A Little Story about Our Farm & Food Safety

Vegetables are packed into clean tubs in the field, washed, and packed into different, clean tubs to go to food pantries.

This fall, we have been growing the most beautiful buttercrunch lettuce - bright green, never sprayed and hardly a nibble from slugs and snails. The stuff almost glows on a cloudy day. It's so pretty, and this week, we fed every bit we harvested to the chickens. 

Cold, dark and cloudy, harvest time was early Wednesday. We cut each head of lettuce, dunked every one in a big tub of water to keep them fresh, and just as we were packing the heads into bags for the food pantry, we noticed one small speck of bird poop on just one leaf. Just one speck, but every head of lettuce had gone through the same tub of water. That one head of lettuce may have spread germs to all of them. Since lettuce is eaten raw, we couldn’t risk making anyone sick. At least the chickens had a good meal.

Bird poop happens. (Working for another farm, I had to compost 50 bunches of swiss chard for the same reason.) Keeping food safe means keeping an eye out for contaminants, keeping your harvest equipment area clean, washing your hands, and not harvesting when you’re sick. There are extensive government rules called Good Agricultural Practices that most farms must follow, but we follow these basic rules every week - and throw out anything that could cause illness - no matter how pretty the lettuce is.