Prairie View

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Things I Learned at Farmer's Market 5/15/2010

From Earl Polk:

Earl's grandfather was a Stoughton--a name associated in this area with apple orchards. Today Earl told Hiromi and me stories about this grandfather of his.

When he (Earl's grandpa) was 13, his father was in the hospital most of one summer. There was a large orchard and market garden to take care of, and only the 13-year old and his mother were left to do the work. Every week the boy made two trips to McPherson, an all-day trip, given the 1914-era transportation they had. But when the husband/father got out of the hospital, the farm was paid off and there was enough money to pay the hospital bill.

Earl bragged on his grandfather's extraordinary knowledge of how to grow produce. He had only an eighth grade education. At one time, someone from one of the state universities wished to recruit him as a teacher, but decided that they couldn't offer him a position since he didn't have a high school education. Flexibility was possible, but not enough flexibility to offer a teaching position to an eighth grade graduate.

Stoughton Orchards once provided a lot of the produce sold at local Dillons stores. (Dillons became a grocery chain in this region and later was bought out by Kroger.) Earl remembers Ray Dillon, the grandaddy of the grocery stores, coming out to Stoughton's to help with the produce operation. He would lay aside his suit and tie, roll up his sleeves and go to work in the packing shed. When he was done, he'd wash his hands, get dressed again in his business suit, and head back to town.

Earl has told me before that Ray Dillon gave him a scolding one day. "I was real arrogant," Earl said, by way of explanation, clearly convinced Mr. Dillon knew what he was doing. "I learned all I know about marketing from Ray Dillon," Earl told me another time, after I had complimented him on his attractive handwritten signs.

Earl also told about a lecture he had heard by someone who lived in Arkansas and grew lettuce outdoors all summer long, on a huge scale. Furthermore, he did it no-till. He wouldn't tell the audience what lettuce variety he used, and he must have kept some other details to himself as well. At least Earl and I still wonder how that's possible in the heat of summer.

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I learned that one cilantro variety looks more like dill than like flat-leaf parsley.

Don and Donna had a very attractive display of herb plants, with one dill-like row labeled cilantro. I expressed doubt about the accuracy of that label, and later Brady also did so. But Donna knew what she was doing. She showed me the listing and picture in the Berlin Seed catalog. Later, from the Neffs, who grow dozens (hundreds?) of different kinds of herbs, I got a flier listing all their varieties, and found one kind of cilantro listed that said it looks like dill, and offers new garnishing possibilities. Furthermore, the description said it is slower to bolt than the more common kind of cilantro--something that makes it almost impossible to grow during the season when other wonderful salsa ingredients are being harvested locally.

I stand corrected.

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Roman had cucumbers for sale today--grown in his unheated greenhouse. Lovely.

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Mr. Neff has an uncanny list of things in common with Hiromi: 1) He was stationed in Japan with the military, so he is familiar with Japan. His daughter lives there now. 2) He worked as a biomedical technician at Wesley Hospital for many years. Hiromi had the same job at both Halstead and Hutchinson Hospitals. 3) He is a potter--something Hiromi aspires to, and has prepared for. 4) They are vendors at the same farmer's market.

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Ron is the president of the Market board. For the past two years, his tiny little wife sang the national anthem on the opening day of the market. She is retired, and still has a strong and true voice, with the kind of range our national anthem melody calls for.

I commented afterward that she must have many varied talents, and asked if she had special voice training. She said she participated in music groups in high school and college, but I gathered that it was not a major commitment of hers. (She worked for law enforcement as a dispatcher till her retirement.) Then her husband interjected something interesting: "She grew up in a church where there was only a capella singing, so she learned to sing from little up," he said. We had an interesting discussion then, on how that affects people's knowledge and experience of music.

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One of the vendors across the aisle is experimenting with growing shiitake (shee-ee-tahk-ee) mushrooms at his farm near Sylvia. Hiromi and I once traveled to Minnesota for a workshop on this, but decided it probably wasn't a viable option for us because of our typically hot, dry summers. Also, we would have to find an inexpensive source for oak logs, unless some local hardwood would be a workable substitute. Oak trees around here are valuable landscape plantings--not waste forestry products. Seeing what this man finds will be interesting.

Shiitake grows on dead hardwood, with the bark still intact. When shiitake is "farmed," oak logs are inoculated with spawn by stuffing the spawn/sawdust mixture into holes that have been drilled into logs. The plug is sealed over with beeswax, and the logs are stacked in log-cabin square formations to allow air circulation. During this time, they need to stay fairly moist and cool.

Shiitake is a delicacy in Japan. Most people are used to eating re-hydrated dried mushrooms. Only a few people routinely eat them fresh, although they are delicious when eaten fresh. They have always been considered to have medicinal value. Recently, glyconutrients were discovered to be present in shiitake. One of the researchers from the Minnesota project told me that she has always believed that food is the best medicine, and she valued shiitake because of that. That was before most people had ever heard of glyconutrients, and she certainly did not mention them to me.

We brought one shiitake-inoculated log home from the workshop in Minnesota and kept it in our bathroom till it fruited. This was the only room in the house we thought would be moist enough to keep the spawn alive. It worked, but growing them in the bathroom had obvious limitations--not the least of which was that it was a small bathroom, and the only one in the house.

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Sheila's youngest son, Jon, got hit in the head with a baseball recently and was airlifted to Wichita with a head injury. Earl thinks he's doing OK now, but Sheila was not present today on the opening day for the market. She probably was attending a graduation in the family. This is likely when people have eight children as Sheila does, with only the oldest one or two graduated from college. One of her daughters wants to be a veterinarian, and is in graduate school now, I believe.

"Make the younger kids stay in 4H," the oldest son told his mother after he had landed his first job out of college. "When they hired me, they didn't look at my college grades. What got me the job was all those things I did in 4H for all those years." Interesting. About 20 years ago, I saw the potential in 4H--especially as a counterpart to homeschooling, and with LaVerne's help and leadership, we got a local club organized for our children to be part of, and the club has thrived ever since. LaVerne and Rebecca have stayed involved all these years, and many local children have benefited.

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The balloon man was back at market today, making balloon animals for any children he could find and please. He also juggles. Today I say him catch a toddler's eye. Hand firmly clamped in his chatting parent's hand, the toddler's eyes stayed glued to the juggler. I don't know if the toddler can talk, but even if he can't beg to go back there, he'll know that the market is a cool place because of what he saw there today.

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Mr. and Mrs. Schultz raise buffaloes and sell their meat. Today Mrs. Schultz stopped by and, in our visiting, she told us that they have ten "pumpkins" on the ground. I guessed immediately that she was talking about the rusty-orange colored buffalo calves.

She said her husband sometimes sings "one little, two little, three little pumpkins . . ."

"You're not going to call them Indians, are you?" his wife asks him.

Mr. Schultz obviously knows better than that. His wife is Indian. From what I've overheard, I think Mr. Schultz is wise to avoid antagonizing her. A subtle approach is definitely healthier.

They have a herd of 110 buffaloes, with prospects for many more calves this spring. Mrs. Schultz says buffalo meat is becoming very popular, given the fact that buffalo are never grain-fed, and the meat is lean and healthful, and very much like beef in flavor. It's offered for sale every week at Farmer's Market.

Our state song says "Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam. . . " That would be Reno Co., Kansas--and McPherson County, at the Maxwell Game Preserve.

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Several people asked whether we'll be selling zinnias again like we did last year. One of them was Pam, the county horticulture extension agent. I said we would. But my plants aren't very big yet. For some reason, the first planting did not do well. The second planting looks good, but the plants are still small. Maybe next week.

I'm proud of those people who tried them last year, even though they looked overgrown, and they had no blooms in the pack. Several people stopped by later in the year to tell me how lovely the flowers were. One woman even brought me pictures to prove it.

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We sold every one of the tomato plants we took to sell today. One woman was delighted to get 6 plants of Carolina Gold--a variety I thought I would have to educate someone about before they would consider them.

They were tall, but not spindly, as evidenced by the fact that we had high winds the day after we planted ours out, and they fared just fine.

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I mustered only one bouquet of flowers today, mostly gathered from landscape plantings. Catmint was very pretty in the bouquet, but it doesn't smell great. Maybe it does to a cat. Orlaya has volunteered in one bed near where it grew last year, and the bouquet also contained snapdragons and daisies. I made a mental note to be sure to grow Sweet Williams for next year. I think those would be blooming now, or very soon, at least.

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Harvey had nice big strawberries today, which he was selling for about $4.00 a quart. I didn't buy any at that price, but I don't blame him for asking that for them. Growing and picking them is hard work.

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