Prairie View

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Things I Learned at Farmer's Market 7/19/2010

Harley W. says the best way to eat sliced tomatoes is to crumble dried basil over them. He buys fresh basil in the markets in Moscow, Russia where he lives most of the year, and dries it himself. He does the same with herbal teas, and combines different kinds for the flavor he likes.

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One of Hiromi's former co-workers was a pharmacist prior to working in the factory where Hiromi and he both worked. The pharmacy career came to an abrupt end when he and the owners of the pharmacy were charged with selling drugs over the internet without the benefit of a legitimate prescription.

Apparently the sentence did not include prison time because the ex-pharmacist stopped by our market booth today and greeted Hiromi like an old friend--which he was, of course.

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Terry (Grant's boss) says his friend Angel now runs a restaurant in the train station in Hutchinson. I can't picture where in that building a restaurant could be, but it sounds to me like a great idea. I don't think it could stay alive long if the only customers were rail passengers, but that's not a large part of the targeted clientele apparently.

Terry says Angel has a deal with Jan, the "herb lady" at our market. Anything she has left after a day at the market gets put to good use at the restaurant.

Terry keeps telling Angel she should use as much locally grown food as possible. I like that sentiment and like for people to use their influence to convince others.

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Today several vendors were set up to the west of the market building in an assembled-on-the-spot aluminum-framed shade structure. It looked comfortable, but the traffic there was dismal, apparently. People aren't used to having vendors there, and something needs to be done to heighten awareness of the change.

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We got a $5.00 Vision Card (Food Stamps) payment today in the form of a wooden disc that can be turned in to Ron and Jeanie who manage the transactions for our farmer's market. They give us a receipt, and the cash payment is made to us on the following market day.

We also got a $3.00 "check" from a participant in the Senior Nutrition Program. These checks are dispensed by the government to low-income seniors who may use them to purchase Kansas-grown food products. The checks can be cashed at a bank. Not all Kansas counties participate in the program, and I'm glad our county does.

For obvious reasons, neither of these funding sources can be used for flower purchases--only for food.

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Flowers were not a hot item today. Lots of nice zinnias and lisanthus came home again and five arranged bouquets went to church on our way home. I plan to give some of them away to certain people and the remainder will be offered to anyone who wants to have them. I have a "Donations Appreciated" sign with the flowers, along with information on what they sell for at Farmer's Market.

I always agonize over how to handle this. I'm obviously not averse to giving flowers away, but I do have a lot of work and some expense in each bouquet, starting with the purchase of seed and starting plants indoors and then growing them in the garden. Harvest and arranging takes time, and I have some expense in the vases and floral preservative. So I'm not quite generous enough to feel good about people snatching them up anonymously, even if they give them away to others, as if it was a gift from their heart. But composting beautiful flowers is not fun either--better for someone to enjoy them. What to do?

Last year I handed out bunches of flowers to everyone in one children's Sunday School class--a different class each week. That was fun for me and them.

An abundance of flowers during this time of year coincides with a dearth of holidays that are commonly associated with flowers as gifts. Mother's Day and Valentine's Day and Memorial Day all occur before outdoor-grown flowers are available in large quantities, and adjusting the timing of the holidays or the growing season is not feasible. So we need lots of people with a bit of disposable income to fall in love with the idea of a vase of fresh homegrown flowers to enjoy throughout the summer months. Or maybe I need a different hobby.

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Our Fabulous tomatoes are selling well, even at $.50/ lb. above the going rate. People who taste a sample don't seem to bat an eye at the price. We do a lot of explaining what's different about this variety--the high level of furaneol, which is increasingly recognized as the chemical responsible for what people recognize as good tomato flavor. The gene that controls the level of furaneol has now been identified, and breeders are just beginning to exploit this knowledge by incorporating the gene into new varieties. This is done by conventional cross-breeding--not genetic modification in the manner of mass-produced genetically modified organisms.

Those who heard Chuck Marr (retired K-State vegetable specialist) speak at the Gathering for Gardeners in Hutchinson last spring heard about this breeding emphasis. The K-State extension/horticulture website has a page on the subject.

Fabulous is an older hybrid variety that was found to naturally contain high levels of Furaneol. We're also growing Mountain Glory, which is part of the "Mountain" series. It has the gene for high Furaneol levels incorporated into its characteristics.

We think Fabulous tastes better than Mountain Glory. It also forms a larger plant and looks like it will be far more productive in our garden. Both are determinate varieties, but Mountain Glory has almost no blossoms any more, and Fabulous is still loaded with both blossoms and fruit. In general, the Fabulous fruit is larger also.

Can you tell we think Fabulous is--well, fabulous?

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Ervin Stutzman, 88-year-old founder of Stutzman Greenhouse, was helping at Roman's busy market booth today. Also on duty was Jackie, Roman's daughter-in-law. I don't know if she knew she was signing on for that when she married into the family, but she seemed to enjoy what she was doing.

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I told Jenni, Donald's daughter, at market today that their alfalfa sprouts have an astonishing "shelf" life. I keep them refrigerated, of course, but I think the ones I ate last week had been purchased almost 3 weeks earlier--two weeks for sure. They were "lost" in the fridge for a while right after I bought them.

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Sweet corn sells right now for as much as $5.50/dozen. I think Gaeddert's sold a whole trailer load at that price. I bought mine from Duane and Norma for $5.00/dozen. Norma stayed home to put corn into the freezer, and Duane and their oldest son manned the market booth.

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Earl told me he was going to try to do some fall planting today yet, in an effort to get it done before the predicted weekend rain arrives. They got eight inches of rain last weekend, but he hoped that in the sandiest spots he might be able to get a tractor in to work it up ahead of seeding.

We didn't get that much rain, but our soil is not sandy, and I don't think there's any part of our garden that could be worked, even with a walk-behind tiller.

I wish I could remember what all he said he wanted to plant. Black-eyed peas and beans are all I can remember.

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One man who saw our rhubarb asked how you know when to pick it. He said he's had a patch of rhubarb for at least seven years and never harvested it because he didn't know when or how.

I told him that he can harvest it any time that there are still new shoots coming up, but he must stop in time to leave some top growth to replenish the nutrients for storage in the roots so that growth is possible in the following year.

He seemed gratified with his new-found knowledge. That's one of the benefits of interacting with growers instead of only with grocers in food transactions--information n how to grow your own food.

All that wasted rhubarb--seven years worth--a pity, but better days are in view.

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"I planted zinnias, and they're blooming, but they're not nearly as nice as the ones I got from you last year," said one market customer today.

Another one said, "Your zinnias are so much prettier than mine."

I think it's largely a matter of variety selection rather than special growing techniques. I plant Benary's Giant.

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I gave away some Malabar Spinach plants to Donald's family today. Hiromi declared some time ago that we had planted enough in our garden, and so he left the rest in the greenhouse. Then last week he stopped watering them.

Subsequently he repented and started watering them again, and suggested we give them away, or sell them or throw them away. The leaves look nice, but I have yet to eat them. They're growing along the garden fence in the flower garden, and I forget to look at them when I'm out there. Hiromi harvested the sample leaf, and I didn't realize till then that they might be ready to eat.

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I'm developing opinions on rhubarb. What I like is red rhubarb with long, fat stalks. Green, short, and skinny does not inspire me.

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Someone took pains today to verify that our tomatoes were grown outside. "They don't taste the same when they're grown in a greenhouse," she stated emphatically. Whatever.

I can't see why they would taste a lot different if they're grown in the ground, with the greenhouse sides open and a transparent roof overhead. But taste arguments are hard to win, and, when it's to our advantage to agree with a declared preference for outdoor-grown tomatoes, we aren't much motivated to argue anyway.

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One person told us today that he's grown Cherokee Purple tomatoes for 50 years, always saving his own seed. "They're better every year," he told us. I admire such persistence, and I love the idea of the self-sufficiency that planting open-pollinated varieties offers.

Terry told us about a variety he planted one year that produced the biggest meatiest tomatoes he had ever seen. But he didn't save seed, and he never saw the seeds offered again.

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Bill, the bee man at the market, told me today that he and his wife took a trip to Alaska recently. He loved it, and was ever-so-impressed with the vastness of the place.

I also learned that he has six daughters, and he visited them all recently. That's why he's missed some market days.

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"Where's your holey chard? I told you I'd eat it." That was one man's disappointed comment in response to Hiromi's telling him last week that he didn't bring any because it didn't look good--too full of holes. And he didn't take any today either.

Hiromi assured him today that it was growing out nicely, and we should have some again next week.

Chard is a great summer green.

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Telling Harley W. about pesto sauce today made me hungry for it. I listed the major ingredients:
fresh basil leaves, olive oil, garlic cloves, parmesan cheese, and sunflower seeds or pine nuts--all blended into a shocking green puree. It's lovely spread on French bread or as a pasta condiment.

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I toted the onion harvest in from the garden this evening--two five-gallon buckets full of Candy and Red Candy onions. The Super Star had come in earlier. I'm using those regularly since they won't keep quite as well as the others. They're all nice and big--which I attribute largely to their being either mid-day or day-neutral onions--the most ideal type for this latitude. I had planted one bunch of each, and was disappointed only that a number of the Super Star bolted. I think that happened because the plants were larger than was ideal. We used those bolted onions, but had to discard the hard stalk in the middle of the bulb.

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