Road Trip - Part II

I'm back at Farm Dover after a whirlwind weekend in Floyd, VA. Let's see, I promised to tell you what I found in town while Maggie was attending her bee class, which started out at the Country Store and ended up at the Spikenard Farm and Honey Bee Sanctuary.

The town is tiny, all of two blocks long and one block wide, but jammed packed with locally owned places: a coffee roaster, farm hardware store, antique mall, yarn shop, several art galleries and a cozy coffee shop, located above a music book shop. Here's a look around...

 

After a morning in town, I headed out to the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway with the intent of finding the Mabry Mill. It was purported to be the most photographed site on the entire parkway, and now you can see why. 

After a hike around the mill, I headed to the Honey Bee Sanctuary to pick up Maggie. Since founding Spikenard Farm in 2006, Gunther Hauk and his wife Vivian have been actively spreading their vision of sustainable biodynamic beekeeping. The Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary provides on-site workshops, lectures, consulting and publications.

We celebrated Maggie's 25th birthday that night with dinner at Oddfella's, followed by moosetrack ice cream back at the Country Store, which was also the site of a very popular Saturday night country dance (think Grand Old Opry).



The next morning we had breakfast on the porch of the Ambrosia Bed & Breakfast, before saying goodby to our host, Caroline. On the way home, we listened to the first book of The Hunger Games, making the seven-hour trip back home go fairly quickly. As we pulled in the drive, we still had a chapter or two to go. We thought about sitting in the car and finishing the tape, but decided we had better go in and see how Ed survived the weekend home alone. It appears he did just fine....but he was glad to see us.



All and all, it was a lovely weekend -- especially nice to spend it with Maggie. I hope she decides to go back for another class and invites me along again.

Road Trip - Part 1

Maggie signed up for a bee-keeping course in Floyd, VA and I signed up as her travel companion. We left Farm Dover early on Friday afternoon and arrived in the tiny town of Floyd, located on the crest of the Blue Ridge, just after dark. It was a pretty spring night and every person in town (population 432) plus a bunch of other people all showed up at the Floyd Country Store for the Friday Night Jamboree, which features local and area Bluegrass bands. We ducked into a jazz bar next door for a craft beer and asparagus pizza before heading to Ambrosia Farm Bed & Breakfast.

This morning I dropped Maggie off at the Floyd Country Store for her class and I headed out to explore the town. I'll let you know what I find...

Making Birds, Bees and Me Happy

If all goes well, sunflowers, zinnias, and nasturtium should be popping up in my garden.
Photo by photofarmer, flickr®

Yesterday's Travels to Paradise (KY)

Ed and I went to Paradise yesterday, but not before going to Owensboro for his Aunt Ila's memorial service. Ila was married to Ed's father's brother, Hugh. Back in the day, the two Galloway brothers ran Galloway's Market in downtown Owensboro.
 

I don't know that side of Ed's family very well, seems like I mostly see them when someone dies. I've recently connected up with three of his first cousins via facebook, so I'm hoping our friendships grow beyond funeral visits and status posts.

The service was at First Presbyterian Church with a lunch afterwards in the fellowship hall. Ed saw some long-time friends and cousins that he hadn't seen for a very long time, evidenced by the fact that they didn't recognize each other (I guess they -- and Ed -- had changed since he was a teenager and known to all as Eddie Lee.)

Before heading back to Shelby County, we rode out into the country, out past Windy Hollow, toward Glenview, Guffie, and Calhoun. We stopped at the old Fitts farm, which was much changed since I first saw it nearly 30 years ago. It was the home place of Ed's maternal grandparents, but today there are no tobacco barns, no old family farmhouse, no root cellar, no front-yard Maple shade trees -- nothing but 66-acres of rolling fields, dotted with some ancient-looking oil pumps. Ben Burns (Ed's great nephew) was out on a gigantic John Deere tractor getting the fields ready for planting.

I couldn't help but scan the ground as we walked around, just in case I caught a glimpse of the little gold ring that Ed's mother lost down the porch floorboards when she was a young girl. For over 75 years she searched for it, as did Aunt Gladys, as do my girls. I suppose for as long as that land is in the family, relatives will continue to look for a bit of shiny gold peeking out of the earth.

Oil rigs still pumping out black gold on the Fitts Farm.

Our journey continued. Just down the road was the old Galloway farm, which is still in farmland, but showed no evidence of the house where Ed's dad was born, weighing in at all of two pounds. We stopped at a couple of country graveyards, trying to find the grave stone of a revolutionary war soldier and ancestor of Ed's on his faternal grandmother's side, a Coloniel Lyttle. No luck.

Don't believe what you hear about words carved in stone: They do disappear with years.

Tichenor's Store at Guffie has seen better days.

From there, we made our way over a bridge of the Green River and toward Central City (which is where my maternal grandmother was born and raised). We had a general plan that we wanted to see the Peabody Wildlife Management area, approximately 60,000 acres in Ohio and Muhlenberg counties that are reclaimed strip mine lands. So we headed to where Paradise lay, but, like the John Prine song says, we found that Mister Peabody's coal train had hauled it away.

On the way to Paradise....

Despite almost non-existent signage, we managed to find our way to a portion of the Peabody Wildlife Area near the TVA plant. Most of the mined land has been reclaimed to grassland, small ponds, swamps and sloughs. The town of Paradise now looks more like a bird-watcher or angler's paradise. A Kentucky Wildlife ranger pointed out some good fishing spots on the map and told us we could camp anywhere that didn't block a gravel road or boat ramp -- an outing best saved for another day.

With the afternoon slipping away, we made our way back to the Western Kentucky Parkway, I-65, I-265, I-64, Simpsonville and then finally to Farm Dover. Nice day; nice to be back home. Paradise, in fact.

___________

Reclaimed grassland and pond in the Peabody Wildlife Management Area with TVA stacks in the background.
photo by Robert Gundy via flickr®

Paradise, by John Prine

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.

Chorus:
And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

You Be The Judge

Could this be a Blue Ribbon Winner at the State Fair?

Celebrating Spring with Garden Bounty

Perhaps by August I will have calmed down about the produce from our garden. But for now, I get exceedingly excited by what's coming up in our garden and in our neighbors: Sandy and Jon's.

Last night, we had friends over for dinner and our appetizer featured radishes, pulled from the garden just ten minutes before our guests pulled down the drive. Earlier in the day, I had blended some softened butter with herbs from the garden. I simply washed off the dirt from the radishes, trimmed them up, and cut them in half vertically. I served them along side the the herbed butter and two kinds of salt: black smoked salt (from Montreal) and some course grained sea salt. They were delicious: crunchy and not too hot.

Straight from my garden, into the kitchen sink, and onto an appetizer platter.

For dinner, I made our family-favorite asparagus lasagne. It comes from a recipe that I pulled from a Gourmet magazine 20 years ago. Ed and I planted 25 asparagus crowns a couple of weeks ago, but it will be a couple of years before we can begin harvesting our own home-grown asparagus. Fortunately, my neighbors grow beautiful asparagus that they sell to restaurants in Louisville. I called Sandy as we headed to church yesterday to see if she could spare some for my dinner guests. I was in luck.

Asparagus is low in calories and is very low in sodium. It is a good source of calcium, magnesium and zinc.
It is high in fiber, protein, vitamin A, B6, C, E, and K, as well as thiamin, riboflavin, ruitn, niacin, folic acis, iron, phosphorus, pottassium, copper,
manganese, selenium, and chromium. Did I mention that is it also delicious? 

Here's the recipe.

ingredients:
4 pounds asparagus trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces, reserve some of the tips
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
6 .7 x 6.25 inch sheets of instant (no boil) lasagna (from Lotsa Pasta)
1/2 stick of unsalted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1-1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup water
8 ounces mild goat cheese such as Montrachet
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
1-2/3 cups freshly grated Paramesan
1 cup heavy cream

Note: I sometimes add prosciutto in layers if I’m serving it to meat lovers. Last night, I used some country ham.

preparation:
In each of two shallow baking pans toss half the asparagus stalks with half the oil, coating them well, and roast them in a preheated 500 degree oven, shaking the pans every few minutes for 5-10 minutes, or until they are crisp-tender. Sprinkle the asparagus with salt to taste and let it cool.

In a saucepan melt the butter, add the flour, and cook the roux over moderately low heat, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add the broth and the water in a stream, whisking, simmer the mixture for 5 minutes, and whisk in the goat cheese, the zest, and salt to taste, whisking until the sauce is smooth.

Arrange 2 sheets of the lasagne in a 9x13 inch pan. Spread the sheets with one fourth of the sauce. Top the sauce with one fourth of the asparagus and sprinkle with 1/3 cup of Parmesan. Continue to layer the pasta, the sauce, the asparagus and the Parmesan in the same manner, ending with a sheet of pasta.

In a bowl, beat the cream with a pinch of salt until it holds soft peaks. Arrange the reserved asparagus tips decoratively on the pasta, spoon the cream over the pasta and the asparagus tips, spreading it with the back of the spoon and sprinkle the remaining 1/3 cup Parmesan on top.

Bake the lasagna in the middle of a preheated 350 degrees oven for 20-30 minutes, or until it is golden and bubbling. Let it stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

LOOK! What's Coming Up in My Garden

We don't eat strawberries during 11 months of the year, but we eat them everyday when they are in season locally. And it doesn't get any more local than from the raised garden in our back yard. So, give it another week or so and we'll be celebrating everyday: Strawberries with yogurt for breakfast, strawberries on salad for lunch, strawberry shortcakes for dessert. YUM!

One more reason not to have to drive into town

I love being out here on Farm Dover and grumble a bit whenever I have to leave. I don't mind going as far as Shelbyville, LaGrange or Foxhollow Farm. So imagine my delight when we found our favorite chocolate bark at Foxhollow Farm Store.

Just this past week they started carrying Cellar Door's Sea Salt Almond Bark. We discovered this handcrafted gourmet confection a year ago at Cellar Door Chocolate's Butchertown shop. Since then, we have gone out of our way to pick up a bar (or two or three). I'm sure all the decadent and delectable delights from this artisan candy maker are delicious. But we just can't seem to move beyond this bar. It is the perfect combination of quality dark chocolate and salty, crunchy almonds.

So, if you haven't tried it, head to Cellar Door in the Butchertown Market or take a drive out to Foxhollow Farm Store* on Covered Bridge Road and pick up a bar. While  you are there, you might as well enjoy the best hamburger ever, grilled to order by none other than Maggie Galloway.


*The Foxhollow Farm Store is open every Saturday 10am to 5pm throughout the Winter. They serve burgers cooked-to-order and a seasonal soup from 11am to 3pm.

Homemade Granola, REALLY

Remember when I blogged about fruitcakes and how I like to know what's in them before I'll eat a slice? Well, I'm the same way about granola. I'm suspect of the sugary-as-dessert, expensive stuff you buy in a box in the cereal aisle of the grocery and even of the anemic-looking stuff from the bulk section of Whole Foods. A few years ago I started making homemade granola from a recipe in Breakfast Lunch Tea/Rose Bakery. I'd bag it up in cute little cellophane bags and send it to my kids for Valentine's Day (being heart-healthy and all). It is very good granola, but the recipe is a bit complicated and the ingredient list is long.  

A month or so ago I ran across another granola recipe on one of the cooking blogs I like: Orangette. The writer intrigued me when she wrote:

What sets this granola apart, I think, is its texture. It's so light and crisp that it actually shatters between your teeth. This is not the kind of drudgery that makes your jaw ache halfway through the bowl. It's mostly composed of the usuals - oats, nuts, and seeds - but what makes it special is that they're bound together by a dark slurry of maple syrup, brown sugar, and olive oil, and that slurry that caramelizes in the oven to form a thin, crunchy lacquer over each nub and bit.

I had to give it a try. I made one batch and then made four more. Then I kind of forgot about it until last week in Baltimore when I ordered granola with yogurt and fruit and immediately realized that my new recipe was ten times better. So, this week, I made another batch. And I'm considering making another one today.

Saturday morning breakfast on the back porch: Greek Yogurt with local honey, raspberries and homemade granola

Here's the recipe:

Olive Oil and Maple Granola
Adapted from Nekisia Davis, Early Bird Foods, and Food 52

300 grams (3 cups) rolled oats
125 grams (1 cup) raw hulled pumpkin seeds
130 grams (1 cup) raw hulled sunflower seeds
50 grams (1 cup) unsweetened coconut chips
135 grams (1 ¼ cup) raw pecans, whole or chopped
85 grams (packed ½ cup) light brown sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
175 ml (¾ cup) maple syrup, preferably Grade B
120 ml (½ cup) olive oil
Dried cherries, optional

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut chips, pecans, light brown sugar, and salt. Stir to mix. Add the olive oil and maple syrup, and stir until well combined. Spread the mixture in an even layer on the prepared sheet pan. Bake, stirring every 15 minutes, until the granola is golden brown and toasted, about 45 minutes. Remove the granola from the oven, and season with more salt to taste. Cool completely on a wire rack. If you'd like, stir in some dried cherries. Store in an airtight container.

Yield: about 7 cups

The author notes that the mixture will keep for a month in an airtight container. But not if you leave it out on the counter and unscrew the jar and eat a handful every time you walk past it, like I do.

_____________ 


So, that's how I make homemade granola. But as I was making it, I realized that it is not completely far-fetched to think that I could make REALLY homemade granola, from the harvest of Farm Dover.

I googled "growing oats" and think we could figure out a way to grow a half-acre of oats, which is a lot of oats. I'll have pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds from our garden. Ed and I planted two pecan trees this past weekend. Unfortunately, we will need to wait 8-10 years for our first harvest. We even have a number of maple trees on the place, so tapping them for syrup is not out of the question. The dried cherries will come from our two cherry trees – Maggie has built a food dehydrator that I bet she will let me borrow. That just leaves salt, olive oil, brown sugar, and coconut chips.

When I told Ed of my plan to REALLY make homemade granola, he joked that if global warming continues, we might well be able to grow olives, sugar cane, and coconuts right here on Farm Dover.

Dreaming of Strawberry Shortcakes

It is always a couple of degrees colder in the country and tonight's forecast is getting dangerously close to being bad news for our strawberries and fruit trees.

We covered up our strawberries but not sure what to do about our fruit orchard.

Jack Frost stay away, please.

Baltimore: It Grows On You

Ed and I have been privileged to visit our children in their respective college cities. From day one, we loved visiting Maggie in Madison, WI and Jack in Montreal. Baltimore was another story. While we have loved visiting Mary at the Maryland College of Art, it has taken us three years to be charmed by Charm City. But it has finally happened.

We just returned from a weekend visit to Baltimore. Maggie was able to join us after she finished work on Saturday, so it was almost a family reunion. (We missed you Jack!) Mary's boyfriend, John, joined us for the weekend festivities.

Getting from the airport to our downtown hotel was easy; we just hopped on the light rail right at the airport and hopped off, one block from our Hotwire hotel. After a late lunch of half-shell clams and oysters at a raw bar at the Lexington Market, we headed over to Hamden, a quaint shopping area that just happened to have a great bar to catch the UK/UL game. Late dinner was at Woodberry Kitchen, one of our all-time favorite restaurants. Maggie's flight was delayed, but she slipped into our booth just as our Government Mule (organic vodka, housemade ginger beer, lime-ginger syrup) drinks were served to us in frosty copper mugs.

Sunday started with Palm Sunday church service at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church. It was hard to focus on the sermon with the sanctuary's Tiffany stained glass windows for competition. Then lunch at a little cafe just down Bolton Street. Afterwards, I headed shopping with the girls while Ed and John toured a clipper ship in the Baltimore Inner harbor.

Today we walked from downtown to the inner harbor to Little Italy and then to Fell's Point and back. Then we popped back on the light rail to head to the airport. And now we are back home again. 

Thank you Mary and John for hosting us. Thank you Maggie for making the effort to get away and join us. What a fun weekend.

Ordering lunch at the Lexington Market.

Stopped in to gape at the Peabody Library.

We found some comfy couches to watch the UK/UL game.

We toured one of the art galleries that featured
MICA student art work. That's a bunny tree behind Ed and Mary.

After church.

Sisters.

John and the girls at the harbor.

Playing Hookey

Saturday morning -- we were up and out the door by 8:30 for a day of fun. No lawyer work. No marketing work. No farm work. Heck, I didn't even make the bed.

We started our day with a hike with Mary Ray, nationally renown herbalist from Bardstown. A group of about 20 people showed up for a two-hour hike (a stroll rather) around 400-acre Shelby Trails. Mary couldn't go three steps without stopping to show us a useful weed, wildflower, or tree bark. She was like a walking encyclopedia of wisdom for the therapeutic use of medicinal plants -- maybe more like a combination medicine woman/shaman. For every specimen, she talked about its medical uses and whether she uses it to make a tincture, salve, poultice, extract or tea. It was a lot to take in -- but definitely roused our curiosity. One more thing to add to our list of things we need to learn.

The teasel weed can be used as a healing wash to treat acne, eye inflammation, itchy skin, sties, and wounds.
It also can be prepared as a poultice to get rid of warts

Straight from the hike, we headed to Ed's hometown of Owensboro, Ky. While we used to make the trip every couple of months to visit Aunt Gladys, we hadn't made the trip in nearly a year.

First stop: Old Hickory for a chopped mutton sandwich and some burgoo.

Second stop: an afternoon at the Gilmores. Natalee was in town with baby Eliza.
When not napping, she was cheering for her dad's favorite basketball team. Go Cards!

We spent part of the afternoon at Rose Hill Cemetery. Ed wanted to see Aunt Gladys' headstone and then we walked around
finding the headstones of his parents, grandparents (see above) and sister and brother-in-law. 

Last stop: Famous Bistro, our favorite restaurant in Owensboro.
Gay, Steve, Natalee and Eliza had dinner with us before we began the trip back home.

 All in all, a very fun day.

Planting Hellebores by Moonlight

Somehow just because I live in Kentucky I'm supposed to be crazy about college basketball -- specifically UofL and UofK basketball. Truth be told, I can only take it in small doses. Last month Lynn and Walt invited us to a Louisville game in the YUM! Center and that was exciting. And I'm happy to watch the last few minutes of a particularly close game, but I'm less than thrilled to be subjected to hours and hours of NCAA Division I games -- 64 teams worth. So last night when the Wisconsin/Syracuse game was just getting underway and the sun was just starting to go down, I left Ed in his comfy chair with the remote control firmly in his hand and headed out to my garden.

Earlier in the day a big box from White Flower Farm was delivered to our front door. It contained a dozen hellebore plants (along with some blueberry, raspberry, blackberry and current bushes). The weather forecast for the next two days called for heavy rain so I decided this was my chance to get at least the hellebores into the ground.

As you know, I've been focusing on my vegetable garden and have given little thought to planting perennials. When Maggie was visiting last week she picked up the catalog from White Flower Farm and started marking all the plants that I just "had to have." Among them were some helleborus x hybridus -- otherwise known to me as Lenten Rose. My friend Jackie has some of in her garden and I'm always charmed to see these beautiful flowers blooming, long before anything else wakes up in her garden. Jackie's feature pale green or white sepals that last well into summer. The ones I ordered are a "winter thrillers" mix featuring flowers that measure 3 inches across and range from green and pink to burgundy and white.

This hybrid mix is closely related to the Helleborus niger, commonly called the Christmas Rose. It gets its name from an old legend that it sprouted in the snow from the tears of a young girl who had no gift to give the Christ child in Bethlehem. I like this story.

Anyway, I knew my time was short for getting these plants in the ground. The sun was barely visible above the horizon when I got started and the moon was well on its way up into the sky when I finished. Because they like shade, and because I haven't given much thought to where I want to ultimately plant perennials, I chose to tuck these plants in behind the Quick Fire Hydrangeas that run along the side of the cottage. Just as I was finishing I heard the coyotes start to howl and decided it was time to head back inside -- just in time to see Wisconsin lose (darn) to Syracuse by one point.

Cause for Celebration?

One year ago today, we moved from our (temporary) home on Calumet to Farm Dover. Hard to believe it has been 12 whole months, four whole seasons, one whole year. Seems like we ought to celebrate!

We Make a Good Team

This farm requires a lot of love and care – digging and planting, lifting and tilling, hoeing and weeding, chopping and pruning, dreaming and creating. Ed and I make a good team.

We've been planting a lot of trees recently. Ed digs the hole; I throw in some compost and plant the tree. We move on to the next one.

Today Ed hoed up a bunch of dead grass and weeds along the drive; I came behind with the tiller and grass seed.

The roses we planted along the front fence needed some tending to. I add a scoop full of compost around each plant; Ed follows with fertilizer.

I grind the coffee beans at night; he brings me a cup of coffee in bed every morning. For this, and a million other things, I am grateful.

Something to Think About...

If you cook, your family will eat dinner together.
If you cook, you will naturally have a more sustainable household.
If you cook, you’ll set a lifelong example for your children.
If you cook, you’ll understand what goes into food and will eat more healthily.
If you cook, you’ll make your home an important place in your life.
If you cook, you’ll make others happy.
If you cook, people will remember you.

– The Food52 Manifesto

All Tucked In

With plenty of sunshine and summer-like temperatures to goad us on, Ed and I added compost to my raised beds and tilled up the cover crop of turnips. Then I tucked in sugar snap and shelling peas, purple and scarlet carrots, radishes and dark red beets. By mid-May we should be tucking into some mighty fine veggies.

Spring is Here, No Matter What the Date

Spring fever has infected both Ed and me in a big way. Here's his take on it.

According to the calendar, spring is still a ways off, but try to tell that to FarmDover.

The other day I noticed without it really registering that the birds had gotten loud around day break, louder than they had been since last fall (but not as loud as they will be later on, when they wake you up when the windows are open).

Then, it did register on me that the winter wheat that Danny planted last fall to replace the raggedy patches of Johnson grass and other weeds was welcoming warm weather with a brighter shade of green.

So I started paying attention. 

Birds again – red-winged blackbirds, robins galore. Then Debbie and both saw a pair of what seem to a mating pair of hawks. Then, this morning I scared up a killdeer. Killdeers are ground nesters so we’ll have to be careful where we mow.  We have also noticed other new birds – dickcissels and lots of sparrows.

The spindly trunks of our orchard trees have taken on a primary shade of red and the crowns are about to burst with flower.

Finally, I was down by the little creek splitting wood for next winter.  (A mindless task that I enjoy except for trying to split logs from a newly fallen locust.  Even with my maul, it was like trying to split them with a Louisville Slugger. A walnut that fell over a year ago was much more accommodating).

Anyway, down by the creek, I ran into this little fellow, like me, stretching himself and taking in the warmth.  So, spring is here, no matter what the date.

I Went Walking...

I pulled on my rubber boots, grabbed a mesh bag, and headed down to the creek. I had the vague notion that I was headed out to look for the first ramps of spring and, if I got lucky, might stumble upon some morel mushrooms.

It seemed unthinkable that just last Monday, I was out tromping through four inches of snow and today, I am walking on a carpet of green, purple, blue and white wildflowers.

I didn't find any ramps. And I didn't find any morels. But the trip was not without reward. It was a treasure trove for my senses. I could hear the water rushing in the normally dry creek bed; every once in a while some small creature would plop into the water; honey bees were loudly buzzing around the purple wildflowers; the birds sounded like they were at a convention. I even heard a woodpecker looking for his lunch.

Everywhere I looked something new was growing, chirping, buzzing or swaying. I saw cardinals, red-winged blackbirds, robins, sparrows of all sorts, meadow larks, even the first blue jay.

The forest floor was covered in the most amazing tiny wildflowers -- the first of the season.

Lucky four-leafers popped out of patches of clover, which seems early by my eye.

The bulbs that Jack planted are just starting to swell with double narcissus blooms.

The pear trees are about to burst with white blossoms.

The forest smelled like a spring tonic – clean, spongy, chlorophyllic, herbal and invigorating.

It is supposed to reach 74 today and it is not yet the Ides of March. I'm not sure what this mild winter and early spring will bode for us come July, but it makes for a lovely morning down by the creek.

_________________________

Seeing all these beautiful wildflowers has made me curious to know what I'm looking at and whether I can eat them. I'm planning to attend an early spring wildflower hike and edible plant program at the Shelby Trails Park on Saturday morning, March 24. Mary Ray, nationally trained Folk Herbalist from Bardstown is leading the hike. Let me know if you want to join me.

A Taste of Spring

Late in the fall, I planted a couple of rows of corn salad as a cover crop in my raised beds. And then mostly forgot about them. Until tonight when I was wishing for a fresh salad and headed out with a trowel to see what I could find. Sure enough, there were these beautiful little rosettes, ready for the picking.

Aren't they pretty?

Corn salad, once considered a weed, was originally foraged by European peasants until the royal gardener of King Louis XIV introduced it to the world. Known by lots of names – mache, lamb's lettuce, lambs tongue, or field lettuce – it has three times as much Vitamin C as lettuce and is chalked full of beta-carotene, B6, B9, Vitamin E, and omega-3 fatty acids. Its tender leaves have a mild flavor, maybe with a bit of a nutty taste. To me, it simply tastes like spring.