Lettuce Lovers' Market

Hello!

Thanks for coming out in force last week to grab your portion of the biggest harvest we’ve had this season! I hope you enjoyed all of the food. This Saturday will be another big one!

We’ve been eating mixed greens and head lettuce like rabbits in our house. Speaking of head lettuce, that’s this week’s featured vegetable. It is in perfect condition right now and it’s abundantly producing. This week would be the time to sample different varieties to get an idea of how diverse the world of lettuce is. Here’s what we’ll be bringing on the lettuce front …

Rouge D’hiver – First described in 1840, this “Red Winter” Romaine lettuce was traditionally grown by Parisian market gardeners to supply Paris with winter lettuce. This beautiful dark red and green romaine has crunchy sweet pink ribs. This is Bill’s favorite lettuce – it has an amazing buttery texture and sweet flavor. It confirms his belief that the French are always right when it comes to vegetables (and most other things!). Savor some Red Winter Romaine and nourish your inner French self.

Forellenschuss – An Austrian heirloom translated as “trout self-enclosing”, forrellenschuss is a beautiful speckled romaine with superior flavor.

Cherokee summer crisp lettuce – This summer crisp has a stunning dark red color with bright green hearts and a mild flavor. You can’t find anything like this at Meijer or Walmart.

Red Fire leaf lettuce – This is our bestselling lettuce, and for good reason. The shiny wavy red and green leaves are beautiful and they taste great. From a practical point of view, it is also one of the easiest lettuces to grow, tolerates heat and sizes up well.

We will also have Bibb and many other varieties of leaf lettuce. We have about two weeks left for spinach. (It depends on how hot it gets.) DON’T BE DETERRED by the large leaves! The variety that we grow has large leaves and still remains tender and sweet!

We have quite a few shiitake mushrooms growing on oak logs under our pine trees. We plan to bring some this week. It’s also possible that Bill will be bringing sugar snap peas!

Another exciting development – garlic scapes! Bill will be bringing the first scapes of the season. You may recall these tasty flowering stalks of the hard-necked garlic plants. We sell them in an Indiana Jones-esque curled-up whip-like bunch, which adds to the cool-ness of your overall farmers market shopping experience. We cook scapes like asparagus, cutting them into 1-inch lengths and steaming or sautéing until tender. They’re perfect alone with just olive oil, salt and pepper OR stirred into rice or an omelet.





On the farm, Bill is in the middle of his first cutting of hay, which provides material for mulching our vegetables. Bill recently purchased a 1960’s sickle mower so life is better. Bill found it online and had it shipped from Kentucky to a local farm implement dealer. They were not impressed, calling it a “piece of junk” in the nicest way. Bill replaced all of the blades and various other parts, and it’s working very well. He saved thousands of dollars going with a used mower, so I’m thrilled.

We have also been up to our eyeballs in strawberries. Do you grow strawberries? If no, you should reconsider. Strawberries are not that hard to deal with and they're great to eat (esp if you have kids). We canned 12 pints last night, which is also not that hard to do.



The weather is still a bit weird – I can’t recall ever wearing a light jacket in June before! But it’s great weather to have the boys out in the field. They’re not totally roasting in the heat. (Although Noah decided to farm without a shirt like one of the interns last week – against our advice – and got a nice little sunburn. I don’t think he’ll do that again!) We also had our first incident with the electric fence. Noah ran right into it – knocked him over into a full somersault. Probably won’t do that again either!

Bill's little brother just stopped in for an extended stay, so we will have his help on the farm. He's an amazingly hard worker. It's in the Davison genes. We'll bring him to the market some time so that you can meet him. In the meantime, I am just surrounded by guys. I feel like I'm living in a frat house (minus the heavy drinking).

For the next market, here’s what you can expect:

Head Lettuce
Spinach
Shiitake Mushrooms
Garlic Scapes
Sugar Snap Peas
Beets
Green Onions
Garlic
Salad Mix
Kale
Collard Greens
Arugula
Ruby Streaks
Radishes
Parsley

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy