I’ve been enjoying my afternoons on the farm stand. People drift in and browse the offerings. Mostly they buy something. Sometimes they ask questions: do we sell pea shoots? How do you cook fava beans? What do you do with collard greens? Sometimes I can’t contain myself and show them obscure and beautiful vegetables, and sometimes they buy those too, as they are a curious and interested segment of the population. I’ve been bringing in cookbooks – especially the wonderful Jane Grigson‘s entertainingly written Vegetable Book and the exemplary Farmer John’s Real Dirt on Vegetables.
Here are some of last week’s farm stand offerings. Chioggia beets are the ones with the exquisitely pretty striped interiors. There’s a dazzing variety of cherry tomatoes, and several kinds of pattypan squash (also called custard marrow) – yellow, pale green (=white) and green.
Tis the season for seed saving and some of that is going on as well. Some of the garlic harvest will be saved for seed. And the plants that have gone to seed are often dried las shown on tarps to keep them from self-seeding in the beds. Once they’ve dried out, the heads will be removed and the seeds culled and sorted.
There’s a fair amount to do in the fields, so the farmers and work parties are keeping busy.
As am I with my apple tree which is laden. Here it is before and after picking a first basket of apples (est. 30 lbs).
Will be juicing some with blackberries, if we ever get enough hot sunshine to sweeten the berries that are tempting us from ditches and hillsides.
