Scallop squash and fresh tomatoes

 A veritable rainbow of fresh produce is available at the DeKalb Farmers' Market, located in the pavilion behind Ace Hardware in Smithville. You can find all kinds of squash, zucchini, and cucumbers, including some unique varieties like striped zucchini, patty pan squash, and white cucumbers. Green bell peppers are in, as are some hotter varieties. 

The first beautiful ripe tomatoes are trickling off the vines. You should never pass up an opportunity to try out a new variety, like big purple tomatoes or little yellow tomatoes, and opportunities abound right now. Beans and corn have been in abundance, but this rain may have come too late for some farmers' crops. If you want to put up fresh produce this year, be sure you get what's in season while it's available. 

Baked goods, mouth-smacking barbecue, canned goods, locally roasted coffee, and luscious handmade soaps and lotions are always available. Flower arrangements, dried and fresh herbs, and some flower and herb plants are there to tickle your olfactory and culinary delights.

One of the unique vegetables you'll find at the market is a scallop squash, also known as a patty pan. These squash are the shape of a flying saucer and are delicious and tender even at a larger size. Try out this recipe with a locally grown creamy white patty pan. 

Grate up the squash using either a box grater or your food processor. Place the grated squash in a colander, sprinkle with salt, and set aside to drain for a few minutes. Melt a couple tablespoons of butter and sauté a handful of coarsely chopped onion just until translucent, about 2 minutes. Toss 1 tablespoon of flour with the butter and onions, and cook until the flour turns golden brown. Stir in a couple tablespoons of half and half to form a paste. Add the squash and cook, stirring constantly 5-7 minutes, until the excess moisture has been released to form a creamy mixture. Stir in a couple tablespoons of sour cream and season to taste with white vinegar, salt, and pepper. Mix in freshly chopped dill or basil, and let chill for at least 15 minutes before serving. You could lighten up this recipe by using milk instead of half and half and substituting Greek yogurt for the sour cream. The original version of this recipe can be found here: “Hungarian-Sytle Summer Squashwith Dill Recipe.”

Patty pans come in many colors, from sunny yellow, to pale green, creamy white, green stripes on white, light yellow stripes on mustard yellow, and even dark hunter green. You can pick them when the squash are so young their flowers are still attached and intact or let them get as big as a dinner plate. Some varieties of patty pan squash can even be harvested as winter squash. 

The plants that produce these squash can get enormous. We have one that's almost 6 feet long! They seem less susceptible to annihilation by stink bugs and squash bugs, but our patty pans definitely succumb to the vine borers last year.

I've heard that if you notice the tell-tale wilting of a vine borer in action early enough that you can cut out and destroy the offending larvae, then mound up dirt or compost around the base of the plant, and sometimes successfully save your squash plant. 

Some growers swear by putting aluminum foil around the base of the plant while it's young, or wrapping the stem with panty hose to keep the bugs from boring in. We tried putting a liberal dusting of diatomaceous earth (DE) around the plants and on their stems early this season.

If you haven't planted squash yet, it's not too late. Now is the perfect time since it's rained a little, and there's more rain in the forecast. Squash love rich soil, so add some compost and plant a squash seed. When the soil is warm and moist, it's not unusual for them to germinate in a day.

Another of the summer's delights, the homegrown tomato, is finally ripe. An out-of-season grocery store tomato and a freshly picked, vine-ripened tomato are as different as Earth is from Venus. There is nothing more triumphant to a gardener or farmer than that first perfect tomato, still warm from the sun, eaten right there in the garden without a knife or a napkin.

Roma and paste type tomatoes are great for making sauce, paste, and salsa since they have fewer seeds and a denser flesh. The smaller grape and cherry type tomatoes make an awesome raw snack. Just rinse and pop in your mouth! Try including the small tomatoes on your kebabs and roast them on the grill. 

Slow cooked and painstakingly prepared spaghetti sauce is a fantastic comfort food in colder weather, but after a long day in the garden, I prefer to just throw together a fresh sauce. I'll use any tomato I have, whether it's purple, yellow, red, or striped; chop the tomato into big chunks. Heat up some extra virgin olive oil, sauté a chopped onion for a minute, add a couple cloves of minced garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Dump in the chopped the tomatoes, add whatever herbs you have on hand, and simmer for just a few minutes. I always use basil, but oregano, thyme, chives, rosemary, and savory would all make great substitutions or additions.

If you really want to can your tomatoes, but they're trickling in slowly, you could freeze your daily harvest and save up until you have enough to make it worth the hassle. You can freeze them whole or cut them into big chunks. Lay the pieces flat on a baking sheet until frozen solid then store in a freezer bag.

A gourmet way to feature your favorite tomato is to make a caprese salad. Get a hunk of good mozzarella cheese—the kind that comes in a little bag with water. Slice the cheese and tomato into ½ inch thick slices. Arrange together on a plate, garnish with a generous amount of basil, and drizzle with a good quality olive oil. Take this simple dish to another level by using an usually colored tomato and a mix of purple and green basil. If your basil gets away from you and starts blooming, you can use the flowers to add a floral flourish to your food.

Of course, one of the best ways to enjoy a ripe tomato is in the classic tomato and mayo sandwich. To make your inner-foodie squeal, use fresh baked oatmeal bread and homemade mayonnaise!

Blackberries, a brilliant summer delight

 

 Part of the fun of seasonal eating is enjoying what's available in as many different ways as possible. There is little else as glorious as a sun ripened blackberry fresh off the cane, but if you know a good picking spot or happen upon a gallon at the market, there are numerous fantastic ways you can include fresh blackberries in your diet.

One of the most familiar and most delicious is blackberry cobbler. There are almost as many blackberry cobbler recipes as there are blackberry canes in an abandoned hay field, but here's a very easy, very basic one. Melt ½ cup (1 stick) butter in a 2 quart casserole dish by placing in the oven as you preheat to 350. Combine 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 2/3 cup milk and mix well. Toss 2 ½ to 3 cups of fresh or frozen blackberries with 1-2 tablespoons of sugar. Pour batter into melted better; do not stir. Spoon blackberries over the batter, but don't stir. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown. I like to add sorghum to my berries, and I add a little vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the batter when I make cobbler. 

Try making your own whipping cream to top the cobbler. Use an electric mixer to whip some heavy whipping cream until it starts to make peaks. Add a teaspoon of confectioners sugar and a dash of vanilla, then whip until it's a little stiffer. Be sure the cream is cold. Some people even recommend refrigerating your bowl and beaters, but I've never taken those extra steps. It's so easy to make, and so much better than the canned whipped cream!

You can also make a fantastic salad dressing from fresh or frozen blackberries. Muddle (mash) a couple tablespoons of berries, combine with a teaspoon of honey, a couple tablespoons of white wine vinegar, and a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil. You can dress up a simple green salad, or even try this dressing over warm sautéed greens.

Light meats like pork, chicken, and white fish pair beautifully with the tart, bright flavor of a blackberry marinade. Starting with the same base as the salad dressing, muddled berries, honey, and white wine vinegar, add spices like cumin, black pepper, salt, and just a dash of cinnamon. Or you could try leaving out the cumin and cinnamon and add fresh herbs, like basil and thyme instead. Spoon over the meat and marinate for a couple hours before cooking. Make extra marinade to serve on the cooked meat.

Another way to enjoy blackberries is to make a refreshing magenta blackberry punch. Using a spoon, clean the skin off a 1” chunk of fresh ginger. Combine ginger, 1 ½ to 2 cups blackberries, one cup sugar, and ¾ cup lemon juice in a blender. Process until well blended. Pour mixture into pitcher and combine with water at a ratio of 1:3, mixture to water. You can add more or less water depending on your preference. 

To make a fizzy punch, dilute with water instead of ginger ale. Serve with a mint or basil garnish. Served cold, this punch is a great way to cool down during a hot summer afternoon. It would be beautiful at a picnic or wedding. And if imbibing your corn instead of eating it on the cob is your style, this punch would pair wonderfully with the brews from Short Mountain Distillery in Woodbury.

Blackberries are part of the group of plant species that transition open ground back to forest. They pop up where ground has been disturbed and goes without being mowed for long periods of time. That's why you'll see them growing along roadsides and in neglected pastures and hayfields. Blackberries are perennials; the canes die back each year, but the roots survive the winter in the ground.

Harvesting blackberries is a fun but delicate task. I wear long pants, long sleeves, solid shoes, and long gloves. It's easiest to pick with both hands free. 

You can cut out the front of a milk jug, put your belt or a string through the handle, and tie it around your waist. It's best for the berries and most comfortable for the picker to go early in the morning, but you should go any time you can. 

Picking blackberries in the summertime was an integral part of my summertime growing up in the South. When the sun is hot and you're surrounded by a blackberry bramble you can smell the fruit ripening in the afternoon heat. I learned by experimentation that the bigger, more supple berries are the juiciest and sweetest. The little ones are more tart but have a very strong flavor. Those little ones are great for making jellies and jam.

It's extremely easy to freeze blackberries. Just pick through the berries to get out any little stems or leaves and arrange in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Put in the freezer until frozen through, then pour them in a freezer bag. You can make any of the recipes above with frozen berries. They're also a great way to pep up a cold winter morning's pancakes or a bowl of yogurt and granola.

Blackberries are an excellent source of vitamins C, K, and E, folate, magnesium, potassium, manganese, copper, and dietary fiber. The intense color of blackberries is due to their high concentration of anthocyanin antioxidants, which support your body's immune system. A cup of blackberry and honey tea sipped the grips of a dreary winter cold can help give your body the boost it needs to heal itself.

Harvesting wild blackberries is a great way to get into foraging for wild foods. Blackberries are easy to spot and positively identify and easy to harvest and process. You can't pick too many, and it would be hard to trample any patch to the point of compromising the next year's growth. Foraging reconnects you with the wild world, of which you are indelibly a part. If you're looking out for a perfect patch of blackberries on the side of the road, you notice more of the natural community of plants that surrounds us, instead of passing it all by in a blur of green as you dash down the highway. 

If you don't have time or can't be bothered to pick these seasonal beauties for yourself, please understand why they're rather expensive. Picking the berries without marring your hands and forearms is an act of grace and rapt concentration, even with sleeves and gloves. The berries are little, and while they do grow in dense patches, it's surprising how long it can take to painstakingly move through a maze of thorny canes as tall as you are. They don't keep very long, so any berries you buy at the market haven't been off their canes very long. 

The blackberry harvest can be a challenge, but it's a welcome challenge. I spend February evenings fantasizing about the sun roasted fruit and fresh cobbler with whipped cream makes. Those sweet culinary payoffs make all the tick bites worth it.

Cabbage and Fermented Foods

 

The beautiful, fresh vegetables are pouring in right now. You can get cabbage, squash, zucchini, potatoes, green onions, lettuce, kale, swiss chard, fresh herbs, cucumbers, and the season's first scrumptious beans. There are always delicious baked goods, canned goods, handmade soaps and lotions, barbecue, and dried herbs. It's almost time for corn and tomatoes. You never know when someone will show up with the first small harvest of those summer gems. Be sure you don't miss out, and drop by every week to check what goodies everyone has!

Fantastic heads of local cabbages are coming out of the fields right now. 

Cabbage is a very familiar vegetable to many people, but that doesn't mean it has to be boring. You can eat it raw, lightly steamed or sautéed, braised, roasted, in casseroles, or fermented, but don't boil or microwave it. Boiling, like with pretty much any other vegetable, boils away many of the water soluble vitamins and nutrients and leaves your cabbage mushy and pallid. Microwaving destroys the healthy enzymes that make cabbage the nutritional powerhouse that it is.

Cabbage contains vitamins K, C, B1 and B6, folate, fiber, potassium, calcium, and manganese. It has cholesterol-lowering nutrients, making it great for maintaining heart health. Cabbage juice is a traditional and effective treatment for peptic (stomach) ulcers, and including cabbage in your diet is a good way to help maintain digestive health. 

One of my very favorite ways to enjoy cabbage is to braise it in the oven with either a dark beer or red wine. You could also stock or even just water as a braising liquid, but I love the rich flavor from using beer or wine. All of the alcohol content is destroyed during cooking. 

For a medium (2 lb) cabbage, quarter and core, then halve the quarters, leaving you with eight wedges. Arrange the quarters in a 9” x 13” baking dish so that they lay flat, barely touching each other. Scatter carrots chopped into 1/4” rounds and sliced onions over the cabbage. Drizzle with some olive oil and pour about a 1/4” of dark beer into the dish. Season with salt and pepper, cover tightly with foil, and bake for about 2 hours at 350 until the veggies are tender. If you use a smaller head or smaller wedges, the cooking time will be reduced. 

About half way through, turn the cabbage wedges. If the liquid is getting low, add more braising liquid. Once everything is tender, turn the heat up to 400, take off the foil, and cook for another 15 minutes or just until the vegetables being to brown. This original recipe can be found at “World's Best Braised Cabbage.”

Sautéing is a quick, easy, healthy way to cook cabbage. The basic recipe is super easy. Quarter and core the cabbage, then slice into 1/2” thick ribbons. Heat a skillet to medium-high heat, add some extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil, and let the oil heat up. Make sure you use a skillet large enough that the cabbage lays in the bottom in just a thin layer. Add the ribboned cabbage and then add about ¼ cup of stock or water. Cover and cook the cabbage for about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

To dress up the simple sauté, you could add other chopped vegetables, like onions, peppers, or carrots. For a wholesome, meatless but fulling meal serve the dish with quinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”), a fantastic whole grain that cooks quickly and packs a nutritional punch, since it's a perfect protein. You can add exotic seasonings like cumin and coriander and pair it with curried potatoes for a delicious Indian-cuisine inspired dish. 

For a more decadent cabbage dish, try cabbage casserole with bacon and cheese. I usually make this dish with leftover rice. Combine lightly sautéed ribboned cabbage and onions, cooked rice, crumbled bacon, and crumbles of a strong flavored, creamy cheese like Blue cheese or Gorgonzola, with a sparing sprinkle of salt and a couple liberal rounds with freshly cracked pepper. Bake at 350 until the cabbage is tender; timing will depend on the size pan and amount of ingredients stuffed into it. Once the cabbage is tender, crank the heat up to 400 or 425 and lightly brown the top of the casserole.

A really fantastic way to augment of the wide range of nutrients in the whole raw cabbage is to make saurekraut or kimchi by the process of fermentation. Fermentation occurs when the sugars in food are broken down, resulting in lactic acid. The lactic acid lowers the pH (acidity level) of the food below the growth range of dangerous bacteria, preserving the food and all its nutrients without refrigeration.

This food preparation and preservation process can be carried out right in your own kitchen. Essentially all it takes is finely shredding your cabbage and other vegetables and packing them with salt in a ceramic or glass vessel and pressing them to release their juices. The juices mix with the salt to create a brine which covers the vegetables. You let the vessel sit for a few days, a few weeks, even a few months, until it acquires as strong a flavor as you desire. 

Lactic fermentation allows many nutrients to be more easily absorbed during the digestive process. Foods prepared by lactic fermentation add good bacteria to your stomach. That ecosystem of bacteria inside each of us is what is responsible for actually breaking down the food you eat into a form that can be absorbed by your body. Fermented foods also help balance your body's pH. The good bacteria absolutely vital for digestive health cannot thrive in a chronically acidified environment. The standard Westernized diet high in animal proteins, processed fats, and sugars leave our bodies chronically acidified.

Both traditional lore and peer reviewed studies agree that fermented foods are a boon to human health. Properly prepared, they are as delicious as they are nutritious. Local author, Sand Katz, is nationally known for his fermentation skills and knowledge. His book, Wild Fermentation:the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture food is a great introduction to the world of fermenting foods, and it's available at the Liberty Library in the old high school building in Liberty.

Get some fresh, locally grown cabbage at the market this weekend, and delve into the culinary craft of creating your own fermented foods!

Squash season

There's nothing like the first summer squash feast of the season. Those golden, tender slices cooked with onions. Or made into a creamy casserole with cheese, bread crumbs or crackers, and a little milk, seasoned with just a little salt and pepper. The succulent, slightly sweet flesh is so versatile that it pairs deliciously with many other garden veggies.

A couple plants can keep a family's table covered in squash every day for weeks. Its versatility is a major boon, since those sunny yellow squash can really pile up when the season gets going.

Summer squash is full of many important nutrients, including B-vitamins, vitamin C, molybdemun, manganese, and fiber, in addition to being a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, which are lacking in the typical Western diet.

When you're selecting summer squash, choose squash with unblemished, tender skin. If you get any with bruises, you should use those first. Unblemished squash will keep in the fridge for at least a week.

To maintain more the great nutrients in summer squash, avoid boiling it and be sure to eat the skin. You can slightly steam, roast, grill, sauté, and even freeze squash and still maintain all its nutrients. 

Skewer baby squash, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and throw them on a hot grill until tender. Wrap up the whole baby squash or chopped large squash in an aluminum foil packet, place on the grill away from the direct heat, and by the time your chicken or hot dogs are done, the squash will be perfectly cooked. You can also just toss baby squash or chopped squash with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in the oven at 325 for about twenty minutes. You can add whole baby onions or thick slices of onion to any of those cooking methods with delicious effect.

To freeze squash, thickly slice the bigger fruit or use the little ones whole. Lightly blanch, then freeze in a single layer on a cookie sheet. After frozen solid, place them in an airtight bag. When you defrost it, put you can put it on the grill, sauté, or steam the squash, and it will be almost as good as it is fresh.

One of our farm's favorite ways to cook up squash or zucchini is to sauté it with some swiss chard. Slice up some onions and squash into ¼ inch thick slices. Strip the chard leaves off the ribs and chop the ribs into inch long sections. Sauté the onions, squash, and chard ribs for 3-4 minutes in extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil over medium-high heat. Add the ripped up chard leaves and cook for another 4-5 minutes. Season with sea salt and fresh pepper and a dash of white whine vinegar. The color combination of this dish is out of this world.

Sauteed squash with chard makes a great side dish that's packed with vitamins and minerals. In addition to an array of phytonutrients and antioxidants, both squash and chard are rich in fiber, which helps regulate the speed at which carbohydrates are converted to simple sugars during the digestive process. Regulating that process minimizes blood sugar spikes. Maximizing your consumption of fresh produce is a great way to help manage diabetes. 

 

You can turn your sautéed squash, onions, and chard into a meatless main course dish by combining it with a whole wheat chunky pasta or tortellinis. The combination of the vegetables and pasta provide you with plenty of protein for a complete meal, but the flavors go great with a meat addition, too.

image from www.crumblycookie.net

Another creative way to use squash and zucchini is to grate the whole thing, skin on, and use it as a beautiful, edible garnish. You can serve it over a great green salad, or feature the grated squash and zucchini as its own salad. Dress the grated flesh with some a red wine vinaigrette. To make the vinaigrette, combine red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil at a 1 to 3 ratio and season with a touch of salt and pepper. Toss with some freshly chopped basil, mint, or oregano for a gourmet touch.

Eating healthy and fresh is easy when there's so much great produce around. Be sure to check out the market this week and load up on healthy, beautiful food for your family!

More chard, our beautiful lettuce, and salad dressings

If you haven't dropped by the farmers' market, located in Smithville behind Ace Hardware, this is the perfect weekend to come on down. We've got two vendors selling fresh produce, so you can get the season's first lettuce, cabbage, kale, chard, and spring onions. The early birds got the eggs and fried pies; they go quick. There are all kinds of baked goods, canned goods, handmade soaps and lotions, vegetable and herb plants, fresh and dried herbs, and the best barbecue, hot wings, and smoked meats you've ever put in your mouth. 

Saturday, June 9th we'll really kick off the produce season with a “grand re-opening”, but there's plenty of good stuff to be had right now!

The fresh produce season starts off with a profusion of greens. I've encountered more people than I can count who have been turned off eating greens by a run-in with mushy, bitter greens. I can't emphasize enough that properly prepared greens are never mushy, never tough, and not bitter.

One of the leafy greens that's in season right now is Swiss chard. Swiss chard looks almost identical to beet greens because it's in the same family as beets. Chard leaves are rich in phytonutrients, which provide antioxidants with powerful anti-inflammatory benefits. One cup of cooked chard will supply you with more than your recommended daily allowance of vitamins K and A, in addition to a slough of other vitamins and minerals, including vitamins C, E, and B vitamins, and minerals including calcium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, iron, fiber, and protein. Believe it or not, that list isn't complete, but it serves to demonstrate what a nutrient-dense food chard is.

Since chard is rich in protein and fiber, it is an excellent addition to your diet if you're managing diabetes. Protein and fiber help regulate the speed at which carbohydrates are converted to simple sugars during the digestive process, which minimizes blood sugar spikes.

Fresh chard isn't tough; you can use both the leaves and the ribs. I am absolutely in love with the bright colored ribs produced by the Bright Lights chard we grow at our farm. The variety of colors of the ribs represents a variety of phytonutrients, so including as many colors on your plate as possible ensures a wide variety of nutritional benefits!

You can use chard raw to dress your green salads, but people with a sensitivity to oxalic acid should eat their chard cooked. Quickly boil the chard, but only for 3 minutes. Pour off the water and season with a touch of salt and pepper and a dash of your favorite vinegar. You can also lightly sauté a bunch of chopped chard in some heated olive or coconut oil and season it the same way. It only needs to be sautéed for 5-7 minutes over medium-high heat. The color should still be green when it's done cooking—never, never brown! Sautéed chard is a great side dish served with pork chops, steak, chicken breasts, fish fillets, or tempeh or tofu. 

Chard pairs remarkably well with tomato sauce, so when it's in season, I almost never make spaghetti without chard leaves in the sauce. I chop up the ribs and sauté them with the onions and garlic that start off my spaghetti sauce. About five minutes before the sauce is ready to eat, I throw in the uncooked, chopped chard leaves with a handful of fresh herbs. After just a few minutes of lightly simmering, the leaves are still bright green, and the herbs have infused the sauce. As an aside—did you know that six leaves of oregano have the same antioxidant content as an entire apple?

Another fantastic fresh green available right now is kale. If the only kale you've ever eaten was out of a can or that pre-chopped abomination in the grocery store, I implore you to give it one more try. 

Kale is a nutritional powerhouse. It contains vitamins K, A, and C, manganese, and fiber, in addition to having antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. Its nutritional profile also includes high concentrations of carotenoids and flavonoids which have powerful cancer preventative properties.

Any of the recipes listed above for chard work just as well for kale. In fact, kale and chard mixed together make an excellent combination. However, my very favorite way to enjoy kale is by eating an entire cookie sheet worth of baked kale chips.

Baking kale chips is the ultimate route to winning over new kale eaters. No kidding, it's as easy as this: Lightly toss the washed and dried leaves with a little olive oil. They shouldn't be drenched, just lightly dressed. Arrange the leaves in a single layer on a cookie sheet and season with a very small amount of sea salt and pepper; add some garlic powder if you're into that. If you're feeling fancy, sprinkle on a little freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Bake in a preheated 350º oven for 7-12 minutes, depending on your oven. You want the leaves crispy and dried but only barely browned. Before trying it, you can't conceive of how delicious this easy recipe really is.

Fresh salads are another delight of the spring season. Lettuce can shake off a light frost, and some varieties will hold out through some hot weather, but by the time the tomatoes are rolling in, the lettuce will be gone. Iceburg lettuce is popular and familiar, but the world of lettuce is vastly more exciting and aesthetically pleasing than those ubiquitous light green heads. You can grow varieties that are lime green with splashy red speckles, some with frilly, curled leaves, heads that grow a foot and a half tall, intense red frilly leaves, loose-head buttercrunch varieties with soft red speckles, iceburg style heads with pink speckles; the list goes on and on and on.

We've all tried the usual ranch, honey mustard, and French style dressings, but you shouldn't limit yourself to such a finite palate. Fresh dressings are infinitely variable and extremely easy to make. I usually make them in a canning jar so I can put a lid on and shake to emulsify (combine) the ingredients and store the leftover dressing in the fridge. 

Here are a few of our farm's favorite dressings:

For a simple vinaigrette dressing use a 1 to 3 ratio of vinegar to oil. Combine red wine, balsamic, or white wine vinegar with extra virgin olive oil. Add a dash of salt and pepper and maybe some dried herbs. Shake until emulsified and eat up! You can add freshly chopped garlic or garlic powder, use freshly chopped herbs instead of dried herbs, or try out grapeseed or sunflower oil instead of olive oil. You can't mess it up, so just experiment until you find a flavor combination that knocks your socks off. This style of simple vinaigrette goes great with a salad that's dressed up with feta cheese, green onions, and chopped kalamata or black olives.

To give your salad a more gourmet, exotic twist, try a ginger, peanut butter dressing. I know this combination of ingredients will sound a little strange, but I absolutely guarantee it'll blow you away. Combine about a tablespoon of peanut butter (the creamy, natural kind works best, but I've been known to make this with the regular crunchy kind, too), a teaspoon of soy sauce or Bragg's amino acids, a plop of honey, a half inch chunk of fresh ginger, grated, a dash of black pepper, a couple tablespoons of white wine or apple cider vinegar, and about a ¼ cup of olive oil. Shake, shake, shake until all the ingredients have combined, and give it a taste. Depending on your palate, you might want a little more tang, so add some more vinegar, or maybe a little sweeter, so add some more honey. I usually end up adding twice as much ginger because I just can't get enough of it. The recipe is just a guideline; play with it to suit your taste. We love this dressing so much, sometimes I'll make an enormous salad just as an excuse to make this dressing.

Since you've got ginger leftover from trying the peanut butter dressing, the next night you can try out a lemonade ginger dressing. Combine equal parts sugar and lemon juice, add as much freshly grated ginger as you want, a dash of salt to bring out the flavor, and top off with extra virgin olive oil at the same 1 to 3 ratio, using the lemon juice instead of vinegar. This sweet and tangy dressing pairs phenomenally well with a salad that's jazzed up with some chopped fruit, like apples, strawberries, or peaches.

Just because most of the fresh produce right now is green doesn't mean it has to be boring or bland. Part of the joy of seasonal eating is enjoying the changing palate throughout the year and becoming a more robust and creative cook. Experimentation is fun. There's literally no end to the number of dishes you can create utilizing fresh greens!

Some delights of spring: chard, kale, and lettuce

If you haven't dropped by the farmers' market, located in Smithville behind Ace Hardware, this is the perfect weekend to come on down. We've got two vendors selling fresh produce, so you can get the season's first lettuce, cabbage, kale, chard, and spring onions. The early birds got the eggs and fried pies; they go quick. There are all kinds of baked goods, canned goods, handmade soaps and lotions, vegetable and herb plants, fresh and dried herbs, and the best barbecue, hot wings, and smoked meats you've ever put in your mouth.

Saturday, June 9th we'll really kick off the produce season with a “grand re-opening”, but there's plenty of good stuff to be had right now!

The fresh produce season starts off with a profusion of greens. I've encountered more people than I can count who have been turned off eating greens by a run-in with mushy, bitter greens. I can't emphasize enough that properly prepared greens are never mushy, never tough, and not bitter.

One of the leafy greens that's in season right now is Swiss chard. Swiss chard looks almost identical to beet greens because it's in the same family as beets. Chard leaves are rich in phytonutrients, which provide antioxidants with powerful anti-inflammatory benefits. One cup of cooked chard will supply you with more than your recommended daily allowance of vitamins K and A, in addition to a slough of other vitamins and minerals, including vitamins C, E, and B vitamins, and minerals including calcium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, iron, fiber, and protein. Believe it or not, that list isn't complete, but it serves to demonstrate what a nutrient-dense food chard is.

Since chard is rich in protein and fiber, it is an excellent addition to your diet if you're managing diabetes. Protein and fiber help regulate the speed at which carbohydrates are converted to simple sugars during the digestive process, which minimizes blood sugar spikes.

Fresh chard isn't tough; you can use both the leaves and the ribs. I am absolutely in love with the bright colored ribs produced by the Bright Lights chard we grow at our farm. The variety of colors of the ribs represents a variety of phytonutrients, so including as many colors on your plate as possible ensures a wide variety of nutritional benefits!

You can use chard raw to dress your green salads, but people with a sensitivity to oxalic acid should eat their chard cooked. Quickly boil the chard, but only for 3 minutes. Pour off the water and season with a touch of salt and pepper and a dash of your favorite vinegar. You can also lightly sauté a bunch of chopped chard in some heated olive or coconut oil and season it the same way. It only needs to be sautéed for 5-7 minutes over medium-high heat. The color should still be green when it's done cooking—never, never brown! Sautéed chard is a great side dish served with pork chops, steak, chicken breasts, fish fillets, or tempeh or tofu. 

Chard pairs remarkably well with tomato sauce, so when it's in season, I almost never make spaghetti without chard leaves in the sauce. I chop up the ribs and sauté them with the onions and garlic that start off my spaghetti sauce. About five minutes before the sauce is ready to eat, I throw in the uncooked, chopped chard leaves with a handful of fresh herbs. After just a few minutes of lightly simmering, the leaves are still bright green, and the herbs have infused the sauce. As an aside—did you know that six leaves of oregano have the same antioxidant content as an entire apple?

Another fantastic fresh green available right now is kale. If the only kale you've ever eaten was out of a can or that pre-chopped abomination in the grocery store, I implore you to give it one more try. 

Kale is a nutritional powerhouse. It contains vitamins K, A, and C, manganese, and fiber, in addition to having antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. Its nutritional profile also includes high concentrations of carotenoids and flavonoids which have powerful cancer preventative properties.

Any of the recipes listed above for chard work just as well for kale. In fact, kale and chard mixed together make an excellent combination. However, my very favorite way to enjoy kale is by eating an entire cookie sheet worth of baked kale chips.

Baking kale chips is the ultimate route to winning over new kale eaters. No kidding, it's as easy as this: Lightly toss the washed and dried leaves with a little olive oil. They shouldn't be drenched, just lightly dressed. Arrange the leaves in a single layer on a cookie sheet and season with a very small amount of sea salt and pepper; add some garlic powder if you're into that. If you're feeling fancy, sprinkle on a little freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Bake in a preheated 350º oven for 7-12 minutes, depending on your oven. You want the leaves crispy and dried but only barely browned. Before trying it, you can't conceive of how delicious this easy recipe really is.

Fresh salads are another delight of the spring season. Lettuce can shake off a light frost, and some varieties will hold out through some hot weather, but by the time the tomatoes are rolling in, the lettuce will be gone. Iceburg lettuce is popular and familiar, but the world of lettuce is vastly more exciting and aesthetically pleasing than those ubiquitous light green heads. You can grow varieties that are lime green with splashy red speckles, some with frilly, curled leaves, heads that grow a foot and a half tall, intense red frilly leaves, loose-head buttercrunch varieties with soft red speckles, iceburg style heads with pink speckles; the list goes on and on and on.

We've all tried the usual ranch, honey mustard, and French style dressings, but you shouldn't limit yourself to such a finite palate. Fresh dressings are infinitely variable and extremely easy to make. I usually make them in a canning jar so I can put a lid on and shake to emulsify (combine) the ingredients and store the leftover dressing in the fridge. 

Here are a few of our farm's favorite dressings:

For a simple vinaigrette dressing use a 1 to 3 ratio of vinegar to oil. Combine red wine, balsamic, or white wine vinegar with extra virgin olive oil. Add a dash of salt and pepper and maybe some dried herbs. Shake until emulsified and eat up! You can add freshly chopped garlic or garlic powder, use freshly chopped herbs instead of dried herbs, or try out grapeseed or sunflower oil instead of olive oil. You can't mess it up, so just experiment until you find a flavor combination that knocks your socks off. This style of simple vinaigrette goes great with a salad that's dressed up with feta cheese, green onions, and chopped kalamata or black olives.

To give your salad a more gourmet, exotic twist, try a ginger, peanut butter dressing. I know this combination of ingredients will sound a little strange, but I absolutely guarantee it'll blow you away. Combine about a tablespoon of peanut butter (the creamy, natural kind works best, but I've been known to make this with the regular crunchy kind, too), a teaspoon of soy sauce or Bragg's amino acids, a plop of honey, a half inch chunk of fresh ginger, grated, a dash of black pepper, a couple tablespoons of white wine or apple cider vinegar, and about a ¼ cup of olive oil. Shake, shake, shake until all the ingredients have combined, and give it a taste. Depending on your palate, you might want a little more tang, so add some more vinegar, or maybe a little sweeter, so add some more honey. I usually end up adding twice as much ginger because I just can't get enough of it. The recipe is just a guideline; play with it to suit your taste. We love this dressing so much, sometimes I'll make an enormous salad just as an excuse to make this dressing.

Since you've got ginger leftover from trying the peanut butter dressing, the next night you can try out a lemonade ginger dressing. Combine equal parts sugar and lemon juice, add as much freshly grated ginger as you want, a dash of salt to bring out the flavor, and top off with extra virgin olive oil at the same 1 to 3 ratio, using the lemon juice instead of vinegar. This sweet and tangy dressing pairs phenomenally well with a salad that's jazzed up with some chopped fruit, like apples, strawberries, or peaches.

Just because most of the fresh produce right now is green doesn't mean it has to be boring or bland. Part of the joy of seasonal eating is enjoying the changing palate throughout the year and becoming a more robust and creative cook. Experimentation is fun. There's literally no end to the number of dishes you can create utilizing fresh greens!

Planting those babies

Written by: Karley Thompson

for the DeKalb County Times

The market was bustling last week! If you want to try those chicken thighs and Boston butts everyone is talking about, you'll have to get there pretty early. Fried pies, baked goods, granola, soaps, lotions, salsa, pork rinds, fresh and dried herbs, early season lettuce, kale, and garlic scapes will all be available this week. You can also pick up herb, flowers, squash, and tomato plants.

The market will have a grand re-opening event on Saturday, June 9^th! Most of the produce vendors will have fresh veggies by then, and then we'll really get the 2012 season cranking. 

It's the perfect time for planting those veggie bedding plants. The soil is good and moist from this past weekend's rain, and unless it all peters out before it gets here, there's a chance for more rain the forecast. We usually plant in the late afternoon or early evening, after the heat of the day has passed and the garden is shady, or on cloudy days. It can be hard on the little plants if you put them out on a hot, bright sunny day. If that's the only time you can get out in the garden, you can ease the trauma by being very gentle with their roots, giving them a good drink, and maybe providing a little shade that first day.

Some plants are hardier than others, as far as how much abuse they'll tolerate and still give you good production. For example, plants in the cucurbitaceae family, like squash, melon, and cucumber, are extremely tender. They are particularly unappreciative of having their roots disturbed, and they don't perform very well after becoming root bound in pots. We do transplant some squash and cucumbers, but we are extremely gentle when handling their roots balls. We're also sure to get them in ground by the time they have their fourth set of true leaves. These plants practically grow before your eyes, and their roots grow even faster. That's why most people skip the delicate transplanting and just direct sow these crops.

The cucurbitaceae are nutrient hogs and will pretty much take as much compost as you can give them. These are often the volunteers that pop up from compost piles, or wherever the chickens drop the seeds. Since they grow in compost piles, it's probably not surprising that they'll grow in a hill of mounded compost. Most gardeners plant two or three seeds per hill and thin to the strongest plant. Cucumbers, vining squash, and even melons appreciate being trellised, but be sure to use sturdy materials. For the heavier fruit, you'll even need to make a sling.

Not all plants needs such tenderness, though. The tomato plant can take a lot, perk up, and then produce a lot. Last year we got way behind on our transplanting to-do list and ended up with dozens of tomato plants that were floppy, almost two feet tall, and still in their 4 inch containers. We picked off the suckers and leaves up about 75% of the stem, used a post hole digger to dig some massive holes, and laid the plants on their sides. Once we filled in the dirt, only about 25% of the plants were left above the soil. Those plants ended up being over 7 feet tall and continued producing through those two scorching months without rain and without irrigation. When we pulled the plants up at the end of the season, we could see that the entire buried stem had sprouted a 

serious root system. 

Peppers can also tolerate quite a bit of abuse, once temperatures are comfortably warm. Small pepper plants will sulk after cool nights and will just huddle down and not grow very quickly if the days aren't warm enough. Not to worry; the weather right now is perfect, so get those pepper plants outside. The stems of pepper plants will also sprout roots, so we also bury the peppers deeper than they are planted in their containers. 

We're experimenting with the peppers this year. We buried up to 75% of the stem of some of the peppers, and others we only buried about 25%. I'll report later in the season and let you know how the experiment is going. 

Peppers and tomatoes are heavy feeders, so they benefit from soils with a lot of organic matter. Both of these nightshade cousins may develop blossom end rot, drop their flowers, or produce cracked fruit with uneven watering, so we always use a thick layer of organic mulch to keep in the moisture. As I've mentioned before, we use old hay. Many gardeners prefer not to use hay because of the weed seeds, but it is locally available and provides drastic moisture retention and soil tilth improvement, so we deal with the weeds.

Many gardeners find that foliar feedings of an Epsom salt dilution are beneficial to pepper and tomato plants. Epsom salt contains magnesium and sulfur in a highly soluble form. Lime is a common garden amendment to the highly weathered, acidic clay soils in our region, since lime is composed of calcium carbonate, which is a base. In addition to raising the pH, lime adds calcium to the soil, but soil calcium and magnesium must be in the proper balance in order for the plants to be able to utilize the available calcium. Since the magnesium in Epsom salts is highly soluble, it provides a boost of nutrients to the plants. 

One tablespoon to a gallon is all you need for a good Epsom salt foliar feeding. Foliar feeding means fertilizing your plants by spraying a solution on their leaves. Very early morning is the best time for foliar feeding. You don't want to spray the solution during the heat of a sunny day because the plants need to be able to respire to tolerate the heat. Many gardening advice sources advise not to spray in the evenings, so as to not encourage mildew problems. That being said, we almost always spray in the evenings because that's when we get around to it. Thus far, we haven't had any mildew problems. 

If you're concerned or just curious about the nutrient levels in your soils, you can have your soil tested through the local extension office or a private lab. If you're not sure if your pepper and tomato plants would benefit from an Epsom salt feeding, you can always do an experiment and only spray one or two of your plants and compare their performance over a couple days or weeks.

Part of the fun of gardening is experimentation, and all the exercise you get from growing all that fresh, healthy produce is a great perk. Experimenting with new methods and unusual varieties keeps each year exciting and each iteration of your garden novel. Coming up with new trellising ideas, or garden layouts, or hypotheses as to why one plant out performed another or the beans were better last year than this year exercises your mind, and you can't help but do dozens of repetitions of glute, hamstring, and quadricept exercises out in your garden!

Garlic scapes

image from Fifth Season Garden Co

This weekend at the market you'll be able to pick up handmade soaps and lotions, fried pies, baked goods, barbecue, smoked meats, and tomato and other summer vegetable plants. If you're putting plants in the ground right now, be sure you're prepared to give them some water. The soil is dry, and the days are hot. I recently read that our area's average rainfall in April is around 4 inches, but we only received two this year. It's hard to imagine that this time last year, the soil was water logged, and we were worried about the creek flooding our garden.

It seems pretty much everything is happening a month early this year. The dogwoods, mayapples, blackberries, and redbuds were all early. We were eating mounds of watercress well into May last year, but this year it's already become very spicy and is flowering. We are still using the flowers to spice up and beautify our salads. Our elephant garlic (which is actually a leek) sent up its scapes over a week ago already, and I saw the first scapes on our hard neck garlic at the beginning of this week. Those are a month early, too.

Garlic scapes are the flowering stalk sent up by each head of garlic. Each clove of garlic that you plant and mulch in the fall will produce a head of cloves, and each of those heads will send up a scape. Some people leave the scapes on the plant, and some people who cut the scapes just throw them away. Cutting the scapes encourages development of bigger cloves, and scapes are absolutely delicious.

You can cook the scapes the same way you cook green beans. They have the same crisp, crunchy texture of a fresh green bean with the flavor and kick of raw garlic. You can sauté the scapes in some butter and olive oil, which will tone down their punch a little, and dress them with just a touch of salt. You can chop and add them to stews and soups just before serving for a sharp, raw garlic accent or add them ten minutes before serving to mellow the flavor a bit.

We let our scapes grow until they develop their first curl. They are usually 6 or 7 inches long at that point, but the flowering head is still firmly encased. You can pick them later, but the lower part of the stalk will get tough as the scape gets taller. The case around the flowering head will also get a little tougher as the plant matures, but you can always just snip it off. If the garlic goes to blossom, you can use the blossoms raw to add a beautiful garnish to your cooked dishes or to elevate your salads from blasé to gourmet.

You should dig your garlic after the leaves have turned yellow but before the whole plant turns totally brown. Use a fork to loosen the soil before pulling them up to reduce the number of heads that get left behind. Even with careful harvesting, it seems like you'll inevitably miss a couple cloves which will happily sprout and show up next year.

Cure the garlic by placing the whole plant in the shade where it will have good air circulation. Some people also cure their garlic right where it was harvested, but the flavor of some varieties of garlic changes when exposed to sunlight. When the papers are thoroughly dried, snip off the stem with some hand shears. To prepare your seed stock, gently separate the cloves and save some of the largest to plant in the fall.

For your culinary garlic, leave the heads in tact and store in a dark, cool, dry place. Stored garlic can withstand light freezing and thawing, but should be kept from freezing through on very cold nights. You'll be able to enjoy your garlic well into the following spring.

Nasturtiums!

image from GardenSeed's blog

Anyone interested in participating as a vendor at the DeKalb County Farmers' Market in Smithville this year is invited to attend a meeting at 6pm on Thursday, May 3^rd. The meeting will be held at the new county offices in the conference room across the hall from the extension office. The meeting is an opportunity for anyone to bring up any ideas, suggestions, or questions involving selling at the market. However, if you can't attend the meeting, you are still welcome to become a vendor. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the market's president, Jeff Cantrell at (615) 597-8292 or me, Karley Thompson, secretary/treasurer, at (615) 536-6136.

Right now at the market you can load up on tomato plants, bursting with the infinite promise of summer's bounty, barbeque bursting with a bodacious bouquet of smoky flavor, and fried pies and baked goods so tasty you'll think you must be dreaming. Get there early for the baked goods though; they go quick.

Go ahead and put those tomatoes and peppers in the ground. There's a slight chance that we'll get another cold snap, but it's not in the ten day forecast. You can also plant your okra, beans, squash, herbs, zinnias, and any other summer crops you've been itching to put in the ground. We're past our average last frost date, and there are no more cold snaps in the ten day forecast. That being said, I checked out the record lows for May, and almost every day in May has seen lows in the 30s at some point over the last four decades. May is not to be wholly trusted.

If you've never tried growing and eating nasturtiums, you should. They're a beautiful, vigorous flower that make good companions with tomatoes. The leaves and the flowers have a peppery bite and add a great zing to salads. The flowers come in all colors warm and summery—orange, red, yellow, crimson, as well as some more muted, softer colors. Some varieties have variegated foliage, some are bushy and low growing, and others will climb a trellis as tall as a house if you give them the space. Nasturtiums perform very well in containers, as well as in the garden, so can enjoy their beauty on your balcony or porch.

Nasturtiums can be directly sowed in the garden, but be sure to plant them well after the threat of cold weather has passed. They are extremely sensitive to cold weather and will even pout in your greenhouse if it gets too cold at night. They also transplant easily. Start them just a couple weeks before you plan to set them out. They grow very quickly and don't need much of a head start. They develop their root systems in the blink of an eye, so stay on top of pricking them out if you use germination flats.

You can grow fantastic nasturtiums even if you don't have perfect soil and full sun. They'll tolerate some shade and actually prefer a leaner soil. If you plant them in a recently-manured bed or soil that's too rich in nitrogen, they'll give you a profusion of leaves but no blossoms. We planted them in our tomato beds last year, which were rich enough to power the tomatoes all season, and we also got great blossom production. There's really nothing more beautiful than a tomato platter with Green Zebra tomatoes (chartreuse when ripe), fresh mozzarella cheese, Red Rubin basil (which is purple), and some yellow and red nasturtium flowers.

Nasturtiums were grown by the Incas for use both as a salad crop and a medicinal herb. The conquistadors sent them from Peru to Europe along with tomatoes and potatoes. Both the leaves and flowers are traditionally used to promote good digestion and stimulate the appetite. The plants are rich in vitamin C, so they can be helpful in fighting off the common cold.

Additionally, due to the mustard oilcompounds in the leaves and flowers, which is what is responsible for its peppery punch, nasturtiums have antifungal and antibacterial properties. It can be used to treat bacterial infections, both topical and internal, including those caused by the Candida bacteria. This bacteria is responsible for many gastrointestinal woes, as it plays a part in both ulcers and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

The leaves can also be applied topically to help heal skin infections. However, you shouldn't eat excessive amounts of nasturtium or apply the leaves topically for longer than about ten minutes, or the same mustard oils that give the plant its beneficial properties could cause irritation.

For more specific information on how to prepare nasturtiums for medicinal uses, consult Herbsfor Health and Healing published by Rodale and ThePeople's Pharmacy Guide to Home and Herbal Remedies by Joe Graedon and Theresa Graedon, Ph.D.

'Nasturtiums' by the fantastic Derick Burleson

Heavenly Hemp

Fried pies, barbecue, and beautiful plants with the promise of summer bounty are all available at the market on Saturday mornings. Some vegetable farmers already have corn, beans, and okra in the field. Potatoes are planted and bursting through the dirt, and the cabbages are starting to take off. At our farm we're enjoying magnificent spring salads with the lettuce we started in March and the last of this season's watercress. I know a lot of people who already have tomatoes set out. Back here in the holler, I tend to be a little more cautious. I woke up to 26 degrees one morning last week, and no tomato wants to be outside for weather like that!

If it weren't prohibited without an almost-impossible-to-obtain permit from the Drug Enforcement Agency, now would also be the time to sow your industrial hemp crop.

Industrial hemp is considered an environmentally friendly crop and is produced in many countries, including Canada, Spain, Ireland, England, France, and Japan, with the largest producer being China. It requires very few pesticides, no herbicides, and its nutrient demand on the soil is similar to that of wheat and less than corn. The time from sowing to harvesting is just three to four months.

Hemp can produce 25 tons of dry matter per hectare per year, whereas corn only produces about 7 tons per hectare per year. Hemp thus poses the opportunity to provide a more efficient source for fuel production, as well as bypassing the food versus fuel concerns surrounding the production of corn based ethanol, as it is the hemp seeds that have potential as a food crop, and not the cellulose rich, woody stem.

Hemp fibers can be used to manufacture textiles, including clothes and even shoes, as well as biodegradable plastics, construction materials, and paper. In addition to being a valuable fiber crop, industrial hemp also has immense potential as a food crop. The seeds are high in Omega 3 fatty acids, which is grossly lacking in the typical American diet. Hemp oil, high protein seed cakes, and even a milk product that higher in iron than any other type of milk (soy, almond, cow, goat, etc), can all be made from hemp seeds. In 2008 the Journal of Analytical Toxicology found no traceable amounts of THC in hemp food products available in the marketplace.

Hemp paper is more durable and twice as recyclable as paper made from virgin wood pulp. One acre of hemp produces as much cellulose as 4.1 acres of trees and takes only 3-4 months from sowing to harvest, instead of the 20 years it takes for trees to mature.

The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper, our country's constitution was printed on hemp paper, and the patriotic literature penned by Thomas Paine that helped stoke the fires of our American Revolution were printed on hemp paper.

Benjamin Franklin started the first hemp paper mill, and President George Washington placed duties on hemp that encouraged its domestic production. Both President Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their plantations. Thomas Jefferson, a vehement supporter of the independent American farmer, put his opinion of hemp into no uncertain terms when he wrote that hemp “...is of first necessity to the commerce and marine, in other words to the wealth and protection of the country."

The first American flag, sewed by Betsy Ross, was made of hemp canvas. Additionally, the word “canvas” itself is derived from the Latin word cannapaceus, which means “made of hemp.”

Current legislation regulating the domestic production of industrial hemp is underpinned and perpetuated by the lay person's misinformation about the chemical structure of the plant and the persistent misconception that industrial hemp is synonymous with its contentious cousin, marijuana.

In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act recognized the industrial hemp plant as marijuana, unfairly maligning a very valuable industrial crop. This is a blatant failure to distinguish between the very different and distinct Cannabis strains that produce industrial hemp and the Cannabis varieties from which the medical and recreational drugs are made.

The psychoactive ingredient in Cannabis, known as THC, is present in amounts that range from 3% to 20% in plants cultivated for their flowers and leaves, from which is derived the drug used for medicinal and recreational purposes. However, THC is present only in minute amounts in industrial hemp plants. The maximum legal level in European hemp cultivation is 0.3%. That's 10 times less THC than even the weakest of the medical or recreational strains and 67 times less than the more concentrated varieties.

Even lower in the psychoactive cannabinoid THC is what's known colloquially as “ditchweed” and officially as “feral cannabis.” This plant has THC percentages as low as .05% and is a remnant from World War II, when the U.S. government actually subsidized almost 40,000 acres of hemp production to aid the war effort. The U.S. Department of Agriculture even released a video titled “Hemp for Victory”, which taught farmers how to cultivate and harvest hemp. After Japan cut off this country's supply of hemp and coarse fibers, domestic production was an integral aspect of the war effort, as those fibers were desperately needed to manufacture such products as rope, canvas, and netting that were absolutely vital to the navy.

Escapee volunteer plants derived from that 40,000 acres are now a rampant roadside presence, especially in the Midwest. Midwestern youth have been trying and failing to get anything other than a headache from smoking ditchweed for decades. The DEA now spends upwards of $13 million a year to eradicate this harmless, previously government sanctioned plant from roadsides and ditches all over the country, especially in the Midwest, despite it having absolutely no psychoactive, and thus no recreational or black market value, whatsoever.

This is a crop that has huge potential to be beneficial to the ailing American farmer. If farmers were unhindered from the senseless regulation of this crop, in addition to generating agricultural revenue, the opening of industrial hemp production would present enormous opportunity for the development of entrepreneurial value-added business ventures, from specialty niche-market prepared foods to utilitarian fiber products like rope and canvas. Those upstart business could create jobs and tax revenues desperately needed in this time of financial strife.

The first step towards a more rational approach to this unjustly maligned crop is to end the misinformation that leads people to believe that medical and recreational marijuana plants are one and the same with industrial hemp, which is absolutely, unequivocally untrue. The debate over the legalization of the Cannabis varieties from which marijuana is derived—for any use—should not taint the many advantages of this valuable industrial plant.

The poisonous, wild nightshade plant, known as Belladonna—an unwelcome squatter in many local gardens—is cousin to the potato, tomato, and eggplant. Hemp is no more similar to marijuana than Belladonna is to the Mortgage Lifter tomato on your BLT or the mashed potatoes on your dinner plate.

Vote Hemp is a national, single-issue, non-profit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and free market for low-THC industrial hemp

Hemp Information

Hemp: A New Crop with New Uses for North America

The interconnectedness of it all

Column for the DeKalb County Times
by Karley


Fried pies, fresh baked goods, fabulous barbecue, and the first tomato plants are all available at the DeKalb Farmers' Market. As I'm writing this we have frost on the ground down here in the back of the holler, so if you have tomato plants, you should be prepared to give them a little extra protection on these chilly spring-appropriate nights.

Our last average frost date for this USDA hardiness zone 7 growing area is April 15. Don't let that fool you, though. More important than your zone is your micro-climate, which can differ significantly from regional averages. Our farm is the last open area at the back of a hollow and is the highest part of the hollow's bottomland. In the evenings you can feel the cool air rolling down the hills and flowing down the slight elevation drop along the path of the creek. What this means for us is that our lows are consistently 7 to 10 degrees below the forecasted low.

That might not sound like much if you're not a gardener, but the difference between a low of 32 and 25 is the difference between a light frost that pretty much any spring crop can tolerate and a freeze that will damage leaves and potentially kill seedlings. In the late fall, that's the difference between tomatoes on the vine for another week and rushing to harvest the last of the unripe fruit. In the summer that's the difference between an uncomfortably warm night up on the plateau and it being cool enough to open the windows and turn off the air conditioner down in the holler.

One of the most rewarding and wonderful parts of gardening is the level of connection you develop with the land. This applies to people gardening in containers on their little concrete patios, too. They too must pay attention to where the sun sets and rises, how the sun moves North and South throughout the season, if it's been dry, wet, hot, or cold, and what bugs are breeding and eating.

Working in the garden we encounter little brown garden snakes, big black snakes, toads, firefly larvae, garden spiders and their hoards of babies, ants, frogs, and bees to name a few. I have never been bitten by the garden spiders or harassed by the snakes. I am grateful to see those predators in the garden because a healthy population of predators is an indicator of a healthy and balanced ecosystem. Toads can eat up to 1,000 bugs in one day, so I am always thrilled to find them nestled in the mulch.

We know there's a large flock of turkeys that frequents the forested part of the property. We've seen them alight in the tops of the trees on the ridge in a kerfuffle of noise and breaking branches. We hear them gobbling to each other in the evenings. We have a woodpecker that frequents the dying Box Elder on the bank of the creek, and sometimes there's a big heron who comes to gorge on the fish, tadpoles, and crawdads that get trapped in pools as our creek branch dries up through the summer.

When storm fronts move through the area, if you pay attention to the sensation of the wind on your skin, you can feel the cool and warm air mingling. I swear I felt the first fall breeze last year, and a welcomed breeze it was. I've been dreading the possibility of last month's unrelenting heat remaining unrelenting for the next five months, but now I have no idea what to expect. I asked a gardening friend if she thought we would even be able to get a good cabbage and broccoli harvest this spring, and her response was, “This week, or last week?”

After an intense bout with the Cabbageworms immediately upon transplanting our cabbage and broccoli into the garden, we are finally down to only finding two or three green worms a day. We had some casualties, but the survivors are now growing enthusiastically. It's somewhat of a mystery, why the bugs eat one plant and leave another. Maybe the victim was a plant whose roots got mangled during pricking out or transplanting, or maybe it was just a bad seed. In any case, we're filling in the holes with lettuce transplants.

Nature abhors mono-cultures. That's one reason why you'll just never achieve a weedless corn patch. The pigweed, bindweed, and lamb's quarter find gardens simply irresistible. The good thing is you can actually eat lamb's quarter as a potherb, and at least the bindweed has pretty blue flowers since it's in the morning glory family. Just try to pull it out before it goes to seed.

We have found that applying a layer several inches thick of mulch around our plants does a fantastic job smothering out the weeds. We use old hay, which has weed seeds in it. Some gardeners prefer not to use old hay as mulch because of those seeds, but since it seems like you end up with weeds in your garden no matter what you do here in the land of eight foot tall iron weed, for us the benefits outweigh the cost.

The old hay mulch also retains moisture and shades the surface of the soil, which supports earthworm activity in the upper layer of the soil. When we use a hand shovel to dig a hole for transplanting, it's not uncommon for us to encounter a dozen earthworms in a four inch hole. Those earthworms are improving the tilth of our heavy clay soil by adding organic matter, as well as providing us with nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, magnesium, and most importantly for our farm specifically, calcium. All this they do gleefully pro bono, as long as we shade them from sun and provide them a little protection from the frost. They also provide our resident garden toads with a protein rich snack when they get tired of hopping after bugs.

Our buzzing metropolis has also provided us with enough lady beetles to get our aphid population completely under control, and we never had a problem with having too few pollinators to pollinate our squash and cucumbers.

Spending time in the garden in quiet contemplation and rapt observation, I can scarcely help being overcome by the interconnectedness of all life on this planet. When our farm dog plops down in the sun and lets her head fall back to look at the sky, I can't help but wonder if she's sharing my elation.