On the Unexpected Rewards of Falling Behind

Volunteer potato

For the past few months, I've been bitterly lamenting the fact that our garden has been neglected to the point of chaos because of goats, plant sales, and off-farm work. Last fall, my life was consumed by managing a political campaign. Then our amazing interns finished their summer garden commitment, decreasing the garden labor available substantially. And it's only gotten worse since then.

In the Spring, our business selling heirloom plant starts exploded, and we grew and sold thousands of seedlings to gardeners in Asheville, Hendersonville, and Black Mountain. Plus our goat herd expanded (and will continue to, as pregnant goat bellies swell). All of this farm business was wonderful, but was only possible at the expense of our own garden.

By the first of June, the garden was totally out of control. Weeds were as tall as me in some places, and thick. We had a dense cover crop of ragweed and poke. We were planting annual vegetables at least a month later than usual--in some cases two months later than we had intended. As two Virgo first child overacheivers, and as a household that relies on the garden for all of our fresh produce and much of our food year round, we were getting pretty depressed about the whole situation.

The last of last year's mixed heirloom dry beans

I kept reminding myself of something that a friend said to me in the past few years along the lines of "Everyone's always in such a hurry to get their plants in the ground in the Spring, but it's really no rush - we have such a long growing season here, and there's plenty of time."

Dry beans and winter squash that need 100 days to maturity still have plenty of time before first frosts here, even being planted in early July. Which is a good thing since I just planted the last beans and squash today. Of course the pests get worse and worse the later in the summer it gets, but c'est la vie.

So now to the part about unexpected rewards. Last fall during campaign season, which was also goat barn-building season, we did a thing that we tell the students in our gardening classes never to do. We left almost all of our permanent raised beds exposed - no cover crops, no mulch, nothing but whatever was left of the straw mulch from last season. The only exceptions were the beds we planted with fava beans and garlic in the fall for spring harvest.

I was cursing our negligence as I pulled 5-foot tall Queen Anne's lace and dock from the beds to clear them for my ultra-late bean and squash planting. Until I realized this: we had a whole unexpected crop of volunteer potatoes. Pulling weeds was like hitting the potato jackpot in those ten or so beds. Each 40-foot bed that we weeded yielded about 15 pounds of potatoes. (yesterday's haul from weeding two beds pictured above).

And: there is nothing like volunteer potatoes to aerate a raised bed. The soil was so loose and ready for planting by the time the potatoes were all dug out that we were able to skip the broadforking that's usually part of our no-till bed prep regimen. All and all, it worked out pretty well.

I'm not saying that I ever want to do it again (fight an epic battle with weeds and still be planting beans in July) but I am saying that it's a really good lesson for me that sometimes there are unexpected rewards for not doing things according to plan. Last night we dined on potatoes au gratin made with new potatoes from yesterday's harvest and fresh raw goat milk. Even when things don't work out as planned, sometimes they really work out.

Potatoes Galore. . .

This morning I dug the last of our late potatoes, the German Butterballs. For readers who are not in Western NC, let me set the scene: the sky is that pure, clear, crisp blue that I have never seen anywhere but in the mountains of North Carolina on a clear fall day. There is an occassional breeze, and the temperature is holding steady at seventy degrees. The dogwood leaves are dark, dark red, and the red maples are just starting to turn a brilliant scarlet. In other words: its an absurdly beautiful, perfect fall day in the mountains.

I am reluctant to spend much time inside at all on a day like today, but I've been meaning to post about growing potatoes. Since I dug some this morning, and since we sold five varieties at the West Asheville market yesterday, it seems like a good time to talk taters.

Here are the potato varieties that we grew this year:

Ozette

A very old heirloom grown by the people of the Makah Nation in the Pacific Northwest for at least 200 years. According to Makah lore, this potato was brought by Spanish explorers to the Neah Bay area of what is now Washington State.

This knobby, nutty variety was unknown outside the Makah culture until the 1980s, when it was introduced to the wider growing and eating public. It is still not widely cultivated, though Slow Food USA has partnered with the Makah nation to preserve and promote the variety (more here).

You can read more on Ozette at a very informative blog I recently discovered, Vegetables of Interest.

I am a sucker for a good heirloom story, and on top of its storied past, Ozette has a rich, distinctive taste and impressive productivity in the garden. We will be growing this variety again.

Huckleberry

This just might be my favorite variety that we grew this year. I love everything about Huckleberry. It is productive, beautiful, tasty, and it has a great name. Huckleberry is pinky-red on the outside and stained with shades of light and dark pink inside.

Cutting open a Huckleberry potato is a delightful sensual experience--first there is the aesthetic pleasure of all of the pinks; then there is the buttery feeling of the knife slipping easily through Huckleberry's smooth, creamy flesh.

We had some incredible potatoes au gratin with Huckleberry potatoes, and they were heartily enjoyed roasted, baked, and in salads all summer long.

Purple Peruvian

Seed Savers Exchange describes this variety as "a treasured, traditional variety from the Andean Highlands."

Treasure is just the right word: harvesting Purple Peruvian potatoes is like discovering clusters of fat purple gemstones in your garden. At first hard to see when you're digging because of their dark color, these potatoes glow with an almost iridescent purple sheen once the dirt is polished off of them.

As if that's not enough: when you slice one open, the purple and white patterns almost look like a crystalline structure. They're so beautiful that it almost wouldn't matter to me what they taste like. But their flavor is excellent and they have a lovely creamy texture.

La Ratte

A French heirloom fingerling, La Ratte was extremely productive in our garden.

It looks, feels, and tastes buttery and smooth. The feeling of biting into one of these fingerlings baked is delightful.

Yum.

Maris Piper

The jury is still out on Maris Piper in our household. We may try growing it again because less than perfect growing technique (we harvested too late) caused a fair amount of scab on this variety. It has a lovely flesh, though, and was fairly productive.

Rose Finn Apple

With a rosy exterior that is sometimes described as "blushed" and creamy yellow flesh, this is a very pretty potato, and has a distinct and delightful taste.

It's a rare and unusual variety, referred to by Abundant Life as a "precious heirloom." I love Rose Finns baked with a little butter or olive oil. We will grow them again.

Early Rose

An 1861 heirloom from Vermont, this potato is really only slightly rosy, with pinkish spots around the eyes. Early Rose is a good old fashioned standard potato. The Maine Potato Lady calls Early Rose "one of the founding potato varieties of this country." Apparently, Early Rose is the parent of many of the more common commercially available potato varieties. We found it to be a nice, basic, versatile potato. However, it is not keeping well compared to some other varieties, so I recommend growing Early Rose for eating within a month or so of harvest rather than using it as a storage potato.

All Red

This variety is the all-time favorite potato of one of my heroes, food historian, seed saver, and gardener extraordinaire William Woys Weaver (you can read Weaver's praise of and musings on All Red in his book, "100 Vegetables and Where They Came From" or online here). All Red, also known as Cranberry Red, is a fine variety--particularly enjoyable at the moment when you cut it open, the knife slicing through its buttery texture, and see the beautiful blushing pink color inside. We will grow All Red again.

Yukon Gold

We either ate or sold all of the Yukon Golds that we grew before I had time to take a picture. So I guess that tells you something.

Carola

Carola is a pretty white-skinned, yellow-fleshed potato that has made great soups and home fries this year. It was very popular at the tailgate market, perhaps because it has that familiar, standard potato look. It's a bit softer, creamier, and more thin-skinned than the typical baking potato, though. Carola's skin has a really nice crunch when eaten unpeeled in potato salad. The plants also produced a good quantity of nice new potatoes fairly early.

Digging Ozettes

We ordered all of our seed potatoes from Ronniger Potato Farm which carries a lot of heirloom varieties, and has decent prices for organic seed potatoes (especially compared to the outrageous prices that some outlets like Seeds of Change charge for organic seed potatoes). Eliot Coleman recommends Wood Prairie Farm out of Maine as his favorite source for organic seed potatoes, so we may order a few varieties from them this year.

So there you have the potato wrap-up...happy fall!

Potatoes on Foodista:

Anarcho-Southern Garden-Fresh Borscht

Fall beets are busting out around here, and so my kitchen is full of beet-derived concoctions.

Yesterday I made beet-basil pesto with red and green beet tops, basil, olive oil, garlic, and walnuts -- it turned out a strange, slightly unappetizing mauve color, but with an excellent tangy, spicy flavor.

Over the years since I've been shopping at farmers markets and growing my own food, I've developed a great love of beets--both roots and tops. And a deep devotion to borscht. Even if it didn't have such a unique and fabulous taste, the color alone is so beautiful that it makes a borscht-centered meal feel like a special occasion to me. How often do you get to put something magenta into your mouth, really?

My borscht does not include any cabbage, celery, or carrots, which from what I have gathered from borscht recipe perusing over the years, are traditional ingredients. I don't like to have too many ingredients distracting from the beets. Finely-chopped beet greens to add to the nutritional wallop of the soup, and are also a nice addition because if you grew the beets or bought them at a farmers market, you probably have tops to make use of somehow.

I have heard that the truly traditional way to make borscht is to ferment the beets first, and I want to try it one day, but this time I opted for a quicker time from dirt-to-mouth.

Beet roots contain folate, carotenoids, and flavoniods, and can help fight cancer and heart disease. Beet greens are chock full of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, all sorts of minerals (including magnesium and iron), and protein. A soup with both roots and greens feels like a good balance, nutritionally, energetically, and taste-wise to me.

I like my borscht creamy and tangy with a hint of sweetness to accentuate the natural sweet-tangy taste of the beets. I also like to roast the beets to bring out the sweetness even more, a trick I learned from my friend Shane.

So here's the recipe:

Anarcho-Southern Garden-Fresh Borscht

An extremely non-traditional spin on the classic Russian soup

Ingredients:

• 5 tablespoons butter
• 2 medium onions, quartered
• 2-3 medium potatoes, thinly sliced (I used Garnet Chili potatoes,an 1853 heirloom variety that we grew this year)
• A big pile of beet roots -- I used 9 cups whole beets, including Bull's Blood,Chiogga, and Yellow Intermediate Mangel varieties
• A handful of fresh dill weed, finely chopped
• A bunch of fresh beet tops/greens, including stems, finely chopped (about a cup chopped)
• 1 quart of plain, whole milk yogurt
• 1 teaspoon plus one pinch salt
• Black pepper
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• Green onions for garnish

Making the pink purée

Instructions:

1. Roast the beets and onions in a cast iron dutch oven or ceramic baking dish with 2 Tbs. of the butter at 300 degrees until tender. I do this the night before and refrigerate the roasted beets and onions until I'm ready to use them the next day.
2. Puree the roasted beets in a blender, adding the yogurt as you go. If you need to add a bit of water to keep the blade turning, do so. You should end up with a smooth, beautiful, purpley-pink puree.
3. In that same cast iron dutch oven that you used for the roasting, saute the potatoes in the other 3 Tbs. of butter. Add a little water when they start to stick to the pot, cover and cook until soft. When the potatoes are almost done, add the beet greens and saute for another 5 minutes or so.
4. Add the pureed beetroot-onion-yogurt mixture to the potatoes and beet greens.
5. Add dill, the tsp. of salt, black pepper to taste, honey, and vinegar, plus water to thin a bit if desired. Cook over low heat for 20 minutes or so until the flavors are well melded.
6. Top with sour cream and finely-sliced green onions, and serve hot with crusty bread for dipping. Enjoy!

Borscht keeps for at least several days in the fridge (maybe longer -- it never lasts any longer than a day or two around here) and is excellent as a chilled summer soup.

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The finished soup ready to serve. . .just add sour cream and other optional toppings such as sliced green onions or a chopped hard boiled egg.

Robbing Potatoes

A freshly robbed potato

We've finally started "robbing" new potatoes from the potato patch--hurrah! Robbing is a thrilling process of rooting around with your hands in the potato beds until you feel . . . Viola! A potato! It's a treasure hunt with a delicious, nutritious reward.

Once you find the potato, slip your fingers around it and gently extract it without harming the roots and stems, leaving the potato plant to grow and thrive and produce loads more potatoes throughout the summer and into the fall. Robbed new potatoes seem like a bonus prize, a little special extra treat.

This morning, I robbed several overflowing handfuls of Yukon Gold potatoes from our potato hills.

New potatoes, leeks, and collard greens.

We happen to have a large quantity of raw cow's milk from next door to use up before it goes bad, and leeks and celery ready to harvest in the garden, so a creamy potato soup was clearly in order.

I sometimes like to add sturdy greens of some sort (collards, kale, cabbage) to potato soup, but not too much as to overwhelm things. And there were collards galore in the garden, so a soup was born:

Creamy soup with New Potatoes, Leeks, Collards, and Celery

• 8-12 new potatoes
• 3-4 leeks
• A small bunch of collard greens, cut into very thin strips
• A handful of celery stalks of any size (we're growing a gorgeous heirloom red stalk celery that can be harvested at any stage by the stalk), sliced thinly
• Fresh parsley, coarsely chopped
• 3-4 cups of milk (raw if possible!)
• 3-5 Tbs. butter
• Salt and pepper
• A generous handful of fresh dill leaves

Ingredients on their way to the kitchen.

1. Cut potatoes and leeks into bite-sized pieces.
2. Saute leeks in a generous amount of butter in a heavy soup pot. Add salt.
3. When leeks are soft, add potatoes and a few grinds of black pepper. Stir, cover and cook, adding water as necessary.
4. Add collards and celery. Add a little water to keep things juicy. Continue to cook, stirring.
5. Add water and cook on medium heat until everything is nice and soft.
6. About 5 minutes before serving, add parsley and continue cooking.
7. Turn off the heat, stir in the milk, and cover.
8. Tear up a bunch of fresh dill, sprinkle in, and stir. Mash everything up a little bit with the back of a ladle if you want the soup to have a creamier texture.
9. Let sit for a minute or two to cool and for all the flavors to meld. Add more salt to taste. Serve!

The soup

. . .

mmmmm!

We had the soup with a salad fresh from the garden -- lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, and edible flowers and a garlickey dressing from our own garlic. Every ingredient was from the garden, with the exception of the milk, which was from the cow next door, and the salt, pepper, and butter, which, along with the oil and vinegar in the salad dressing, were from somewhere far away.

Summer!

Full Bloom

Photos from this morning in the garden:

Dino Kale

Chamomile

A whole lot of garlic and potatoes

Valerian & Ironweed

Onions, leeks, and brassicas

Love in a Mist

Leeks flowering, with sorrel in the background

The incredible, edible day lily

Lavender

Red Milkweed

After Blackberry Winter

Ever-dependable and beautiful chives

Although in these parts Mother's Day is considered the cutoff date for not having to worry about frost anymore, the North Carolina mountains are a whimsical place, and freak late frosts happen.  

On May 10th at our plant sale, a friend told me that a dozen years ago, there was a killing frost here on May 23.  Shocking!  "I did not know that was scientifically possible," said Tim.  

Then a week ago, after all sorts of heat-loving plants were in the ground and the garden was growing like gangbusters, in came the cold.  Our thermometer registered a low of 33 last Monday night.  We covered and took in what we could, but some of our plants showed signs of having been hit by a light frost.  Potatoes seemed to take the hardest hit, surprisingly.

Frostbitten Yukon Gold Potatoes

This sort of final, seemingly unseasonable cold snap, which I've heard called "blackberry winter" is common in the mountains of North Carolina. And blackberry winter was right on time this year: the blackberries were (and still are) in full bloom, and didn't seem a bit bothered by the low temperatures.   

Most things in the garden were similarly unscathed--the perennial herbs and flowers, greens, and ultra-hardy alliums and fava beans didn't blink an eye at the cold weather. 

Photos follow of the post-frost garden.

Multiplier onions flowering

Buttery red lettuce

Bountiful favas  

Pink evening primrose

Spinach from the garden

One of my favorite additions to the perennial garden this year: blood sorrel. . . accomp- anied by calendula volunteers 

Tall and dramatic leeks

Chard

Love-in-a-mist volunteers about to bloom

Kick It Root Down: Planting Potatoes

Potato varieties.  Click to enlarge.

We planted the first of the potatoes today--four 40-foot rows plus a bit more.  Five varieties went in the ground today: a very old fingerling variety called Ozette; another fingerling, Rose Finn, a tasty favorite of mine; the famous and ubiquitous Yukon Gold; a beautiful pinky-white heirloom called Early Rose; and the silky-skinned Maris Piper.  All were ordered from Ronningers out of Colorado.  These varieties (pictured above) added up to 12 pounds of seed potatoes -- only 28 more pounds to plant!

Full-throttle garden season is about to begin.  Bring it!

Seed Potatoes

Purple Peruvian, a very old fingerling potato variety available from Ronningers.

I just placed our seed potato order from Ronninger's Potato Farm.

Ronninger's offers an amazing variety of reasonably-priced seed potatoes, including certified organic and also what they call "naturally grown" which they describe as follows: "These are grown the same way as our certified organic potatoes, however, to save on time and costs, they were not inspected for their organic status."

Our 40 pounds of seed potatoes will be shipped on March 1, and we'll plant them in mid-March. 

Here are the varieties we're growing this year:

• La Ratte  
  
• All Blue
  
• All Red  
• Carola  
• Early Rose  
  
• Garnet Chili
• German Butterball
  
• Huckleberry
  
• Maris Piper
• Yukon Gold
  
• Purple Peruvian
• Rose Finn Apple
  
• Ozette

So the first of the 2009 seeds have been ordered--to paraphrase Maurice Sendak, "let the garden rumpus begin!"

Locro de Papas

Christopher and I were lucky enough to travel to Ecuador at the end of 2006 to visit my sister Mary, who was traveling and WWOOFing in various parts of South America at the time.

Of course two of the things I was most excited about in Ecuador were eating and talking with people about food. I loved the traditional foods of the high Andean areas of Ecuador. In general, the food was hearty, hot, creamy, and delicious. I did not sample the cuy, whole roasted guinea pig with teeth and all, so some would say my Ecuadorian culinary experience was incomplete, but I did eat Locro de Papas as often as possible.

Left, above: I ate my first bowl of Locro in this plaza in Quito, the capital of Equador. It was our first evening in the capital, and I savored my Locro with a hot mug of coca leaf tea. Mmmm!

Left, below: the view from the cafe.

Locro de Papas, often just referred to as Locro, is a creamy potato soup that varies from region to region, town to town, and probably household to household in Ecuador. And it is delicious. The Andean region is the ancestral potato homeland, and potatoes and quinoa are still the staple crops in the high mountains of Ecuador. Ecuadorians have had thousands of years of practice in preparing potatoes, and have perfected potato cookery as far as I am concerned. Every menu I saw in Ecuador included potatoes in one form or another, and Locro was almost always offered.

Lorco, a traditional dish tracing back to ancient times, is a great example of a food tradition that evolved to suit precise regional conditions. When you are high up in the Andes, there is no more perfect food than a hot, creamy, stick-to-your-ribs potato soup. In every spoonful, I felt like I could taste the flavors of generations of Locro spooned out of big ceramic kettles by thousands of grandmothers. What all of the Locro variations had in common were potatoes and salt. From that base, there were lots of variations.

My favorite Locro, eaten at around 11,000 feet in elevation, included homestead cheese from the town we were in, local potatoes, and Andean quinoa. It was served with fresh greens from a kitchen garden out back.


We took these photos of the mountains around the town where I ate my favorite bowl of Locro. There were thermal springs bubbling out of the ground, snow- capped volcanoes towering above us, and Andean Condors soaring overhead. I savored a perfect bowl of soup while Christopher feasted on local trout caught about 1/4 mile from our table. Definitely a peak food experience.

I've been working on a Locro recipe, and finally have one to share. This is definitely the time of year for Locro here, with local potatoes widely available and cold, wet weather driving us inside in search of hot soup. Here goes:

Locro de Papas with Quinoa

• 1-2 cups cooked quinoa
• 8 cups of water
• 4 pounds potatoes, peeled and “cracked” – see below
• ¼ cup butter
• Salt to taste – at least 1 tsp
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 head of garlic
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1-2 finely chopped yellow chili peppers or yellow sweet peppers
• Fresh ground pepper to taste
• 1/2 pound Muenster or other very melty and mild cheese, grated

1. Cook the quinoa ahead of time. I like to cook up a big batch and use some of it for this and the rest for other meals throughout the week. I have been using heirloom red quinoa lately, but you can use any variety.
2. Prepare the potatoes: rather than cutting them up, “crack” them like so: push the tip of a knife into the raw potato and then twisting it so that the potato breaks. This preparation supposedly releases more starch from the potatoes for a creamier texture.
3. In a large, heavy pot, heat the butter and stir in the salt, paprika, and cumin.
4. Add the onion and cook over moderate heat until the onions are soft. Add the chili peppers or sweet peppers and cook for a few more minutes.
5. Add the water and the cracked potatoes and bring to a boil. Simmer until tender, about 30-40 minutes.
6. Mash up the potatoes with the back of your spoon or a potato masher as you stir. Once the potatoes have released their starch and the soup has taken on a creamy texture, reduce the heat to low and continue to cook, stirring from time to time, until the potatoes disintegrate completely.
7. While you are cooking the soup, roast the whole head of garlic, peel, and then mash the soft, roasted cloves into the soup pot.
8. Continue cooking on low as long as you like. About 10 minutes before serving add grated cheese and cooked quinoa, and turn off the heat. The residual heat of the pot and soup should be enough to melt the cheese without overcooking it. You can also add a bit of milk, half-and-half, or cream at this stage if you like.
9. Stir a few last times and season to taste with salt and pepper.
10. Serve topped with generous slabs of fresh avocado.
    

Notes:

~ I recommend cooking Locro in a cast iron Dutch oven. Any big, heavy pot will do, but a seasoned cast iron Dutch oven is the best.

~ The peppers are optional. I have been using the last of the “Golden Treasure” peppers left over from our late summer garden.

~ I used Muenster cheese because it’s the right texture since I can’t get Ecuadorian cheeses here. You could also use mozzarella or queso fresco.

~ The roasted garlic is a departure from traditional recipes - you can leave it out if you like.

Left: Me looking into the kitchen garden of the purveyor of my favorite Locro, at 11,000 feet in the Andes.

So Alan and Christopher and I shared big bowls of Locro de Papas here in our own mountains last eve--we had ours with chunky bread, a salad from the garden topped with radish relish, pumpkin seeds, and dried pears from Hans.

It was in the low twenties outside as we sat snug around the kitchen table with our soup bowls. It had flurried all day and low clouds were settling in the valley around us. The creamy sensation of spoonfuls of Locro de Papas in our mouths and the warm satisfied feeling of bellies full of hearty soup created a perfect comfort-food experience on a cold, wet night in the mountains.