We will be at the Hillsdale Farmers’ market this Sunday. The market runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Berries

We will have some Chesters, likely the last of the season. Because of the weekend’s rain, they will be delicate. Use them with due haste.

Pole Beans

Preachers, Garden of Eden, Greasy Grits and Honeycutt Pioneer Cutshorts.

It is the fashion to eat barely cooked snap beans and rave about their crunchy texture. Unfortunately, that is how you have to treat modern bush beans. There is barely any flavor in them to start, and cooking does not improve the flavor. The bush bean has been bred to be tough so as to survive mechanical harvesting, and then transported in a dump ruck with an eight-foot deep bed. An awful indignity for any fruit. The traditional pole bean was selected to be tender and sweet, and survive, at most, a two foot drop into a pail, whining all the way.

We cook the Preacher in a pot of boiling water. It is absolutely tender in about five minutes. For freezing, blanch the beans in boiling water for a couple of minutes, scoop the beans out of the water and chill immediately in ice water. Small batches are better. Preacher freezes perfectly, as does Fortex.

“Garden of Eden” is a fleshy Romano-type of bean of Spanish origin. There will be some of the Romanian “Gold of Bacau” in the basket as well. The flat beans are best cooked very slowly in little or no water. Toss the beans in oil and simmer slowly until dead tender, along with peppers if desired. The flavor is amplified as the beans cook. They are best when they are showing a fair amount of seed. Don’t worry, they won’t be tough. The seeds add sweetness and a depth of flavor to the bean. You can also cook the flat beans in ham, speck, bacon or among sausages. We don’t particularly like the texture of frozen flat beans.

We have been trying to find a classic string bean that will mature in the Pacific Northwest. Most of the old classics, such as greasy cutshorts from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, are from the southern states and set their beans way too late, sometimes in the early October. This year, we noticed that Sand Hill Preservation Center, where we get our sweet potato varieties, had couple of shorter season string beans. Apparently, if you separate the greasy and cutshort traits, the pods have less to think about and ripen earlier . . . Anyway, we are happy to offer them to traditionalists who enjoy the contemplative task of stringing beans.

As with the flat pod types, the string bean flavor is coaxed from the pod by long, gentle cooking. Harvested when fulsome with seed, they are tender and you have the added bonus of a shell bean flavor nestled inside. We cook ours until they are beginning to fall apart. We had one person look at us with derision as we suggested how to cook the beans. Shook her head and said that’s how her grandmother cooked beans, and that they had all the nutrition cooked out of them. Upon further inquiry, we found out that her grandmother is 98 and still growing beans. No doubt, the secret to old age is trying to find all that lost nutrition. The reality is that, although raw vegetables and fruits are an important part of the diet, long and slow braising also makes available certain nutrients that are not accessible in a raw or undercooked vegetable or fruit.

Bill Best, of Berea, Kentucky is a leading voice for the preservation of traditional southern beans. He has set up the Sustainable Mountain Agricultural Center (link). You can read more about these beans on their website. He is a fellow evangelist when it comes to lauding the merits of the pole and string beans.

Plums

Mirabelles, Prune d’Agen, Golden Transparent Gage, and possibly the irretrievably misnamed “Italian prune” which is actually a German prune or zwetchen. Quetsche in French.

Col. Henry Dosch, of Hillsdale, Oregon, was a tireless proponent of the Oregon Fellenberg Prune. The late 1800s and early 1900s was the era of the great expositions and world fairs, and Dosch urged fellow prune growers to use these venues to promote the prune in the world. He felt confident that consumers would soon the the difference between “the evaporated Oregon prune and the sun-dried insipid California prunes.” Oregon prune growers never did bother to promote the fruit, selling them instead to the California fruit cooperatives, where stripped of their identity, they wound up as prune juice. The prune orchards of Oregon are pretty much a thing of the past.

Table grapes

Sweet Seduction, Canadice and Price.

Tomatoes

Slicers (German Striped and Mortgage Lifter) and paste (Ox Heart).

Every family processes tomato sauce differently. Here is our lazy bones method that allows us to put up many jars during a busy harvest season.

The whole tomatoes are put in a roasting pan, piled up proud of the edge is fine. We sprinkle a bit of salt over them and put the pan in a slow oven, 175 – 225 degrees, for 12 – 24 hours. We drain off the liquid in the bottom of the pan. Drain a couple of more times as they cool. Reserve the liquid as it is a good stock or juice. For whole tomatoes, we peel them and put them in a canning jar. For sauce, we run them through a food mill. We finish the job with a pressure canner as it is a bit faster, but a hot water bath is adequate for the task. For tomato paste, the sauce goes back in the oven over night, using the same pan.

This very gentle cooking process yields a flavorful sauce with good consistency, and avoids the off-flavors that develop from over-cooking the fruits. Best of all, it is done with little effort.

Preserves

The selection is getting thin, but we still have loganberry, red currant and Italian prune.

Garlic & Shallots

Beets

Yellow and the cylindrical red. The greens are excellent as well.

Basil and Dill

New Potatoes

Frumento

Fava di Carpino

Looking forward to Sunday,

Carol and Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm