Waste not, want not isn't just an expression for us, it is how we live our lives. We really take reusing to a whole new level. What most people would put into the trash we find uses for; what people would put directly into the recycling bin, we find second lives for before it hits the blue bin.
On a farm, there is a very fine line between having far too little and having far too much. If a farmer plants too few crops. he or she will have a hard time meeting the demand, and the supply will always fall short. On the other hand, if a farmer plants an overabundance to ensure meeting the demand, sometimes there will be excess and thus food is wasted. Food is not wasted when it's turned into compost, but it is wasted in the sense that it is rendered unconsumable, at least in the short term. For us, who are not used to seeing hundreds of pounds of every vegetable under the sun, we cannot help but think of hungry people yearning for those blemished tomatoes or misshapen squash that make it into the compost bin. We are wired to try to find a use for things before they rot. Melody and Adam think we're kind of crazy, as they are used to all the excess and routinely compost what isn't at the absolute peak of freshness. We're doing our very best to consume and preserve as much of their bounty as possible. But we realize that no matter how hard we try, there will be an abundance of food that we'll never be able to eat, jar, freeze, preserve, pickle, and/or turn into sauce. Being the creative people we are, we found a new way to use unripe and overripe tomatoes: tomato baseball!
Sunday, we went hiking to a few Adirondack swimming holes with some other local farmers Adam and Melody know. It was fun to explore the territory and to cool off in the crystal clean mountain water.
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