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MAY 2, 2007 TONIGHT'S EVENT: Denver, CO Wednesday, May 2 7:30 - 8:30 pm Tattered Cover LoDo 1628 16th Street FRIDAY, MAY 4: Sonoma, CA Friday, May 4 5:30 - 6:30 pm Reader's Books 127 E. Napa Street For the full West Coast book tour schedule, see the May 1 blog entry. Two days ago, we ate an incredible 100-mile meal in Toronto, Ontario (more on that tomorrow--including a recipe). On the menu were roasted carrots, and with them came the opportunity to meet the farmer himself, David Cohlmeyer of Cookstown Greens. When the meal came to end, David quietly started telling a story. David grows a variety of carrots, among them a white one. He'd been growing the white carrots awhile when, suddenly, the seed was no longer available. Among his disappointed market customers was a woman from Croatia. When she heard that David could no longer get the white carrot seed, she said, "I know where you can get some. They grow white carrots in Croatia." She promised to contact her mother back home to see if she could get some seeds. David had set July 12 as the latest date he could plant his carrots. As the planting deadline approached, he asked his Croatian customer whether her mother had had any luck with the seeds. Well, no, she hadn't. Actually, war had broken out in Croatia, and her mother was just hunkering down. David felt a little bashful and tried to forget about his white carrots. Not long after, his customer woman approached him again. "There's been a lull in the war!" she said. Her mother had dashed up to where the carrots were grown and got some seeds. She had packed them up and put them in the mail. Unfortunately, they were returned to sender. Due to the fear of bombs being sent by mail, the postal service had restricted the weight of what could be sent. Again, David said he could really live without the seeds. But the Croatian mother was persistant - and she knew the value of a good carrot. She placed a classified ad asking if anyone in Croatia was flying to Toronto. She found someone, got the carrot seeds into their hands, and David received the package July 11 - one day ahead of his planting deadline. It says a lot to me, this story, not only about the dedication people can have to their local flavors and the power to share them through seed (rather than endless exports),but it's also a reminder of the fact that our daily sustenance used to come complete with stories, myth, and culture - and not only a price tag. David, incidentally, grew the carrots - and took it as his responsibility to make sure the seeds are now widely available. -JBM

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