I love my job: I am proud to be an entrepreneurial cheese monger.  

I love the food business:  I am proud to be a part of the re-localization of American regional food systems.

I love that each week I find myself in a farmer’s market:  I love the opportunity to stroll about, to talk with friends and acquaintances, to build community – and to observe the bounty of our own local food system.  These are my seasonal notes:

Asparagus came, as expected, earlier in the spring: one of my favorite early seasonal greens.  Fresh-picked asparagus has happily persisted and was readily available at today’s market. Its availability has shockingly overlapped the debut appearance of today’s nectarines.  (Yes, nectarines in early June.)  My dear friend and co-executive director of FRESHFARM Markets observed this “first time in memory” occurrence as we chatted.  It made me mused about the culinary possibilities of this new partnership: asparagus nectarine pie?

And, this season’s market has brought a good cast of new characters to our attention as well. Tat Soy. Black and purple radish.  Kohlrabi.  Barese Chard. Persian Cucumbers to name a few.  We welcomed these multi-cultural additions to our local foodshed.

The brussel sprouts had come and gone by early May.  I miss them. 

My favorite cold storage apples: the Japanese varietal Mutsu, were gone by the start of June.  I remembered (as a 50 year old man) that such fruits and some vegetables could be over-wintered in cold storage (our grandparent’s root-cellars).  I was amazed how fresh these apples seemed as we enjoyed their crispness in April and May.

Cherries made their first – and rather early – appearance by mid-May.  At today’s market, cherries of all varietals were in abundance.  Strawberries followed the cherries by a week.  Blueberries made their debut appearance today, in early June.

Peas shoots have come and gone. Sadly.

Red beets came in early May.  Golden beets followed by a week or two.  Both are still in our market basket weekly – beets combine so wonderfully with goat cheese.

The ramps have come and gone.  What a wonderful come-back story behind this lovely little West Virginia weed!

Fava beans – received with great enthusiasm – showed up two weeks ago.  Today was their likely final appearance.  We have a big bag, and while they require a good amount of prep we look forward to cooking, sautéing and enjoying their seasonal exit.

Cauliflower – even purple cauliflower – along with broccoli made their seasonal debut last week.
I know that many (all) of the things that have retired from this season’s market can still be bought at supermarkets.  I wonder from where they come and at what cost.

This weekend in DC, and on adjacent June weekends in many other US cities, GLBT Americans are celebrating “Pride Day.”  These celebrations mark another rite of the season.

Many years ago, I attended one or two gay pride marches myself.  Now, these events have no attraction for Pablo and I.  I remember attending these events and wondering: "Why gay pride?"  Why then not straight pride?  Caucasian pride?  Being same-sex oriented is merely one of the aspects of an identity, the onion-like layers that surround each of us.  My seasonal notes:

The first gay pride parade was held in New York City on Sunday, June 28, 1970. One year earlier, in the early morning hours of Saturday, 28 June 1969, the bar-goers the Stonewall Inn – one of the nation’s first openly gay bars – rioted following a police raid.  The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar which catered to generally to the gay community, but which was popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth.

The Stonewall riots are generally considered to be the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, as it was the first time in modern history that a significant body of GLBT people fought-back, resisted arrest, and stood up for their civil rights.  The first Gay Pride Marches were organized in America’s largest cities by members of the Mattachine Society and the Gay Liberation Front, early and historic gay rights associations who fought for the rights to we take for granted today.

I love my job: I am proud to be a gay, entrepreneurial, cheese monger.  

Memorial Day brings summer.  It is filled with memories of good times, barbeques, beaches, and outdoor activities of all sorts.   With the heat and humidity reaching stifling levels in the mid-Atlantic, this year’s Memorial Day weekend certainly delivered on summer’s start.  This was my 50th Memorial Day.  And while I observed it with a fair amount of food and friends, this year was different.  I have made a point of remembering.

My grandfather, Seth Koch, was born in 1891.  He served as an infantryman in the Great War, now known as World War I.  He never spoke of it to me directly.  A few summer ago, Pablo and I travelled to the mid-West to visit my Uncle, my father’s only brother.  Stored carefully away in boxes in his basement is an archivist’s dream.  Photos.  Documents.  Records.  Handwritten journals.  Accounting ledgers.  My grandfather and his progeny are were (and are) prolific record keepers.  In these boxes were hundreds of original photos that told the remarkable tale of his service fighting the Germans in the trenches along the French battlefront.  His Army-issued gas mask was particularly evocative. It smelled of dust and age and human sweat.

History suggests that the immediate origins of the Great War lay in the decisions taken by statesmen and generals during the crisis of 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a radial Serbian. The more immediate cause for the war was tension over territory in the racially, religiously and ethnically diverse Balkans. Ironically, the tensions in the Balkans that thrust Europe into this Great War have largely been forgotten by modern minds.  The renewed tensions in the 1990s, and the American incursions into the Balkans, not understood in the context of these earlier tensions that sent my grandfather into France.

My Uncle and my father’s only brother, Keith Koch, was born in the early 1920s.  He served as an Air Force fighter pilot in World War II and flew bombing missions over Germany during the final months of the War.  He makes light of his service.  During that summer visit as we looked through boxes of memorabilia, photos of his service drew scant glances.  He would persist instead, much to the irritation of my Aunt Donna, in recounting his memories of a "special" female friend who he met during training.  Old aerial photos of the German terrain they were to study and then bomb made me think of Google Maps.  How far technology has come.  How much we take for granted.

World War II rose directly out of the ashes of World War I; a defeated Germany left demoralized and economically broken -- this environment serving as a perfect breeding ground for the German-nationalist fervor that would allow the rapid rise of Adolf Hitler.  The rest is – as they say – history.  Nationalist rhetoric began with themes of economic justice and revenge; then morphed quickly and darkly into religious genocide.  Ironically, though we hesitate to draw such analogies in modern conversation, much of the Islamist-terrorist threat we face today is economic at its root but is now viewed by most as almost exclusively driven by religion.

My father, Wayne Koch, was born in 1928.  He served as a Marine; fighting on the ground in China and Korea.  The photos of his service are at once the hardest for me to look at -- and the ones of which I am most proud.  I bear an uncanny resemblance to my father.  Looking at these photos is a bit like looking at a past-life doppelganger.  The family has carefully saved my father’s Marine dress uniform.  From it, I know that he was quite thin during his service -- and smaller than I.  As well, a few of his letters home to my grandparents have survived.  He writes of the camaraderie and company of his fellow marines, and the strange sights and customs of Asia.  He inquires about life at home on the farm.

Out of the ashes of World War II rose the communist threat.  My father fought to prevent the spread of communism throughout the Korean peninsula.  Ironically, despite the fall of the monolithic Russian threat, we face today serious threats from a persistently communist and now nuclear-armed North Korea.

I have no military service to recount.  My generation: too young for Vietnam and raised after the anger-filled, anti-war politics following Vietnam had put an end to the draft – we were “spared.” No one in my generation, none of my male or female cousins on either side, served in the US military. 

Two of my nephews, son and step-son of my older sister, currently serve.  One serves in the Navy on Trident submarine stationed in the Pacific -- no doubt watchful of the Korean peninsula.  The other, after a tour of duty in Iraq, continues to serve state-side as a Marine.

I read recently David Levering Lewis’ God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215.  I was struck by the historical triangulation between the world’s three great (non-pacifist) western religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  I was struck by the endless history of war; the dogged history of pursuit for domination among these three.  And, struck by how throughout history the balance has shifted as religious interested and alliances among the three have shifted. 
 
It was George Santayana, Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist that said: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."