Pad Thai with bacon, spring onion, radishes, and....beet greens?

Okay, so I know it probably sounds gross, but actually----amazingly delicious.  I rarely attempt beet greens because too many times they have turned out a miserable attempt at cooking a green with not so good of a reputation.  But lo and behold, tonight's attempt took them out of their lower tiered ranking.  We were planning on using spinach, but we got home and had forgotten to cut any, so beet greens it was. 
These are heirloom beets, touchstone gold and chiogga.  We had them quick pickled on the side for an added treat.  Stuart wouldn't let me buy any beets at market so I was forced to turn to our diminutive version.  The radishes were also a treat.  I've only cooked them once before but they were better tonight.  And of course Fickle Creek bacon ups the status of any meal at our house, as do my chopsticks from the Portland Japanese garden gift store.  

Opening Market goods

It was a great opening market yesterday, with most of our vendors showing up to sell their goods.  Lots of customers, beautiful sunshine with hardly a cloud in the sky---a great kickoff to the official 2009 season.  I wish we would have had more tulips color up in the field.  They were very popular yesterday (perhaps because I added an extra stem per bunch?)  and at three ft. tall, they added some glamour to our flower selection.  We'll probably have twenty buckets of them next week, just in time for Easter.  Please let the sun shine next Saturday!!!!

Country folk step out....to country store

So the joke among farmers goes as follows:  Do you want to know how to make a million dollars farming?  Start off with two.  And after getting the majority of our business taxes done this past weekend, this joke is seeming more true than not.  But we are off to a great season so far, and main season starts this Sat.  Who cares if it's been raining all spring and our early summer beds that we'll need to plant in four weeks are still in cover crop???  Who cares that some weird maggot is eating our squash seeds and that mice won't leave our basil alone??  We're farmers!  Deal with it!  So we decided to leave the farm this week for a shopping trip to spend some well-earned cash money on, that's right, farm supplies.  
The whole store smells like a chemical factory, but it is a great place to go for supplies---and we still had a gift card leftover from our wedding (thanks uncle Stuart and aunt Jackie!).  Luckily we didn't need to pick up this scary sign, evidence alone that chemicals maybe aren't so great to be using on your fields.  Stuart paused for a long moment to look at camouflage baby clothes....after a quick picture I had to speak of some machetes I had seen tucked away in a corner to get him to move along.  And oh the cooking section at this place.  Unbelievable.  Tons and tons of cast iron cookware.  They even have a seventy gallon stewing pot for who knows what; you'd need three horses just to tow it.  We spent a lot of money, mostly on t-stakes for our new fence we need to put up around our early summer plot, but no fence, no food.  so it goes.  

The return of the veggies

well, after a long dry spell with produce, looks like we'll have a decent amount for opening market on Sat.  No longer can we sleep until 8 on Sat. mornings, have a leisurely cup of coffee, and read a few pages in the latest novel we're on.  In fact, probably no more novels until this fall, no more listening to the birds sing, no more dancing around while I cut flowers, Stuart won't be tumbling and doing aerial cartwheels going through the berry rows.  We're totally serious from here on out.  This Sat. we're going to have carrots, spinach, cress, radishes, green garlic, and possibly arugula.  And armfuls and more of tulips, anemones, ranunculus, delphinium, and daffodils.  If we're lucky a bouquet or two of poppies.   

Leftovers

We now have fifteen bluebird houses ready to go, thanks to all the great helpers at our bluebird house building party/Stuart's b-day party.  Now we just need to put them up around the farm and hope there are still some bluebirds looking to nest.   My brother Elijah made me these cranes for my birthday, twelve of them all with different origami paper.  I never had the patience for origami.  I even had trouble making stupid paper airplanes.   Love these cranes though, and they were great party decor, along with the flowers we had leftover from market the week before.  And the vase life we're getting from ranunculus and tulips?  Shizaam.    

Coming soon to a farmers market near you.....

Strawberries!!!!   That's right everyone, just a mere month and a half away.  We just got our Gourmet in the mail (a very thoughtful gift from the folks down in FL) and the cover just took my breath away.  I will be making this dessert, a strawberry mascarpone tart with port glaze, though for Stuart's sake, as he is sensitive to wheat, I'll probably make a coconut crust (think macaroon).  Our strawberry plants are looking fantastic---no voles eating a third of them like last year.  A bunch of blossoms that would have become strawberries were zapped in the last cold spell but we think regardless of losing some they will be bountiful this year.  These pics are from last year and the year before---note the gorgeous iris that I have not been able to grow again since 2007.  I think I'm planting too early.  Although we're not looking forward to picking them, eating the berries in any form is going to be a treat.  Come on out and get some of ours at the DFM in early May, we try very hard to pick them at peak ripeness so the sweetness is just right.

Flower pics for market

What's dead is dead....

I treed my first groundhog a couple days ago.  I was cutting flowers in our hoophouse and was walking back towards the driveway when I saw something scurry in our garden.  A big fat groundhog was gallumping its way towards the treeline, pausing every few seconds to peep over at me to see if I was still there and if I was a threat.  I kind of just stared at it in disbelief, while all the things I knew it could've been munching on were whirring through my mind, all the time spent seeding, weeding, planting and planning, the hardship some of our overwintered goodies have endured, all to be eaten by a big fat groundhog who just happened to carouse into our garden on a warm sunny day to look for a full belly.  I quickly decided to run after him in the hopes of seeing where his den was, and after a few feints this way and that, he made the fatal decision to go up a tree.  I yelled and yelled for Stuart to come to my rescue, darting back to the truck 150 ft away to honk the horn, a desperate honkhonkhonkhooonkkkkk and a yell at the top of my lungs, and then a dart back to lock eyes with the pig-rat in the tree.  Stuart was probably 200 yards away, shaking his booty to who knows what in the greenhouse while doing some transplants.  I knew his music drowned my yells, but for some reason I kept yelling and honking the horn with blasphemies and curses in between the yells.  Finally I had to leave the treed land-beaver to drive down to the greenhouse to pick up Stuart, who, only when I was fifteen ft away honking the horn, decided to turn around and see the frenzied state I was in.  We rushed back up the driveway (Stuart:  "You'd kill me if I drove like this", "what has gotten into you?") and YES!  The groundhog was waiting, having been petrified by my wails, breathing some of his last breaths very heavily.  We decided the best course of action would be to ask our heroic neighbor Bernard to come over and shoot the beast, which he obligingly did.  One groundhog dead, how many to go?  

Good dinner for a cold night

I now want to put grated beets on every salad from now on.  If only we could grow them better.

 

Stuart's Birthday---fun times with ringmaster Stu

What a day!  We all had so much fun going out and celebrating Stuart's 31st birthday.  With his traditional birthday mustache, Stuart was looking mighty like a circus showman---he even used some of our mushroom plugging wax to twist the ends---high stylin' and profilin'.  We went to the always delicious Crook's corner for dinner.  Shrimp and grits for me and Stuart, Erin had the cheese pork, and Ransom had the gumbo.  And of course the jalepeno hushpuppies for an appetizer.  SO FREAKING GOOD.  
This b-day card from Erin merited some laughs from all of us, especially since it looks like the chubby baby Stuart.  The inside reads "Oh Poop, another birthday."  Crook's has a great art exhibit up of all these basketball rims  in very different and unique places---they're all really really good shots as you can see from the one behind Erin and Ransom. And I wasn't going to bring up b-ball with the very sad UNC loss---but as I can blame it on Roy's lack of defensive strategy, blatant lack, it's all okay.  ITS ALL GOING TO BE OKAY.  I guess Stuart needed a good b-day present.  After Crook's we wandered down to the wine bar and stayed there for way too much wine.  I haven't been out that late maybe since our wedding.  Prematurely an old fart, you say?  Yes, it's true, but the late night was well worth the lack of sleep and hangover.  Happy birthday Stuart!!!!