It is spring in Colorado, and so it was nearly 70 degrees and sunny yesterday, and today it is 38 and drizzling. Tomorrow morning for the farmers’ market kick-off? Snowing and 32 degrees, according to the forecast.
Wandering the farmers’ market in downtown Boulder tomorrow will demand hats and gloves, but you have been waiting for those farmers and artisans to line 13th Street for more than four months. You can do it! We will make it worth your efforts.
We over-winter loads of vegetables and herbs, which means instead of harvesting everything in the fall we plant some vegetables to stay in the ground, protected with row cover, during the cold Colorado winter. And then we harvest the plants through the winter for our restaurants, and when the market opens we have plenty to harvest and sell. One of the benefits of over-wintered greens? Flavor! Sugars act as antifreeze in plants that persist through the winter, and when harvested in the spring sugars flood the plants. Spinach candy is a wondrous thing.
Consider tomorrow’s market.
We will have:
- Spinach
- Frisee
- Escarole
- Mache
- Arugula
- Sorrel
- Pan di zucherro
- Perpetual spinach
- Field greens mix (arugula, lettuce, tat soi)
- Parsley
- Spring onions
- Leeks
- Gold Ball turnips
- Arugula flowers
- Mustard flowers
In addition to the greens, we will have breakfast sausage, chorizo and bacon from our heritage pigs, and a soup.
Finally, you will find different milled grains at our stand as well. Last year we launched an ambitious grain project, planting different traditional wheats, emmer, farro, polenta corn, buckwheat, millet and more. We harvested many of the grains in the fall, let them dry in barns during the winter, and now are busy milling the grains (we built our own milling machines) into flours and whole grains. Tomorrow, you will find polenta, cracked wheat and farro at the stand. Boulder County grains, milled into flours — you’re not going to find that anywhere else but our stand and in our restaurants.
We look forward to seeing you tomorrow, bundled up and eager to score fabulous vegetables, grains and meats. You will make soup and love every slurp.
