Day 40: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

San Francisco, California

The sage plant in our little garden herb patch has begun to flower. We do not use it often enough to keep the blossoms down. The rosemary and thyme, on the other hand, are almost nightly staples, as we continue to explore new recipes that work with the meat in our freezer, the unpredictable variety of vegetables delivered to our door, and the dry staples remaining on our shelves.

I saw video the other day of farmers just south of here plowing under a crop of delicious-looking beans. There’s nobody left to pick them. A recent headline in the LA Times reads, “You Can’t Pick Strawberries Over Zoom.” Where migrant farm workers are still available for the state’s current bounty, advocates lobby desperately for their employers to find and provide protective gear and they rush to translate health safety information into the indigenous languages spoken in the field. Meanwhile, as the disease shows up in Southern and Midwestern packing plants and workers (again, more immigrants) die, our chicken, beef and pork supplies, we’re warned, may become unreliable.

Up until now, the holes in our personal shopping list have been caused by distribution glitches - unanticipated high demand - which seem to be getting better (we even got flour the other day!). But if it happens that food shortages begin to occur closer to the source, I shudder to think what us city folk - what anybody will do.

Across the fence, our neighbors have finished planting their vegetable garden, a tiny patch in the sun. They do it every year. A few tomatoes, potatoes, and beans - a hobby, of course, not a pantry. Between the two houses, we will have a handful of apples and pears in the fall, which we will exchange over the fence, as we always do. But a food supply? I don’t think our sage and rosemary alone will get us through the summer.