Slowly, slowly

Eat food, mostly plants, not too much, slowly, slowly.

I search for flavor because I love that I have no real control on what emerges from basically nothing into crunchy and spicy and sweet and salty and juicy. The creation of fruits’ and vegetables’ design is overwhelming. The surprise of it is calming and reassuring. The reality of it is wonderful.

Since November 2023, I’ve volunteered once a week at Paradise Farms. Most of the time, I helped to prepare rows of soil for transplanting. this involves using a scuffle hoe to create valleys that are sprinkled with fertilizer and compost, squeezing baby plants out of their seeding trays and plopping them into the valleys at the appropriate distance, usually 12 inches to allow enough space for babies to grow into full cabbages or tatsois or lettuce heads or onions. Then we cover them with soil and place the irrigation lines close by. It’s magical to watch these tiny fragile leaves grow into their full delicious colorful selves.

The work is repetitive, squat intensive, and satisfying. The harder tasks are the variety of weeding techniques required in place of traditional pesticide. Everything from delicate pulling around the baby plant that needs to grow to flaming the ground to (my favorite) scraping the ground with a stirrup hoe. Weeding is meditative. and weeding seems like 90% of regenerative farming. Almost everything that grows in healthy soil is edible but farmers decide what stays and the edible invaders become compost. Weeding is tedious, violent, humbling. I've noticed that the weeds just win sometimes. It's the natural balance and to farm regeneratively is to sometimes lose to the weeds. I've learned to make peace with them and sometimes even brought them home to cook with. Frenemies.

I’ve also harvested starfruit with a belly bucket which was super fun because I didn’t have to bend over once, found lots of pearly frogs, developed spider web vision so I wouldn't walk into them, and enjoyed walking around like I was pregnant, squishing soft fallen starfruit as I went from tree to tree finding the perfect ones. Also, starfruit doesn’t smell bad when it rots, instead it perfumes the groves. I wonder, is anyone making starfruit wine in Miami?

I thought about all of this during my first harvest. I thought of the time I've spent and how much more time and effort the team at Paradise Farms spends to weed, clear, maintain, compost, grow, track, rotate all these crops. I thought harvesting would be the easy part. I was wrong. harvesting was even harder because I had to actually look at what the plant had produced and assess if it was ready, edible, and safe. suddenly all my senses were engaged, I was bent over, trying to find the purple eggplants that were soft but firm, insect free, and avoid being pierced by their sharp defense hats. It took far longer than I predicted. Same for the dill where I was trying not anger the bees crowding their yellow flowers and the mint that had woven itself into a tangle, and the longevity spinach which snaked along the ground in a web almost forcing me to take one leaf at a time.

As I was harvesting, I was constantly thinking about what I will do with the ingredients to make it tasty and palatable and friendly for everyone. I was amidst the sneaky spinach when I made a connection, like a single circuit switch being turned on. I realized why my mission is what it is and why I believe eating slowly is a crucial missing step in how we eat. Growing food takes time and yet when it arrives on our plate we barely look, stop to smell, or dare to touch. the last step when the food finally arrives on our plate is currently missing so many rituals. Why don’t we ask ourselves every time: where did this come from, how was it grown, what did it look like before it became this, who made this for me, what did it take for this to be here? the engineering of plants is mind blowing and I barely have to do anything to make this food tasty because most of the work was done on the farm. If I served everything from Paradise Farms on a plate raw it would be beautiful, delicious, complete and now I'm almost tempted to. 

There are very intelligent people in the world who don’t have a clue how vegetables grow or where their food comes from. It's fascinating and time consuming and extremely important. Those same intelligent people eat these vegetables and accept their mystery without question. it’s really quite cool that there is a whole new frontier for so many people to discover wonder in. Even just a bolting windowsill basil or backyard tomato but especially okra, kale, broccoli, carrots, artichokes! it's magical and novel, I hope, even to those who are used to it.