Eating on the farm, from the farm, for the farm - B

This week Tuesday, i.e. this evening, another wwoofer here and I made a few different dishes:



... just a salad using red-tipped leaf lettuce from the farm, organic but bought sunflower seeds, local honey, and some balsamic vinegar.



... an asparagus, garlic scape, and garlic stir-fry-like dish, with a tiny bit of canola oil (not from the farm)...



...roasted local organic sweet potatoes, not from the farm because their sweet potato harvest was dismal last year, hopefully this year turns out better. They were roasted with dill and sea salt (the latter, not from the farm),



Roasted beets with garlic scapes, and also canola oil and salt not from the farm...




Another stir-fry, this one with beet greens and onions from the farm, a few shitake mushrooms from another local/organic farm, all cooked with some butter also from elswhere.





Long story short, it is hard to cool a meal completely with on-farm ingredients considering we don't produce our own veggie oils, dairy, salt, or many grains for that matter. I have come to notice that total food self-sufficiency is a dream, and that it is okay for a farmer - even one who grows most of what they can in their climate - to buy from another farmer. If anything, it is desireable that we support other farmers; whenever we go to the Dundas market Ann tends to buy a couple of items from other farmers that we don't have, be it a mustard variety we don't have, or carrots which we aren't harvesting yet but someone else had in a cold frame, or milk which we don't produce ourselves (we could milk our cows, but don't have the time considering our devotion to fruits and veggies).