Blue Schoolhouse Birthday Boy!

Hello Friends!

Today is a very special day … four years ago today I went into labor with Ben on my way in to work. It was a harvest day, and Bill was in the field with our then-farmhands April and Matt. I tried to ignore the obvious signs of labor, figuring I could ride it out (until when??). It was pretty obvious by the time I got to work that something was up. I called Bill to tell him the news. He gave his farmhands some quick instructions and left them in the field. Baby Ben was born a few hours later on June 25, 2004. Bill stayed with us all day and night. After a sleep-deprived night on the hospital pull-out bed, Bill drove back to the farm at 3:30 a.m. to pick up the truck full of what veggies the farmhands could pick and pack, and returned to town for the market.

Some of you may remember Bill that day … the proud dad with the hospital bracelet still on his wrist. Totally zombied out. I’m sure a few of you were shorted some change given the challenge of adding and subtracting while in a walking coma. And some people probably came out ahead! In any case, we appreciated all of the well wishes and general support. We brought Ben to the market the following week – I’d attach a photo of that, but I think the picture was taken with my mom’s camera. The pictures I’m attaching are from the first few months and then from his birthday this morning. He’s at that age where he can’t smile on command without doing that crazy little boy grimace (showing all teeth while scrunching eyes tightly shut – very natural looking). So we captured him looking serious about his gift of bungee cords, pulleys, ropes, caribiners, and a toolbox. He loves to use Bill’s cords/ropes to tie his tricycle to the barbecue grill and the front door, so now he has his own.

I regret to inform you that I’m still doing this blog via dial-up. Boo-hoo. We did hear from several very helpful people with suggestions on our best options. We are going to go with a Verizon cell phone thingy (I assume they’ll know what I mean!!).

Bill and his farmhands are making great progress in the field. They spent a good part of today trellising tomatoes in the greenhouse. It started great … the cloudiness had cooled off the greenhouse to a nice temperature. About halfway through trellising, the sun came out. Within minutes the greenhouse heated up like Death Valley. The guys couldn’t stop, though, as they were stuck mid-row with twine everywhere. By the time they emerged from the greenhouse, Brian said, “I feel like I just came out of hell.” And this from a guy who uses words sparingly.

Speaking of hell, we had a heaven-sent rain this morning. Bill could have cried, he was so happy to hear the pitter patter of raindrops on the window. He was facing the inevitability of irrigation … that means hours and hours of laying drip tape, walking back and forth to the water pump, and all-around suboptimal conditions for the veggies. The soaker that we received was just what the doctor ordered.

The hotter-than-Hades greenhouse also served as a reminder that we’re transitioning from the cool season crops to warm season crops. So bye-bye to spinach and mixed baby greens and hello to summer squash (a.k.a. zucchini) and more! It’s a great time for diversity, and in the coming weeks you’ll see us bringing quite the variety of veggies. The warm season crops are all easy to prepare with minimal effort. Take the summer squash … our favorite way to eat them is to slice them down the middle length-wise, cut slits into the cut-side, and brush with olive oil, balsamic, and salt/pepper. Lay it on the grill cut side up until tender. The kids absolutely love it! They just grab entire halves of summer squash and demolish it.

Fortunately, warm weather does not eliminate the greens altogether. We will have head lettuce, swiss chard and kale every week. I’m going to focus on chard this week. Chard is very versatile, and you can eat the entire leaf WITH the stalk. Even when the stalks are big, they are still amazingly juicy and tender. You can cook with chard in the same way that you cook with spinach. According to Vegetables A to Z (one of our favorite books), in France both the succulent stem and leaf are incorporated into daily fare as regularly as spinach in the U.S. The pale, broad stalks are simmered in fragrant bouillon that is then thickened and seasoned with pounded garlic and anchovies and presented alone, to star in the way that asparagus do. Or they are bathed in sauce and browned in a gratin. Leaves are folded into terrines, omelets and soups, pureed in gnocchi, wrapped around pork patties, and even made into a dessert pie. Be sure to share your favorite chard preparation on the blog!!

Bill will likely be harvesting most of the garlic next week. After harvesting it, we hang it all in huge bunches from the rafters in the garage, where it can dry out a bit. We will be bringing GARLIC SCAPES to the market again this week. We probably only have this week and next week before the scapes are history. Be sure to get in on this rare seasonal treat!

People have been pretty excited about the beets. We’ve finally made it into the field with the beets. (The first few weeks were beets out of the greenhouse.) We’ll be bringing three types – traditional red beets, golden beets, and chioggia beets. The goldens have a milder beet flavor than the reds, and they don’t bleed their color into the rest of the dish. The chioggias are the sweetest variety and have red and white stripes on the inside. Any of these beets can be grated raw onto a salad for a wonderfully sweet beet flavor, amazing nutrition, and an awesome aesthetic. Try this recipe:

Beet Salad*
(Chez Panisse by Alice Waters)

Use as many beets as you like in this recipe. Cut off the greens, leaving the top and tail on. Boil for about 20 minutes, or until they can be poked with a fork. Dump off the water and slip the skins off. (They should very easily slide off the beet without a knife. Wait until they’ve cooled off, though!) Top and tail the beets, and then quarter/cut them into bite-size pieces. Mix in vinegar (we prefer balsamic) – just enough to get all of the beets coated with it. Add salt and pepper and let it sit for at least an hour. This allows the beets to absorb the vinegar flavor. Then add olive oil – again, just enough to coat the beets. You’ll end up with a small puddle of vinegar and oil at the bottom, which is fine. Serve at room temperature. It’s easy and fabulous! It’s also infinitely variable … we like to add chopped walnuts, fresh parsley, and goat cheese.

* CAUTION: This beet salad recipe is likely to turn the most beet-skeptical into a beet-lover. Be sure to warn them that it can turn your pee pink. The boys consider that a major bonus!

Here’s what else we’ll be bringing to the market:

Head Lettuce
Beets
Garlic Scapes
Kale
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Collard Greens
Parsley
Swiss Chard
Radicchio
Japanese Turnips
Summer Squash

The new bag system went well. We decided to charge 10 cents per bag, and people were pretty receptive. I’d estimate that we handed out 75% fewer bags than usual, which is AWESOME!! Thanks to all who brought their own bags and to those who were supportive of the new system.

Don’t forget that we’re delivering fresh veggies to Common Ground and the Garlic Press on Tuesday evenings …

On Tuesday evenings Bill delivers produce to Common Ground in downtown Bloomington and to the Garlic Press in Uptown Normal. So if you miss a market or just run out of veggies mid-week, head to Common Ground! And if you need the veggies prepared into a fabulous meal, Garlic Press is right down the road.

We’ll see you at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers Market on Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. – noon. BRING YOUR BAGS!! We’ll also be at the Trailside Market in Uptown Normal, every Tuesday from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Please let your friends know about the blog. We plan to put out the email sign-up sheet during the market season again. Call us at 467-9228 or email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com if you have questions.

Thanks!
Mercy Davison

Let's hear it for ... GARLIC SCAPES!

Hello Friends!

I hope that this is the last time that you’ll be getting this emailed blog announcement from me via dial-up internet. I’m generally in favor of patience and a zenlike acceptance of things beyond my control, but dial-up would irritate the most seasoned yogi. I mean really … when I go to upload the pictures onto the blog, I hit “send” and then can eat my dinner AND do the dishes before it’s done loading. And after all of that, sometimes the internet disconnects. I have actually screamed when that happens.

So we’re finally considering the plunge into expensive high speed internet. (Now that Noah is finishing his expensive preschool career, we need something new to do with our fortune!) I’m not even sure how we’re going to do it. There’s something called “dtn speednet” or something like that, and then there’s some weird cell phone technology that’s been working for our neighbor. Satellite is no good because you still upload via your dial-up connection. I consider shopping around for an internet plan to be less pleasant than shopping on the Veterans Parkway strip on a hot July afternoon … so if you have any suggestions for the best plan of attack, please let me know!!

And while we’re throwing our money around, we’re also talking about getting a box truck. We’ve FINALLY outgrown the little Toyota pickup and homemade trailer. (The trailer was purchased, but the big red box on top is an original design by Bill!) This season has just been phenomenal for Bill, especially on Saturdays. In previous seasons we only filled up the trailer and truck (thus requiring the Toyota Corolla to save the day!) for a couple of weeks in August when both tomatoes and watermelons are in season. This past week we already had to bring in the Mighty Corolla. It’s astounding. And we’ve been selling almost all of what we’ve brought. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why people are buying more produce at the market this season – post your thoughts to the blog so that everyone can ruminate together.

Speaking of the Saturday market, one of the tasty new treats this week is GARLIC SCAPES! Rock on! (That’s what former farmhand Dusty Roads, as we called him, would say about most things.) Are you familiar with scapes? They are a cult vegetable, somewhat along the lines of ramps (wild leeks). You just can’t get these very easily, and the season is very short … about 3 weeks. I Googled scapes this evening and found a Washington Post blog entitled “My Friend the Garlic Scape.” Not kidding. The author describes scapes as “the garlic lover’s nirvana.”

What is a garlic scape? It’s the flower stalk of a hard-neck garlic. If you don’t pick it, you end up with a smaller garlic bulb. Thus, Bill will be picking all of the scapes from the hard neck garlic varieties that he has planted. (He primarily grows soft-neck varieties because they’re easier to grow and sell.) Bill has read in many places, including the Washington Post blog, that the premier way to eat scapes is in pesto. Here’s the recipe:

Garlic Scape Pesto

1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Method:
Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.
For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.

Here’s what else we’ll be bringing to the market:

Salad Mix
Spinach
Arugula
Head Lettuce
Beets
Garlic Scapes
Kale
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Collard Greens
Carrots
Parsley
Swiss Chard
Radicchio

This would be the perfect week to try your hand with greens. We just have so many wonderful varieties … kale, collards, radicchio (not really green!), spinach, etc. We prepared a family favorite dish for friends over the weekend, and they were really impressed with how simple yet delicious it was. The recipe was a bean-and-rice dish with wilted greens. I’m including a recipe for rice below. Even though you can make rice with just water or a good stock, we find this recipe to really add something special to the meal without requiring a ton of work.

Basic Brown Rice I (Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon)

2 cups brown rice (long or short)
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 cardamom pods
4 cups chicken stock (or good veggie stock)
1 Tbsp gelatin (optional – I’ve never used it)
½ tsp sea salt

In a heavy, flameproof casserole, melt butter and olive oil. Open cardamom pods and add seeds to the casserole. Saute rice in butter and oil, stirring constantly, until rice begins to turn milky. (This takes about 10 minutes.) Pour in liquid, add salt and optional gelatin, and bring to a rolling boil. Boil, uncovered, for about 10 minutes until water has reduced to the level of the rice. Reduce flame to lowest heat, cover tightly, and cook for at least 1.5 hours or as long as 3 hours (I’ve only ever done it for 1.5 hours!). Do not remove lid during cooking.

While the rice is cooking, Bill simply sautes onions and garlic in olive oil with some salt and pepper. He cooks it slowly over a low heat so that the onions and garlic become somewhat sweet. He then adds sliced up greens … radicchio, endive, kale, etc. … to the pan and covers it to wilt the greens. He sometimes adds a bit of water to steam it all. If you’re a meat eater, a couple of pieces of fried and chopped bacon never hurts.

One last news item … we are switching over to biodegradable bags. This is a big deal for us for two reasons. First, they’re about four times as expensive. Second, we’re going to charge people 25 cents for 1-4 bags. (We could charge a dime per bag, but we generally work with quarters.) The goal is to reduce the number of bags that people use, not to make any sort of profit. The world is so full of plastic, and plastic bags in particular are choking our waterways, killing our wildlife, and degrading community aesthetics across the globe. Many countries are doing away with plastic bags almost altogether (i.e. Ireland, China), and many cities in the US are starting to tax the bags to reduce their prevalence. We do hope that you help us avoid bags entirely. After all, biodegradable bags aren’t really very biodegradable in a landfill!

The photos this week are of broccoli and Bill's nemesis ... the potato beetle. Bill is spending quite a bit of time knocking them off the plants and squishing them.

Don’t forget that we’re delivering fresh veggies to Common Ground and the Garlic Press on Tuesday evenings …

On Tuesday evenings Bill delivers produce to Common Ground in downtown Bloomington and to the Garlic Press in Uptown Normal. So if you miss a market or just run out of veggies mid-week, head to Common Ground! And if you need the veggies prepared into a fabulous meal, Garlic Press is right down the road.

We’ll see you at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers Market on Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. – noon. BRING YOUR BAGS!! We’ll also be at the Trailside Market in Uptown Normal, every Tuesday from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Please pass along these emails to any friends that you may think would be interested. We plan to put out the email sign-up sheet during the market season again. Call us at 467-9228 if you have questions.

Thanks!
Mercy Davison

Broccoli Bonanza!

Hello friends!

It’s only been a day since the last blog posting, but I have BROCCOLI NEWS! (I also have to correct the blog address – it’s .com as in blueschoolhousefarm.blogspot.com. Sorry about that!) This just in … Bill has gigantic heads of broccoli that he’ll be bringing this Saturday, and lots of ‘em. You simply must put this on your grocery list for the farmer market.

According to Alice Waters (Chez Panisse Vegetables), broccoli is the dense, unopened budding sprouts of a member of the cabbage family. Terra Brockman’s cookbook notes that broccoli was popular among the Romans. Broccoli is very rich in Vitamins A and C and all of the cancer-fighting phytochemicals in the crucifer family.

So eat the whole darn plant. Stems, leaves, and all. And keep it SIMPLE! Try these recipes:

Sauteed Broccoli with Olive Oil and Garlic (Terra Brockman)

1.5 pounds fresh broccoli with leaves attached
salt
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp garlic, chopped finely (green garlic works great!)
2 Tbsp chopped parsley (we’ll be bringing parsley)

Bring 4 quarts of water to a fast boil. Add 1 Tbsp salt and as the water returns to a boil, drop in the broccoli. (If you have one large head, cut it into a number of smaller stalks, coarsely chopping the leaves.) Cook until the broccoli stalks can be pierced with a fork. (Careful! Don’t over-boil!) Drain.

Choose a skillet that can hold all of the broccoli. Put in the olive oil and garlic and turn to medium heat. Cook and stir until garlic is golden. Add broccoli, salt, and chopped parsley. Turn the veggies 2-3 times to coat thoroughly. Cook for about 2 minutes, then serve at once.

Broccoli Piemontese (Terra Brockman)

3 pounds fresh broccoli
2 finely chopped cloves garlic (or the equivalent in green garlic)
olive oil
salt, freshly ground pepper
white wine

Cook broccoli in boiling, salted water until barely tender. Drain. Saute garlic in enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a large skillet. When lightly browned, add broccoli and spoon hot oil and garlic over it. Season to taste. Add wine and cook down quickly. Serve broccoli with pan juices poured over it.

If you notice any small green cabbage worms, soak the broccoli in a bowl of cold water with a teaspoon of salt dissolved in it. The worms will soon float to the top.

Rare treat -- Sweet Cherries!

Hello Friends!

It’s been a troubling week for vegetables in the national press. First, food prices continue to rise at a significant pace. Then the rains wreak havoc on the industrial farmers with the expected outcome of more price increases. And then we hear that we have to throw out those store-bought tomatoes because they could make you sick. (As if a hard, pink, out-of-season “tomato” couldn’t already make you mildly ill.) What are we to do?? Of course, come to the farmers market!

We will have some delightful vegetables for you this week; however, we will also have an unexpected treat. SWEET CHERRIES! When we bought our house six years ago, we got some fruit trees in the deal, two of which were 6-foot tall sweet cherry trees. Bill has been pruning them every year for six years but we have yet to get more than a few cherries from these trees because they usually get moldy in rainy weather or the birds eat all of them in the course of one day. The trees are now 20 feet tall. For some unknown reason, we actually get to eat them this year. We don’t have many (15+ pints), so you’ll have to be very early to get some. I’m including a picture of me up in a tree picking them. I never climbed trees as a kid, although I did read books about kids climbing trees! I just love it. Especially when you’re near the top and the wind blows the branches around. It makes me feel like I’ve just had a big pint of beer … kind of swooshy!

And this weekend we promise … the sun will shine. Bill said that last Saturday the rain came down the instant the market bell rang. We still sold a lot of food, but we also had to compost a boatload of it. So sad! (Of course, the neighbor’s horse was in heaven with all of the head lettuce. He eats it out of our compost.) Our best quote from last week's market came from a 4-year-old girl, whose mom is a major supporter of local food and local farmers. The mom was telling Bill about the barbecue she was having that night. Bill asked her if she'd still have it rain-or-shine. She said, "Yes." Then her daughter said, in a flight of ideas, "You're local farmers so you'll come to the market rain or shine because you don't matter." We're not sure what she meant, but it was darn funny.

Here’s what we’re bringing …

Sweet Cherries!
Salad Mix
Spinach
Arugula
Head Lettuce
Beets
Radish
Green Onion
Green Garlic
Kale
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Japanese Turnips
Collard Greens
Carrots
Parsley
Swiss Chard

Bill had his first significant setback – he had to till under his first planting of watermelons. Most were dying due to cold weather. Fortunately, he has more in the ground, but it is touch and go with them as well. The cucumber beetles are attacking the seedlings and many of them are starting to die back. Could this be a year without watermelons? Perish the thought!

How do you like this week’s photographs? Bill wanted you to see the new “bottom field” that he’s renting across the road. It’s loaded with soy beans and sorghum sudan grass, both of which Bill planted as a cover crop. Unlike our current 7 acres, which are totally exposed to wind, the bottom field is down by the creek. It’s sheltered from the wind by the row of trees lining Walnut Creek, which makes a nice, creek-y noise next to the field. The soil in the bottom is totally black and crumbly, another major difference from the field we’ve been using. But with all things, there is a down side that many farmers with bottom fields are experiencing this year … flooding AND disease. That’s right. When you’re down in the bottom, there’s no wind to blow away the fungi, etc. that thrive in this sort of wet, soggy weather. So we plan to keep both the upper and the bottom fields in the future as something of an insurance policy – with organic farming, you can’t put all of your eggs into one basket. Disease or pests in one field can be offset by a fine year in the other field.

Bill also wanted to include a close-up photo of his cover crop. (He just bought a new digital camera while I was out of town – I just about killed him.) The land owner, Gail Fisher, let Bill use his vintage (1940s?) John Deere/Van Brunt seed drill. Bill felt like a real farmer doing that!! In the photo you can see the alfalfa, red clover, and oats coming up amidst the dried corn stalks from last year. The bottom field has been conventionally farmed for many years, so we will let it rest and recover this year. What you see in the picture is succession in action. Nature abhors a vacuum, so it’s filling the space with not only our cover crop but also weeds like ragweed and foxtail. The race is on … cover crop versus weeds. This cover crop will be mown as many times as necessary to minimize weed seeds propagated from mature weed plants. It’s an awesome responsibility to tend to 9 acres of new farm land, and Bill just loves it!

We still have Bill’s brother Aaron at the farm. What a bonus! The poor guy decides to spend his “break” from work hanging out at our farm, and it turns out to be two weeks of hard labor. It’s back to his wind turbine job tomorrow!

We’re all working really hard on the farm right now. Today I called home at lunch to see how things were going, and Bill said, “I’m totally behind! All of this harvesting is keeping me from the doing 6 other things that really need to get done!” (He’s harvesting on Tuesdays for the market + Common Ground + Garlic Press, on Wednesdays for the CSA, and on Fridays for the market.) I had to just cut the conversation short and get back to my work. I’ve told him before that I have enough anxiety issues without taking on vegetable anxiety. I mean really. So he called me later to reassure me that everything is actually going OK and that I shouldn’t worry. What a guy (and what a liar!).

Noah got himself a big ol’ black eye over the weekend. My mom’s neighbor girls (ages 14 and 11) were watching Noah and Ben while I attended a wedding, and the boys were extra-squirrely. You know how kids get when they’re A) at grandma’s house B) eating total junk food loaded with who-knows-what C) with babysitters they’ve never met. Recipe for disaster, right? Right. So at some point they were running around like chickens chasing a mouse (have you ever witnessed that? Too funny!) when they crashed into each other … Ben’s noggin into Noah’s eye. The noggin won, of course. The poor babysitters felt so bad. They even called my mom’s cell phone to leave a black eye voicemail. (I didn’t have my cell phone with me. After all, it was a wedding reception in St. Louis . I told them that if something that serious happened to call 9-1-1, not me!) I’m sure they’ll never babysit for us again. Oh well. But back to serious business …

Don’t forget that we’re delivering fresh veggies to Common Ground and the Garlic Press on Tuesday evenings …

On Tuesday evenings Bill delivers produce to Common Ground in downtown Bloomington and to the Garlic Press in Uptown Normal. So if you miss a market or just run out of veggies mid-week, head to Common Ground! And if you need the veggies prepared into a fabulous meal, Garlic Press is right down the road.

We’ll see you at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers Market on Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. – noon. NOTE THE TIME CHANGE!! We’ll also be at the Trailside Market in Uptown Normal, every Tuesday night from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Please pass along these emails to any friends that you may think would be interested. We plan to put out the email sign-up sheet during the market season again. Call us at 467-9228 if you have questions.

Thanks!
Mercy Davison

Can you eat too many greens? No way!

Hello Friends!

Last week’s Bloomington Farmers Market was the biggest we’ve ever had during the regular season! (We made more at the Thanksgiving Market, which was mind-blowingly great.) We aren’t sure what to attribute that to. We brought a lot more food, figuring that those 10:30 a.m. people (you know who you are!) need to have a bountiful display to draw them in. We’ve also heard some people say that the grocery store prices are now high enough that they’d prefer to spend even more money on truly local food. But who really knows. We just hope you all keep coming and buying the best local food available.

We had an interesting collard greens experience at the market as well. We actually sold out! It’s only surprising because people in B-N don’t seem to know how awesome collards are. We just love them. We had one customer stop by and say, “My brother in Minnesota told me I absolutely had to buy collards.” That’s pretty funny when you consider how historically southern collards are.

After the Bloomington market, we had another rainy/stormy harvest day on Tuesday. Preparing for the first Uptown market was a bit bogged down by the thunder/lightning/strong wind. I’m not one to attribute weather to the wrath of God, but some days do make you wonder. Bill’s rain gear is pretty much a Kleenex now – totally soaks through. Honestly, it stays dry for about half an hour and then Bill gets drenched through the zippers, pockets, etc. It’s kind of a good workout – he gets to bend over and pick veggies while wearing a 30-pound, water-saturated raincoat. Fortunately, after all of the harvesting drama, the first Uptown Market was quite good. We saw many old friends and made some new ones. We’re right next to the Crumps and the Ackermans, at the far east end of the parking lot.

The farmhands this year are particularly good-natured about the weather situation. Of course, even they have their limits. After several hours of picking spinach leaf-by-leaf and delicately transferring to plastic bags, the farmhands were sick-and-tired of spinach labor. So Bill decided to be a wise-guy and tell them that he had another cooler full of spinach for them to rinse and bag … Brian, a very nice guy, actually said, “I will kill you.”

Did you buy green onions last week? If yes, you may have noticed the residual skin of the onion set near the root. We intended to remove that, but the heavy rain made it impossible to focus on that type of detail. I tried to tell people at the market, but it seemed a bit unappetizing to use the word “goobery” when describing this onion set issue!

We have a new “corporate customer” – Ryan Fiala, the owner of D.P. Dough in Uptown Normal. His store has one main focus … the calzone. What’s not to like about ingredients wrapped in tasty bread??!! Seriously. So anyway, he really wants to have a calzone featuring local ingredients. He’s calling it the “LOCAZONE.” I love it. He visited Bill’s stand and promptly bought a variety of items, asking why it looked “so much better” than the stuff at the store. Bill answered, “It was hand picked about 3 hours ago.” I think Ryan was pretty impressed, and he told Bill that the first Locazone would be featuring Bill’s Spinach and Green Garlic. Whoo-hoo!

Before I tell you what we’re bringing to the market, I want to take a paragraph to describe a couple of lettuces that people have been raving about: Della Catalogna Radichetta and Cherokee Red Leaf Lettuce. The Della is an Italian heirloom lettuce with a delicate flavor and crisp texture. The Cherokee is new for us this year. It’s strikingly dark purple with a tightly wrapped, bright green head.

(I’m including some pictures of lettuce. The first is a lettuce bed prior to being transplanted. You can see the low, white cushion-on-wheels with a tray of lettuce off to the left. Bill made that so he could sit up and transplant rather than squat or bend over. The second photo is a bed of the Cherokee. I’m also including a photo of hard-neck garlic, which is from a bed that we have not been selling as green garlic.)

Our new item this week will be kohlrabi. I knew nothing of this vegetable growing up, but boy is it tasty sliced up and eaten raw. You can also do great things with cooked kohlrabi and bacon – just channel your inner German and get out a cast iron pan. We’ll also have more broccoli than we had last week.

We always have lots of greens. You know … radicchio, winterbor kale, lacinto kale, collards, turnip greens, radish greens, dandelion greens, and Red Russion kale. We’ve had a hard time describing it to customers, so we recently had an elaborate greens taste testing event in our kitchen with some friends. Bill sautéed the 8 different kinds of greens listed above with the following result: winterbor kale kicked butt. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most “bitter,” we found radicchio to have the most bite. I could go on all day about the American aversion to bitterness, but suffice it to say that a complex bitterness coupled with a good crusty bread with butter is one of life’s true delights. That said, our taste testing group most preferred the winterbor kale, finding it to be slightly (and pleasantly) tobacco-y in flavor with a hint of morel mushroom at the end. And this was simply sautéed in good quality olive oil with light salting. The turnip greens were also highly rated. The others were all tasty as well.

And one last thought … salad mix. It is simply one of our best items. Did you know how long the salad mix keeps in the fridge? At least a week if not two. Many people are unaware of this, thinking it’s like the “mixed baby greens” in the store from Earthbound Farm and Dole. I don’t want to sound too negative, but the Earthbound/Dole stuff is pretty pathetic compared with really fresh greens. It’s true of all the beautiful-but-tasteless greens sold in bags at the store. They may triple wash it for you, but you’re still not getting the real flavor and nutrition. These mega-salad companies grow the greens in extremely controlled environments (too much watering = too little flavor) and then bag them with a complex mix of gases that prevent everything from wilting in the bag UNTIL YOU OPEN IT. At that point, you have about 24 hours to eat it before it totally melts. Our greens grow outside where they can develop their true flavors, and then they’re picked within 24 hours of the market. No comparison.

We're looking forward to Saturday! Bill will be at the stand with his baby brother Aaron. I'll be in St. Louis at a wedding. Here’s what all we’ll have at the market …

Salad Mix
Spinach
Arugula
Head Lettuce
Baby Beets
Radish
Green Onion
Green Garlic
Kale
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Japanese Turnips

Random tidbit …

It’s become something of a joke to consider how many special days/months we have for various causes. (Fruitcake Toss Day, National Oatmeal Month, etc.) And then there are the associations to support these worthy causes. I recently ran across one that made me laugh periodically all day yesterday … the National Patio Enclosure Association. There it was … the NPEA … emblazoned across the mug that I had selected from the Inspections break room. Who would've thought patios (and enclosed ones at that) would have their own association. And the motto: “Help Keep the Patio a Patio.” It made me wonder if patios are under siege in some fashion. (It turns out they are – from the “3-season room”!) I’m always looking for a new source of anxiety. Why not incorporate enclosed patios along with conflict in the Middle East and the faltering U.S. economy?!


And we’ve finally delivered fresh veggies to Common Ground and the Garlic Press…

On Tuesday evening Bill delivered produce to Common Ground in downtown Bloomington and to the Garlic Press in Uptown Normal. So if you miss a market or just run out of veggies mid-week, head to Common Ground! And if you need the veggies prepared into a fabulous meal, Garlic Press is right down the road.

We’ll see you at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers Market on Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. – noon. NOTE THE TIME CHANGE!! We’ll also be at the Trailside Market in Uptown Normal, every Tuesday night from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Please pass along these emails to any friends that you may think would be interested. We plan to put out the email sign-up sheet during the market season again. Call us at 467-9228 if you have questions.

Thanks!
Mercy Davison