Week 17 Newsletter

Week #17 - Week of September 21st

Let’s not dance around the truth here. I owe onions a sincere apology.

Onions, I am sorry.

Given the nature of my job, I enjoy asking people what their favorite vegetables are. At the surface, a neutral conversation starter. But really, not quite. When I am met with the emphatic response of, “Onions!” I scoff, and respond with some variant explaining why onions should not count, or why that response doesn’t get at the spirit of the question. Somehow refuting the objective truth that onions are indeed vegetables.

Maybe I can blame the fact that I was twelve years old in 2011, gaining consciousness as a human during an era where the gymnasium of my middle school was plastered with posters of celebrities darning superimposed milk mustaches from the infamous “Got milk?” campaign. Dairy on the brain. 2011 is also the year that the USDA shifted away from using a food pyramid as a nutrition guide and instead introduced what they still use today, “Myplate.” While I have no desire to get into the nuances of national nutrition education efforts in this country, what I take away from my time staring at that plate is that the ¼ section of it labeled “Vegetables” is green. Something about the green subliminally suggests that only the veggie heavy hitters belong, the broccoli, spinach, lettuce, etc; the same ones occasionally illustrated in some expanded versions of the all-knowing plate. No red, yellow, or translucent representation for onions, drifting somewhere outside the plate graphic in an unknown category. No love for the important sulfur, antioxidants, and fibers they contain. Just dairy and green vegetables on the brain.

Yet, flash forward, and each subsequent season that I have spent farming, I turn to onions to guide me through the months more and more. Often the first crop of the year that gets tray seeded, a laborious affair as the seeds are so frustratingly tiny. So spindly and fragile as they begin to germinate in March, just thin green strands yet to find their strength for the year, a relatable feeling in the throws of late winter.

On the last day of this past April, I spent my working interview here at Ecolibrium planting onions. We did so not from these weak seedlings I speak of, but rather from sets. Sets are onion seedlings from the previous year that were harvested when tiny bulbs started to form and were kept dormant until our use on that joyous, rainy April day. Although still small, sets are much sturdier than seedlings. I found comfort in knowing that these sets could handle a little gruffer treatment than their dainty seedling predecessors. This is potentially a stretch, but maybe the strength of the sets inspired me to find a stronger physical and mental point faster this year than previous seasons? Maybe.

As my time here has progressed, watching the onions has given me a tangible, observable marker of my time at Ecolibrium, separate from the cherished social relationships formed, and more as it pertains to tending to this land. This has carried from harvesting early spring onions, to clearing the remainder of the beds as summer was peaking and we were all going a little crazy, through months later, watching the cured, storage stock dwindle as week after week, they remain a CSA box and restaurant order mainstay. As we officially enter fall, a more reflective time of year on the farm, I say in earnest, the onions and I grew in tandem here. So much so that when we harvested the onions, I insisted on keeping one in the field so as to not end my own growth that has somehow become interlocked with these freakin’ onions. I threatened that if someone took my emotional support onion out of the ground, it was likened to ending my Ecolibrium career and I would stop coming into work. (The onion is still there, currently under a tarp as the beds get some rest before next year’s garlic crop is planted later this fall. I know, it will probably be rotten by the time I get to it, I think that’s part of the metaphor. Still workshopping it.)

Though it has certainly taken on a new form this year, loving onions as a long season crop is not new to me. Onions are fun to grow, farmers agree about this often. I also have long enjoyed the versatility and depth of flavor that onions provide culinarily. A couple times a week, I even pocket onions when I walk by the bins around the farm because I know they will be there to level up meals full of storage crops in the middle of winter.

So then I have the gall to say that they don’t count as a vegetable? Who the hell do I think I am?

They’ve just existed in this separate void in my head for some reason, and I regret how long it has taken for me to properly acknowledge and revere onions the way they have always deserved.

Onions, I am sorry. I don’t deserve the right to say this, but you are my favorite vegetable.

Happy fall, week 17!

-Amanda