Food for a Year: July 1-17

On Cairncest Farm in Plainfield, two brothers, Edmund and Garth Brown, have resolved to eat only what they raise/grow/forage/hunt themselves for an entire year. Edible Finger Lakes is carrying biweekly updates from the Brown brothers as they embark on this food journey.

Food for a Year: July 1-17

The garden is really going now. It’s full of new potatoes, plenty of carrots, beets and rutabagas, and more lettuce and greens than I could possibly eat. The first tomatoes are ripening in the greenhouse, and the summer squash have just started producing. Compared to a few months ago, I have an incredible variety of foods to choose from. It’s funny, then, that I nevertheless often find myself looking forward to fall produce–green beans and garlic and after them winter squash–rather than appreciating the bounty I now have available.

The summer has been flying past, I have more foods than ever to choose from, and yet it gets harder, or at least more tiresome, to keep eating from the farm. I think this is largely a product of the fact that I am through the most difficult part, so in a sense there’s nothing left to prove. All that remains is to wait out the rest of the year. But I am also getting tired of having to spend so much time thinking about arbitrary constraints I’ve set up around my diet instead of simply preparing and enjoying lots of delicious meals. –Garth

Brothers Edmund and Garth Brown are owner-operators of Cairncrest Farm in Plainfield, New York. They produce and sell grass-fed beef and pastured pork. They blog about their 2015 homegrown challenge here.

Read the last Food for a Year post here.