>>mix, but the best thing overall every year was just >>dairy manure. The stalks and ears of the corn were >>just massive - like the cows neck. > >The size thing always worries me. We all get taken in by this, even >the Koliskos were prone to assessing quality in terms of size. >It is an important indicator only up to a point. "adequate" seems a >more appropriate term than "massive" when it comes to nourishing >food. >Sometimes bigger is worse, rather than better. >$0.02.
I know what you mean, Graeme, in regards to conventional food. I have to admit, though, that neither my tongue nor my eye have found problems with the massive, heavy produce that has come from the Kimberton CSA or from Jeff Poppen's farm. Both farms are long time biodynamic and both use large amount of cow-based BD compost. Jeff, I believe, also manures his fields. Kerry Sullivan (I really have never understood if his place is the Kimberton CSA or has another name. In this case, I'm assuming that the Kimberton CSA is the one at Camphill and not Kerry's) also grows vegetables, such as Kale, that look almost prehistoric in their mass. This produce is not watery or spongy. It's simply robust beyond imagination. Separate from this, I agree with your assertion that in conventional produce smaller may be better. It was macrotiobics founder George Osawa's contention that smaller produce was 'better integrated,' and therefore contained more innate "intelligence" than large vegetables. (this made it easy for him to assert that the small Japanese bodies of his era were superior to the larger Western bodies. Of course, he may have been correct since now that the Japanese are taller they also are subject to the same degenerate diseases as the West) I would bet that George would chose the big BD vegetables through chi, though. Hugh's spinach at ACRES simply filled the mouth with energy! -Allan
