July 18, 2008

I never had a beet growing up.  It is the one vegetable my Dad cannot tolerate and one of the many vegetables my Mom won't eat.  The only beets I ever had until 5 years ago were the horrid canned beets that show up on salad bars.  I kept thinking that anything that looked as beautiful as a beet had to be good, but experience kept saying I was wrong.  Until, that is, I had my first fresh beets when I was working on Sue and Gary's farm.  Wow!  Beets are good!  Especially good are those first young beets of the season.  Tonight, at 9 pm and just home from the farm, dog tired and mosquito bitten, I was feeling too tired to make anything to eat.  Then I remembered the baby beets I had steamed and chilled, waiting in the fridge.  I slipped the skins off the Detroit Red, the Golden Detroit, the Cylindra, and the Albino - hmmmm - ambrosia....  Really, who needs candy when you have sweet baby beets? 

More great food just keeps popping up all the time now - luscious fresh garlic, three varieties of bush beans, heirloom zucchini, savory hot and sweet table onions, red cabbage, and the first of the sweet basil.  I love this food - it's the reason I started farming - so I could have these wonderful varieties fresh on my table.  I also love that other people love this food - and that I'm bringing fresh, flavorful, and nutritious produce to people I care about!

Potatoes will be coming along in another 10 days or so.  A recent test dig yielded only two decent size potatoes in the hill - but I may have a new favorite!  The Huckleberry potato has a brilliant purplish red skin and a creamy sweet tasting white flesh shot through with pink streaks.  Sue and Gary said they were good, they were wrong - these are great!  Look for them soon!