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| patty : Down on the Farm
On North Elliott Road, Chapel Hill June 28, 2009
It turns out that I have something in common with a noted UK entrepreneur, Peter Hargreaves, although, unfortunately, it is not a personal fortune estimated at $506 million like his. No, but we do share a favorite pastime, this down-to-earth native of Lancaster endearingly quoted by the Financial Times as being “always wary of people who are flash with their money”, and I. Our shared favorite pastime is growing vegetables. “…nothing beats washing the vegetables and laying them out on the kitchen work surface,” he told the FT, and I couldn’t agree more.
Nothing, for instance, beats thinking, why go to the store to get something for dinner when you might find something in the garden instead and then finding there the last of the fava beans along with beet greens, the makings of a delicious soup. The beet themselves, along with horseradish that is coming up everywhere, will make a fine beet-horseradish relish. A few days ago a foray netted a mess of string beans and some cucumbers. Yesterday we dug some caribe potatoes and will have them this evening, mashed, since they are said to be better for that than for home fries.
The lettuce is gone of course, too, having turned bitter in the heat but it was glorious while it lasted – sheaves of Royal Oak Leaf, Bibb, and the heirloom romaine Forellenschluss, splashed in red and so named “speckled like a trout.” The favas were a smashing success, standing about four feet high when full-grown and dangling six-inch pods containing large broad beans. I ordered seeds after reading about them in a food column by Rowley Leigh again in the FT (why can’t any American newspaper be as good as that estimable UK publication?) titled “Do yourself a fava.” Leigh, the chef at Le Café Anglais, London, calls the fava bean “one of the most worshipped and adored of all vegetables.” That certainly seems to be true here in the Chapel Hill area. Restaurant chefs bought up almost all of the fava beans from at least two farmers at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market in June, pounds and pounds of the beans
Green peas were another success even though they grew in the unfenced front yard, right under the noses of the deer, groundhogs, rabbits or whatever is eating the beans that are growing there now. We had the peas trussed up with sticks and string and perhaps they served as a deterrent, looking like something than could ensnare an animal. Tomatoes are a bit slow. We’ve had only one ripe red tomato, in contrast to all the red ones at the Farmers’ Market. One grower told me that she started her seeds in her greenhouse in January, which may explain the lag. I didn’t get a greenhouse until March so had to wait until then to get started. Meanwhile, the Sun Gold tomatoes are ripening well enough but I didn’t want these marble-sized yellow tomatoes in the first place. I meant to buy Red Suns, which produce big fat red tomatoes. I made the same mistake last year Sun Gold/Red Sun: Maybe next year I can keep them straight.
Time to go do some watering.
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