In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
The 2014 harvest is now available for purchase at R.H. Ballard in Washington, VA, and through Heritage Hollow Farms Store in Sperryville. We kept a few jars for direct sale, if you are local and interested. It’s a very small harvest as we are letting …
Before I planted blackberries in the garden, I used to go forage for them. They grow all over the place, tenaciously clinging to their chosen spot and taking over the neighborhood: the clump expands rapidly and any cane that touches the ground roots to produce …
Who hasn’t plucked and munched on a handful of wild blackberries or huckleberries while hiking? Didn’t it feel like a tiny treasure hunt, the taste of wild berries sharper, more intense than their tamed counterparts? Sure, foraging for berries takes time, but you didn’t lift …
So far, it’s been a good year for berries! A cold winter and abundant spring rains have given the plants what they want. You will not hear me complain about the past winter nor about the rains (yet, at least…) I am actually harvesting red …
Simple comforting lunch on this gray day: tomato soup (with canned tomato from last summer), buttermilk biscuits, grits & manchego souffle, roasted Hatch pepper & tomatillo salsa (peppers & tomatillo from last summer)
As far as I am concerned, I grow tomatoes for winter eating. In fact, this year, I am mostly growing paste tomatoes: Roma, Amish Paste, San Marzano, and Grandma Mary’s Paste Tomatoes in summer? oh, sure, I like a good tomato sandwich as much as …
Heirloom vegetables are a familiar term – conveying the idea of plants bred and selected over years of patient work for specific traits and local conditions, as well as the resulting seeds carefully passed down generations. The livestock equivalent is “heritage” breed. When it comes …
My husband says “cardoon” sounds like something out of The Lord of The Rings. I say it’s more like Deep Space 9. Either way, we love it here. It’s beautiful in the garden and it’s delicious (recipe at the end of the post) While I …
Japanese quince flowers are truly enchanting in the spring. But the fruit that ripen in mid-fall sure aren’t pretty: hard to the touch and to the teeth, gnarly, pitted, inhabited often. Raw they are so tart that they’ll make your mouth puckers (if you don’t …
Chestnut time! Yes, it is time consuming to shell fresh chestnuts. There, I said it. But if it’s not difficult – provided you blanch the chestnuts and peel them while still warm. Besides chestnuts are a treat, made all the rarer because the trees take …