Christina
Mehlhorn
July 22
The Magic Happens in the Kitchen
There were a few points to this day that I felt should be noted. One of the first aspects of the harvest day that I would like to address was brought up in a previous market day write-up. I mentioned in that day’s writing that there were two varieties that I didn’t love harvesting. One of which I addressed this past Monday, the other is basil. This delivery day, however, my opinion on basil was changed a bit. The trays of basil that we were harvesting today seemed to have been given more time due to the fact that the leaves were much larger than I was used to seeing. As a result of this, the stems were longer and more developed than the previous weeks, leading to a much easier harvest. The shorter stems I encountered before were much tougher and more difficult to harvest. Because of this, it took much longer to harvest and led to a few cuts before. This week, however, the harvest of basil went much quicker.
Another aspect of the day that I would like to talk about is the cilantro. Throughout the summer so far, I have seen a varying harvest of cilantro. Some weeks we have had much less than we were supposed to. Other weeks we were just barely under the amount needed for deliveries. Some weeks were right on the money. This week, we were extremely under. The quality of the tray can be attributed to the humidity within the farm. Because cilantro is extremely finicky, having the farm be even a bit too humid will affect the cilantro yield greatly. This past week, there had been problems with the power, which led to temperature fluctuations in the farm. The change in environment caused the cilantro trays to retain too much water in the soil, facilitating the growth of mold in some spots as well as plants that are over saturated and weak. Hopefully the upcoming weeks will be more stable and cilantro will to do well.
The final aspect of the day that was pretty cool happened in one of the kitchens of the restaurants I deliver to on Fridays. The prep kitchen is located in the basement of Lincoln on West Broadway. Every week I head down into the basement to drop the greens off in their fridge myself. This week when I went down, I ran into one of the head prep cooks that I talk to briefly each week. I had been seeing him waiting for the bus on Mondays while at the market. He brought this up, asking if we were doing that to find new customers. I told him that was the case. He then told me about his friend who is a chef in a restaurant on the first floor of the Liberty Hotel. He gave me the name of the chef and told him to contact the restaurant and ask for him due to the fact that the restaurant uses a lot of microgreens in their dishes and would probably be interested in doing business. I thanked him for the lead and relayed it to the rest of the team who told me to tell the Farm Manager and Oliver. It was pretty cool to be a part of a new business partner for the company. I really hope that becomes something for them. As a result of this, I have decided that all business magic for this industry happens in the kitchen.
Here's a photo of all of the harvested trays stacked and ready for the soil to be dumped out and donated. I couldn't tell you the number of trays we harvest in a morning but, this is it in picture form.