Kitchen Garden Journal

People are wondering: what are we growing that’s new and exciting this year? We have a few things that are new this year, but for The Kitchen Garden, the theme of the 2010 season is to buckle down and really focus on the things we do best.

New vegetables on the menu this year include some notable heirloom varieties. First off, we are dramatically expanding the number and types of heirloom tomatoes. Last September, I got a hold of a copy of Amy Goldman’s The Heirloom Tomato and it seriously got a hold on me.

The vastness of the tomato spectrum was laid before me and I was inspired to seek out new varieties. What we have settled on is a collection of about 50 cultivars that represents a broad sample of types: beefsteaks; oxhearts; small, odd-shaped ones; paste or plum tomatoes; and cherries, each in an array of colors. Some new varieties include Amana Orange, Marvel Striped, German Red Strawberry, Roman Candle, Ukrainian Pear, Purple Russian, and Zapotec Pink Pleated.

We are also participating in the RAFT (Renewing America’s Food Traditions) Program this year, in an effort by the group Chef’s Collaborative to supply growers, free of charge, with seeds of historic American vegetable varieties, that will be sold to willing and eager chefs (and other customers). Varieties that we have selected include Boothby’s Blonde cucumber from Maine, Red Wethersfield Onions—an old Connecticut variety, and Gilfeather Turnips, a mild winter root from Vermont.

This year we’re adding an heirloom variety of Italian zucchini to our collection of summer squashes. Arguably the best tasting, Costata Romanesco is an old Roman variety with light green ridges and a huge female blossom. These things get massive if you let them but when picked small the flavor is much more concentrated than other varieties. We will be harvesting this type only as babies with the blossom still attached, perfect for dipping in batter and frying for an unforgettable summer treat: chefs take note.

Another thing we’re excited about this year is kimchi, and pickles in general, (after reading the Momofuku Cookbook), so even though we normally don’t grow napa cabbage and daikon due to low demand, we’re putting in one planting for the fall so we can do a big kimchi push in October.

In our unheated greenhouse we are growing an extra-early crop of carrots and beets that we hope will be ready in the beginning of June. After those come out we will plant the entire house to Middle Eastern cucumbers, those small, rock-hard seedless ones that you find in the supermarket in packages of 4 or 5.

But the biggest news for this year is that we are upping our commitment to bringing you more of the things that time and again, you have shown us that you like and that we love growing for you. We are doubling our bunched, multicolored carrots and onions of all types, tripling our beets, significantly increasing baby new potatoes and fingerlings, bunched herbs like basil, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, thyme, and mint, as well as scallions, radishes, and leeks. We are discovering that these crops grow very well on our soil and that we are very good at presenting them.

So stay tuned. We begin planting in the field in mid-April and we will have products available starting the last week of May. 

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At the Kitchen Garden, we have officially embraced technology. We are extremely excited about our website: now that we've built it, we plan to use it. The more we get involved with internet communications, the more we see how they can further the goals of the local foods and Community Supported Agriculture movements. We are using the internet to get more information about farming out there, and to attract a community of people who appreciate the one thing about local food that is most important to us: the eating.

We farm because we love food and want to share this joy with others. With the Kitchen Garden C.S.A., we want to create a community of passionate cooks, a community that believes in fresh, local food because it tastes better and is simply more pleasurable to cook and eat.  

The connection shareholders experience is through sharing information. The Kitchen Garden harnesses online media and social networking to further the goals of Community Supported Agriculture: a desire for community and a connection to the food we eat, and the people who grow it.

We hope that our website is a resource for cooks, whether they are CSA members or not. We write our own recipes and share many tips and techniques for making tasty dishes from around the world. We now have a Facebook page where you can connect with us and one another, to keep in touch and share stories and recipes. And now that we have iPhones, we can post photos and videos instantly from the field while we're doing what we love.

Welcome to our version of Farmville. Real farming in real time.

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The sap’s running and while it’s too early to tell what the maple season will be like this year, I can tell you that the pancakes at Gould’s Sugarhouse on Route 2 in Shelburne are fantastic no matter what’s happening up in the sugar bush. Our Saturday morning visit was the third for our daughter, Lily - an annual tradition we started when she was one month old - and the first for our 5-month-old, Oliver. Even though we got there at exactly 8:30 a.m. when they opened the doors, the wait was about an hour. Perfect timing is probably more like 8:15.

 The wait, however, is truly part of the experience of the New England sugarhouse pancake breakfast. It’s the only dining experience I know of where you can chat with real farmers doing real farm work in real time while you wait for your table. A friendly chat with the man working the evaporator about his firewood gave me some insight into his business.

There are two major external factors that determine the success of a maple crop, or of any crop, for that matter: the weather and the economy. Since the economy is bad, the local sawmills aren’t churning out as many boards, so there aren’t as many cast-off end pieces to burn. Luckily, though, last winter’s ice storm took down a bunch of hardwoods on the Gould property and they were able to split and season their own windfall crop of wood. Adding hardwood to the mix buys them more time to chew the fat with customers; instead of stoking the boiler every 5 minutes with an all pine fire, they only have to do it every seven minutes to keep the sap at a fierce 220 degrees. 

So in this case, the negative effects of the economy were offset by the positive effects of bad weather.

In other good news, local demand for pancakes seems to be stronger than ever, and Gould’s serves the best around. The secret? Good luck finding it out, but the essence of the Gould’s pancake is moistness. There are no crunchy fried bits on the outside, but who cares? Their perfect batter, whatever its makeup, is perfectly cooked, not at all raw, and when you dive into a triple stack it’s like taking a bite of birthday cake. And if that wasn’t enough, the homemade sour pickles are the perfect foil for all that syrup.

That’s what’s so great about Gould’s: the traditions. More than at some other places where they have propane boilers or reverse osmosis or lots of Bisquick, this place seems like the real deal. No one’s forcing them to spend the summer making all those pickles for the following spring. They do it out of a sense of pride in what they do, and of doing it right, and that sense carries all the way though the process from sap to syrup to service.

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I am just back from a weekend trip to Montreal. Being in that city this time was a badly needed shot of French culture right into the arm. Tempered in good measure by a dose of Canadian friendliness and lack of pretension, my visit was inspiring on many levels.

Going to Montreal is like a geographical slap in the face. That there is a whole metropolitan culture beyond the desolation of northern New York never ceases to amaze me. And even though I am way more Canada-literate than most Americans, being there reminds me of the severity our collective Canada-denial. Case in point: when I think of Northeast cities, I think Boston, New York, Philly, DC. It never even occurs to me to look up. But Montreal is truly one of the great Northeastern cities, and so close.

And it’s now official: I need to go there more than once every three or four years.

I need to be in a place where you can count on good baguettes: not just one or two places, but ALL of them. Can you imagine if bakeries in the US just happened to stock four kinds of paté? People would laugh. Then the place would go under. It’s just nice to be in a place where French things are French and don’t also have to reflect American trends and tastes (or lack thereof). French food in the US unfortunately has that in common with Chinese food.

As you can tell, I carry around way too much snobbery and bitterness. And in Montreal, I witnessed a culture of warmth and openness that somehow doesn’t sacrifice coolness or good taste. Strangers are assumed to be sympathetic. I can’t but think if I lived there I would be a better person.

My trip to Montreal was truly inspiring. Most of all, it seems to have inspired a bad case of city envy and fantasies of relocation. If anyone knows the lowdown on emigration, please let me know.

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