Local Food

We've been eating a lot of local food! We've been able to harvest strawberries from the rows that were left from last year's crop, which Allan has reserved for our own use! We brought those and some home-made
bread to a farm-and-community pot luck. We're all aspiring bakers, so we've been eating exclusively our own bread, and soon we'll get our share of local flour from a guy who grows and grinds his own grains. We had some folks from Living Lands Agrarian Network over for a pond swim and potluck on Friday night, and they came arms overflowing with fresh salad greens, while we provided mint for the mojitos and herbs for the beans. This week we also found some wild cress, called Upland cress, which we ate one lunchtime in a delicious salad with some Miner's lettuce thrown in, and another time with some sauteed foraged mushrooms. We're doing our best to appreciate and use what is growing around us while we wait for the main veggies to come in -- which is much more interesting when sharing and trading with friends. We've made a lot of food with goat whey that Living Lands folks have given us, left over
from their own goat cheese making. We've used it for oatmeal, bread, and soaking beans. It's fresh and healthy and full of good protein.
Last week we feasted on a wild goose they had shot with a bow and arrow at Riverhill. We've also been making really delicious herbal teas - lots of mint tea, and also thyme-lavender-fennel frond tea, which changed from light purple to a hot pink when we added lemon. We've been using a lot of allium scapes (the flower heads) - fried in a light tempura batter was phenomenal!

Planting update: last week we planted peppers, more cukes, more potatoes, jerusalem artichoke, melons, collards, salad mix, more carrots. This week we (almost) finished planting potatoes, and we planted a sea of tomatoes.

Tomatoes, just getting started:

Sorting rotting Jerusalem artichokes: