The Black Cat Farm booth at the Boulder Farmers’ Market will include the following produce on July 4, 2015:
- Arugula
- Baby beets
- Baby fennel
- Baby Swiss chard
- Cilantro flowers
- Garlic, young
- Kale
- Leeks
- Lettuce, Jericho and Tom Thumb
- Lettuce mix
- Mizuna
- Mustard green mix
- Spring onions
- Sugar snap peas, four varieties
- Turnips (magenta, white, and hinona kabu)
Mulefoot pork cuts, dried heirloom Windsor lima beans, dried black garbanzo beans, and Black Cat Farm polenta will also be available.
Snap peas
Everyone has heroes. Some of Eric’s heroes are plant breeders and geneticists, who are responsible for many of the delicious varieties of food that we love.
Snap peas have been around since the 1880s. However, the seed disappeared commercially, which meant that snap peas weren’t available in the market. This changed with the introduction of the sugar snap pea in 1979, for which we have to thank pea breeders Dr. Calvin Lamborn and Dr. MC Parker of Twin Falls, Idaho.
Eric is a lover of sugar snap peas. He is such a big fan of Dr. Lamborn, who is one of his heroes, that he wrote Dr. Lamborn and started a correspondence. A wonderful result of that friendship are the four types of unpublished sugar snaps that Dr. Lamborn has let Eric grow prior to publication (commercial release of the seed) and that we are offering at the market.
Non-GMO, these red, purple, yellow, and green-colored sugar snaps are beautiful on the plate and retain their colors even when cooked. Dr. Lamborn plans to put them on the market in two years through Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
