May 13th Mother’s Day Market

Mother’s day is a great day on the farm. This year, we plan on celebrating Mother’s Day here! It will be awesome to have the kids on the farm picking strawberries for strawberry short cake, fishing in the pond, and catching turtles. I found this awesome recipe from my favorite recipe blogger, Skinnytaste:

I have made this for my lunches this week and will make it for our Mother’s Day field lunch! I am using Matt’s awesome field greens and our strawberries! At market, we did a trade with Sullivan’s Farm and I got some of their awesome Bonnyclabber Cheese. I rolled their goat cheese into balls and rolled them through dried cranberries and chopped almonds. It turned out delicious!

My lunches for the week and my Mother’s Day Salad!

The best part of fresh food is awesome eating! I will serve this alongside a homemade chicken salad. After lunch, we will send the kids out to the field to pick strawberries and make strawberry short cake on the spot! It will be an easy celebration!

We are bringing green garlic to market. We are proud that Rappahannock Restaurant serves Black Creek Farm Green Garlic Soup! It is delicious and we are so honored that they use our produce at their restaurant.

Green garlic is very young garlic with a mild garlic flavor. It is only in season for a few short weeks. There is so much you can do with it! The immature garlic bulbs and edible green stalks have an amazing nutty-oniony flavor that is great fresh or cooked. Substitute green garlic in recipes for onions, scallions or leeks. The young, tender cloves don’t need to be peeled before chopping. Slice and use in potato salad or mince and stir into salad dressings. Toss some in a stir-fry, on a pizza, or in soups. The light garlicky flavor enhances dishes without overpowering. One stalk and bulb of spring garlic is equivalent to a small onion, or a leek and one clove of mature garlic.

Another thing that is coming in season VERY early is garlic scapes! We will begin to bring them next week. Listen to Farmer Matt talk about this year’s garlic crop:

Garlic scapes are the flower of a garlic! We pull them at their tenderest stage. I love to grill them, tbey have a nice garlic flavor. I also love to make garlic scape pesto! It is so easy. I take a 1/4 cup of pine nuts, 3/4 cup of coarsely chopped garlic scapes, juice and zest of one lemon, salt and pepper to taste, a 1/2 cup of good extra virgin olive oil, and a 1/4 cup of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. I toast the pine nuts until they are brown. Then I combine the rest of the ingredients in to a food processor and pulse it until combined. You can freeze this for later! I mix it in my pasta dishes, put on cottage bread from Norwood Cottage, and spread it on chicken breasts before I bake them. It is AMAZING! We will only have them a short time and this year they are early so be sure to try them out.

So, what’s coming to market next week?