farmers' market + garden update

[heresluck]

There was a farmers' market on campus this afternoon as part of the local post-harvest festival: about a dozen local farmers took pre-orders last week and then brought the ordered goods, plus in most cases some additional items for impulse-buyers, to town for the market. Offerings were limited - apples, onions, carrots, squash, pork, beef, chicken

Comments

[batwrangler]

Yay! You're back!

[heresluck]

...I didn't realize I was gone! But hey, yay squash! *g*

[blacksquirrel]

Ah ha - it's good to know that I'm not alone in my loathing of acorn squash. I've warmed to most other varieties over time, but no matter how many times I try to like acorn, it never quite works for me.

I just made soup yesterday and pancakes tonight with a beautiful amber cup squash. They really are incredibly versatile.

[heresluck]

You are most certainly not alone. I cannot WAIT to grow hubbard squash next year. Whee!

[wenchsenior]

1. Acorn squash is absolutely vile. Especially when people add sweet flavors to an already cloying vegetable. Ew. My own favorite is spaghetti squash.

2. Your food posts simultaneously inspire me, and make me insane with jealousy. It would be very very difficult for me to do a good vegetable garden where I live (due to a great deal of travel, small lot size, and climate and soil issues), but your posts always give me that momentary spark of "Oh, but what if I tore up my entire front yard full of friggin Bermuda grass, hauled in chicken manure and compost, installed drip irrigation..." etc. Then I remember the neighbors would likely run me out of the area at gunpoint.

3. I miss Madison, and most especially the farmer's market. :sobs:

[heresluck]

1. Spaghetti squash is good, but not my favorite. I'm right there with you on the wrongness of putting sweet stuff on acorn squash. (I grew up eating it with either butter-and-sugar or -- wait for it -- marshmallows. No wonder I didn't know I liked squash until I was in my twenties.)

2. If you really want to grow some veggies, it might be worth looking into container gardening; gardeners.com has a number of options that might allow you to grow at least a limited number of tomatoes or peppers or herbs.

3. MY SISTER. I miss the DCFM and the East Side Market with a deep and abiding ache. Also, living around the corner from Lao and Jamaican food. Woe.

[wenchsenior]

MARSHMALLOWS!?! GAHHHH!!!!

I think I'm going to be back in Madison this coming month, and I'm already anticipating eating at some nice ethnic restaurant on State St. Maybe Chautara...

Like Tibetan food would ever show up where I live. :is bitter:

[sapote3]

1) The post-harvest sale idea is genius. Our market quits at first frost, which is a little frustrating, because I know there's squash and potatoes they haven't moved yet.
2) God, I love squash. I'm preferential to delicata, though. I don't know if I have a grudge against acorn, I'll have to test this theory.
3) This local-food initiative of yours is awesome. I've almost gotten there during the growing season before (especially when I worked on the school farm, that made it easy). Last year I managed to can enough tomatoes to last through the winter. This year I mostly seem to be living on fig newtons, though. I need to get back in my localvore habits.

I hope you'll post incessantly about garden things; I think those are fascinating.

[heresluck]

1) It's worth contacting farmers directly about squash and root vegetables; markets yield diminishing returns as the weather gets colder and attendance goes down, but most farmers are still more than happy to arrange direct sales. If they supply local restaurants or groceries, pickup can be arranged pretty easily.

2) I like delicata too, but it's the big weird varieties that I love best. *g*

3) This localvore thing is turning out to be interesting, fun, and tasty, which is a pretty unbeatable combo. I don't know how well the large-scale gardening is going to go, but I'm definitely motivated, so -- cross your fingers for me!

And yes, gardening appears to be my newest fandom, so posts about it are pretty much inevitable. *g*

[kassrachel]

I covet your root cellar and your wise & thorough way of handling root vegetables! We go to our CSA twice a month in winter for root vegetable distribution, and I always do my best to store things in our basement (where right now the two cheeses we made last winter are aging), but I've never managed boxes of sand, and as a result by late winter everything I'm storing tends to turn greenish and sprout roots which poke valiantly up toward the light.

[heresluck]

I can't get over the fact that you make cheese! That's so cool!

I got my crates from a wine shop; they occasionally get wines (especially imports) in wooden crates rather than cardboard boxes, so I asked them to tag some for me. They even let me have them for free! The sand is just sandbox sand from the local nursery (some hardware stores carry it too); I line the crates with several layers of newspaper so the sand won't make so much of a mess, spread the sand out on black plastic in the sun to get properly dry, and then dump it in the crates, which I keep against a cold wall so everything stays properly dormant. It's worked very well so far.

[kassrachel]

We've only made cheese the once, last new year's -- we got 25 gallons of raw milk from a local dairy, and made all sorts of things out of it. The mozzarella and concomitant ricotta (made from the whey that's a byproduct of the mozzarella) were both glorious. The feta was a disaster. And the two small wheels of hard cheese, a parmesan and a cheddar, have been aging all year; we plan to cut into them in December. I hope they're good, after all the wait!