The wwoofer will receive a free bed and food—with enough time off to explore the surrounding areas. The relationship between wwoofer and farmer can last for as little as a few days, or as long as a year. It’s usually a sociable learning experience, with wwoofers and hosts exchanging not just goods and services but knowledge: farming technique, conversation, and travel stories. And wwoofers can improve the profitability of a small farm: with extra hands to harvest, a farmer who normally sells only at farmers’ markets could, for instance, branch out into wholesale, selling to restaurants or local grocery stores that pay the farmer less than direct market transactions. For some farmers, profit margins are so thin that they can’t afford to sell to these less lucrative markets. But if they have free labor, they can.

  While this sounds like an ideal situation, there’s obviously a considerable amount of trust involved. A farmer is inviting a complete stranger into his or her home; a wwoofer is sleeping in the home of a complete s
tranger. Surely something this foolhardy only takes place in socialist-leaning countries like Sweden or open, devil-may-care countries like Australia. Or the decorous, tea-loving countryside of England, where the organization formed back in 1971.

  Yet there are currently 4,727 registered wwoofers in the United States, with an average of 393 new members each month. There are 800 host farms here, 112 in California alone.39

  Granted, New Zealand (a country with 1 percent of our population) boasts over 1,000 host farms. But still, 800 trusting American households is nothing to scoff at. And interestingly, while most wwoofers in New Zealand are international travelers, many of the wwoofers here are U.S. citizens looking to learn more about their own country.

  For us, hosting a wwoofer would also be a way of giving back to the agricultural community. For five months, we had “wwoofed” our way around New Zealand, developing skills and techniques that would serve us well when we returned home to start our own farm. The generosity and knowledge base of the host farmers astounded us; we’d both enjoy the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of our hosts by showering a wwoofer with fresh, home-cooked meals and pointers about local spots to visit.

  At the market, as I put away our unsold leftovers at closing time, I was hatching yet another plan. The day’s leftovers included one and a half bins of chard, one of kale, a few pounds of crookneck squash, a handful of Patty Pans, several pounds of green beans, and just a few tomatoes. The flower guy stopped by to give us a bouquet in exchange for squash and chard; Emmett headed over to the bread seller to see what he’d like from us in return for a loaf of whole grain bread.

  Trading is one positive aspect to market leftovers—we ended up with everything from breads and cheeses to walnuts and onions—but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t trade away everything. The freshly picked bouquets of rainbow chard, pert and voluminous, arranged with careful attention to color and size, broke my heart. By this evening, they’d have met their final resting place on the compost pile, withering with the weeds. The chicks weren’t quite ready to tackle the amount of produce we had on hand—for that, we’d need fullgrown poultry, and judging by our quantities, possibly more than thirty girls.

  As I dropped the last crooknecks into a bag and twist-tied the end closed, I decided that there had to be a better way. Wouldn’t it be great to have a guaranteed produce sale—and, in the case of a surplus, the ability to give loyal customers free extras?

  And so I began charting the lines of my argument to convince Emmett that next year, Foggy River Farm should really start a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. And maybe a U-Pick bean operation, and WWOOF hosting, and a work-trade program, and weekly gleaning, too.

  But in the meantime, there would be many nights of farmers’ market feasting. The star of the season had arrived. And while the proletariat bean failed to overthrow it, I would be the final conqueror, the proof in the blade of my bread knife buried tonight deep in a Striped German. As I watched the seeds spill out of the tomato cavity, I’d laugh out loud: I’m going to eat this tomato, and I’m going to like it.

  Chapter 7:

  WORM FRIENDLY

  Sweet Corn

  “Two ears?” I asked, incredulous. “All this for two lousy ears? You have to be kidding.”

  “Be grateful,” Emmett said. “It used to be one or two, now it’s two or three.”

  I was standing by a plant that dwarfed me. It towered six feet tall; elongated emerald-green leaves sprayed out from the central stalk, which culminated in a wheaten broom—a sort-of angel atop a sort-of tree.

  Affixed to this giant plant were precisely two ears of corn. The ears, enveloped in green, were accented by dun fibers protruding from their tips.

  “I think it’s ready,” Emmett said. “The book says that when the tip of the ear is filled out and firm, it’s sweet.”

  With that announcement, he ripped an ear from the stalk. It was more like removing a branch, really; it didn’t just pop off neatly, but rent with a sound like the breaking of bones. Or perhaps cartilage—the same sound as that of a turkey drumstick being removed.

  Emmett pulled back the fibrous green casing with a squeak, but someone had beaten him to the corn’s sweet kernels. One fat, green worm had munched a thick trail halfway down the cob, leaving an ugly brown cavity in its wake.

  Unfazed, Emmett stepped deeper into the corn jungle and wrenched an ear off a different plant. Two worms, a quarter of the way down the ear. A third ear: three worms, still young and clustered near the top. After six ears—all of which had at least one worm—Emmett consented to acknowledge the trend.

  I thought the words but did not say them aloud that time. Crop failure. Instead, I played the Pollyanna card.

  “Well, the chickens will love all this corn.”

  “I didn’t grow all this corn for chickens.”

  “Well, they’ll enjoy the worms, anyway.”

  Emmett scowled. As he gazed down the long rows at our multiple successions of corn—each block out from us one week less mature than the one before—he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. He bit into one, just to prove his point.

  “It tastes fine—it’s not like the whole cob is ruined. On most of them, the worm’s not too far down. We can still sell these,” he said, and paused. “Maybe for a small discount.”

  First of all, I wasn’t sure our statistically insignificant sampling of corn granted us the authority to say that most of the worms were contained in the top section of the ear. And secondly, I wasn’t sure that Emmett’s judgment mirrored the general population’s when it came to the palatability of food. I love the man and his garbage-disposal skills that enable him to finish off whatever’s left on my plate—but sometimes he eats things I’d rather avoid touching, let alone put in my mouth. Suspect leftovers in the fridge? They smell a little funny, but they taste just fine. Every once in a while, he’ll get halfway through an aged Tupperware supper and start to feel queasy. The queasiness—not the fact that the leftovers are two weeks old and I begged him not to eat them—is what finally makes him toss it in the trash. He’s a big proponent of not letting things go to waste. While I agree with the concept, I’m not always comfortable with the extremity with which he puts it into practice.

  Corn earworms dined on our cobs long before we could.

  Sweet, salted, and slathered in butter, I’ve always loved corn. But at the moment I couldn’t possibly imagine why any farmer in her right mind would remotely consider growing this worthless, pest-infested, energy-intensive crop. It requires babying—ample nitrogen from compost, plenty of water, regular mounding of soil to prevent the shallow root systems from giving up and letting the whole plant topple over—but it doesn’t provide much return for these efforts. One six-foot plant, producing its two paltry ears, is worth exactly one dollar. If those ears are even saleable. And I was skeptical about how many customers would be willing to shell out good money for wormy corn when the local grocery store offered big, glistening heaps of the stuff without any unappetizing inhabitants. Come to think of it, sometimes the grocery store had corn on sale: four for a dollar. How was that even possible?

  Cheap supermarket corn is partially made possible through the liberal application of pesticides. There are at least five worm-like critters that prey on sweet corn plants, and they’re found across North America: the wireworm, the cutworm, the European corn borer, the fall armyworm. But of all the invaders, the most infamous is the corn earworm, which feeds directly on the market product and renders the corn unattractive, if not unmarketable. The earworm’s persistence and ubiquity poses a serious threat to the corn grower; to quote a University of Kentucky entomologist: “Once worms have become established within the ear, control is impossible.”40

  The typical chemical program calls for spraying every three to five days from the time when the ears begin to form silks to the time when most of the silks have wilted. And for farms like ours—that have new blocks of corn maturing every week for continuous harvest
—this would mean spraying every three to five days for most of the summer and into the fall. Biological control is also an option, with predators such as lacewings, minute pirate bugs, and damsel bugs all eager to dine on earworm eggs and small larvae. But on our farm, the cause of death of any given corn earworm is more likely to be kin than kith. Specifically, a corn earworm is more likely to be killed by another corn earworm than by an unrelated insect. In some fields, as many as 75 percent of the total corn earworms fall victim to cannibalism—which is why, when Emmett started shucking cobs, he tended to find either a few small earworms or one large one. First, the earworm eats the shell of the egg from which it hatched. Then it turns its attention to the corn kernels, then to its siblings, and then it eats its way out of the ear and pupates in the soil. Once it metamorphoses to the moth stage, the process begins again.

  And so our little corner of the corn world on market day was full of worms. In the end, Emmett’s optimism—his dogged insistence that a flaw really isn’t a flaw, or maybe just that imperfection isn’t the end of the world—overcame my disgust. Which is why this chilly Saturday morning air filled with grunts and bone-snapping sounds. Rip the branch off the corn-tree; snap the ear off the branch; toss the ear in a pile. Drumstick tear; grunt; pop; thud. Breathe.

  At the Healdsburg farmers’ market, we hauled out two gray plastic bins filled with corn and placed them on the market table. To one bin, we taped a paper sign: Worm-Friendly Corn. The words were accompanied by a hand-drawn sketch of a corn earworm. Emmett drew the worm hesitantly—unsure whether too much honesty made the best advertising policy—but even so, the wiggler had a certain panache: this wasn’t some country worm, more like a city worm headed out on a hot date. I found the saucy invertebrate cute, artistic, and embarrassing as hell.