The sun shone on our farm walk at the open house this weekend!
Ah, after a beautiful (and at times maddeningly) warm and dry early October, fall made its presence known on the farm this last week. Last Wednesday was the wettest day of the year with two inches of precipitation falling here. Bare spots on the farm (roadways, edges) went from dry packed dirt to mud in just a few days. We had to navigate our farm anew, avoiding certain roadways for fear of getting stuck (and on Wednesday, several vehicles did almost get stuck!). Fall is here!
It turns out, however, that said mud was very welcome at our Sunday Pumpkin Patch Open House. Welcome mud? Yes! What a surprise! Leading up to the event, we were worried that we’d be rained out (since it was all in all a very stormy weekend around here). But, just as we were setting up the band (Awaken Jane — so very lovely!), the clouds parted, and the sun shone down on the farm. Yes, the sun! (Of course, how funny is it to rejoice so fully about the sun just a week after its departure!)
Awaken Jane — this awesome trio really brought some class to our humble farm porch ... and good music too!
And so, folks came. We drank hot chocolate (prepared when we thought we’d all be hiding under cover, but still delicious!), tasted different varieties of peppers, picked out pumpkins, walked the farm, listened to good music (Awaken Jane — so very lovely!), and played in the mud. One parent joked later if there was going to be a contest for the dirtiest child. It would have been a tough contest, as some kids get really into the mud puddle adventures, ditching their shoes and socks to squish their toes through all that organic goodness. What a joy it was to watch that fun exploration!
Thanks to all of you who came out and helped a Sunday afternoon turn into a bit of farm community magic. And, if you missed it this year, hopefully you can make it next year! We’ll have to find another good musical act (have I mentioned yet that Awaken Jane was lovely?).
For now, we’re starting to really feel that “hunker down” energy of fall. The rainy days had the kids and me scurrying to the art store for all kinds of painting and drawing supplies (which have been the main interest around the house of late), and the crew is enjoying a slightly later start time in the morning. Casey is already asleep on the couch as I write this, because of course it’s fully dark outside. It is here and building — that quiet fullness of late fall. Welcome!
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Brussels sprouts
- Kohlrabi
- Chard — To me, chard feels like a very unique cooking green. So many cooking greens in the fields are of the brassica or cole family — kale, mustards, collards, cabbage. But then there is chard, which is a beta, putting it in a completely different family of plants (the chenopods, a family that also includes spinach and beets). In fact, the plants we grow as “chard” are technically the same species as beets! I suppose through selection and breeding, chard has become a leafier plant and beets have become a “rootier” plant (although chard also grows a big bulbous root too! and beet leaves are delicious to eat!). Anyhow, I always marvel in the kitchen at how chard brings us a novel cooking green experience. And chard itself can be cooked in different ways to achieve different results. My preferred way to cook it is to chop and saute in lots of fat (butter is my favorite) until the leaves and stems are soft and wilted. In my experience, using just fat for cooking leaves quite a bit of body in the leaves, which I enjoy. However this takes a while to do, and some people prefer chard that tastes more like spinach. To achieve that result, add some liquid during the cooking process (we like to use broth) and put a lid on the pan. The chard will cook more quickly and achieve a texture very similar to cooked spinach (which it seems people either love or hate). I also really love adding chopped chard to broth soups — in that scenario it achieves a texture very similar to seaweed (such as you might find in miso soup). Casey also wanted to point out that this particular harvest of chard is very heavy in stem. Chard stems are the overlooked awesomeness of chard when it comes to American cooking. Some people even go so far as the strip the leaves off the stem and send the stem to the compost! We have heard that in France and Italy, the stem is the vegetable and the leaves are torn off and discarded (which also seems like a waste). That stem can be chopped and cooked as a vegetable — it’s especially delightful in omelets or gratins. Of course, I like to use stem and leaf together. I generally just add the chopped stems first since they do require slightly longer cooking time.
- Parsnips — Tonight we roasted up our first batch of parsnips of the season. I am always amazed by this root vegetable and its complex flavor — I find myself tasting all kinds of hints of spices (cinnamon? what is that flavor?). We generally peel then chop our parsnips into bite sized pieces for roasting until soft inside and crispy outside.
- Beets
- Green & sweet peppers — At our open house this Sunday, we presented several different peppers for taste testing. This has become a tradition for our fall open house — to offer different varieties of one food for comparison. Even as farmers, I love the opportunity it presents, because we so rarely take the time to savor the diversity of vegetables in quite that way. In this case, tasting the peppers one-by-one, I was really struck by the variance in sweetness and the different textures of the walls. Our “lipstick” peppers offered very thick juicy flesh in their walls, while the “Jimmy Nordellos” were sweet and had much thinner walls. Always interesting! We’ll have to think of what to compare next year!
- Summer squash & zucchini
- Potatoes
- Garlic
