The Weekly Newsletter of Chubeza Farm
It Happens in the Best of Families
This week, we warmly welcome the final, long-awaited member of the remarkable Brassicaceae family growing in Chubeza: the amazing cabbage! It proudly joins three cousins – broccoli, kohlrabi and cauliflower – which began arriving in your boxes two weeks ago. Together, they showcase a variety of plant preferences and evolutionary pathways - leaves, flower buds, and thickened stems. These vegetables thrive in rich, fertile soil, and in return provide us with heaping portions of health, nourishment, flavor – and beauty!
Just picture it: a glamourous cauliflower with its bright, intricately fashioned white crown, a green or purple cabbage dotted with raindrops, or Brussels sprouts that look like climbers racing up the stem to reach the summit. This stunning, diverse pluralistic family warms the heart – a family in which each member is valued for its unique qualities, growth patterns, colors, and distinct taste.
The cabbage (Brassicaceae) family is a perfect example. All family members originated from onewild plant, Brassica oleracea, born in the Mediterranean region and somewhat resembling a canola plant. At some point after domesticating the plant, people began growing it for its leaves. Since the leaves were the edible part, it made sense year after year to select the plants that produced the largest leaves. Over time, those leaves became bigger and bigger, leading to the creation of the plant we now know as kale or collard greens. Kale’s botanical name is var. acephala, meaning "headless cabbage."
Other folks preferred plants that produced smaller, denser, and more tender leaves clustered around the top of the stem. Hence, they selectively propagated plants with these traits. Over the seasons, compactness became increasingly prominent in such plants, resulting in ever denser, closed cluster of leaves at the plant’s crown. Over the years, these clusters grew to evolve into forming the true "head" we know today as cabbage. Its formal botanical title is var. capitata, a "headed cabbage."
Sometime within the last thousand years, humans developed a passion for eating the immature flower buds of the cabbage and began selecting plants that produced larger flowering heads. This is how cauliflower and broccoli were born, both variations of the cabbage’s undeveloped flower cluster. Cauliflower’s botanical name is var. botrytis, meaning "cluster," for its resemblance to a cluster of grapes. Broccoli, developed in Italy, earned the title var. italica.
Then there were those who davka focused on a different part of the plant altogether. In today’s Germany, growers actually favored kale plants with short, thick stems. They hankered to eat the stem itself. Gradually, by selecting plants with increasingly thickened stalks, they dramatically transformed the ancient cabbage to morph into today’s kohlrabi, named var. caulorapa, meaning “stem turnip.”
As for the last member of this robust, extended family: We each have our own personal preferences for tastes and smells, and apparently there were also those (probably the Belgians) who preferred plants that developed multiple compact clusters of leaves along the stem. They selected and re-selected plants that produced this leaf pattern, bringing the world Brussels sprouts, titled var. gemmifera, "jewel-bearing cabbage."
Thus, this twisting family tale reminds us that even without formal education in genetics or plant breeding – but rather via a process of careful observation, simple seed selection by dedicated growers, and a great deal of perseverance and patience – six unique, distinctive vegetables have developed over the past 7,000 years from a single wild ancestor. Small, everyday miracles.
They happen in the best of families.
May we all be blessed with a week of good news, patience, resilience, and inner strength. And may blessed rains come in abundance, along with other great joys of winter!
Alon, Bat-Ami, Dror, Einat and the entire Chubeza team
