Sunday, June 21, 2009

Pictures from our Shareroom

Here are folks out in the pick-your-own fields, scrounging for sugar snap peas, snow peas, and strawberries.  I've made particularly fruitful visits myself to the strawberries, freezing a gallon or so for a few strawberry-less months in the future.  Also, with my new ice cream maker I made a batch of fresh strawberry ice cream this weekend, with one of those fancy european-style recipes with an egg-yolk custard base.  It's fantastic.  Next up, chocolate.
I think our chard might be the most beautiful vegetable out there.  We plant a variety called bright lights which comes up in many different colors, red and purple and yellow and white and pink ribs against yellow to green or dark green leaves.  The picture doesn't do them justice; I'll try again.  This was the vegetable of the weekend; I ate it simply blanched and dressed with butter and parmesan and also in a slightly too-rich but still tasty gratin.
I love scallions, particularly in salads, eggs and stir-fries.
Broccoli Rabe (last weekend's vegetable) and bok choy.
Kohlrabi and beets.  Kohlrabi is new to me.  I peeled one today and ate it raw, and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.  It tastes somewhere between a crisp turnip and cabbage, a little sweet and very crisp.  One of the other fellows I work with on the farm eats them like apples.
Our shareroom, which takes up the front third of our barn.  Lots of stuff goes on in here - construction projects, tractor storage and maintenance, farm talks...it's the hub.
A beautiful head of lettuce, a purple romaine.

1 comment:

dldeprez said...

You can thank anthocyanins and carotins for giving your chard its many pretty colors. These pigments aid the primary chlorophyls in the capture and delivery of light to the photocenters where the work of the light reactions occurs in trapping sunlight energy during photosynthesis.