Prairie View

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Things I Learned at Farmer's Market--6/20/2009

A chef from the Blue Duck restaurant demonstrated several wonderful dishes and gave out samples--

Creme Brulee (like a thick custard with flavors of chocolate, caramel, and coffee and a crisp crust of caramelized sugar on top)
Gazpacho (a cold summer soup made of blended tomato, peppers, onions, and garlic with flavorings)
Orzo and stir-fried vegetables: (Black and white orzo with garlic, onion, zucchini and yellow squash, fried in olive oil, and seasoned with freshly ground salt, fresh herbs, tomatoes, and wine vinegar) The tomatoes were added near the end of the cooking time, and the wine vinegar was added last. The orzo was precooked and then combined with the fried vegetables.

The black orzo is colored with squid eggs--something which the chef assured me is flavorless--a trick the Italians apparently discovered and shared with the world. I had never seen this small, flat, oval-shaped pasta in black before.

The chef also told me he hated all vegetables as a child. He grew up in a small Georgia town and ate meat and potatoes. But sometime in his 20s he decided to try anything he was offered. By tasting a lot of different things repeatedly, he learned to like almost everything. And now his favorite time of year is summer, when he has all sorts of fresh vegetables and herbs to cook with.

The chef told me too that during the summer he buys 30 lbs. of fresh tomatoes from Roman twice a week and uses them for cooking in his restaurant. I'm told the Blue Duck is one of Hutchinson's finest restaurants. I'd go there in a heartbeat if I could feel good about spending the money, and if I wouldn't be afraid I'd feel out of my element with the rest of the dining crowd.

On the bright side, I think I could easily approximate at home the kind of food he served there. with home-grown or farm-produced ingredients.

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My dear market friend Cathy was back today, for the first time this season. She and her husband just moved into an apartment at a local nursing home complex. She misses her backyard. I saw it once. It was very tiny, and exquisite.

Cathy and her husband Stan were farmers in an area about an hour north of here. When they retired, they bought a house in Hutchinson. They are now in their upper 80's.

Stan gets up every morning and reads his Bible. Then he goes for a 13-mile bike ride. Sometime in May of this year, he passed the 24,900 mile mark in miles covered, which equals the distance around the world. When he came back, his extended family and a news reporter were on hand for a ribbon cutting ceremony.

Cathy told me that they had an estate sale yesterday, and now their house is on the market. If I know anyone who needs a nice house, I should send them their way. She's not exaggerating. The house is indeed a nice one.

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Ron and Judy from the Partridge area stopped by and admired the grasses I was using in my arrangements: Panicum--Switchgrass--Frosted Explosion, and Stipa--Silky thread grass--Pony Tails. I learned also that they live in a former schoolhouse, and we conversed a bit about other schools-turned-homes.

They told me that Mrs. Ghormley, the teacher at East Eureka, the school a mile east of us, was a wonderful teacher, but she wasn't much of a housekeeper. (She was my older sister Linda's first grade teacher.) Judy and I both confessed that after we were dead and gone, no one was likely to speak of us as wonderful housekeepers, although Judy and Ron both agreed that Ron's Mom had formidable housekeeping skills. I invited Ron and/or Judy to stop by and I would give them some of the grasses I'm growing.

I've known these people casually for some time, but never had such fun visiting with them before. Judy, who worked at that time for the city of Hutchinson, had stopped by my booth several years ago and told me that our board was welcome to print fliers for her to make available at a large upcoming RV rally in Hutchinson. With the rest of the board's approval, I put something together and dropped it off at her office. We had lots of RV customers, thanks to her efforts.

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At the Farmer's Market, Clinton sells homeopathic remedies made from locally gathered herbs. He's a thoughtful gentleman and a retired farmer. He and I have had many conversations in the past, and, afterward, I'm always left with a mixture of admiration and concern.

He's more knowledgeable about local flora than almost everyone I know. For that I admire him. He's also very careful about treading lightly on the earth, and recycles nutrients and promotes sustainability to a degree few people are willing to undertake. I like that about him.

Today he told me he had had a herb walk on his farm last Sunday, and the people who came cooked some wild-gathered food afterward. It sounded like my kind of fun, and I told him so. Then he told me that the last thing he had people do last Sunday is go on top of the house ? and meditate, to draw energy from all that is around them. He told me he didn't know if that would be my style. Oh my. I don't think so. I told him that I see value in meditation but I feel a lot of caution about opening myself to whatever is out there. I believe having a focus for our meditation is important, and for me, the focus ought to be God. He responded by saying he doesn't think our theology is that far apart.

I also learned from him that the tender new leaves at the growing tip of pokeweed stems are edible. After they are harvested, they are boiled ever-so-briefly in a kettle of boiling water. Lamb's Quarter, which we learned to eat from Blanche, our neighbor lady, can be prepared in a similar way.

Clinton makes his medicines by stuffing a quart jar with the leaves of his chosen plants and then adding a half and half mixture of water and vodka (for the alcohol, which dissolves some substances that water can't dissolve--although he didn't say this). The jar sits on his window sill for a week and he shakes it periodically. Then he strains the liquid and dilutes it further to sell or give away. I think he gives away everything he brings to market. He sees this as a service he wants to provide for the community.

Clinton believes that God put plants in every locality that can be used to cure the ills of the people who live in that locality. That meshes well with what I understand about the mercy of God in giving people ways to deal with the curses of living in a fallen world. But when Clinton talks about a third force (coming from nature), in addition to the Good (coming from God), and the Evil (coming from Satan), I feel that our theology is far apart, or at least the terms that we use to describe what is real are very different.

God bless Clinton in every way in which he follows God.

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Harvey had a large tub of green tomatoes for sale today. He was not being wasteful. He was trying to salvage the tomatoes that had popped off the vine during Monday night's windstorm. He has his tomatoes in a hoop house with the structure made of PVC pipe. His tomatoes are trellised, with the upper end of the strings tied to the overhead structure. Apparently, the wind made the structure shake and quiver and bounce up and down so violently that not all the tomatoes were able to hang on. Some of them were large. He also had ripe tomatoes to sell today.

Harvey was gone during the storm. When he returned, he was "just glad the buildings were still standing."

For three years in a row, Harvey's tomatoes had been hailed on. That's why he started growing them under plastic. And sure enough, not one of those green tomatoes looked hailed on.

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Duane and Norma, the Amish couple from Yoder who always bring baked goods and sell them right next to us, must have had a wet ride coming and going today in/on their tractor and stock trailer. It rained almost all morning at market. It was a very gentle rain--perfect for everything except the standing-ripe wheat. Even then, the absence of wind was a blessing for preventing the lodging of the wheat.

Rain today had two benefits. Farm families who were invited to the wedding in the community (Leon and Andrea's) could do so without remorse about missing a good harvesting day, because it was not a good harvesting day. Also, people can go to church tomorrow with no sense of regret about not tending to the harvest. The grain will still be far too wet.

Next week, temperatures are predicted to be near 100 every day, with clear skies. This should cheer the heart of lots of local farmers. Navigating through the mud will still be a challenge, but the straw and grain should dry fairly quickly.

Tonight there was a tornado warning for Nickerson, nine miles north of us. Lowell reported that the clouds that slipped by just north of them looked green. We had a severe thunderstorm warning here, and got about .4 inch of rain, but no high winds or hail. Lowell was helping replace shingles at the church where water had leaked through to the ceiling during the last storm, and the work went right on, with very little precipitation dampening the efforts of the men on the roof.

This looks like the final notable weather event for at least a week.

I've added another term to my weather glossary: heat burst. This is rarer than the derecho I wrote about earlier. When this happens, the air temperature rises very quickly when a thunderstorm collapses, and the air within it sinks, and compresses and heats the air below it. Earlier this week, in McPherson, where the effect was especially pronounced, the temperature rose from 84 to 100 degrees within 45 minutes, between10:42 and 11:31 pm. During that same time frame, the wind accelerated from 10 mph to 29 mph, with gusts from 30 to 52 mph.

The high winds from the earlier microbrust phenomenon occurred because of evaporation and cooling air. The heat burst was because of sinking and warming air, but the effect was the same--high winds at the surface.

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