These days, Eric’s face is ruddy from time spent in the fields, participating in spring planting at the Black Cat Farm.
The other day, he recounted how they had planted 55,000 onion seedlings. If they all grow to maturity, the onion seedlings would amount to 4 to 5 tons of storage onions. As it is, the plan is to start selling some at the Boulder Farmers Market in mid/late May as spring onions and using others in Black Cat Farm-Table-Bistro and Bramble and Hare until July.
Spring onions have a small bulb and a large juicy green stalk. The bulbs are great for grilling. The green tops are scallions.
By July, the bulbs will have grown to full size and the tops withered to nothing. Farm workers will harvest the onions and then let them cure in Eric’s barn. Once cured, they can be stored for months.
Fava beans
Eric also says that the farm will grow double the amount of fava beans they did last year to grow their own seed. To do so, he has purchased 45 pounds of fava bean seeds. The plan is to hold some fava beans back from the Boulder Farmers Market and restaurants to let them go to seed for next year’s planting.
Fava bean seeds now all originate from Europe and are expensive. Hence, the experiment in fava bean self-sufficiency. Sounds more likely to work and enviromentally safer than domestic fossil fuel self-sufficiency.
