ATTACK OF THE KILLER SPINACH
I’m sure everyone knows by now about the  recent incident of people all over the nation being sickened by Ecoli contamination of bagged baby spinach processed by the country’s largest organic producer.  Although early reports insinuated any number of claims, the facts are now becoming more clear:
The spinach in question wasn’t necessarily organic.  Although Natural Selections Foods does process organic spinach, they also process conventional spinach.

The contamination — whatever its source — happened in a single processing facility, which washes and bags spinach from hundreds of farms, for dozens of brand names.  The FDA recognized this early in the event, when they specified that “loose” as opposed to “bagged”, baby spinach was fine to eat.  Any spinach that was not pre-bagged presumably did not go through the contaminated facility.

Many media outlets, and so-called experts, have failed to understand the details of this event.  First, many continue to tell people not to eat any fresh spinach, when the FDA’s website specifically cites only a single product:  bagged fresh spinach.  Second, they have tried to make a connection between organic produce and animal manure, a potential source of Ecoli.  Fact:  It is a violation of federal law, the National Organic Standards Act, to use raw animal manures on a crop that will be harvested within 120 days of application of the manure.  No organic farmers are using raw animal manures on their spinach fields anymore, if they ever did.  It  is far more likely that a conventional farmer would use raw manures — there are no regulations prohibiting the practice for anyone other than organic farmers.  The FDA never insinuated this connection; they are intimately familiar with the organics law.

  One thing has become clear during this controversy:  Very few people, including so-called experts, understand the difference between manure and compost.   Compost is a semi-miraculous biological process which even biologists are still learning details about all the time.  It transforms any number of waste products — including but not limited to feces, urine, dead plants (leaves and grass), dead animals, and other natural wastes — into humus, which is one of the building blocks of soil.  The process involves heating the waste products to high temperatures for several days, then introducing oxygen into the mixture (aerating it) and allowing it to continue to “cook” until pathogens like Ecoli are killed and the active chemical components are neutralized.  The source of energy for this “cooking” is provided by natural biological and physical processes.  When compost is “finished”, it is a relatively uniform product, whatever the feedstock may have been.

 Here at Terra Firma, we use a compost that is produced locally using a combination of dairy manure and grape pomice (the leftovers from pressing grapes to make wine).  While you can still find grape seeds in the compost, there is no trace of the manure.   You can grab a handful of the stuff, hold it an inch from your nose, and smell only “earthiness”, aka humus.  We spread compost on our fields before every crop, where it provides a slow release of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.  It also replaces some of the organic matter which is lost every time the soil is worked, and provides food for the beneficial soil organisms.

 Natural Selections, the parent company of Earthbound Farms, is the single largest organic producer in the country and one of the largest vegetable growers in the world.  To me, this Ecoli outbreak proves that farming and processing food on this type of scale — whether it is done organically or conventionally — is a risky endeavour.    The problem as I see it is not the Ecoli itself, which can come into contact with food in any number of ways.  The real problem in this case is that so much produce was subsequently cross-contaminated.  And our consolidated food system expands the geography of an outbreak while making it difficult to trace and control.

The fact remains that Organic Agriculture is the most heavily regulated farming system in the country.  The food we grow is as safe or safer than conventionally grown food.  Terra Firma is not currently harvesting spinach (Thank God!), but our fall crop has been planted and is growing.  We plan on once again making our baby spinach a regular part of your healthy diet, and we hope you won’t let the media circus around this unfortunate event spoil your enjoyment of a truly great vegetable.

IN YOUR BOXES
It’s a good thing we don’t rely on potatoes for much of our income here at Terra Firma, because this summer’s crop was one of the worst on record for us.  The early Yukon Golds had a cold, wet growing season and then got cooked in the heat just before harvest.  We had high hopes for the later field of Yellow Finn and French Fingerlings, but it now appears that we just got them planted too late.  They seemed fine when we harvested them in August, but they are now experiencing a very high rate of breakdown in the cooler.  This is probably related to the crazy heat wave they had to endure in July.

We are currently washing and sorting the potatoes — we normally do this as necessary — to try to save the good ones.  We may also be putting slightly more spuds in your boxes during the fall, as they are clearly not going to store well into winter.  This week we are sending along some French Fingerlings, a gourmet variety of potato with a dense, waxy flesh that is wonderful in potato salads or for roasting.  Some people find them slightly bitter; this problem is easily solved by peeling them before cooking or slipping the skins off after cooking and before serving.

At the other end of our potato spectrum, our fall-planted, winter-harvest field seems to be doing okay.  In the past, we have had almost comically bad luck with this crop.  Many years we jump the gun  and plant it too early in the summer, wherein the potatoes rot before sprouting.  Other years, heat waves in August doom the crop.  And still other years, early rains make harvest difficult or almost impossible.  If you’re reading this thinking, “why bother, guys?”, don’t worry too much.  We now grow (or try to) just three acres of potatoes a year, so the investment of time and energy is rather minimal.  Maybe someday we’ll just give up and get all our potatoes from another grower -- as we often do already when we don’t have any of our own.
.

Thanks,
  Pablito
 
 

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