Category Archives: Farms

Springing into Market Season

Posted on May 1, 2016 by AnnieRie

Yes, around here we know the seasons have changed when the farmer’s markets, and Jenny’s have opened.

Jenny’s announced on their facebook page that opening day is Friday the 6th. For me, this is such welcome news. No more driving when I need some citrus, or bananas, or extra vegetables to complete a meal. Jenny’s is only a mile away from me, and open every day of the week. Yes, some of the produce is from the wholesale markets but they also support local farmers who don’t sell at the county markets. You haven’t had lima beans until you have their fresh picked, fresh shelled beans in the middle of summer.

As for the farmer’s markets around here, Wednesday is the day Miller market opens the season.

We have to hit Love Dove Farms for fresh greens. You know it’s really the beginning of the fresh fruit and vegetable season when you can make this awesome salad.

Greens and strawberries. A simple yogurt dressing. If you want, the addition of some ewe cream cheese.

Five of the eight Howard County markets open this week. Miller library, Wednesday. Cradlerock library Thursday. The Friday hospital market has expanded hours, opening at 11:30 am, to accommodate the lunch crowd. Saturday, Maple Lawn opens Sunday Oakland Mills. The newest market in River Hill Garden Center, opens on the 14th, and the Glenwood and Ellicott City Old Town markets return that same day.

This web site, MDSBEST, will help you find local farms, markets, CSAs and food sources in the state.

For those who read my blog and don’t live in Maryland, I found local harvest to be the best place to find local purveyors.

As for us, Tuesday our CSA begins again. Wednesday I may be hitting Miller Library to get salad fixings. If you want to change what you eat, and eat more locally produced foods, the salad greens are the easiest way to begin.

And a couple of salad spinners are the best thing in your refrigerator.

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Posted in Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Locavore and tagged farmer's markets, Food, Locavore, real food, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Shopping at Friends and Farms

Posted on April 28, 2016 by AnnieRie

Somewhere along the line, we reduced our reliance on grocery stores and increased what we bought from our CSA and our regional food bag.

Like our combinations at Friends and Farms.

The Protein and Dairy bag.

Today we got monkfish, ground chuck, eggs, cheese and turkey filets. Instead of milk, I pick extra produce. Today it was arugula.

Arugula was also in my sample produce bag, which I went on line to choose. My CSA doesn’t start until next week so I went on line to order a produce bag.

One with a protein option. Shrimp.

You can customize all kinds of combinations with this company. And buy extras at the warehouse.

Like yogurt and ice cream and apples and rice. Meat options too, which I saw on the blackboard. Whole chickens. Beef brisket. Specials every week as they try to keep the inventory in the freezer at a minimum.

Most of our food comes from here, and our CSA. No recalled foods from small local suppliers. No vegetables with possible listeria contamination. No meat products with wood, metal, plastic or whatever in them. I am a true believer in buying from small local companies, and knowing who processes your food.

Just to show how easy it is to come home and make an awesome dinner.

I sautéed that monkfish. Added it to a skillet of rice and vegetables.

Made a fish stew that will go into my regular rotation. It was that good.

This was simple. Yesterday I made a couple of cups of rice in my rice cooker. The leftovers from dinner become an addition to tonight’s dinner. I sautéed onions, garlic, and asparagus in olive oil. Added a container of crushed tomatoes. A container or spicy kale and bean soup. A teaspoon of sugar. A half teaspoon of salt. A splash of wine. After sautéing the monkfish I finished it in this mix.

Served with this.

A locally produced merlot.

Between the local markets, farms, CSAs and Friends and Farms, I don’t need to go to grocery stores. Unless I need toilet paper.

Yeah I forgot to photograph the final dish. It was served over arugula. Which was in my produce bag and my sample bag.

A double dose of arugula.

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Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food and tagged CSA, Food, local businesses, Locavore, MD Wine, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Sharp’s Farm is Open

Posted on April 19, 2016 by AnnieRie

The greenhouses opened today.

If you have never visited the farm at Waterford, you have missed a great opportunity to purchase seedlings and plugs of heirloom and hybrid herbs, vegetables and flowers.

Most of my perennial herbs behind my kitchen came from them. I buy my heirloom tomatoes there. They are conveniently located. A simple drive using scenic back roads. Head north on the Homewood, Folly Quarter, Triadelphia intercounty connector. Take a right on Sharp Road (named for the original family farm) and bear left onto Dorsey Mill which becomes Roxbury, and ends at Rte. 97. Head south (left) for just a few miles to Jennings Chapel. The alternative is the interstate but I find it more interesting to take that scenic route near the old location of the farm.

The farm itself is lovely.

You may even spot the eagles nesting out by the lake.

I also buy my heavy row cover for my garden there. They have many unusual vegetables too. Like Malabar spinach. Or artichokes.

Not a bad way to spend a spring morning. We’ll be there sometime in the next two days to get tomatoes, herbs, cukes, zucchini and some supplies.

Survey Says

Posted on April 3, 2016 by AnnieRie

Ok. I know I don’t have a huge amount of readers just in Howard County, but for those who live here, could you help with a simple survey?

Local Food Survey

If you click on the link highlighted above, it will take you to Survey Monkey. A class at University of Maryland, taught by one of the cofounders of Friends and Farms, Phil Gottwals, is looking to find information about whether people make food buying choices based on some definition of “local”.

It’s an interesting survey, and you don’t have to answer the personal questions.

For other local Howard County bloggers, on the hocoblogs website, let me know if you want to help Phil’s students and spread the word using our social media contacts. The more people the students get answering their survey, the better.

Any other questions, add a comment below. And, I promise, this isn’t a click bait thing. No advertising or harvesting of email addresses.

Just students who are learning what is important to consumers. Like really good food.

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Posted in Community, CSA, Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Local Businesses, Locavore and tagged CSA, Howard County, Locavore, real food, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Even More Carrots

Posted on March 24, 2016 by AnnieRie

Friends and Farms must have been spying on me. They knew I liked carrots and gave me more of them in these week’s Protein and Dairy bag. Why are there carrots in a protein bag? Because we don’t do milk, and I substituted produce.

For us, this $43 a week food source provides us with almost all the meat, fish, and eggs that we use in our cooking. They have expanded this option, giving us 5-6 pounds of premium fish and meat every week.

I like having local sources. Not getting irradiated or artificially colored beef.

It’s a good deal for the money. Today we got a T-bone steak.

Country spare ribs.

Split chicken breasts.

Bacon.

Eggs.

If you are “less meatarians” like we are, you can feed two people with this option. Easily. I try to make meat be a small portion of the plate.

We do so many things differently these days. We make egg salads, chicken salads, process the bacon to be used on multiple meals.

Consider what we do. Protein, one quarter of the plate. Carb, one quarter. Vegetables, half the plate.

And look into Friends and Farms, if you live around here. They are flexible with lots of options to choose.

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Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Local Businesses, Locavore and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Making Progress

Posted on March 20, 2016 by AnnieRie

Today’s the first day of spring.

My daffodils are blooming. Even that weird snow storm yesterday didn’t take them out. They are a bright spot in my cluttered kitchen aka renovation central. The only room on the first floor not being painted, it has become the storage site for all the dining room, foyer, powder room, closet and hallway stuff. Like dozens of pictures, fixtures, switches, knobs, hinges, etc.

My family room isn’t much better. Chairs, table leaves, buffet contents, new light fixtures and mirror. The chaos moved from control to out of control.

I still have room to cook, and room to start the garden seeds.

They are happily getting sunshine in the kitchen. I started arugula, dill, bibb lettuce and rainbow chard. If I get time to continue the spring cleaning of my garden plot, the onions will be planted later this week.

This egg crate method works very well for seed starting.

I use a fruit box from Costco, covered in a layer of plastic and newspapers. Prevents leaking while watering.

All of these will eventually go into my community garden plot, sometime in the middle of April. Under row cover for the greens. The dill. It will be interspersed into my asparagus patch up there. I am really excited to have a two foot by twenty foot line of asparagus in my new plot.

And, in just a few weeks, I am off to Sharp’s Farm to get my summer vegetable seedlings. Spring needs to get in gear around here, and help us gardeners get plants in the ground.

Planting anything interesting this spring?

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Posted in Farms, Gardening, Hobbies, Nature, Weather and tagged farms, gardening, hobbies, spring flowers, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Going for the Greens …

Posted on March 16, 2016 by AnnieRie

… inspired by our CSA basket, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

That lacinato kale made me think once again of colcannon. So I decided to go looking for a truly Irish interpretation of the dish, one that I have made countless times and blogged about, almost as often.

I never knew about the Halloween connection, or the prizes inside. Amazing what we can find here on the internet, isn’t it?

But, getting back to the CSA basket, the kale and parsnips both made me think of making my version. I have to use the techniques from the web reference, as it hasn’t been the way I’ve finished mine.

As for the rest of my weekly Lancaster Farm Fresh delivery, picked up at my friend’s home near Robinson Nature Center, there were other real favorites this week.

Five of the seven vegetable items came from the LFFC “brand”, which is what they sell to restaurants, stores and buying groups, like Friends and Farms. Two of the items were attributed to individual farmers. We knew that in the winter we would be getting some of the vegetables bought through the cooperative, to supplement what is grown on the local farms year round. Let’s face it, with a CSA that tops out some years above 4000 members, you can’t always get the local farms to have enough every single week. Or, that the small farms can provide enough of one item, so some of our items have the LFFC tag on it, meaning it’s an aggregate of many of the farms’ provisions.

This week we got zucchini. Five absolutely lovely green zucchini. A joy to get them in the dead of winter, and we had been told that farms south of us were being used to supply some variety in our baskets. I have plans for those zucchini. My store in the freezer of zucchini fritters is gone. Done. Inhaled. I love the Smitten Kitchen recipe for zucchini fritters and make dozens of them in the summer, gently layered in parchment and placed in the freezer. We used our last ones a week ago.

I will be grating zucchini and making a nice replacement batch. I have to pick up some plain yogurt at Friends and Farms to make tzatziki in order to enjoy some this weekend.

As for those sweet potatoes on steroids. I have plans for them. They were in the swap box, and I just decided I was tired of beets and sunchoked out, so I put the bags of each of them into the box and brought home those two behemoths. I want to make hummus with one, and bread with the other. Never made sweet potato bread and since I am a prisoner in my house while work is being done (still not finished after four weeks), it’s a good time to try a new recipe.

As for the rest of my stuff yesterday, here are the bread and cheese.

And, the meat delivery of the week.

Yep, bison is back. Along with chicken thighs and bacon. Not what works for tomorrow, but welcome additions to my freezer.

As for tomorrow there will be sausage for dinner. With colcannon. Bread. Cheese. Guinness. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

The Dirt List

Posted on March 14, 2016 by AnnieRie

Just up the road a bit, in Philly, there is an amazing restaurant called Vedge. I’m not sure when I first heard about it, maybe one of my magazines, or Chopped, or a random blog post somewhere.

I do know I love their recipes in their book. Like this one. I stumbled across this article recently and ended up buying the book online. For $9.99, it now resides on my iPad to inspire me when my CSA box comes.

Why? Because our Amish food cooperative CSA supplies restaurants, hospitals, schools and grocery stores within a 150 mile radius of the 100+ Amish farms who are members of this organic cooperative. I viewed, a while back, the Penske video by the general manager of Lancaster Farm Fresh, Casey Spacht. Casey had this vision, and worked with a small number, at the start, of Amish farmers to make it come true.

I also found, while reading my cookbook that the “dirt list” at the restaurant is inspired by those same vegetables that come in my weekly CSA. Baby Hakurei turnips. Chinese broccoli. Salsify (I am bummed, we haven’t gotten salsify in ages, it all must go to the restaurants).

Other local restaurants use the coop too. Like Woodberry Kitchen, in Baltimore. And, probably Great Sage, since the coop delivers to Roots. We are lucky that our CSA is supported year round, even when we don’t get the minimum 30 members in the winter. Why? Because the truck also delivers to Roots, MOM’s, Friends and Farms, to name a few of their local wholesale customers.

I do love this CSA for its uniqueness. They offer some really off the wall vegetables. It isn’t a CSA for the carrot, corn, romaine crowd. You have to want escarole, watercress, purple kohlrabi, bitter fruit, and other exotic things. You have to learn to be creative. You have to have a passion for discovery, and you have to love vegetables enough to want to use large amounts of them in your cooking. Even the smaller shares give you a great variety. You certainly get your money’s worth.

a medium summer share

I just signed up for my sixth spring/summer share. I dropped back to a medium share, as the large was giving us as much as 25-30 pounds of organic vegetables weekly. The variety was great. And, at $31 a share, it was an immense bargain. The medium share is about $22 a share and will give us 7-9 different items, and about 15 or so pounds a week. Sure beats grocery store pricing for organics.

There are lots of choices for CSAs around here. I just happen to be committed to this small, focused, adventurous group of people who are willing to take on these and more.

And, it all comes down to that dirt list on the Vedge menu. Named because of the freshness, the seasonality, the joy of eating food that was just harvested. The typical turn around time from ground to table for this cooperative is two days.

Check out the book from Vedge. And check out our CSA. If you really love cooking and want a challenge, this is the place to find it. Great vegetables. A book of amazing recipes for inspiration.

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Posted in cookbooks, Farms, Food, LFFC, Locavore, Restaurants and tagged CSA, farms, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food, value of CSA, vedge. Bookmark the permalink.

The CSA Update

Posted on March 9, 2016 by AnnieRie

The warm weather makes us all think it’s spring. And with spring, our thoughts turn to fresh vegetables and fruit. Here in the heart of Maryland we have so many options for Community Supported Agriculture and they are evolving to make them more adaptable for our needs.

I wrote about Breezy Willow the other day. Besides them, there are lots of options around here. Love Dove Farm. Gorman Farm. Clark’s Farm. One Straw Farm. TLV Tree Farm. Zahradka Farm. All fairly local.

For us, we still like our Amish option, with all the exotic vegetables. We know it isn’t for everyone, but we like it. I still can buy from the local farms at the markets all summer and fall.

Happily, the CSAs around here are allowing you to choose options. For meat. For eggs. If you haven’t considered buying locally and helping a farm get money early in the year, keeping them from having to borrow money early in the season maybe you should check out the options and help them stay healthy. If you don’t live around here, you can check out Local Harvest and find one near you.

You too can get wholesome food, fresh from the fields, and know the farmers who grow it.

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Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, LFFC, Locavore and tagged CSA, farms, Food, local businesses, Locavore, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

Breezy Willow

Posted on March 6, 2016 by AnnieRie

The new and improved country store.

For their grand opening yesterday, I took some time off from moving stuff around the painters to head out to Woodbine (the weird part of Woodbine that drops below the interstate and is between Lisbon and Glenwood) to see the new Breezy Willow Farm addition, at Hopkins Springs.

Right on Frederick Rd. Between Carrs Mill and Bushy Park. The family bought this historic property and will make it their CSA pick up point for those picking up at the farm.

The site is great. Much more parking and a big area for those intrepid early bird members, who used to get a little cold up on the hill at the old site.

They have expanded their offerings at the store to include freshly baked items from the Amish. I brought home a six pack of cookies yesterday. The produce pick up area is across the way from the farm store. Both areas are heated, and much more comfortable.

I also like their new options, for summer CSA. You can pick a weekly or biweekly pick up. You can sign up for full CSA, or delete the bread and eggs portion, just to get fruit and vegetables. Good new choices for those who are vegan.