After being thwarted by wind and rain in July, we were finally able to celebrate our second annual Shareholder Party! Hurricane Lee remained respectfully offshore and allowed us a beautiful, sunshine-y, end of summer day.
If you’re unfamiliar with our Market Share program, members purchase a share at the beginning of the season. Share purchases provide cash for the farm at a crucial period when we need to purchase seeds and other inputs. Market Share members then use their credit (+ 10% extra) to buy vegetables throughout the growing season.
Of course, we completely forgot to take any photos of people but DID take pictures of dogs! Here’s my dog, Olive, the Taylor’s new dog, Fig, and Peat of Beets & Blooms Farm fame!
Over the past 10 years, the shareholders have played an important role in supporting and growing the farm, and we were excited to show them where the magic happens. Rachel, Elise, and Aaron gave a tour of the fields, and we all enjoyed a delicious potluck - including dishes like Heather’s famous kale chips, Gerry’s farm-fresh veggie lasagna, and Adrian’s fried rice with shishitos.
I thoroughly enjoyed romping around the fields and spending time with everyone outside of busy market days. One of the true joys of farming is feeding people that you know and care about. The relationships that I’ve built over the past four seasons are so meaningful to me and keep me motivated through the hot, humid summer days. It was fun to spend dedicated time on those relationships away from the market checkout table. So much fun, in fact, that I neglected to take any photos…
Alyssa’s son, Ezra, was kind enough to share his seat with a lovely bunch of collards!
As we officially enter the autumn season, some familiar vegetables are returning. Bok choy, mustards, and hakurei are back! And collards are here at last. The first beds of sweet potatoes have been harvested as well. They’re curing another week before they make their market debut.
Speaking of sweet potatoes, Market Share member Karen took home an armful of sweet potato leaves from the shareholder party for a culinary experiment. Stir-fried sweet potato leaves is a classic dish in a number of Asian countries. How would the leaves from the sweet potato variety that we grow, Mahon Yam*, work in the dish?
Petra and Alex say GREAT! Karen reported that blanching the leaves first created the best results. The leaves are then stir-fried with garlic, oyster sauce, and sesame oil. There’s a similar recipe that Aaron found in The Vegan Chinese Kitchen by Hannah Che.
According to Karen, the Mahon Yam leaves tasted just right in the dish. For those of you (myself included) who have not yet tried stir-fried sweet potato leaves, the leaves have a mild, sweet flavor similar to spinach. Should we start bringing this crop to the markets? I think we owe Karen, Petra, and Alex royalties if so!
-Kiersten
*This is a sweet potato not a yam. Yams are totally different plants, but basically not available in the US. Yam is used colloquially for sweet potato in the US.
