My Farmer: Lower Valley Farm, Kalispell, Montana
It was 5 years ago when I purchased my first CSA half share from a farm just down the road from me: Swallow Crest Farm . The following year, the farm did not offer CSA shares. Because it is just me and even a half share was a challenge to use, I decided to buy from Farmer’s Market just what I needed versus finding another farm with CSA offering.
I enjoy the market … once I am there, but Saturday mornings getting to it – yikes! The market is located in the parking area of our community college: a beautiful small campus. Unfortunately, around it are Wal-Mart, Costco, Home Depot, Lowes … what the family of my favorite market source calls “the land of everything”. Oh, and there is a huge sports complex: ball park and soccer fields. Saturday mornings, the traffic around the Farmer’s Market is more than I enjoy dealing with. Last year I went to the first few weeks market and then not until the last weeks.
This year, I bought a half share from Lower Valley Farm: my favorite Farmer’s Market Farm. They are located at the south (lower) end of the valley as am I, but on the west side vs my east side location. Pickup is on Thursday 5-7 p.m. so perfect for me. The first pickup this year is Thursday – YEA! Farmer’s Market started on May 6 and I went – Saturday’s are not as bad until Summer visitor traffic gets added to the mix so I told myself to “buck up Buttercup!” and head to town.
I’ve been enjoying tatsoi, baby arugula, pea shoots and sun shoots. All except the baby arugula are new to me.
Everything is wonderful and fresh but O MY – the pea shoots!! I didn’t realize they would taste so much like peas. They are wonderful in a salad and in a sandwich. The sun shoots are good but the pea shoots are my new favorite green thing.
On a previous post ( Sun, snow, banana bread and asiago rolls ), I made fragrant brown butter cardamom banana bread from Andrea Bemis’ blog: Dishing up the dirt .
Andrea’s book, ‘Dishing up the Dirt’, her blog and her Instagram have lots of recipes and inspiration for eating and cooking from the garden.
https://instagram.com/p/BUF1xbzD9iM/
Above from Andrea’s Instagram is reference to another new book on cooking from the garden.
I bought it. Six Seasons: a new way with vegetables . It is another beautiful book with recipes organized by season. The author, Joshua McFadden’s obvious passion for seasonal, farm fresh vegetables is obvious and I am looking forward to trying many recipes from the book.
And then this morning in my Instagram feed:
https://instagram.com/p/BUIx0xiFmh3/
Ya-hoo and Hoo-rah!!! More shoots and arugula plus radishes to sub for the turnips in yogurt/herb/poppy seed dressing and I have a couple of days to plan what to do with the rest of the bounty.
More later this week from the farm pickup and as in 2012, a weekly wrap up of what I received and how I used my CSA share goodies.