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Farm Table in Winter

January 12, 2016 by Mark Dewey

images-1Seems like a cosmic lesson: I’ve just fallen in love with eating food right out of the ground — that broccoli! those beets! — and now there isn’t anymore?

Seasonalism is a great adventure in nourishment and discovery, moving from the May rows of the garden through the November rows like a progressive dinner party where you want the recipe for everything they serve: Oh, the asparagus of it! Fundamental cauliflower! Blissful conjunction of sun and soil and purest water!

And then it all just stops. January comes and I’m supposed to eat, like, Swanson imagesfrozen dinners? My large intestine isn’t down with that. Not to mention my idealism. Talk about a slap in the self-image!

But wait: you live in Virginia. Even normal winters here aren’t very cold, and this year? My daffodils are coming up already.

Turns out that eating in the neighborhood doesn’t have to mean a winter of potatoes. Here are three ways to keep your love alive in winter:

images-3Cover your garden. Spinach, kale, chard, turnips, beets, carrots, and parsnips will all defy the power of frost without your help, and with a cold frame or a floating row cover, they’ll grow right through January nights with temperatures in single digits. In fact, freezes actually sweeten kale and spinach so you hardly even have to dress them in a salad — just add walnuts and a little feta.

Farm in your living room. Germination unleashes enzyme activity that no other stage of images-5development can match, and it doesn’t last very long, so new-born plants are like the veal of veganism. Sprouts, shoots, and microgreens grow easily in jars and trays that don’t require annexes or dedicated thermostats. A few square feet of floorspace near a window or a corner of your kitchen counter will keep you in tender delicacies all winter.

Support intrepid farmers. Some small growers in Northern Virginia work their beds all year. With high tunnels, green houses, and carefully-scheduled planting, they can fill the truck and go to market even in January and February.  The Leesburg Farmers Market operates straight through the winter, and stalwarts such as Quarterbranch Farm, Shenandoah Seasonal, and Honey Brook Farms are there every Saturday, keeping the love alive with fresh neighborhood food.

So take courage, give thanks, and keep eating. There’s still food out there.

Filed Under: Big Pictures, Local Farming Tagged With: Cold frames, cold weather gardening, Honey Brook Farms, kale, Leesburg Farmers Market, Quarterbranch Farm, Seasonal eating, Shenandoah Seasonal, Winter farming, winter greens

Kale as Tender as Parsley

April 16, 2015 by Mark Dewey

Braised kale with pintos and quinoa.

Braised kale with pintos and quinoa.

I ate my kale with pinto beans and quinoa — not a fancy dish, but cheap and nourishing. First I braised the kale with some onion, and since heat softens the flavor of kale, sauteed onion controlled the flavor of the dish. That was all right. I had eaten a lot of the kale raw that afternoon, so I knew what it was trying to say.

IMG_1171When you eat this kale raw, it wants you to know that it shares genus and phylum with cabbage and broccoli. It has that same astringent note you find in cabbage — the one that comes on late, at the back of your mouth, when you’re about to swallow — and the same bright grassiness that makes your mouth kind of curl around raw broccoli.

People say that the stuff in bags marked Kale at grocery stores doesn’t taste like this kale, and apparently the kale that comes in bags has to marinate in something acidic for half an hour before it’s chewable, and apparently the stalks on that kind of kale are so hard that they have to be removed before bagging, or they’ll knock the crowns off your teeth, but I haven’t eaten kale from a bag in so long that I don’t remember if those awful things are true about bag kale or not — Oh, the sweet forgetful bliss of real food!

Come and get your share.

Filed Under: Eat, On Foggy Bottom Road Tagged With: brassicas, cabbage, great country farms, kale

GCF Kale Watch — Week Two: How Long Will It Grow?

December 19, 2014 by Mark Dewey

imagesLast night after dinner I realized there was nothing in the kitchen to pack for lunch today, so I pulled my boots back on and drove to Winchester, steeling myself against the confusion that afflicts me in stores like Martin’s, where every choice is multiplied a dozen times, and the criteria for selection are written in such small letters that I have to hold the labels at a certain angle or I can’t read them, and the angle changes from label to label for some reason, perhaps because I’m tired, or because the different colors make different demands on my eyes; and since I’ve come without a list, I have no sound basis for deciding which of those aisles to brave — 17? 24? — so the chances are good I’ll either buy things that will make me kick myself when I get home, or I’ll put my basket on the floor and walk away from it, bewildered, which I was about to do when I realized that the next day would be Friday, and I’d be checking the status of our kale, which meant I wouldn’t need to pack a lunch, so I bought a box of peanut butter cookies to compensate myself for taking all that trouble which it turned out that I didn’t need to take, and I drove home.

That’s why I like kale.IMG_0906

Since things slowed down here on the farm, I’ve had time to think about how to explain the nourishment I get from eating food right off the ground. It’s true that there’s a devil in me that still likes to defy my mother — “Ish!” she would have said. “Don’t eat food off the ground!” But angels walk alongside that devil when I go out to check the kale, which is waiting where is was a week ago.

I realize that it’s there because Mark planted it in August — it didn’t just appear — but that’s the most complicated aspect of its existence. For months now, it’s just been there, dwelling in the inverse of confusion — no choices to make whatsoever but ‘where should I start picking?’

I focused on the tightly-crinkled leaves today, eating one for every one I put into my bag, like Sal from that book about blueberries, and by the time my bag was full, my stomach was too. That was lunch.

Last week's kale wound up braised with pinto beans, corn bread, and GCF carrots. Soul food.

Last week’s kale wound up braised with pinto beans, corn bread, and GCF carrots. Soul food.

I know enough chemistry, biology, and physiology to understand why the lunch I ate today was better for my body than anything I might have bought at Martin’s last night would have been, and I’m beginning to understand why it was better for my soul as well: because for months now it’s just been there, its goodness contained in itself, with no human input required.

The complicated apparatus of a place like Martin’s scares me sometimes because it depends entirely on human input: so much attention, so much investment, so many lives to keep all those lights shining on all those choices — thousands and thousands of products! It seems like a miracle that all those energies can intertwine so thoroughly and hold their charge so long. But it’s not a miracle: it’s something people made. A lot of people.

The miracle is kale.     IMG_0904

Filed Under: Eat, On Foggy Bottom Road Tagged With: confusion, kale, modern complication, simple food, simplicity, soul nourishment, sustainability, whole food

GCF Kale Watch: How Long Will It Grow?

December 12, 2014 by Mark Dewey

winter kale

winter kale

It’s cold out here on the Blue Ridge. At night we fill the woodstove with quarter-rounds of seasoned oak, and we keep our dogs close to the house. Last week I saw ice floating on the Shenandoah River — not much, but some. So I figured our kale would be finished. You know how greens look after ice breaks open all their little cells? Slippery and gelatinous? That’s what I expected.

This is what I found: IMG_0901

The older leaves have thickened and darkened. Their center ribs are as thick as licorice whips, and their edges have tightened into firm crinkles. The new leaves are a lighter green, and they’re crinkled so densely that they look like coral, and they’re stiff like the wool on the back of a sheep.

It’s often said that cold weather sweetens kale, and I taste that sweetness in some of these leaves, but most of them are more green than sweet. A modest green, with overtones of blue. The younger leaves begin with a flavor you might call nutty, and as you chew they give your tongue a little tingle. There are a lot of recipes out there for kale, but I’m eating it right out of the bag and wondering why you’d bother turning it into chips or soaking it in dressing. Maybe that’s because I just picked it.

How long will I be able to do that, I wonder?

IMG_0845Mark says we can probably pick it all winter. Some people don’t pick it at all until the second frost, apparently, and one source claims that kale can handle temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. How can that be? Not enough water in the leaves to freeze?

I’m inspired by the pleasure of this kale — and the mystery of picking it in the middle of December — to make a commitment: I’ll walk out to the kale field every Friday and pick enough to make a meal. And I’ll report on what I find and how it tastes.

Let’s see how long it lasts.

Filed Under: On Foggy Bottom Road Tagged With: cold weather gardening, frost resistance, kale, winter greens

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