How was babygreens born?

It's just like Baby Boom and I accidently found my calling making gourmet applesauce. Except that I don't dress as well as Diane Keaton, and I haven't inherited my cousin's child. Or fallen in love with a veterinarian, or made lots of money, or, or.

OK, so it's nothing like Baby Boom.Instead, I moved to Beacon, NY six years ago. The most amazing thing about living here, for me, has been belonging to a C.S.A. (Well, and my beautiful porch. And the Hudson River.) My summers have been filled with so many gorgeous veggies, a weekly visit to the fields, picking flowers, and the smell of warm tomatoes and basil on my hands. But each year there comes a time when the days get shorter, the air gets a chill, and C.S.A. distributions end. It's a tragic time. I look at all the pathetic produce at the supermarket and want to cry. Then I look at the prices, and really want to cry. So I've been fabulously healthy during the summers, and weird and anemic in the winters.

That has recently led to my involvement in developing a winter C.S.A. in Beacon, wintergreens. wintergreens is just starting up, and its first season is the winter of 2009-2010. There are winter C.S.A.s all over the country feeding hungry locavores, and Beacon is finally getting its own.

Where do babies come in, you're asking? Have you inherited a toddler yet? No, no baby. If I had a baby, I wouldn't have time to make baby food!wintergreens is based on the belief that everybody should have access to local food. That's what a community food program is all about: rich, poor, fat, skinny, vegetarian or no, everybody should be eating food that's grown in their backyards. And that, my friends, includes our smallest citizens.

We all have a lot to gain to by supporting local farmers. Flavor and nutrition are both maximized when we eat food that came from the vine that very day. Imagine what visions of health we'd all be if we'd grown up eating that way.

Therefore, I introduce to you babygreens. It is food made from the same beautiful (organic and certified naturally grown) fruits and veggies we're getting in our farm shares. No pesticides, no wilting while traveling. Just beautiful, healthful food (run through a fine mill, for safety's sake).