You Say Potato, I Say, Eleven Year Old?

We harvested the first of the potatoes this week, and they are the most potatoey potatoes I've ever eaten. They put my pre-farming potato experiences to shame. They are delicate and buttery-sweet and have a thin skin that, when thrown in the oven, gives in when you press against it with your fork. I have been enjoying this added element in our home-cooked meals lately due to the dynamic change in flavor and texture that the potato brings, but I'm also loving that the grandchildren who visit the farm are so tuned-in to actually tasting their food and participating in all steps from planting to harvesting that they make very un-childlike comments about them. Take last night for instance when Alondra, age eleven, stuck her fork into one of them and slowly chewed it with eyes of contemplation.  She swallowed, flattened another one on her plate with her fork and smeared it slightly to separate the skin from the white fluffiness in the middle, looked up at her uncle, and said,

''Uncle, look at the texture of this potato! It's beautiful!''

Only on a hippy-dippy, organic farm of food revolutionaries would a child be raised to not only eat potatoes without exorbitant amounts of cheese or salt, but also understand what a good potato's texture should be and to comment on it. I was floored. Not sure why I was so surprised, really; this child eats heaping portions of vegetables like green beans, squash, tomatoes, and chard at every meal, just as she has been since she had her first teeth, I would imagine. It's so interesting to be around children that know exactly where their food came from [their garden, or grandma's garden], what went into growing it, and just what the product should look like before it's ready to be yanked from it's vine or tree or home of dirt. It reminded me of my first week on the farm when Mariel, Alondra's aunt and general coordinator of day-to-day orchard and garden activities, sent me out to the garden to get some lettuce for dinner. She sent me with Alondra, who knew where the lettuce was. The two of us grabbed a knife and walked out to one of the gardens, big girl following behind little girl, stepping gingerly around cabbage and broccoli and pepper plants and onions until we got to the line of lettuce: bright green bundles of leaves which stood out against their dark soil backdrop, especially because we were in the last hours of daylight when certain greens of the plants are illuminated in that mystical irridescent glow of dusk.

I followed closely behind her as she stepped around each head of lettuce, pointing at each one with her knife as she passed by it, saying, ''This one is too young to pick, this one's not ready yet either, too young, too young, too young, AH! That one is perfect!''  She squatted down, sawed off its head, and did the same to the next three or four heads as well. Honestly, the difference in size between the premie lettuce and the ready lettuce was so miniscule that I certainly wouldn't have noticed, or at least it would have taken me much longer as I pained over each one, teetering between making a decision, ''Is it ready? Is it not? Ready? Not? Readynotreadynotready????'' And Alondra just knew, immediately, as if she were deciding between two things so obviously different as carrots and tomatoes. I love this fine-tuned consciousness that comes with spending time a farm like this one. So cool. It makes me happy to know that these children are part of the next generation. Oh god, I sound like a grandmother. When I was a young lass...

So, I think I've established that this farm is more than a little unique. They are certainly not your typical Argentine family, what with their rejection of meat in a country that worships the Sunday family barbeque, with their non-consumption of alcohol and thus wine in a region that produces the bulk of the nation's supply, and of course with their general lack of attention to generally accepted Western-driven aesthetics (they [we] walk around in dirty t-shirts and blackened bare feet, both Amparo and her husband, Enrique, are missing some teeth, etc.). They grow cabbage and onions and carrots in an area surrounded by giant farms that grow nothing but grapes and apples. They would be kind of off-beat in most of the U.S. [welcomed with open arms in my former state, Vermont]. In Argentina, forget about it. So, you can imagine the delightful clashing of cultures that arose last week when Enrique's family came to visit.

They arrived in waves, first two, then three more, then full carloads as the week continued, each with meat, beer, wine, other typically farm-prohibited fixings. They set up their tents across the river, still on the farm property, and spent their week of summer vacation camping out at Enrique's house. My favorite visiting family member was Tio Negro, a short, slightly balding beer-bellied gentlemen in his sixties, who always seemed to be singing some sort of romantic balad as he strolled through the grounds of the farm. Cousins, uncles, aunts, grandchildren wandered through our kitchen at all hours of the day and night to extract their perishables from our fridge, and it was odd to see nearly forgotten goods like t-bone steaks resting next to the leftover quinoa soup. There was something so wonderfully comforting about his family, so delightfully familiar, just a bunch of good people sitting back on their lawn chairs by the river, sipping on beer and blasting the radio and cooking up meat on the grill. I have definitely met them before in some form.

You'd think that two sides of the family with such drastically different lifestyles (or at least eating habits) wouldn't get along.  Not so. Everyone seemed to be mutually respectful of the other family's beliefs and ways of life, and it became even more apparent when the visitors invited us all (even the volunteers) across the river on Sunday for a big barbeque. Tio Negro had made a giant six-foot long pizza in the brick oven, along with some delicious grilled chicken. Our side of the river brought salad and grilled veggies. There must have been at least thirty people there in the end, all sitting at one long rectangular picnic table (which was actually about three or four tables lined up), and it was lovely to see everyone come together over a meal, especially when it is food that is the substance that would theoretically divide them. Okay, so the majority of the farm family didn't touch the meat, or the pizza (I made up for what they left behind, don't worry). And the visiting members barely ate any of the salad (fair; although it was made up of tomatoes and lettuce and onions, it also included a variety of delicate yet bitter herbs and greens which most of Argentina would call WEEDS). Luckily, Mariel knew her family well enough to make a special salad for them which included all of the typical stuff minus the weirdo bitter green things. And I did catch a couple of the cousins carefully testing the weirdo hippy salad with their front teeth, then inserting the rest of it into their mouths, and some of them claimed to love the flavor and helped themselves to more.

And this is why I love food. Yes, if people are unflexible and unyielding, preachy and proselytizing, it can be a vice that drives people apart. But in most cases, it's the glue that holds us together, as individual specimens and as a culture. It is a way to share thoughts, explore new flavors, throw a little bit of yourself into a dish that will nourish others (I did not mean for that last bit to be taken literally--please don't throw a little bit of you into a dish if you cook for me). Food is a way to tell stories of the past, it's the medium we use to preserve that of our ancestors, and a space for us all to be creative, to see what happens if we add a splash more of this or a handful less of that. We need food to survive, so it might as well taste good and be enjoyed with people who make us glad we're alive.