Bounty

I've been thinking this weekend about the bountiful plenty in my life and how ugly and wrong any discontent on my part is.  There is so much joy and richness in my life and doing anything but embracing it is pretty reprehensible.  Some of the abundance for us this weekend came from our first CSA pick-up of the season.  Tiny potatoes, gorgeous bright yellow squash, and shiny spring onions, among everything else.  I'm so excited to be part of a CSA again like we were in Connecticut!  It all looks good this week and I'm excited to see what else we'll get.

The farm is actually in southeastern Oklahoma (about 2 hours away) and the farmers drive into Dallas every Saturday morning for us to pick up our shares at the Dallas Farmers Market.  This place is not really what you normally think of as a farmers' market; there's lots of wholesalers and produce grown in California and South America and whatnot.  A lot of it is not oriented toward retail customers.  However, this past Saturday it seemed much better than it has on my past visits, I'm sure partly because the growing season is now really under way.  Also I think they are finally trying to get Shed 1 (there are four giant open-air sheds with corrugated metal roofs) to be mostly local farmers and dealers selling produce from Texas and surrounding states.  And the place was certainly hopping with people like me wanting to buy.  I bought some eggs from a lady who said her chickens run around eating bugs and grass, and I bought some bacon from Rehoboth Ranch which sounds JUST like one of the awesome farms in the book I just read.  Hmmm, bacon and eggs--  I think some pasta carbonara might be in our future.  We were regulars at the farmers' market in New Haven and I've missed it a lot, but this past Saturday helped reconcile me to the loss.  It's very different, but different in a fun, good way.  There were no hippie farmers, but there were Spanish-speaking families selling gorgeous peaches and Texas cowboy-types with grass-fed steaks.  There were no scones to buy for Grace, but we did get a WONDERFUL breakfast burrito with really delicious salsa.  Things change, but it would be sad indeed to miss out on what is here now while yearning for something that is not.

I'm not sure that comparison is in the spirit of those thoughts, but for completeness here was our first week's haul from the CSA in Connecticut: