Persephone Farm's Wild & Fancy Salad Greens

Persephone Farm is very proud of their salad greens. Rebecca considers them their “signature product”, the first (and most unique) offering the farm produces. She says…

“We started the mix way back in 1991, before the baby salad green craze was even a notion. One thing I like to say about our Wild and Fancy salad mix is that it was never meant to be merely a platform for dressing (as is the case with so many bland dumbed down salad mixes these days.) We strive to have an exciting mouth feel, a variety of flavors, textures and leaf shapes in every batch. We painstakingly comb the fields for wild crafted ingredients in every picking. Some of these are: chick weed, lambs quarters, wild amaranth, (lemony) sheep sorrel, purslane, wild cress, cheese weed, and dandelion greens. It is my belief that these plants offer us nutritional and medicinal benefits not often found in cultivated crops. They are here in symbiosis with us humans, co-evolving to benefit both plant and animal species. Not to mention that they offer unique and special flavors not found in commercial mass produced greens mixes.”

Oh yes! I can testify, this is very tasty stuff—so many textures and flavors of green goodness. A light dressing of olive oil & lemon juice, a bit of shaved Reggiano Parmesano on top and viola, that’s serious good eats (as Alton Brown would say). Oh, you can try to forage around your own yard (I have), but it’s so much easier to pick some up from Rebecca at the Bainbridge Farmer’s Market or better yet, become a CSA subscriber.

Persephone Farm’s Wild and Fancy salad greens are served at many fine restaurants, among them The Four Swallows, Hitchcock, The New Rose Cafe at Bainbridge Gardens and The Port Gamble General Store. Subscribers often get a bag in their weekly share and can add-on extra salad greens if they choose. Buon appetito!

Fields of greens (wild & fancy)

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Spring nettles

Spring nettles, eat, but don't touch

Nettles? Yes, stinging nettles. The Farm is offering them at the Bainbridge Farmers market while they’re still young and tender. Use gloves to handle raw nettles. Once it’s steamed or boiled briefly it looses the sting, use nettles like other spring greens or spinach. Try some nettle pesto…

Famous food forager, Langdon Cook, has a great nettle pesto post here on his Fat of the Land Blog.

Here’s our recipe adapted from ‘Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life‘ by Louisa Shafia

1/4 pound stinging nettles
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  • Put the nettles in boiling salted water for 1 minute. Drain and let cool.
  • Squeeze out as much of the water as possible and coarsely chop.
  • In a food processor process the nettles with the garlic, pine nuts, oil, and lemon juice until smooth.
  • Transfer to a bowl and fold in the cheese. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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Tomato Starts

Check out the article Bill posted at The Season last May. Tomato Starts–A Farmer’s Guide

Every year, our starts seem to outperform those big, bushy plants you find at commercial outlets like nurseries, Big Box stores and supermarkets. Sometimes ours don’t look as robust as theirs do on the shelf, but as the season progresses their plants’ vigor often wains, and by harvest time a lot have died or are duds, while ours are bearing nicely.

How do we do it? Persephone’s Farmer-in-chief, Rebecca, explains in this guest post on starting your tomatoes.

Read the full post Tomato Starts–A Farmer’s Guide.

Spring chicks

New chicks keeping warm

May Day was warm and beautiful. Perfect for a visit to the farm. Persephone Farm’s early crops are coming in! (A month late). Some of Persephone’s season extension tricks: low tunnels, row covers, and an unheated lean-to greenhouse. We saw the cute and fuzzy two day old baby chicks keeping warm under lamps in the barn.

A few CSA shares are still available, to learn more download the CSA brochure.

Photo by Tim Celeski

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Contrary to popular belief Spring is really here. Today is opening day of the Bainbridge Island Farmers Market. Join in the celebration. We hear there will be the traditional goat cheese toss and free horse & wagon rides through town. Of course we’ll be there today and every Saturday through out the season, ending October 29. The market is located at Town Square at City Hall (map) 9 a.m – 1 p.m. Please come by and visit us. Remember CSA subscribers get receive a 10% discount when buying from us at the Bainbridge market.

Spring is just over the horizon!

Bill has written a new post at The Season he describes the pre-spring activities on the farm and explains the CSA model. Most importantly, he say’s that spring is just over the horizon. We’ll it can’t come soon enough, this winter has been harsh, wet and cold. The mention of planted pea shoots gives me hope. I look forward to a bountiful season of fresh veg from the farm. And so it’s time to sign up for the 2011 CSA.

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