Photo Fridays: Sweet Potato Plants

We have a whole row of sweet potato plants which we hope are making beautiful tubers down there in the soil.  You don't really know how the potatoes are growing until you dig them up!

We planted sets in mid-May and they soon took off.  They grow vigorously, not only making a sort of carpet on top of the row, but also running down the sides of the row, across the aisle and into the neighboring rows.  Luckily, both the adjacent rows are empty right now.

The young sets the day after we planted them.

My, how they've grown!

Ed has already trimmed them a couple of times to keep them under control.  We will probably dig them up in early September.

A Different Kind of Market Day

This post was inspired by one of Alicia Jabbar's contributions to the Simple, Good and Tasty blog.  Her post Farmer's Markets from the Other Side of the Table describes the farmer's market from the farmer's perspective.  Since we started our farm business, Ed and I have spent most of our time behind the table.  On Saturday we had the luxury of experiencing a market from the customer's side. 

We drove into Houston to shop at the Urban Harvest Farmers Market.  I enjoyed being a customer again, like the good old days.  It sure is a lot less work!  We woke up at 6:30, got ready at a leisurely pace, and even ate breakfast before heading out at 7:40.

For once, I remembered my camera.

A loaf of sourdough and a scone from Angela's Oven

Oyster mushrooms from Animal Farm

Two flavors of chevre from Hammond Farm

A chat with our friends Lori and David Crank of Oaks of Mamre Farm (I had already picked up my eggs and chicken at their semi-weekly delivery in Tomball)

Tomatoes from Wood Duck Farm (our plants are long gone)

Then we headed over to the Midtown Farmers Market at Chef Monica Pope's restaurant t'afia, where I accidentally left the camera in the car.  Houston Dairymaids was out of our favorite, Redneck Cheddar, because they are saving it for a beer and cheese tasting at St. Arnold's Brewery next week.  Luckily for us they still had some of Mozzarella Company's fresh mozzarella, Veldhuizen's Texas Gold and Sand Creek's gouda.  We also grabbed some plain naan from Nisha's.

We came home with a lot of delicious local food.  It was a good day!

Photo Fridays: Ginger

This is the second year we have grown culinary ginger.  It is an interesting plant and very easy to grow.  Last year we had only a couple of plants, but this year we are growing a whole bed.

I think the ginger plant is pretty, in a fern-y way.  There are about 40 plants in the bed.  We planted the pieces of root in early May; little green shoots started appearing a few weeks later.  We can start harvesting them in early fall, but the main harvest will be after the weather gets cold.  We'll dig up the hands (i.e. roots) and bring them indoors to dry.  They tend to rot in cold soil. 

We will sell some, eat some (yum!), and save the rest to plant next spring.  I wish all the plants were this easy!
 

Food Rules, Part II

This is a follow-up to my previous post about Michael Pollan's book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual.

Part I of the book presented 21 rules for distinguishing real, whole foods from the edible foodlike substances which surround us in the American food landscape. In Part II, Pollan answers the question "What kind of food should I eat?" with 22 more guidelines. He points out the "striking diversity of traditional diets" to demonstrate that no ideal diet exists, but asserts that some types of foods, methods of preparation and food combinations are better for us than others.

I approached this section with a bit of skepticism. I am so tired of nutrition science's focus on identifying 'superfoods' and that special nutrient which magically prevents (or cures!) diseases x, y and z. In the grocery store checkout line, I wince when I see magazine covers announcing the results of the nutrition study-du-jour along with the headlines "Lose Ten Pounds in Time for Summer!" and "Five Easy Dessert Recipes!" next to a photo of an enormous cake. Humph.

I was glad to see that the first rule in Part II was "Eat mostly plants, especially leaves." Wow! What a relief. We don't have to stress out about which vegetable or fruit is THE BEST. When a customer at the market asks me which is healthier, the broccoli greens or the kale, my answer is whichever one you like better because you will eat more of it. Pollan would probably say "both". Rules 25 ("Eat your colors") and 29 ("Eat like an omnivore") stress the importance of a varied diet. Rule 24 suggests a hierarchy of foods based on how many 'legs' they have: plants and mushrooms have 1, poultry have 2, and mammals such as pigs and cattle have 4.

Rule 36 is a little gem about processed breakfast cereals. I probably would have written something like this: Avoid highly processed, fortified breakfast cereals, especially those marketed to children, because they generally are calorie-dense, often made from highly refined flours, and contain chemical dyes, artificial flavors and preservatives. Pollan skillfully condenses it into this memorable phrase: "Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk". Great imagery. I love it.

As a person who has struggled with an unhealthy attachment to sugar, I found Rule 39 especially meaningful: "Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself." Sort of rules out Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream, my drug of choice, doesn't it? Considering the number and complexity of the ingredients, though, I guess Part I already raised a flag about those addictive little pints. I have tried to take this guideline to heart. I rarely buy ice cream anymore. That is a big step for me. I have tried a couple homemade desserts which have worked well: 1) chocolate pudding from scratch and 2) frozen overripe bananas pureed in the food processor with peanut butter to make a sort of ice cream substitute. The pudding is a lot of work and makes a lot of dirty dishes. Washing the food processor is a pain and we don't often have overripe bananas sitting around. So I don't make these very often, which is exactly Pollan's point.

My favorite rule of all is #30, which ties right in to what we are doing here on our farm: "Eat well-grown food from healthy soil". Instead of using synthetic, quick-fix fertilizers to push our plants to maximum production, we have made the commitment to build up the fertility of our soil with plenty of natural organic matter. The compost, manure and wood mulch we continue to add to the soil make more nutrients available to the plants. We believe healthier soil produces stronger plants which are better able to resist diseases, repel and outgrow insects, and handle harsh weather. Pollan states that research supports the hypothesis that "soils rich in organic matter produce more nutritious food: that is, food with higher levels of antioxidants, flavonoids, vitamins, and minerals."  Sounds good to me!

Photo Fridays: Melons

I haven't posted in a while because I have been out of town.  The garden changed some while I was gone.  Ed pulled out more plants which had succumbed to the mid-summer heat, then planted buckwheat, our summer cover crop.

The melon and cucumber plants keep rolling along, apparently loving every minute of 90+ degree weather.  We have the cucumbers growing up a trellis, but the melon plants are just sprawling all over the place.  They are at the top of the garden, near the fence, and they keep trying to escape by growing up and through the fence.

If you look carefully, you can see the melons hiding underneath the leaves (center and right side of photo).

This melon is almost fully ripe.

We're growing only one melon variety, Ambrosia, because it is the best-tasting melon we have ever had.  It has a wonderful floral aroma when it is fully ripe and the flesh is sweet with a lot of flavor.  I don't know if I could eat one of those watery grocery store cantaloupes again.

Have a lovely weekend!