The radish prophecy

The red shoulders of the farm’s first radishes of the season poked out of the soil last week. Scooching along to pull them, snap off yellow leaves, and bunch them, gave me time to contemplate this root veggie’s significance to the farm.

Jason had faith in radishes from the start. Several years ago, as he rolled the seeder down a row, leaving yet another 125-foot trail of radish seeds, he foretold that a bright red heap of radishes at our farmers market stand would be a draw in early spring, when most produce is green.

I did not embrace his radish prophecy early on. “Radishes, really?” was my response, not caring for them much at the time myself.

But sure enough, before the radishes were stacked on the market stand, over my shoulder I actually heard a woman say, “Ooooh radishes!” Radishes, really?

Every week, the radish heap disappeared in customers’ bags, and radish sales were nothing to sniff at. Jason was a radish seer.

Before packing the radishes for market, it seemed necessary at first to blast every bit of dirt from them. After some time, however, I became aware of (but could not explain) the positive power the sight and feel of dark, rich, healthy farm soil had on me, and wondered if it appealed to others. A little dirt, it turns out, doesn’t bother most people. Maybe there’s something comforting about the reminder of where a radish came from? While they still get a rinse, washing away every last remnant of the radish’s birthplace isn’t a worry anymore.

Young radishes are mild and sweet. They also have an unexpected silky texture. While radishes are associated with spiciness, they only turn “hot” when they’ve been left in the ground a long time. It isn’t a radish’s size that determines the heat, although a radish left in the ground longer will likely be bigger.

Over the years, my respect - and taste - for the humble radish has grown. They’re a quick, easy, and profitable crop. We grow mostly cherry belle and French breakfast, and they’re ready in under 25 days. They’re also an almost year-round crop. If we seed them at the right time in autumn, we’ll have radishes through winter. They’re also one of the first vegetables we direct seed in March. As for care, we keep the water on them and drag a hoe down the row at least once or twice.

Radishes also have a lot of what our bodies need, and maybe that’s why we’re drawn to them. They provide a good deal of potassium, vitamin C, folate, and fiber, according to the University of Illinois Extension. The extension is a wonderful source of radish information and recipes. And here’s how we recommend preparing radishes. It’s Joshua McFadden’s recipe for Roasted Radishes with Brown Butter, Chile, and Honey.

A radish makes a small ripping root sound when it pops from its underground dwelling. Seeing something so colorful spring from the black earth is a reminder of what wonderful things come from good soil.

Check out these unusual beauties. They’re listed under different names in catalogs, but we know them as Amethyst.

These are the two typical varieties we grow. The round ones are cherry belle. The more oblong radishes with white tips are French breakfast.

This is a beer radish. It’s a traditional German snack. It has a rough, black skin and white interior. They can grow to a large size and can be very spicy. They’re meant to be sliced thin and salted, and enjoyed with a chunk of bread and a mug of beer.

~ Stella

3-ingredient cheesy cauliflower soup

We have a simple style of eating. New and elaborate dishes aren’t a good fit for us. So we’ve found foods that we enjoy (and they make us feel our best) and we’ve stayed with them. We keep the same ingredients on hand, so we always have what’s needed for something easy and delicious.

This soup is a regular on our home menu. It calls for no milk, yet it’s delightfully creamy. And you can make a delicious version with just three main ingredients. This recipe calls for a hand-held immersion blender. This tool is a fantastic kitchen investment if you like creamy soups.

With the weather still pivoting from sun to snow (or both at the same time), soup’s still on the menu here.

INGREDIENTS

1 head of cauliflower, chopped

About 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

About 3 to 4 tablespoons of butter

DIRECTIONS

1.) Put the chopped cauliflower and butter in a soup pot. (The pot needs to be big enough to use the immersion blender.) Add enough water to cover the cauliflower pieces by about an inch or two. If you want a thicker soup, use less water. But you do need enough liquid for the blender. Cook the cauliflower until it’s extremely soft (you should be able to easily mush it with a fork).

2.) Turn off the heat, but leave the cooked cauliflower in the water, and use the immersion blender to combine the cauliflower and water. Blend until the soup is perfectly smooth.

3.) Turn the heat back on low, and add the cheese. Stir until the cheese melts. The soup should be very creamy.

4.) Add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy with crackers or a delicious chunk of good bread!

NOTES

When cooking the cauliflower, I’ll sometimes add other vegetables, like a chopped carrot, or sweet pepper. They’ll blend right in with the cauliflower as long as they’re cooked until tender. You can garnish your soup with chives or green onions. Maybe sprinkle a little paprika and extra shredded cheese.

~ Stella

Fried dandelion blossoms

Grandma and Grandpa made these with Silas last spring, and he LOVED them! He was excited for me to try them, and I was very impressed. They taste like a fried veggie, especially like battered mushrooms. They’re extra good dipped in ranch dressing.

Fried dandelion blossoms

INGREDIENTS

About 20-30 dandelion blossoms

2 eggs

About 1/2 cup flour

Salt & pepper

About 3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

DIRECTIONS

1.) For the dandelions, remove as much of the stem as possible. It’s OK to leave the tiny green leaves at the base of the blossom. Soak the dandelions in cold water for a few minutes, in case of insects.

2.) In a small bowl, crack eggs and mix with a fork.

3.) In another bowl, combine flour, salt, and pepper.

4.) Heat butter and oil in a skillet. (I used an electric skillet.)

5.) Drain water from dandelions. Dip dandelions in the egg, then roll in flour.

6.) Place the battered dandelions in the hot skillet. Cook until browned (medium to high heat), then flip and brown the other side. If they clump, break them apart. The pieces should be tiny, and nicely browned. Cook until very tender. Serve hot with a side of ranch.

We have a good crop. Bet you do, too, or hopefully you can find some!

The blossoms will look pretty pathetic after you soak them in water, but they’ll hold up just fine.

The dandelions are quite messy looking after being dipped in the egg and flour. It’ll all come together in the skillet. Enjoy!

~ Stella

Sunday at the farm

Jack Russell terriers, Dusk and Dawn, stopped by to help with the voles. In this photo, you can see where broccoli used to be on the left.

We put up Caterpillar 2. It took the two of us just under an hour to drag the plastic back over the hoops and secure it with the nylon. (We filmed the process and we’ll try to post it soon.) We’ll plant in this tunnel around May 1. It’ll house the earliest tomatoes and peppers.

Grandpa Gary delivers mulch we store off-farm. We weeded and used a weed trimmer around the blueberry bushes, then shoveled on mulch.

Lots of blossoms in the new orchard.

Have a good Monday, and a great week!

~ Stella

Spring chill

Saturday was one of those spring days when the dampness just soaks into your muscles. After the day’s work, we were both drained from the chill and uncharacteristically subdued. Some days are just like that. It wasn’t until making a fire, eating hot soup, and crawling into bed early that my legs and hips finally thawed. That’s where the cold always gets me, front and side upper leg muscles.

There are blue skies outside the window this morning. Hopefully it’ll be a sunny Sunday.

Jay worked up a row in the Little Tunnel with hand tools. It’s too tight a space for the walking tractor. First, he loosened the soil with the broad fork. You can see a sliver of the broad fork on the right side of this photo. Then, he went over the row with the wheel hoe. The wheel hoe has different attachments. It basically turns you into a rototiller. We use it for spots like this, but it isn’t practical for wide use on a farm this size. It is a handy tool for home gardeners, however. The more workable the soil, the easier it is to use. It’s a workout when you have weeds and stones.

We pinned landscape fabric between the Big Tunnel and Caterpillar 2. Lettuce and cilantro will mostly take up this space.

We started selling lettuce again last week. It’s one of our most popular items.

Have a pleasant, Sunday. The sun is shining now!

~ Stella

Silas & the snake

The way to the farm is a narrow dirt path, packed hard as concrete, that curves around the trees, up a hill. Near the bottom of the path, there’s a stone spring house that flows into a tiny brook. This spring also feeds the farm pond that’s a few steps away.

Passing through this spot now, between the spring house and the pond, a specific evening last spring is called to mind. On that day, Silas and I trotted down the path, enjoying the new sensation of warm sun, headed home after working in the gardens. At the top of the hill, my challenge of, “Race you!” had the same effect as lighting a cannon fuse, and Silas shot down the slope.

In this story, there are two indisputable facts. First, Silas won the race by a landslide. Second, I saw the snake first. Hidden as it was in the dry, tan leaves, and wearing a coating of dust, Silas did not see it in the middle of the path. “Silas!” I shrieked. But the warning was mistaken as playful in our mother vs. son dash. His little boots with the green tractors with yellow tires landed right in the center of the snake’s coiled dark brown and tan body. For a half second, Silas, still unaware, turned and smiled at me, the snake looped around his feet. “Snake Silas!” I screamed, pointing. I don’t know my snakes. I just knew that this was the fattest one I’d ever seen, and my five-year-old was in the middle of it. In the other half of that second, Silas looked down, screamed, and stamped his boots in panic.

To the snake’s credit, it didn’t do much of anything. Silas leapt free and bolted toward the road. The snake was now the least of our worries. Silas wouldn’t hear a vehicle coming over his own cries, and he wouldn’t see it before it was too late. But even in the clutches of terror, his characteristic good sense prevailed, and he skidded to a stop at the edge of the road, turning to me with tears streaking down his red face, arms outstretched to be lifted.

Having heard Silas’s screams, Jason came running down from the farm. Bolting down the hill, he almost didn’t heed my raised hand, trying to stop him from making the same mistake we’d just made.

My first and worst fear had been a rattlesnake. Although a rattler would be unusual in this county, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. When Jason took a closer look at it, there was no rattle. Based on its coloring and stoutness, and proximity to water, it could have been a water snake of some kind.

Later research pointed us toward the possibility of a hognose. But we don’t recall the upturned snout that gives the snake its name. They are interesting creatures, though, with a mild demeanor, and notable defenses, so let me share a bit about them. When threatened, they lift their heads off the ground and flatten their necks to give a cobra appearance. They also play dead, flopping on their backs when troubled. They even let their tongues loll out and release a foul smell. And if all this fails, they’ll throw up their stomach contents and twist around in partially-digested toad. The toad toxins make predators suddenly lose their appetites.

This is a photo of an eastern hognose snake. PHOTO FROM PAHERPS.COM.

Whether it was a water snake, a hognose, or something else, the incident made Silas understandably very weary of slithering creatures. To try and ease his fears, we talked about the encounter, and did our best to turn it into his own personal folktale: Silas & the Snake. We can get him laughing now about the time he “danced on a snake’s head,” but his shoulders still give a little a shimmy when he thinks of snakes.

We didn’t want a fear of snakes to take too deep a root in him, because with gardens, come snakes, if you’re lucky. We need a serpent’s stealth to help with the voles who steal transplanted lettuce and broccoli overnight (holy vole-y). After replacing about 200 lettuce heads in early April, I leaned down to snatch up my trowel and hissed to the voles hiding under the landscape fabric, “Snakes are going to eat you.”

Once, we watched a rather small garter snake eat a frog. What a long, gruesome process. From beginning to end, the snake was as helpless as its meal. Locked around its prey, the snake had absolutely no visible reaction to the three humans crouching over it. We expected a big lump to form in the snake, but as the frog’s slippery shanks and toes slipped from sight, the garter remained sleek as ever.

Last year, we stored a few cage traps in the Little Tunnel. Just about every day, there were two decent-sized snakes who liked to curl up in their own private cage to snooze. I found this pair comical, and appreciated always knowing where they were.

Garter snakes also have a tendency to cozy up under big heads of lettuce. In the middle of spring, when the lettuce heads are extra huge around here, I wear gloves and peek beneath the leaves before reaching under with the knife.

Snakes are so helpful on a produce farm that some growers release them in their rows. We’ve always been lucky to have quite a few. But we’re probably down one deeply offended serpent who prefers to live as far as possible from rude youth and screaming mothers.

~ Stella

P.S. Let me give a description of the snake we encountered on the path. If you have any insight into what kind it may have been, please write us at plottwistfarm@gmail.com. The snake was stout. It seemed bigger because it was so fat, but it was probably around 4 feet long. It had a sort of banded coloring, with alternating dark brown/black strips and lighter tan strips.

Really hopping! See what's popping up around the farm

New life is springing up all around the farm. Take a look:

Jason found this toad under the landscape fabric in the Big Tunnel and lifted him to safety before cranking up the walking tractor and tilling. Toads are esteemed colleagues on the farm, respected for all the good they do, gobbling up slugs and other pests that feast on produce. Perhaps it’s because of the German fairy tale, “The Frog Prince,” that toads are specifically associated with ugliness. How unfair and untrue! Just look at that gorgeous, bejeweled skin, and those gold-rimmed eyes.

Radishes in the Big Tunnel are almost ready. Tiny red globes are emerging from the soil. Fresh radishes have a wonderful crunch. This crop is Cherry Bell and French breakfast.

The garlic poked up from the straw seemingly overnight. In late spring, each garlic plant will produce a single curly scape. These will be snipped and shared with CSA members or sold. Scapes have a pleasant, light garlic flavor, and a long fridge life (over a month). They’re delicious in eggs and can also be grilled. Scapes are one of my favorite ingredients. The twirled scape is the stem of what would eventually be a bloom. If we don’t cut the scapes, the plant will divert its energy toward producing this flower and away from growing a bulb underground. We’ll pull up the garlic in July.

We had extra space in the back of Caterpillar 1, so I transplanted flat leaf Italian parsley that Jason started from seed. Here, it’s getting a drink from the sprinklers. We like to aim for at least one herb in the weekly CSA shares as often as we can.

~ Stella

A dandy day

Working on a dandelion salad for tonight. We have a recipe from Grandma Darlene for fried dandelion blossoms, and we can’t wait until those little cheery things are popping up all over.

Pictures of kale and broccoli tunnel

Kale and broccoli left their cramped quarters for private apartments this morning in Caterpillar 1.

Kale is amazing. It produces almost year-around, as long as deer or other critters don’t chomp it down. We’re still harvesting kale from plants put in the ground last spring. It does have a tendency to bolt in its second year of life, however, so we eventually replace it every season.

Planting in the burned holes of the landscape fabric goes much quicker than expected.

Silas helped with the broccoli. He came up with the helpful task of pulling them from the tray, and placing them beside the hole.

He’s efficient.

Time to turn on the sprinklers, and go home for lunch! This tunnel took about 2 1/2 hours to plant. It’s a good night for Jason to go on groundhog patrol, don’t you think?

~ Stella

Farm photos

Here’s a few photos from the last few days.

Earlier this week, we pulled the plastic over Caterpillar 1. Grandpa Gary was in the woods nearby, and came over to help. With three people and a mostly still evening, the task went smoothly. This year, the two Caterpillar tunnels are reinforced with metal braces, and equipped with overhead sprinklers. Both tunnels will also be blanketed in landscape fabric.

One down, one to go.

Jason planted four more apple trees in the New Orchard. He also replaced a pear tree.

Here’s the wave of transplants that will start the season.