Life imitates…candy! Picking cherry tomatoes may take forever, but it’s totally worthwhile for both looks and taste. This is newer tiny farm thinking for me. In my concern for quantity, having enough every week for market and CSA shares, I tended to favor things that grew BIGGER. Kinda primitive-practical (and I’m still biased against baby veggies, like tiny scallopini squash—just give ’em a couple more days, no?! :). Only last year, I finally expanded the cherry selection from a couple of standard round, red varieties to a fair mix of heirlooms and modern hybrids. Today’s assortment includes Golden Cherry, Red and Yellow Pear, Ildi, Red Currant, Chadwick’s Cherry, Matt’s Wild Cherry, and Sweet Baby Girl. There’s supposed to be Green Grape in there, maybe they were passed over because they didn’t look ready to pick!
Local food
Fish in the field
A different order of fieldwork: eating up the leftovers! A couple of rainbow trout left over from yesterday had to be used, so I coated them in cornmeal, pan-fried ’em in olive oil and butter, with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, squeezed some lemon over, and took ’em out to be picked at in the field. The trout was joined by leftover roasted potatoes from last night’s dinner harvest, and fresh flat leaf parsley. Fast, no fuss (my cooking skills are so far…basic!). The photo’s kinda funny. I set the plate down on a path to get the parsley, which is growing two feet away, snapped the shot, then noticed what all was in it: a little pigweed growing on the left, some mallow on the right, and grass all around, my weed friends looking on… Rain: another intense storm overnight finally gave us just over an inch (25mm), and then gave way to this beautiful, sunshiny day. Still, that’s only about 40mm in 40 days!
Dinner!
After a fairly lazy day in the field, half of it spent waiting for the ground to dry out a bit after an intense thunderstorm (only 15mm, though), it was off to a farm a couple of miles down the road to get some local rainbow trout for dinner. Then, a quick tour of the garden to pick the fixin’s: new potatoes (Norland, Yukon Gold), yellow and green beans (Indy Gold, Derby), summer squash (Sunburst, Flying Saucer…yes, FS), beet greens (mainly Detroit Dark Red). Nestled in by the beans, the first tomato to turn color, a Stupice, of course, not quite ready to munch, but only days away! And so, except for salt, pepper, olive oil and butter, your basic local dinner!
Rabbit food
Around here, there is a definite segment of the population for whom salad greens, while accepted as possibly “good” for you, are not really considered proper human food. I might even think it’s an old school, meat-and-potatoes farmer thing, though I haven’t chatted with enough farmers to…generalize. In any case, I’m an all-new first generation farmer and to me, salads are great! This is the first dinner salad harvested this year, picked from the early lettuce aisles. It’s a mix of arugula and four lettuces: Simpson Elite, Granada, Red Salad Bowl, and Sierra, each with its own color, texture and flavor. Lots of fresh veggie variety is an excellent concept. :) Tastes good, too!