"Good Food" focuses on local farms

When we first moved to Whatcom County, began homesteading, and got involved in Tilth, I had a conversation with Gretchen Hoyt of Alm Hill Gardens that I still remember 30 years later. Although I grew up in the country around gardens and animals, I knew basically nothing about farming, except that the migrant workers I met as a camp liaison for a summer education program (my summer job after freshman and sophomore years in college) were living in third world conditions in the Puyallup Valley.  

(It’s interesting in another light that at the time, the late 1960s, the workers in the camps I visited were First Nations people from a reserve on Vancouver Island. Their annual migration to pick berries and beans outside of Sumner was a continuation of the seasonal cycle of food gathering their tribe had followed, probably for millennia. Of course the significant difference was that instead of putting by their own stores for food and trade, they were now living in squalor while they harvested a product for someone else’s profit.)

What Gretchen said was how many skills you needed to be a successful farmer or farm worker, especially on a diversified small farm. She said if farming rewarded according to the knowledge and  management abilities it took to do it well, fieldworkers would be paid like lawyers. [Gretchen, if you ever read this—I’m sure those aren’t your exact words; it’s the gist that stayed with me]

I thought of that when talking with Gretchen and Ben’s son, Joshua Craft, this summer at the Bellingham Farmers Market. Josh is farming on his own now, at Nooksack Nine Fruits and Veggies. When I saw him in mid-June, and not a sunny June as we may remember, he already had glorious ripe heirloom tomatoes. Well, actually he didn’t have them, because he had just sold the last one, at $5 a pound.  In order to produce flavorful ripe tomatoes in a rainy Northwestern Washington spring, Josh had rigged up a wood-fired furnace and piped the water it heated under the soil of his greenhouse so he could plant tomatoes in January. By the time the little plants were up and in need of light, the days were getting long enough to provide it, with the actual heat still coming from below. That’s just one example of the skills he uses to grow market vegetables and find a way to make them profitable. 

I thought of it again last night when I watched “Good Food,” a documentary about sustainable agriculture in the Pacific Northwest, mostly Washington state. Made by Bullfrog Films and featuring, along with a lot of gorgeous scenery, David Suzuki, Mark Musick of Tilth, Ben and Gretchen at Alm Hill Gardens, The Bellingham Farmers Market, Mallard Ice Cream, Rio Thomas (founder of the Small Potatoes gleaning project), Anne Schwartz of Blue Heron Farm near Rockport, and many more, it is that rare thing, a feel-good movie about our food system. 

In the movie Ben and Gretchen talk again about the mismatch between the service farm workers provide for us and the pay and respect they get. Ben says that growing and harvesting the food we depend on is the most necessary job there is, and deserves to be seen as such. “We pay our workers better than Walmart,” said Ben, discussing his and Gretchen’s priorities as business owners.  “That’s not saying much,” Gretchen responded. (Of course Ben and Gretchen themselves don’t make anything like what Sam Walton of Walmart did. He was the second richest man in the world when he died in 1992.)

Besides better food and less dependence on ever-scarcer oil, local sustainable agriculture provides benefits that may not be as obvious outside the small communities where more farmers live. Among them are increased control and increased satisfaction for the farmers themselves, something we all want from our jobs. Billy Allstot grew up outside Tonasket on a commercial apple orchard and now grows vegetables, herbs, and flowers for direct sales to farmers markets. In the film he said that when he was an apple grower for a wholesaler, he would truck his crop to the warehouse and that was that. Except for the check, he never heard another thing. No praise or critiques, he never saw a customer bite into an apple and smile, never even knew what continent his fruit went to. Now he can get to know his customers, answer their questions, and literally stand behind his product. If tastes and trends evolve, he knows it right away and can adapt to meet them.

As a high school teacher out in the county, I see yet another benefit. Many of my students are the children of farm workers (and work the fields themselves in the summer). When I started teaching there in the mid-1990s, it was rare for a child from a fieldworking family to graduate high school. Constant moves and the frequent need to stay home to help out thinned the ranks of children who could stay in school. Rarer still was a farmworker’s child who participated in extracurricular activities, which presupposes a degree of stability and some spare time. Now it’s different. Diversified sustainable farms, are labor intensive, and the skills they require mean that workers are less interchangeable. The children of the families working at Alm Hill Gardens have some stability, they can make plans, and they don’t always have to grab every possible chance to make another dollar for their families in the short run. Those kids are taking AP classes, they are heading to college, they turn out for sports, they head after-school clubs and run for ASB

You can get the movie from the Bellingham/Whatcom County Library. 

Some links:

http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org/stories/blue-heron-farm/ has a very interesting interview with Anne Schwartz

http://www.facebook.com/smallpotatoesgleaningproject

www.goodfoodthemovie.com

When it Rains, it Stores

As the March 29 snowfall melts, the rain barrel fills up for later. Come July when the cucumbers are thirsty, I won't have to haul water out to the alley. A length of chain channels water from the gutter to the barrel opening.

I'm a big fan of rain barrels. Some years back when I was feeling flush, I bought an 80-gallon commercial model, plus an overpriced downspout diverter gizmo from Real Goods catalog, and installed it at my York Neighborhood house. It did yeoman duty there, helping me establish new plants in the desert conditions under the juniper tree.

At my current house I have that one for the front yard, and a do-it-yourself model in the alley. The 40-gallon alley barrel was free from the Trans Ocean surimi plant on Orchard Street. They kindly steered us toward the ones that had held dextrose, rather than the ones that reeked of fish. A bit of RE Store gutter, a few fittings from Hardware Sales, and we're in business. My house has only one hose bib and it's inconveniently located, so the barrels save me hassle as well as water. A couple years ago on a local sustainability tour, I saw a smaller rain barrel mounted on a handcart so it can go where the need is greatest. That seems like an excellent idea too.

If you would like a rain barrel of your very own, there's a workshop Saturday April 19, 10 a.m. to noon at the Bellingham RE Store. Pre-registration is required by contacting Anitra Accetturo at 778-7732 or AAccetturo@cob.org

A second workshop will be held in May--date to be announced later.

A Resurrection

When we lived on the farm, my own version of sunrise service was to go out Easter morning and collect nettles for omelets. It was our way to mark an annual resurrection that seems miraculous in its own way--every spring the nettles come up and the hens go back to laying full force after their winter slowdown. On days I felt even more metaphorical, I could compare the nettles--prickly, aggressive, and hard to control--with certain people I know who may be hard to get along with but are still worth having around.


Eggs from a home flock, free-ranging on bugs and greens, have brighter yolks, firmer whites, thicker shells, and a rich flavor unknown those from factory chickens. They go well with the intensely "green" taste of cooked nettles. (The sting goes away in the cooking.)

Northwest nettles have been valued as well as cursed for millennia. Local tribes used the strong stringy fibers of mature plants for fish and duck nets and for the warps of Salish rugs. They also had a variety of medicinal uses. According to reports collected by ethnobotanist Erna Gunther in one of my all-time favorite books, The Ethnobotany of Western Washington, the Squaxins and Lummis gave crushed nettle leaves in water to women during childbirth "to scare the baby out." Less fancifully, many tribes considered nettle tea a muscle relaxant, making it valuable during labor. The prickly sting was also put to use in lieu of caffeine. Hunters would rub themselves with nettles to help stay awake all night.

I know at least one person nowdays who rubs nettle leaves across his knuckles when his arthritis acts up. I've also read on the web about nettle tea curing cancer, which I think may be a stretch. When we were kids, the accepted antidote to nettle stings was the slightly gooey sap of the brake fern, which was reliably found nearby. Aloe works too.
The Sumas property is nettle's paradise, the rich riverbottom loam producing armies of 6-foot specimens. That response to good soil may be one reason that early ethnographers reported Quileute women made their best gardens in soil where nettles had been cleared away. Nettles are also an excellent addition to the compost bin. For the kitchen, though, you want the soft, new growth only. Mature plants are too stringy. I stop collecting when they top 6 inches. Use rubber gloves to pick and clean them.
In general, nettle make a reasonable substitute for chard or spinach in any recipe that requires cooking. They cook very quickly, so adjust the time accordingly. The following basic recipes are from Winter Harvest.
Cream of Nettle Soup
Ingredients
4 cups young nettle leaves
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups milk or light cream (I'm going to try it next with soy milk)
2 tablespoons grated onion
2 tablespoons flour
salt and pepper
grated Parmesan to taste
Instructions
Wash nettles, do not dry, and steam them in the water that clings to them. Puree with their liquid, adding some stock by the tablespoon if necessary. Melt butter in a medium saucepan, add onion, and cook until soft. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until color starts to turn. Add stock, salt, pepper, and nettle puree and heat just to boiling. Lower heat and simmer 10 minutes. Add milk or cream and heat gently. Sprinkle each serving with Parmesan to taste.
Serves 4

Nettle Omelet
Ingredients
4 cups nettle young nettle leaves, loosely packed
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
5 tablespoons butter, divided (or any combination of butter and olive oil)
2 shallots, minced, or 2 tablespoons minced onion
5 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper
pinch of fresh tarragon (optional)
Instructions
Steam nettle leaves until limp. Remove from heat, press out moisture, and chop. Mix with ricotta and set aside. Melt 1 tablespoon butter, or heat oil, in a small saucepan, add shallots or onion, and cook gently until they start to turn color. Do not let them brown. Stir them into the nettle mixture. Add salt and pepper to beaten eggs. Melt remaining butter, or pour oil, in an omelet pan or your closest approximation. Add eggs and cook over low heat, loosening edges as they solidify and letting the uncooked egg run under. Spoon ricotta-nettle mixture onto one half of the omelet, leaving a 2-inch margin bare. Slide a spatula gently under the other half and fold omelet under the filling. Cook very gently, about 2 minutes on each side, sprinkle with tarragon, and serve hot.
Serves 2 or 3

Once again--What Makes a Good CSA?

I posted my question about what makes a good CSA on the Local Harvest forum--http://www.localharvest.org/forum--and got a thoughtful reply from Walter Haugen of F.A. Farm near Ferndale. He gave me permission to repost it here:

Since I have a CSA share program and am just up the road from you, outside Ferndale, my views are obviously biased. However, here goes. Even though I use organic practices, I don't market as organic because I think certification is bosh. As Eliot Coleman says, "Your best guarantee of safe food is to know the first name of the farmer who grew it." I also think it is important to do as much by hand and I don't even own a tractor - I have a BCS tiller and two smaller units - lower carbon and calorie footprints.

I give vacation extensions so people don't lose their weekly box when they go on vacation. I don't mind selling vegetables right up to Thanksgiving as I did last year. I only have on-farm pickup at the moment, but if I sell enough Bellingham shares I will do a single dropoff one day a week. The Local Farm Exchange (LFE) stand down on Railroad Ave. is a good dropoff point, but there is a little bit of confusion now as to how it will be run. Hopefully it will be sorted out by June.

I encourage farm drop-in visits, as I am always looking for an excuse to get off my hands and knees in the dirt. Another good idea is to use Farm Bucks - this idea was pioneered around here by Mike from K&M, so I want to give credit to him. Farm Bucks are a good way to involve people who have cashflow problems and only want the equivalent of a half-share. I find that half-shares take more energy than full shares because they break your rhythm on box-filling day. Full shares plus Farm Bucks seems a good compromise to me. I am also defining my niche more narrowly and have more of a political component in my flyer and FAQ's. Those are all things I think are important and I could go ad nauseum, but I won't.

Haugen is also an initiator of the Ferndale Farmers Market, set to open in May. To read a profile of him and his farm, and the long process of getting the farmers market going, check out the Ferndale Record Journal--http://www.ferndalerecordjournal.com/index.php?goto=2008-03-05%2006:22:48&section=news

It's Complicated, Part 2

I really love fresh tomatoes--hardly a bold, controversial statement, but heartfelt: tomato/basil sandwiches, especially if they are on slices of La Vie en Rose Tuscan Loaf, cherry tomatoes off the vine while I’m weeding around them; fresh tomatoes on pizza; roasted tomatoes; stuffed tomatoes; tomato slices with some of that fancy salt my friend Vicky Jenkins carries around with her; fresh tomato curry; tomato risotto…

Stop!!! This is making me crazy. It barely March, and I rarely eat fresh tomatoes until I can get them from close to home, preferably from that big container on my deck. I have it on wheels so I can keep pushing it into the sunniest spots as the season moves along. Some of this anticipation is pleasurable, like waiting for your true love to come back after absence--ah those reunions. And with tomatoes, it’s much less complicated--none of that renegotiation of new and old roles--you can just dive right in.

But I’m not a purist, and I’ll no doubt succumb to a basket or two of tomatoes before the too-brief local season arrives. The question is…which ones?

If I’m tracking food miles, then my choices are B.C. hothouse tomatoes or the hydroponic ones grown by the Hayes family just down the road in Custer. If it’s price, then Grocery Outlet probably has some grape tomatoes from somewhere that will be mostly ok if I use them right away.

If it’s all about the carbon footprint, my latest reading makes it seem that organic from Mexico may be a better bet than the seemingly obvious local choices. The aforementioned (It's Complicated, part 1) New Yorker article by Michael Spector (you can also listen to his interview with Terry Gross at www.npr.org) points out that many factors besides food miles go into a carbon footprint. He says, for example, that apples shipped to Manhattan from New Zealand, assuming they travel by sea, probably involve fewer carbon emissions than those trucked down from upstate New York. Climate, growing conditions and farming practices all factor in to the mix, and New Zealand’s soil and sunshine make for more productive acreage with less outside input. Spector says the same holds true for New Zealand lamb shipped to Great Britain as compared with those Yorkshire sheep you read about in All Creatures Great and Small. In probably the most quoted part of his article, he says that if you live east of Cleveland, you are doing your sustainable duty if you buy French wine (which travels most of the way by sea) rather than California or Washington wine (trucked eastward on our vastly subsidized highway and petroleum distribution systems). Unless, of course, the trucks are running on biodiesel. Unless again, of course, that biodiesel is made from fuel-intensive factory-farm crops that are displacing real food crops.

Back to tomatoes. Those B.C. and Custer tomatoes presumably require lots of input--the acres of greenhouses, fuel to heat them, etc., whereas Mexican ones grow outside in the abundant sunshine where their species first evolved. When I gardened in California during my college years, I was amazed how easy it was to grow tomatoes. I could grow those huge beefsteak varieties that I regretfully pass by here because they almost never ripen in time. I had so many I ended up selling my surplus to the local deli for their sandwiches--my first experience in market gardening. I could harvest Roma sauce varieties by the bushel. When I contrast that kind of gardening, which was mostly about keeping up with the deluge, with the fussing and fretting I do to get a few precious fruits to ripen here before late blight strikes, I can see that some disparities in energy input are simply built in.

As for me, I’m going to cook brown rice with chard with some dried tomatoes cured in olive oil, ride my bike over to see my granddaughter, and save the tomato dilemma for another day.

PS--I know next to nothing about hydroponics and it’s entirely possible my assumptions about energy input are a bit off-base. My main memory is from a journalistic trip to Cuba in 1983, when my then-husband and I were shown a hydroponic operation in a Havana backyard. Being that we were then living on a homestead with lots of space and wonderful soil, I focused less on the hydroponics process and more on the dedication of our host, an aristocratic fellow who had converted to the revolutionary cause and devoted his life to food independence for Cuba.
So here’s some info from an expert:

Selling Hydroponics:
Of course, hydroponics has long battled a stigma- that it's the sole province of underground growers intent of producing evil crops. But you, as a successful year-round grower, can tell a more complete story. You can show the public how hydroponics allows growers to grow more crops in less space with fewer resources. How it can provide consumers with exotic or off-season crops that would otherwise have to be shipped thousands of miles to market. And how it's conceivable that someday hydroponics will be utilized to grow large volumes of food sustainably. And, as a result, more cropland will be available for soil and wildlife conservation activities and good old open space.
It seems that when hydroponics is promoted as a partner in our efforts to build a sustainable and prosperous future, new doors of acceptance and possibility are open.
Barbara Berst is a freelance writer and microfarmer living in northwestern Washington State. She is the author of the forthcoming title, Prospering with a 21st Century Micro Eco-Farm, and can be reached at berstperkins@earthlink.net or by writing to her at Island Meadow Farm, 4925 Sharpe Road, Anacortes, Washington 98221.

The Hayes's own website (http://www.devinegardens.com/about/) explains, among other things, that they power their farm machinery by biodiesel they produce onsite. I've eaten their tomatoes and they are very tasty--also pricy. Once again, it’s complicated.

It's Complicated

"We have to be careful not to rush from denial to despair," says John Elkington, founder of a British sustainability consulting business. The quote is from a fascinating article in the Feb. 25 New Yorker, on the complexities of measuring carbon footprints. Elkington worries that as we pull our heads out of the sand and realize the scope of our task in responding to global warming, we may just throw up our hands and stop trying.

I'll have more to say about the article later, because it made me question some of my own assumptions about sustainable living, but in the meantime it's online and well worth reading:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter


I thought about Elkington's quote Monday night at a meeting for the Whatcom Community Food Assessment Project. That's an ambitious effort to quantify the food situation in the county, in order to "help ensure a local food system that will sustain the land and livelihoods that provide adequate, nutritious food for current and future generations in Whatcom County."

It didn't take long for the folks at our table to zero in on the complexities of that worthy goal. If low-income people in the county are going to eat adequately and nutritiously, fresh healthy food has to be affordable. If future generations are going to farm, fish, and thrive here, our agricultural and fishing practices must be sustainable. If sustainable family farms are to survive in a competitive market, they have to fetch a good price for their products and they need to keep their labor costs under control. "It's a three-legged stool," said Tom Thornton of Cloud Mountain Farm. Sustainability, affordability to consumers, and adequate worker wages/business profit: all three elements are essential. Achieving them all can be a daunting challenge.

For example, I admire Rootabaga Country Farm, home of Samish Bay Cheeses among other organic, sustainably produced, top quality products. But their least expensive cheese retails for $16.99/lb. at the Co-op. Their other varieties sell for $22/lb., which means I can only assume they are delicious as I've never tried them. I trust their commitment to sustainable practices, I hope they are making a decent living, but the third leg of the stool is out of reach for most of their neighbors. (The farm will ship cheese to you via UPS for a lower price per pound, but the minimum order is $24 plus shipping.)

I did learn from Amber Dawn Hallet, the Sustainable Connections staffer who facilitated discussion at our table, that the affordability leg will be addressed in one new way this season at the Bellingham Farmers Market. This year the market vendors can accept food stamps.

Compostable (kind of) Deli Containers

The Bellingham Food Co-op is now using biodegradable plastic for its deli containers. The nice server at the Swan Cafe told me they were compostable, but he wasn't sure how fast. So I've been trying it out in my backyard bins these last few months. I've put some in whole, some cut into strips, and with or without first pouring boiling water over them. As yet, nada. The vegies, leaves, and shredded paper are decomposing in their leisurely cold-weather fashion. The plastic looks good as new.

A bit of research tells me that breaking the containers down into CO2, water, and non-toxic organics takes about 6 months in a high-temperature commercial composting facility and closer to a year in a home bin. The actual manufacturer's website, below, says 45 days, but I think that's a marketing fantasy.

These containers are a joint brainchild of Dow and Cargill, and are made from cornstarch--that's three strikes against them in some circles. The technology can also be used to make plastic out of sugarcane, potato, tapioca, cellulose, or soy protein.

http://naturesplastic.wilkinsonindustries.com/NaturesPLAstic/

My conclusion is that I'll try to remember to bring my own containers to the Swan, and when I forget, I'll be adding my bioplastics to the food-waste tote I share with my nice neighbors. But I am curious if others have hit on a home composting solution.

From the Archives

In 1986 I wrote an essay on homesteading for the 20th anniversary of Pacific Northwest Magazine. PNW is no longer published, and I no longer live on the farm, but I still feel the connection to the cycles of the land that I tried to articulate then.

...What I like about my routine is the unmasked complexity of ordinary life. I like it that the weather is not just an annoyance or pleasure but a real shaper of events. I like leaning on the counter at the feedstore talking about winter rye, even though I buy it by the pound instead of the ton. My days have more drudgery, but they also have more resonance. I sniff the breeze for rain. I check the center of the compost pile, where the alchemy of decomposition can give off enough heat to cook an egg. I look for morels when the alders start to bud.

In a world full of events that seem random at best, and more often so terrifying in their logic that I can hardly bear to face them, I am entranced by the benign intricacies of barn and garden. The cow's surplus milk goes to the chickens. We rotate the chickens between pens each year, and plant corn in the pen that's empty. The cornstalks and overripe ears go to the cow, so she can make more milk for the chickens. Now that we have a young daughter, her mealtime mess is also the poultry's gain, and she likes both the chicken and the egg. Operating along with these homely household cycles are enough more mysterious ones for a lifetime of wonder: hawk and mouse, mushroom and rotten log, caterpillar and cabbage...

The young daughter of the essay now has a young daughter of her own. I hope Hailey, too, will grow up knowing where her milk and chicken and corn on the cob come from.

Lentil Liberation

I've always associated lentils with big times--I expect because my mom made lentil soup as the midnight meal at the epic New Year's Eve parties of my childhood. Staying up late, watching a generally dignified set of adults get loose, lentil soup with ham. It all fit.

Later I fell in love with Indian food and its multicolored array of intriguingly named dals--moong, masur, urad, toor--lentils all. Like tofu, or potatoes, lentils are a flavor sponge, soaking up the salt and smoke of ham hocks or the warmth of cumin and chili.

What I didn't know until years later was that millions of those cooks in India were working their magic with legumes grown in Washington state. The Palouse hills of eastern Washington (and, ok, Idaho too) produce nearly all of the lentils grown in the U.S., the great majority of them for export. Meanwhile, specialty dals are imported from India to the U.S. for the Indian-American market, subject to the vicissitudes of world trade. (For example, the Indian government banned lentil exports in 2006 when drought drove up domestic prices.) It's not clear to me why this makes sense. Couldn't North American lentil lovers get their fix from the U.S. and Canadian growers who are actually looking for markets?

As a major crop in the fertile but fragile soils of the Palouse, lentils are a better environmental choice than most. Being legumes, they fix nitrogen in the soil and are often used to build soil quality in rotation with the more nutrient-demanding grain crops. They can be sown directly into stubble from the preceding crop, reducing the erosion from tilling. They are generally grown without irrigation, so they don't further imperil the aquifer to the extent of, say, potatoes. They are also currently endangered by the rising prices for wheat, corn, and soy, which are pushing growers into altering their rotations and sowing where the money is. If we lose lentil acreage to grow grain for ethanol in the name of energy independence, is that really progress?

So as local eaters, surely our mission is clear: Keep our lentils home! Buy a batch today! Post your favorite recipes in the comment section here!

And come August, never mind that tour of Normandy to try du puy lentil salad with duck breast. Head to Pullman for the annual Lentil Festival. Lentil Burgers on the grill, a big parade, bicycle races, and--for my money--some of the most beautiful agricultural landscapes on the planet. http://www.lentilfest.com/

What About the Taco Truck? or Carbon vs. Culture?

I was musing happily, perhaps a bit self-righteously, on my recent refocus on local food, when I drove by my favorite taco truck out on Guide Meridian. That got me wondering. Then, further down Meridian near my house I went by the Asia Market. That got me wondering some more.

Let's say foodshed eating goes beyond local produce week and becomes a way of life for thousands. If John Rawlins is right about our future in the upcoming post-oil economy, we'll have no choice. (For a report on his recent speech at WCC by John Stark, go to http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/5/7/104000775.html.) As we savor our cream of nettle soup in spring and our baked pears with blackberry wine sauce (Pasek Cellars, Skagit County), are we really going to lose the chance to eat pan dulce (hard wheat flour and sugar!), or taco de lengua (masa! lime slice!) or Thai gaeng dom yam gai (coconut milk!), or falafel (sesame seeds! garbanzos!).

Can we eat a healthy and delicious diet of local foods? Of course. Would we lose more than just the chance to pamper our palates with new tastes? I think so. Food is such a powerful carrier of culture and memory, a link for thousands of our neighbors between memories of home and the new life in the U.S. For native Northwesterners like me it's a daily reminder of the blessings of diversity. I'll celebrate the day when we don't waste our resources on tasteless mega-strawberries from California and Chilean peaches that should have stayed home. I have high hopes for the baby peach tree that, along with four blueberry bushes, is replacing grass in my front yard (all from Cloud Mountain Farm). But I don't want walls along our borders to keep out people, or flavors.

January Chard

This time of year I crave fresh greens. I've had all the roasted beets I want for awhile, delicious and versatile though they are. The Co-op has lots of pretty green things, but they mostly come from far away and I'm trying to reactivate my local winter palate.

Local produce can be scarce, and the surviving garden crops tend to be tough and raggedy. In my small city garden the regular lettuce is gone and the corn salad is so hunkered down and so mud-spattered that's it's hard to get excited about it. So, it's pretty much down to kale, leeks, and chard.

Today I'm going for chard. Unlike kale, chard's flavor doesn't improve with a freeze. The surviving leaves tend to be a bit leathery and strong tasting, so a quick stirfry doesn't always do the trick. I like make variations on a traditional Sicilian pizza topping. I use olive oil; butter could work for strict locavores, or the greens can be braised over lower heat with a touch of hazelnut oil from Holmquists Hazelnuts in northern Whatcom County.

Chop up onions and/or leeks and garlic, maybe a cup of the oniony flavors to a large bunch of chard, including stems, and cook until onions are soft and chard is limp. I use a cast-iron skillet. Add two or three dried tomatoes. (Soak them in hot water for 15 minutes first, unless they are already cured in olive oil and therefore soft.) If your Sicilian loyalty outweighs your local foodshed convictions, you may want to add sliced Sicilian olives, a handful of raisins (traditional and weirdly good), and an anchovy that will dissolve into an untraceable and delicious additional flavor. Simmer the combination, covered, for another 10-15 minutes.

The results take the boredom right out of winter meals. Italians bake it on a pizza crust. Cheese isn't really needed, but locally made Cotija tastes great. It also goes well with pasta, and locavores can use it on wonderful Whatcom grown potatoes.