The Weekly Newsletter of Chubeza Farm
THANK YOU!!
BERRY, BERRY GOOD NEWS!
FRESH, DELICIOUS BLUEBERRIES, RASPBERRIES & BLACKBERRIES HAVE ARRIVED!
As the temperatures can attest, Summer is here! (On June 21st, the Summer Solstice will make it official…) To cheer your hearts, your tastebuds and your good health, we’re delighted to welcome the incredible berries from the Chelkat HaSadeh Farm in Tekoa and the Kaima Farm in Beit Zayit.
Sweet Blueberries from Kaima Farm:
150 gm. package - 21 NIS Half-kilo package - 62 NIS
Raspberries & Blackberries from Chelkat HaSadeh Farm:
Raspberries – 125 gm package - 22 NIS
Blackberries – 125 gm package – 19 NIS
ORDER THESE BERRIES TODAY VIA THE CHUBEZA ORDER SYSTEM!
L’chaim --To your good health! To sweetness!
Once again, our week opened with sirens, explosions, and war. Uncertainty, instability, and upheaval. Yet gratefully, in the field the crops, as always, remain unfazed by the turmoil of human beings – rooted in the soil, steady and comforting. This week, your Chubeza boxes will bring you our summer royalty – his royal highness King Corn!
Each year he accompanies us from June to December, joins us as we bid the school year farewell, dives along with us into the pool over the summer, and goes back to school with us in fall. This year, King Corn eagerly began ripening even earlier than usual at the beginning of June and will stand faithfully at our side right into July’s unbearable heat. Then it’s time for him to take a break in August-September (more about that soon) and then return to breathe freely with us come October, making certain the weather has regained its sanity. Only then will he retire for the season in December. Now that’s what I call a king!
Corn is one of the earliest crops the indigenous Americans learned to cultivate and grow. Some 7,000 years ago, Central American female foragers noticed a spontaneous mutation among the wild grass teosinte, with a longer cob filled with kernels larger than in your average ancient weed. Something sparked their intuition, and they tasted it – to their great delight! They also discovered that kernels which fell to the ground sprouted to become mature plants that yielded more cobs. Over time, they learned that if they saved and planted the choice kernels, the next harvest would be even better!
Thus, in the process of selecting the optimal plants to grow and harvest from year to year, cultivated corn was developed sporting large, juicy kernels securely attached to the cob. Today, corn is one of the few plants which cannot reproduce without human help – its kernels must be manually removed for germination.
To your left is the ancient corn, and to your right is today’s corn:
At the next stage, the indigenous American farmers discovered that if they grow corn, beans and squash together, they could create a decent basic diet out of the three. The threesome also grew beautifully as a team: the corn served as a support pole for the climbing beans, while the squash spread across the soil as mulch, preventing weeds and sealing in the moisture.
This trio, known as “The Three Sisters,” is an excellent example of a plant guild/community: a group of plants that gain added value from growing together. Their secret to success is their positive mutual relationships: each plant contributes to its neighbors, and gains from them in return.
Mirroring human communities, a good plant guild is more independent, stronger, healthier and easier to maintain than growing plants without reciprocal connections. This agricultural development proved so time-efficient that it gave the growers enough spare moments to build houses, weave rugs, braid baskets, develop astronomy and math, art, and culture, and of course – to party…
Native Americans used corn in a variety of ways. They ate it fresh or cooked, dried and ground into flour, ground the fresh kernels into polenta - a moist corn porridge, adorned their homes with colorful corn ribbons, popped the kernels for popcorn, fed it to livestock, and more. Each part of the corn plant gave its gifts: the tall corn stalks’ stature enabled trellising beanstalks, the corn stem poles were used for building, fishing and more, the corn silk served as a medicinal herb to treat kidney ailments, and the leaves were woven into mats, baskets, crafted masks, moccasins and corncob dolls:
But over time, dramatic changes occurred in the cultivation and usage of corn. This grain - once so substantial in the lives of the early inhabitants of America – has become an industrialized product, engineered and emptied of meaning.
Today, too, we depend on corn in nearly every realm, especially in food. Almost every processed food contains corn derivatives. But this relies on very limited numbers of genetically engineered varieties, extracted and processed in a worn, squeezed and abused form of nutritionally empty products which demand enormous, unnecessary energy to produce. We use cornstarch for thickening and gluing, and corn syrup for sweetening. Leavening agents, emulsifiers, food coloring, and citric acid are all derived from corn, as is most animal fodder for industrial livestock. Corn also serves as a basis for plastic and fuel production.
(For a deeper dive, I highly recommend Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma about food systems and corn’s role within them.)
And yet, simple, delicious corn still holds a place of honor in our world. There’s nothing like the sheer joy of biting into a fresh ear of corn….
May these delectable corncobs bring some sweetness into our days, as we soon enjoy better times of calm and growth. Keep your spirits high!
Best wishes from us all at Chubeza
