News from Terra Firma Farm

Greetings!
Agriculture has been in the news quite a bit this week (Given the general level of understanding by reporters of farming, this is not necessarily positive). With the U.S. Senate set to vote on the final version of a hotly contested food safety bill today, there was no shortage of opinions being expressed in the media. Many people were shocked that the Tester Amendment, which would exempt small farms from federal oversight, passed due to grassroots support by supporters of local and organic agriculture. This despite heated opposition from large farm groups and the food safety industrial complex. The same groups then lobbied hard to kill the entire bill, using the Tester Amendment as an excuse. They failed and the bill passed. It was a major wakeup call for the agricultural lobby, which has always contended that organic and sustainable agriculture is an elitist niche phenomenon with no future.
             TFF subscribers know that I supported the Tester Amendment to the Food Safety bill. But my overall feelings about this issue are very conflicted. I firmly believe that the biggest single cause of food poisoning is the scale and scope of the industrial food system, not the contamination of individual crops by individual bacteria. Creating a new bureaucratic hurdle for farmers without any funding to help them jump it, as this bill does, will only serve to force more consolidation in agriculture: bigger and bigger farms with the potential to make more people sick when the inevitable outbreak occurs.
Nor will the new legislation do anything to stop the proliferation of confined animal operations (CAFOs) such as the enormous egg production facility that was the source of last month's salmonella outbreak. In the topsy turvy world of food safety, it will be the biggest facilities with the most animals that will be best able to comply with the new FDA rules. Antibiotic use will increase, as will water pollution from their animal waste. Meanwhile, farms growing free range livestock will be treated with suspicion by a bureaucracy much more comfortable seeing livestock inside a building than out in a pasture.
      We live in a time when fear and greed are used extensively as sales tools by both politicians and business, targeting humans' innate survival instincts and bypassing our rational brains entirely.
Since the 9/11 attacks, our nation has spent billions of dollars trying to prevent another terrorist attack, fueling a bureaucracy and industry that are immune to the recession. There is no opposition to it: no sane public figure will stand up and question spending such an incredible sum to prevent such an unlikely disaster.
   The proponents of food safety have used the same paradigm. The FDA will focus enormous resources on making an already safe food system a little "safer" while entirely ignoring the truly unsafe food (and drink) that is produced, marketed, and sold by every year by the food industry. We live in a country where "freedom" means that corporations can sell, and people can eat, foods proven to cause chronic diseases that are killing tens of thousands of people every year. In the end, you have to ask who is really being protected?
Thanks,
                 Pablito

Holiday Gift Baskets
This year we are once again offering our subscribers beautiful and tasty gift baskets of TFF fruits and nuts, shipped directly from the farm to your friends and family anywhere in the U.S. The baskets will contain Satsuma Mandarins, Pink Lady Apples, pistachios and walnuts. The baskets will be $28 shipped in California and $38 shipped out of state.
To order holiday baskets, log in to your account and click on "Web Store" in the upper right hand corner. Select "Holiday Gift Basket" and then be sure to fill out the address field and include any message for the recepient. You will have to do this multiple times to purchase multiple baskets.
Baskets will be shipped out on December 15th to ensure they arrive in time for the holidays. Orders must be in by Sunday, December 12th at midnight.

White Carrots?!

We're growing a few new winter crops at TFF this year that we're hoping will add a little diversity to your boxes. One of these is Parsnip, a root vegetable closely related to carrots. Unlike carrots, Parsnips are almost always cooked. They are sweet and creamy, with their own slightly aromatic flavor, and make a great addition to pureed soups like potato-leek or to roasted vegetable dishes.
We haven't grown parsnips at TFF for over ten years because they are hard to grow here. They need a long period of cool weather to sprout, take six months or longer to mature, and don't taste good if harvested when it's hot. In other words, they grow best someplace where summers are cool and foggy so they can be planted in July or August and dug up in mid-winter.
We planted parsnips here in late May, because it was still cold and rainy, and we were beginning to wonder if summer would ever come. They grew fine through our cooler-than-normal summer only to suffer through the hot fall. Now they've had a week or more of cold, frosty nights to sweeten them up and they're ready to harvest.
There are three keys to bringing out the creamy, sweet best of parsnips. First, always peel their woody skin. Second, cut them in half lengthwise. If the knife doesn't easily cut through the core, make sure to remove it before cooking -- it will be tough and woody. Third, even if you are going to roast the parsnips (by themselves or with other vegetables), make sure to steam or parboil them first for a few minutes to soften them up. If you are cooking them in liquid (like a soup), you can skip this step.

Carrot-Parsnip Soup, with a twist
This recipe combines the creamy whiteness of the parsnips with moister, more colorful carrots, then balances their sweetness with a hint of Thai flavors. For a simpler soup, just omit the lemon and coconut milk.
Dice 1 large or 2 small onions and saute in 2 T. vegetable oil until soft and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel 1 lb. of parsnips, cut them in half and remove cores if they are woody. Chop.
Dice or chop 1 lb. of carrots (3 cups).
Add the vegetables to the pot along with 4 C. vegetable broth and 2 C. water. Bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat.
Wash and chop 3 C. spinach leaves, or shred cabbage to make 3 C.. Put a handful into each of the serving bowls.
When the vegetables are soft, puree the soup in batches until smooth.
Return to the pot and add 1 C. Thai coconut milk. Stir and heat through.
Add the juice of 1 lemon and turn off the heat. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the soup into the bowls and serve.