The peak of winter, just before spring
We got some rainy days. Even when we thought "how much more rain could there possibly be? it is the Middle East here," but it continued, more and more, occasionally with hail too.
On days like this, not only are the fields soaked with water, but we are too – anyone going out to pick, to weed, to protect the crops from the buckets of rain or to support, returns completely wet. Even those moving around the boxes, sorting the produce and arranging the vegetable boxes and gets a nice shower, and you, of course, receive your organic vegetables completely satisfied – wrapped in a layer of cool fresh water, and happy and pleasant mud.
Winter is evident also in the variety of organic fruits and vegetables that are in the store – there is an abundance of citrus fruits, the organic clementines, oranges and grapefruit sit in beautiful piles in their baskets, and are also served in the store in our tasty and sour-ish juices. The spinach is extra green and the strawberries (oh, organic strawberries is a wonderful and fragrant thing) stand proud, fleshy and red. The shelf of greens is packed with produce that is at its peak in the winter, presenting themselves to any guest – the celery, all kinds of lettuce, the swiss chard leaves (and the red chard) and the baby leaves, the cilantro and all their neighbors…
There are a few other visitors we see only in the winter. For example, the black turnip (a friend once told me that they use a home remedy against coughing and for encouraging the extraction of phlegm: they dug in a small hole in a turnip and covered it with honey. A few hours later there was “juice” in the hole. That juice is the medicine. Both tasty and healthy.) There are also green papayas and fresh dates from the last harvest.
What is missing are, of course, the sweet organic fruits of summer: peaches, watermelon, melon, grapes… Although they are already beginning to appear in the "ordinary", non-organic supermarkets, we will give them the time they need to arrive without pesticides and poisons (in the supermarket they are imported, and definitely not organically grown, which of course is not possible at this time of year in Israel), and also – so that we can long for them a bit longer and then eat them in their season, when the body is most happy to greet them.
Also, the organic summer vegetables are not here yet, but the preparations for them have already begun: the beds were tended, aligned, ready. Some of them have already been planted with seeds of summer crops: pumpkins, melons and zucchini. The new lines are covered with plastic, in long, low tunnels. And in each tunnel – a promise for the spring that will come and bring with it warmer days… And with each tunnel being built, the muddy hands are wiped on each other or on the pants, and the heart fills with satisfaction and hope and the seasonal waiting of the farmers – waiting for the first signs of sprouting, to test if the weather is warm enough and the crops no longer need this plastic "coat".
Therefore, when another storm comes, we smile a little inside. Also because we like rain, we can see how the plants in the field spread their arms out with pleasure and gulping it. And also – because we can already smell the spring that is coming and we wait for the bloom that will come with it…
To health!
Yours,
The garden team
We can expect to receive in our organic vegetable baskets (draft only):
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Potatoes
Fennel
Cabbage
Parsley
Zucchinis
Spinach
In the LARGE vegetable baskets also:
Beets
Sweet potatoes
Cilantro
In the organic fruit baskets:
Bananas
Oranges
Red grapefruit
In the LARGE fruit baskets also:
Pecan, not peeled, 250 gram
Sweetie
Clementine
