Kitchen Garden Journal

We have been picking artichokes for a couple of weeks now and they have been really popular with our chefs and market customers alike. 

We get lots of comments like, “did you grow these?” Yes, we grew them. Normally artichokes are planted as a perennial and they send up their flower buds the spring after planting. But they don't survive the winter here so we grow the Imperial Star variety, which produces flowers the first year so it can be grown as an annual. 

But it’s still surprising. We’ve had mixed results with them in the past, but this year we put them in a good spot and they are doing really well. What’s most surprising is how great they taste. Fresh, tender and sweet with no chokes. Simply trim, cook and enjoy.

Artichokes contain compounds the effect the taste of other foods. When you eat them, take a sip of water and it tastes like someone put sugar in it. Take a sip of your wine and it tastes terrible. So, when serving artichokes, choose your beverages wisely.

Here’s a simple way of preparing them:

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The heat wave brought some intense hot and dry weather to the valley last week. While it certainly stressed out a lot of plants and farmers alike, it was the perfect opportunity to get our garlic and a lot of our onions out of the field.

Due to the cold, wet spring we had—which seems like a distant memory now—the garlic harvest started a week later than usual, around the second week of July. The hot, dry conditions that ensued were perfect for harvesting garlic. If it’s wet and rainy during the harvest, the garlic might not dry properly. That was definitely not the case this year, and after a couple of weeks hanging in the loft, the garlic is good and dry and we’re now bringing cured garlic to markets. Check out last year's garlic harvest post for some arty work shots.

After we missed the promised rain last Monday, I saw my chance to field-cure some onions and shallots. So we started windrowing them on Tuesday (where we lay them out in the sun in rows) and by the end of the week they were ready to bring inside. We got to use the onion boxes that we made back in March, which are copies of boxes used on this and many other Valley farms back in the old days. (The one that Alissa & Brian are modeling in this photo is an original one that we found in the barn here. The new ones are visible behind.)

Now the barn is filling up: garlic in all the rafters and onions all over the floor in the loft. Now we just need to sell some and quick, so we can stop worrying about the loft collapsing! Although we hopefully will still have some to sell during the winter time.

Some of our favorite garlic and onion recipes can be found in The Vegetable Pages, like spaghetti with aglio, olio and pepperoncino, Greek salad, and green beans with red onion & vinaigrette. We'll be demonstrating how to make french fries with aioli at this year's Garlic & Arts Festival, Saturday, October 1 in Orange, MA.

The heat  is also pushing along our summer crops and we’re excited to start harvesting some new things. Tiny Padron peppers are a popular snack in Spain just tossed with olive oil and pan roasted or grilled. Once in a while you get a hot one, so watch out! (Martha likes them.)

We’re also psyched about our artichokes coming in. They look great and the flavor is so amazing. So different from the week-old ones we get from California. Here's a link to how to trim an artichoke for cooking. Now we need to get our own page on artichokes up!

And tomatoes are really starting to come in now so stay tuned….   

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Cabbage is just now coming into season and because this year’s spring crop looks so nice, I thought I would share a few thoughts about it. 

First of all, you ought to know that not all cabbage is created equal. There are different types of cabbage for every purpose, and unfortunately, many people’s low opinion of this awesome vegetable is probably due to the fact that people use the wrong kind of cabbage for all the wrong reasons.

Our spring cabbage—we grow a variety called Tendersweet and I assure you it is both—is meant to be eaten when freshly picked. When cooked, it becomes very delicate and meltingly tender. (My mother in law makes stuffed cabbage with some frequency and swears by our Tendersweet.) But I think that it is really at its best when eaten raw.

In fact, cabbage itself is my favorite of all the members of its tribe (radishes, turnips, broccoli, etc) to eat raw.

But I wouldn’t eat just any cabbage raw. Our spring cabbage, because it’s meant to be eaten right after it’s picked, has traits that other types of cabbage can ill afford: a thin, tender leaf with a high water content. It’s very mild tasting; sweet, crisp and crunchy. 

Cabbage grown for long-distance shipping or winter keeping, on the other hand, has thick leaves with low moisture. That’s why when you eat most cabbage raw it has a squeaky, rubbery texture and a funky, sulfurous flavor. Not the kind of thing you want to make into slaw and serve with burgers at a 4th of July cookout. 

In other words, our cabbage is the heirloom tomato of cabbages.  It would simply not endure rough treatment or long journeys but it has a flavor that is truly wonderful and unique.

So, how do I love to enjoy raw cabbage in the summertime? Let me count the ways! 

My classic coleslaw, for one. I wrote up the recipe last year and published it on our site and got more feedback on that than any other recipe. Another perennial favorite is an Asian flavored slaw with roasted peanuts and herbs like cilantro, mint and Thai basil in a fish sauce-sugar-lime dressing. SO GOOD! 

A German-inflected slaw with a mustard vinaigrette and caraway seeds is another alternative to the classic. And easiest of all, when I was in Italy in the summer I was often served thinly sliced cabbage (they call this variety “cappuccio”) simply dressed with olive oil, wine vinegar, salt and pepper as the salad course at pranzo, the main meal of the day.

But lately, my favorite way to eat cabbage is a Mexican-inspired slaw that I like to call chile-lime cabbage. It is amazing when served with tacos (see last week’s post about spring pico de gallo).

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This past week started just like every week does this time of year, with our Monday morning harvest. It takes us a while to wake up and get our heads around what kinds of superhuman tasks we're supposed to accomplish during the week. So it's nice to start with something utterly mindless like picking baby salad mix out of the weeds as the caffeine slowly kicks in. Caroline and Dan look like they are doing their best to focus on what good things have come from all this rain, like the size of our rainbow chard.

By Tuesday we're rushing around trying to get everything picked and washed and packed up for the Springfield market, wholesale deliveries, and CSA distribution. I like to pick beets because they're so colorful. Since I have to always tell everyone what to do, I always tell myself to pick the beets.

On Wednesday it started to clear up and it was a beautiful warm, sunny day. Caroline took a load of stuff down to the brand new Wednesday Amherst Farmers Market in Kendrick Park. I brought Lily and Oliver to hang out there after they got out of school. We sat on the grass and ate a lot of these beautiful Warner Farm strawberries as we caught up with so many friends. If you missed the market this week, come check it out. It's pretty nice. Lots of grass to sit on, produce to buy, and prepared foods to eat from places like Chez Albert (which are made with our veggies!).  

Wednesday night it rained hard again and it woke me up to the fact that I needed to seize every minute of sunshine to get caught up on my tractor work. On Thursday I was able to make lots of beds for planting, which was well-timed because Friday was the perfect day for it. Wet, drizzly conditions are good for some things--like setting out transplants. Heather and Alice dug out the leek seedlings from their nursery bed in the back corner of our greenhouse.

We got them in, buried up to their tipppy-tips so they will make long, white shanks. Just in time for some more heavy rain (WTF?!).

This is a shot from our Saturday market stand in Northampton. It was a busy day and we sold mostly everything we brought. The fennel really loves the rain. We also had the first of the fresh garlic, our Spanish Roja variety that matures a good two weeks before the other varieties. 

All in all it was a pretty good week and, as ever, we couldn't do any of it without our amazing crew. Thanks to Heather, Alice, Brian, Alissa, Dan, Joe and Ben, as well as Dorothy, Bob, Celia and Barbara who look after our kids. You guys are amazing!  

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Nature's first green is gold. At our farm, the first sign of life in spring is always the green shoots of garlic poking up from their straw-covered beds. Garlic is the foundation of practically every dish that we make in our kitchen, and its life cycle signals the passage of time in our fields.

By the middle of May the shoots have taken off; leafy, succulent and sweet, they are now ready for the frying pan, the salad bowl, the cuisinart. 

Spring garlic is a spring treat.  It is available only for a brief period in late May and early June, so now is the time to enjoy its mild garlicky essence in spring-inspired dished of all sorts: spring garlic omelettes, salad dressings, potato salads, asparagus risottos, spinach sautes, and on and on and on. 

Spring garlic is entirely edible. To prepare it for cooking, simply trim the tougher leaf tips, strip off the first layer of skin, and trim the roots.  Chop the stalks like scallions and use them in any dish that calls for garlic.  Since it has a much milder flavor, use twice to three times a much as you would of regular bulbs.  Many people who are sensitive to garlic can enjoy spring garlic without hesitation because it is so mild.  Even used raw in pestos it does not overwhelm.  5 stalks of garlic and a small bunch of basil make a nice pesto for one pound of pasta.

Spring garlic is symbolic of a return to the kitchen to delight in the green grassy taste of the New England spring.  Its natural mates are asparagus, spinach, lettuce, greens, and eggs.

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photo by Candace Hope

Winter time on the farm is the season for planning, and this year is certainly no exception. We have been grappling with decisions that will shape the farm for years to come. How do we continue to build on the success we have had? Should we get big or stay small? Should we rent land or grow more intensively?

Gladly, after much hand wringing, we are giving shape to the future of The Kitchen Garden. And, more and more, we like what we see.

 The hardest decision we faced was whether to rent more land. If we rent more land, we will be better able to rotate and rest our fields. But, more land means larger tractors and new systems, and we’ve barely mastered the ones we’ve already invested in. And once we got bigger machines, what would prevent us from getting even bigger?

No. No, no, no. We like being a small scale farm. We like using every scrap of land we have, often for two crops in a single season. We are proud of the high quality that we can achieve when we harvest everything to order, and of the value-per-acre that we coax out of our little strip of soil.

It became clear that more land would change who we are and what we do a little too much. So how do we continue to grow our business?

The answer: greenhouses and compost. Yes, folks, we think Eliot Coleman is right.

This spring we are embarking on a major construction project. We’re building two greenhouses: a little one for raising seedlings, and a huge one to grow crops in. The big one, called a high tunnel, will be 30 feet wide and 200 feet long, and will have a radiant heating system buried under the soil. It will allow us to produce a lot more vegetables for a much longer season.

So keep a look out for a full line of greens and roots from The Kitchen Garden available from November to May! We are looking forward to the prospect of glazed hakurei turnips for Christmas dinner and baby arugula salad for Valentine’s Day. Not to mention a full market stand of salad greens, radishes, spinach, carrots, beets and onions and peas when the farmers markets open on May 1, and tomatoes and cukes by early June. (That will have to wait until 2012, though.)

(We’re still on the fence when it comes to perennials like berries and asparagus. Any thoughts?)

It’s a huge investment for us. It actually is going to cost more than our land is worth. But, by some estimates, we may be able to grow the same value of produce in the high tunnel that we currently grow on the entire farm.

We’re getting some help from the government. We got a grant from the Mass Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) that will cost-share $10,000 of the cost of the structures. Even so, after doing some fairly conservative cash flow projections for the next two years, the value of the crops we can raise in the high tunnel pays for the whole project in two seasons.

This project will change the nature of our farm and our business. But we like what we see. We are strengthening our core value of being a profitable small farm. We will be producing delicious food for our existing loyal customers for more of the year, strengthening our ties to our community. And we will continue to grow and harvest our crops mainly by hand; keeping the same attention to detail that has brought us so much success so far.

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After our weekend getaway to Portland and the sudden realization that there are just 6 weeks left in our marketing season, we are suddenly illuminated by the light at the end of the tunnel.

This has been the kind of season where we thought we’d never see that light. But voila, here it is, and unexpectedly we find ourselves able to evaluate the season as a whole—both what we have endured up to now and what we might expect for the rest of the year.

I have no complaints. Or at least that’s the line that I’ve been using for months as I coast along on the verge of exhaustion. What do I have to complain about? An amazing and hardworking crew made up of people we truly adore? Weather that, though hot and relentless, gave some stupendous crops? Strong markets, record sales, and solid growth? Considering the alternatives, it’s been a really good year.

So why do I feel so ragged, burned out, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and capable of drastic action? And at a time of year when I would expect to feel some relief?

 I suppose I shouldn’t discount the two children under three that would be overwhelming even if we weren’t trying to run a farm that takes 110% of what energy we have already.

But even taken apart from that, this year, as blessed as it has been, was really, really hard, and here’s why.

Going into this season, we had spent the winter making all kinds of fabulous and ambitious plans for the farm: a new blog, a massive planting of heirloom tomatoes, increases in all our most profitable crops. We were going to grow at least 30% more stuff on the same amount of land as the previous year, without a substantial increase in labor. All of this has come to pass - but I’m getting ahead of myself.

April and May gave us nearly perfect weather for planting. Nice sunny weather most of the time and one night of rain per week. You can’t ask for better conditions to get a lot of crops in the ground. By the first of June, we had well-established plantings on about 80% of our land. And we were really keeping up with things. Our tractors were all running perfectly, our weeding machines were doing a lot of the work for us, and we had the right conditions to get in there with a big crew and do the hand work when necessary.

For the first time in the history of the farm, I felt like I was really getting a handle on how to do this. A word of advice to aspiring farmers out there: the first of June is a bad time of year to pat yourself on the back.

We started markets with a bang at the end of May. We couldn’t believe the turnouts and the seemingly insatiable demand. Wholesale orders were overwhelmingly strong, and we started our CSA share distributions. Very quickly, the complexity of our diversified marketing (historically a point of pride) became insane. Then one by one the field crops started to come in: first the beets, then carrots, squash, cucumbers, onions. The time we were spending harvesting, packing, and distributing all of these crops was ballooning at the expense of “farming,” (the tillage, planting, and weeding).

The first week of July we came back from our vacation. The heat wave had started while we were away. We had set out a large planting of broccoli into dry sand and we were facing a brutal 10-day forecast: no rain and temperatures in the upper nineties for as far as any meteorologist could see. Irrigation was imperative. And the garlic was ready to come out. No weeding happened that week. We were officially behind.

Then the tomatoes came in. July 15 was the first real pick. We picked about half a ton of tomatoes twice a week for the next six weeks. It was very time consuming and it was laid right over top of a schedule that was already impossible. A state of emergency was declared.

One by one, all of those wonderful plans that we had made were coming true. And it seemed that each and every one of them was threatening to do us in. The farm descended into chaos as we had one record sales week after another.

Then the engine of our main tractor blew. Yeah, the one I spent ten grand on. It’s been in the shop ever since.

Trying to maintain the focus to get all of our fall crops in the ground, irrigated, and weeded in the middle of all of this, and with an improvised and slapdash mechanical system, has been one of the great challenges of my life.

As July turned into August it got drier and drier. It got so dry that the slightest bit of tillage sent a suffocating cloud of dust up into the hot wind. Our soil blew away in plumes.

Still, no rain. Worse, every week there would be one or two days in the forecast with a significant chance of rain that never materialized. As a result we did a lot less irrigating than we would have because we were holding out for the inevitable rain. In the meantime, a lot of our crops just kind of shut down, and one planting of lettuce after another simply bolted.  

Needless to say, our spread of fall vegetables isn’t nearly as lush as it has been the last few years.

But that’s the reality of farming. You plan the best you can, and you live and die by forces you have absolutely no control over. I’m not really complaining, and I’m certainly not looking for anyone’s sympathy. This is the life we chose.

I just have to keep reminding myself why I do it. I love vegetables, and this is still the best way I know how to get my hands on the ingredients I want to cook with. 

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This year we’re growing over 50 varieties of tomatoes. About half of these were grown from our own seeds, and half are new varieties that we got from heirloom tomato seed companies. Now that the tomatoes are in full production, the pressure is on to select fruits for saving for next year. I’m about 2/3 of the way through this process, and the seeds are piling up.

Saving your own tomato seeds is really simple, and almost always results in better seeds. With our own seeds, we have nearly 100% germination and purity. By contrast, purchased heirloom tomato seeds can often be low germinating and totally impure. Of the purchased varieties in our patch, only about half have turned out 100% uniform. (This, of course, can be part of the fun of collecting heirloom tomato varieties. We’ve already saved the seed from one “sport,” or off type of mysterious origin.)

Tomatoes are “inbreeders.” Their flowers have both male and female reproductive parts, and about 99.9% of the time, the pollen from each flower pollinates itself, resulting in stable genetics from one generation to the next. This means that seeds from a tomato will produce the same variety the next year.

So to save seed, simply select a nice specimen of a variety you like. Cut it open, scrape out or squeeze out the seeds and juice into a little cup. Cover and let sit for 2-3 days until it ferments and develops a layer of white mold on the surface. (The fermentation process breaks down the jelly-like substance that clings to the seeds.) Pour the liquid and seeds into a fine mesh strainer and run water gently over it. All the pulp should wash away freely, leaving only pure, clean seed. (If there is pulp that hasn’t fully broken down, fill the cup with water. The seeds will fall to the bottom and the debris will rise to the surface. Simply pour off the pulp until you are left with clean seed.)

Pat the excess water from the bottom of the strainer with a dish towel and then transfer the seeds to a plate and spread them around. They take a few days to dry. Transfer to envelopes and make sure you label everything carefully!

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This is a very special year for tomatoes. After two very wet cool summers we are finally discovering the taste of good tomatoes again, only possible with the intense heat and dryness that has defined this summer so far. This year's tomatoes are beautiful, bountiful and so exquisitely flavored that they make your heart sing. One of our favorites, Cherokee Green, is pictured above.

We somehow found the time this week to make our favorite heirloom tomato tart (recipe posted last week) and we were reminded just how much more amazing and concentrated the flavor is when you roast these tomatoes, especially the plum types. The darker colored tomato in the tart is Purple Russian, which has rich, sweet and puckery flavor.

This was our spread at Saturday's Greenfield Farmers Market. It doesn't get much better than this.

Chez Albert in Amherst will be featuring our tomatoes in all their glory at a special Tomato Dinner on Wednesday, August 18. The menu will showcase Kitchen Garden ingredients and offer an opportunity to sample many of our heirloom varieties. Call (413) 253-3811 for reservations.

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Our 2010 tomato harvest has begun. It looks like it's going to be an amazing harvest this year as the plants are simply laden with fruit and we've got nothing but hot weather to look forward to. Above, heirloom beefsteak tomatoes.

Mixed Small Heirlooms.

Sungolds and Mixed Cherry Tomatoes.

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