Welcome to the second issue of soy! if you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, please consider subscribing. soy is a monthly newsletter about food and how it relates to things like identity, community, labor and history.
Did you know that each day, the sun sets one minute later? In my neighborhood, the sun started setting at 7:00 p.m. yesterday because of daylight savings. 7:00 p.m.! Even the thought gives me a thrill. It’s all about the little thrills now, like the knowledge of that fact, and the small bird feeder I set up outside my window. (The birds actually come! They actually feed! They are mostly pigeons and house sparrows, but occasionally I’ll see a cardinal or two.)
One of the other little joys in my life has been going to the farmers’ market every weekend. I used to think that winter farmers’ markets weren’t a thing, but things still grow in the winter, and those things are delicious. Sure, many of them are various tubers and roots of marginally different sizes and colors, but once you cut into them, the flavors and textures can differ wildly. A fun game I’ve been playing is picking something new each week that I haven’t tried before and cooking with it. So there’s been a lot of Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac and kohlrabi on the menu.
I’ve enjoyed it, but one tension that I’ve run into in the attempt to cook and eat more seasonally, locally and ethically is how that desire sometimes collides with my desire to eat closer to my culture. Chinese people traditionally don’t cook with the types of vegetables that are available at my local farmers’ market. And it’s hard if not impossible to find fresh, organic Asian vegetables in general (with the exception of bok choy which has made its way into the lexicon and consciousness of Whole Foods shoppers). I find myself choosing between the food that’s better for my gut and planet and the food that feeds my soul. I wish I didn’t have to choose.
One solution to this conflict is to just improvise with what I have: take the rutabaga and whatever else is sitting in the fridge and stir-fry them with some doubanjiang and cumin and a smattering of Sichuan peppercorns to make a Chengdu-style dry pot for example. As I’m writing, that sounds delicious.
But to be honest, although I love to cook, I am not always a confident cook, especially when it comes to things I haven’t made or ingredients I haven’t used before. My first instinct is always to consult recipes. Alicia Kennedy wrote a great treatise on recipes and why you should learn to use them more as a guide than as an exact prescription, which I agree with on an intellectual level (as I do with most everything Alicia writes). The practice of consulting a recipe and then finding the ingredients to make said recipe is a product of the supermarket context we live in, which doesn’t take into account seasonality and geography, not to mention how those ingredients happen to taste at that moment.
In practice, I find it hard to trust myself in the kitchen. I suspect the part of me that hesitates to stray from recipes is the same part of me that is eager to say the right thing, blend in, and not give anyone a reason to see me as an outsider. Because if I can make your grandma’s lasagna, how can you question where I’m really from? As I’ve grown older, that part of me that wants to assimilate has given way to a version of myself that cares more about just finding my people. People who don’t have assumptions to correct and who I don’t feel I have to prove myself to and with whom I can rest easy in the knowledge that they understand, in some cases because they’ve been there themselves. But this hasn’t been an overnight change, and getting over an entrenched reflex to do everything correctly and follow the rules—even with recipes—has been a process.
In the end, my favorite treatment of a farmers’ market vegetable was one I improvised. I julienned a celeriac, stir-fried it with some ya cai that I had on hand from making dan dan noodles, added some light soy sauce, Zhenjiang vinegar, a dash of sugar and a handful of dried red chilies. It was delicious and so easy.
I’m curious: what have you improvised recently? How’d it go? Let me know in the comments, or reply to to this email. (Replies go straight to my inbox.)
Besides learning to trust myself more and rely on recipes less, one thing that has helped me enjoy the flavors I want while also eating fresh, organic1 and local is my CSA, Choy Division, run by farmer Christina Chan.
If you don’t know what a CSA is, it stands for community-supported agriculture, and it’s a way for people to invest in their local farmers while also enjoying good produce. You pay the farmer up front before the season begins, and that money goes towards the costs of running the farm, which are usually highest at the season’s start. In return, you get to pick up a weekly share of fresh produce (and in some cases, eggs, flowers, and other goodies), farmer’s choice. It’s a fun way to cook, because there isn’t much choice involved, and each week is a surprise. It’s also a great way to have a relationship with your food system and see the labor that goes into getting food on your table in a way that most people don’t get to witness. In my experience, being a member of a CSA has deepened my appreciation for both the food and the people who grow it.
What sets Choy Division apart from other CSAs is its focus on Asian heritage vegetables. Big beautiful Napa cabbages that open up like flowers. Ku gua or bitter melon cratered with bumps. The most delicious-smelling Thai basil. And some truly hard-to-find treasures like the delightfully-numbing Sichuan buttons (which, ironically, are not from the Sichuan province) that explode and do cartwheels in your mouth. And peppers. So many peppers!
Being a member of Choy Division has been a complete joy. There is certainly some pressure in opening up a box of vegetables each week and going, “Okay, what do I do with this?” But it’s also been a welcome push to just experiment and try something new.
It’s not everyday that you get to speak with the farmer who grew your food. That’s why I was so excited to interview Christina Chan, the founder of Choy Division, for this issue of soy. Our conversation, edited for clarity and concision:
What’s a typical day like for you on the farm?
Christina: The off season has been full of planning. It seems like all the work happens in peak season, but actually half of it happens now where you're laying the groundwork for what you'll do. So it's all the financial back-end of things: bookkeeping, budgeting, ordering supplies and materials, writing up your crop plan to figure out how much you want to grow of everything, and where and when you're going to grow it.
In peak season, I start the day with a walk through the field to see what's changed. Even day to day, especially in the summer, things grow and move quickly. Then I go right to the harvesting, washing and packing everything away. That's usually followed by a ton of weeding. Because the soil is so fertile, not only do your vegetable grow really well, but all of the other plants do too. And since we don't use any pesticides or herbicides, that means it's all manual removal.
And then there's planting. There's this idea that planting only occurs in the spring, but planting actually happens all season long because some things you can only harvest once.
And so you keep planting it in order to have it all season. So, quite a lot of time is devoted to that for the first four months of the season.
I’m curious about your journey to being a farmer and starting Choy Division. How did you get on this path?
I got into farming five or six years ago. I had gotten a master's and was originally going to pursue environmental science. But then I realized that the only path forward was in academics, and I felt like I couldn’t make the difference in the world that I wanted to. You do research, and you feel like it's eventually going to help, but it's a 10-year process. I was feeling really frustrated.
I started volunteering on an urban farm, and this urban farm was really community-focused and spent a lot of time creating outreach and education programs for the local schools and neighborhood. It was the first time I realized that food was a path where I could both be outside—which was a huge part of what I wanted in a career—and talk to, teach and encourage people to make choices that would improve their lives and the environment. From that point on, I kind of dedicated myself to farming as a way forward.
What made you decide to focus on Asian heritage vegetables?
After the urban farm, I started apprenticing and working on other farms. At that point I realized most of the farms are white-owned and white-led. I realized there's a real lack of the kinds of vegetables that I wanted to see being grown. A few random farmers would grow bok choy, but it would be too old or too big and not right. It’s so frustrating to see giant bok choy. It felt like, why do I always have to choose between these two halves of who I am? This part of me who's interested in eating organically and the part of me that wants to eat the same food that my grandma or mom would make.
So that was a huge lightbulb moment for me. I thought, "Ah, I could grow these." It never occurred to me when I started because I'd never seen anyone do it. One of the farmers I worked with grew celtuce, and he told me about how he had it on the table at the farmers’ market, and this one family came over and was so excited to see it. And that really signified to me that there is a real desire and need for these organic Asian vegetables. Since I've made my journey more public, I've had a lot of people tell me that they've always looked for something like this. So, it feels really good to provide that kind of service and sense of belonging for so many people.
I started with what I like and what I know. A lot of what I grow has a Chinese focus because that is my family background. From there, I asked, “Well, the Korean farmer I worked with, what does she grow? What does she like?” And then I asked my other friends. So it’s always changing depending on what people like, because I only know so much, and I don't want to assume to know how to grow something and what it should taste like when I don't.
With not just vegetables, but meat for example, I want to eat meat that was raised humanely. But I also want to have my meat sliced in a certain way. And it's really difficult, near impossible, to find both.
I know. And if you can't find it in New York, where can you find it?
Exactly. I'll go to the fancy hipster butcher, and all I can get is huge cuts of meat, and very rarely is there pork or the kinds of cuts I want. They’ve caught on to pork belly, which I guess is like the bok choy of meat, but that’s about it. I think that's the next frontier.
This is actually something I've thought about. Because some people do the full-diet CSA. And I’ve thought, “I should partner with a livestock farmer and offer those cuts." But I don’t think I’m there yet.
If you ever consider that again, you can 100% sign me up. Back to the farm: where is it, and how did you get it started?
I started this project in 2019 with a 300 square foot backyard growing space that used to be a part of Hellgate Farm, an urban farm that was a network of backyards that they had outfitted. They had returned this space to the original homeowner, so she let me grow on it. There, I got my first taste of managing my own space, even though it was small. I was working in collaboration with a pop-up chef, which was great, because he was running dinners once a month, and I had a small space.
A year after that, I signed up to do an apprenticeship in Chester, New York with the restaurant Dig Inn’s farm. Through this apprenticeship, there's an opportunity to join their incubator program afterwards, which provides you access to land and major infrastructure that is generally the barrier to most small farms starting. I had access to a tractor, a wash and pack facility and a cooler, all of which normally you would have to build out with quite a lot of money. Hundreds of thousands. They remove all the obstacles so you can focus on growing.
That's how I have access to land now, and I'll have that for a couple more years. I also have to give a huge shoutout to GrowNYC, who I did a Farm Beginnings program through. Through them, I learned so much about running the business aspects of a farm. They gave me so much technical assistance and support in terms of just telling me that I can do it.
And can you tell me about the land you're on now?
The land I'm on now is about a half acre at the Chester Agricultural Center, a farm hub. There's about five or six other farms on this really large property, and we share infrastructure, like the wash and pack barn. It's pretty great, because most farms tend to be very isolated and on their own. But this way, you have so much knowledge and so many resources right at your fingertips, because everybody brings with them a different skill-set and background. So, if you have any problems, you can walk up to another farmer and say, "Hey, are you having this issue? What would you do about this?"
The soil itself is amazing. It's called black dirt, and it truly is just black. It's so rich and fertile. Everything will grow here. I've never seen anything like it before. It's almost like growing in pure compost.
Where do you get the seeds?
I get almost all my seeds from a company called Kitazawa, an Asian-owned seed company out in California that sources and sells predominantly Asian seeds. I think they've existed for just over 100 years at this point and were started by a Japanese family. I get a few other varieties from other seed houses like Johnny's or Hudson Valley Seed Company. But I like the idea of supporting Kitazawa, because they offer most of what I want. And I feel like other companies are not whitewashing it, per se, but I just don't feel as good about supporting them. I don't want to turn our traditional foodways into novelties for other growers, like what’s happened to the Shishito pepper.
I want to talk about your farm's business model. I actually learned from your Instagram that the CSA model was first created in the 1960s by Dr. Booker T. Whatley, a Black farmer and professor. That was surprising to me because, as you mentioned, most modern CSA members are white. What do you think happened there, and how can we make this type of relationship with food more accessible?
When Dr. Whatley was farming, there were a lot of Black farmers, and now that number's dropped significantly. Part of it is just the government and big Ag, but I don't know exactly what happened.
I think to involve more people in going to the farmers’ market and things like that, we need more growers out there offering more types of produce. And I think also taking SNAP and EBT is a big part of it as well. While food should cost a certain amount because it is expensive to produce, we also have to recognize that not everyone has that luxury, and they shouldn't be punished for it either.
Do you feel like eating fresh, organic, local, etc. is currently inaccessible?
It’s always puzzling to me when people say the farmers’ market is really expensive. I compare the prices [with the supermarket], and that's just not true. I don't know how we can dispel that myth.
The fact that farmers’ markets are typically once a week, in the mornings, is a large barrier. The convenience factor is huge. People want to be able to go to Key Food at 10:00 p.m.
Now that you've done this for a while, would you recommend this path for people who are interested in farming? Is it possible to make a career out of small-scale farming, or are the economics hard to make sense of unless you become more commercial?
I think it's definitely possible. That's why I've spent so much of my winter focusing on finances. I think in order to make a small farm work, you need to stay on top of your revenue, cost of production and profit margin, because you're probably going to lose money otherwise.
Whether or not I'd recommend it to anyone, I would say that it is a lifestyle and not just a career. It can turn into your entire life if you're not careful. So it takes a level of dedication or passion to be able to do it. On the hard days, it can be so frustrating you want to quit, but the good days outweigh the bad.
I know a lot of people do dream about leaving the city and starting a farm. It's a lot easier said than done, but I think for the right people, there is nothing that will make you happier. Now that I’m doing this, I can't imagine another life.
What’s been the biggest unexpected challenge for you in farming? What’s something that people might not understand or expect?
There's just never enough time in the day. You feel like you're always behind, and there's always more to do. You have to remind yourself that it's okay if you don't get stuff done and if a crop fails. That doesn't mean that it's a failure on your part.
One of the biggest specific challenges was the lack of resources on Asian vegetables. There is really nothing out there to teach how and what to do. You could find a thousand web pages on how to grow the perfect tomato. You will not find the same level of information on how to grow bok choy.
A lot of things have been trial and error. There's also a strong Instagram farm community, so I reach out and talk to people there. But it's all through our own collective learned experience. There is no definitive guide, no book we can read, no master farmer for us to reach out to. We're all just making it work however we can, which is very cool and scrappy in its own way.
A lot of people—even though they're certified organic, or they practice organic—use organic pesticides. And I'm still choosing not to use those, because even though they aren't necessarily harmful to us, they’ll still hurt non-target organisms like other insects. I try to find alternative solutions like physical barriers, and it ends up taking more time and labor on my end.
It feels good that it works and I don't have to rely on the spray, because it's very tempting when you see all the farmers around you using it. You have to be strong, and you have to remember why are you doing it. It's not just about efficiency and producing the most beautiful product. There's a constant battle between your morals and why you farm, and then the bottom line. I think that's a big challenge of farming.
What are your hopes and dreams for Choy Division? Where do you see the farm and yourself in five to ten years?
My long-term farm dream. Ah, I love talking about this. Right now I'm on about half an acre, and it's just me. I would love to be around two acres and have a couple of people that I'm working with. And I want to establish an Asian/BIPOC farmer mentorship or apprenticeship program for other young farmers to learn and grow their own culturally-relevant produce. There's maybe three to five Asian-led farms in the New York area, and I think only one of them offers an apprenticeship, and that's the one I did. But even then, they grow mostly mainstream vegetables. So offering that kind of mentorship program I think would really benefit the community here.
In addition to two acres, I also want to have fruit trees. I'd love to grow persimmons eventually, Korean pears, goji berries, Sichuan peppercorn. I'd love to have a little bit of agrotourism and have people visit, do farm chores, a little bit of a pick your own. Once again, you can pick your own strawberries, pick your own apples, but you can't pick your own bitter melon.
For people who are interested in joining their own CSA, any recommendations? Are there other farmers out there you recommend who are focused on planting food of their heritage?
In Hudson Valley, there's the Hudson Valley CSA Coalition, and they have all types of different farms over there. In California, there's Radical Family Farms. They're also mixed Asian heritage and offer a CSA. There's another Asian vegetable CSA in Upstate New York that’s just called Asian Vegetable CSA.
There are also some Black-led farms, like Soul Fire Farm up in Albany. They're super well-known and offer a CSA. And because the majority of farm workers in the U.S. are Latinx, some are reclaiming it by starting their own farms and growing the food of their people, which is amazing. There's a farm at the ag center called Grandpa Farm, and it's been inspiring watching this family farm grow so many different things.
Any advice for people who are thinking about or starting to grow their own food? What are some good beginner crops for folks who have a small space? And what’s the argument for growing your on food?
I think if you live in an apartment, there's no practical argument for growing your own food. The best argument I can give you is that there's a lot of joy in watching something develop and then being able to literally enjoy the fruits of your labor. It's something very special that can't be described until you do it on your own.
Also, it’s worth understanding what the process is. Most of us don't really look into it. We take it for granted. Once you do, you have a new appreciation for the challenges that it comes with.
Everybody loves house plants these days. So, it feels only natural to then just get something like a hot pepper plant. It's probably the easiest one to grow in a small space because it arrives in a container, but all the fruits are really small. Anything that's going to have a large fruit, you are not going to be able to grow in your house. If you have some space outside, radishes are easy, and you put those right in the ground. Salad greens are usually easy if you don't have a lot of sunlight. Also herbs like cilantro or garlic chives can be very easily grown indoors.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, please consider sharing it with a friend who could learn to trust themself more.
Another plug for my hot pot salons: Hot pot is one of my favorite activities and, in my opinion, unrivaled in its ability to nourish and bring people together. One day when we’re able, I’ll be gathering friends and thinkers for monthly hot pot salons in my home. If you’re in the New York area, let me know if you’re interested in joining.
Also, a special thank you to my good friend and talented artist, Serena Gelb, for designing the lil’ edamame logo for this newsletter. Isn’t it cute?
Something to clarify about organic food and farming: a lot of small farms can’t afford the official “USDA Organic” certification, but that doesn’t mean their produce isn’t grown using organic practices, and that they aren’t in some cases better for you and for the planet than certified organic vegetables at the grocery store.