Farmers’ Market: Chinese vegetables
“In China, these are vegetables,” stated Dr. Chunzeng Wang, tenured geology professor at UMPI. He is front-page news to regular Star-Herald readers, both as the driving force behind the Geospatial Information Technology Center on campus and more recently, as one of the local contributors to the effort to make Haystack Mountain more of an appreciated destination and less of an annoying impediment to winter travel. His comment was directed at a stunted pigweed struggling to survive in the DMZ surrounding apple trees at the Presque Isle High School Farm.
Limited summer labor and perhaps some concerns about the interaction of tender shoots and bark with young student-farmers on souped-up lawn mowers has resulted in the rows of trees within the orchard being treated in bands with herbicides to knock back the weeds and grass. A very few weeds stubbornly pushed their way out of the desolation of a five to six foot strip of dead, brown grass. The professor from China found the American approach, removal of all life forms not part of the desired monoculture, a bit strange. Why would we not harvest and eat them?
Dr. Wang’s comment comes back to me as I assiduously remove dandelions, lambs quarters, and pigweed sneaking up through the rows in my garden. I avoid spending $5.99 for a mixed green salad serving one at a local restaurant or $3.49 for a bag of Spring Mix Greens from the local grocer providing maybe three dinner salads with vegetative supplementation, by planting a packet of Spectrum Greens Salad Mix from Johnny’s Selected Seeds for $3.99. It will feed me for the entire summer if I keep the weeds at bay. The effort also offers something like a free gym membership with all that bending and stretching. Mental exercise complements physical activity … why is this a weed and this a desirable? The irony is not lost on me that I am spending half my free morning plucking edible greens from rows of other edible greens, filling a five gallon plastic pail that acts as my weed bucket. I briefly contemplate harvest Though I reject the idea and continue my chore to the end of the row, all is not lost or wasted. I pour the whole bucket over a temporary electric fence to the waiting claws and beaks of pastured laying hens anticipating a nutritious treat. “OK, Doc. Here in my corner of Aroostook County, these are eggs.”
Eggs, mixed greens, vegetables, grass-fed beef and many other good things (though probably not pigweed and dandelions) are all available in the Aroostook Centre Mall parking lot.on Saturday mornings from members of the Presque Isle Farmers Market.
Editor’s note: This weekly column is written by members of the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market. For more information or to join, contact their secretary/treasurer Steve Miller of Westmanland at 896-5860 or via e-mail at beetree@xpressamerica.net.
