Headhouse Returns for 10th Season

Barry Savoie of his eponymous organic farm helps customer on opening day at Headhouse

Radishes at Blooming Glen Farm

The Food Trust's Yael Lehmann snipped the ribbon to open the 10th season of the organization's farmers' market under the shambles at Headhouse Square.

A healthy contingent of 24 vendors -- including six that were actually selling fresh produce you could actually bring home and eat -- showed up under the constant rain. Additional vendors are expected next week. Crowds were sparse (at least during the market's first half-hour when I visited) but eager to take advantage of the offerings.

Asparagus, one of the quintessential vegetables of spring, could be found at two stalls, A.T. Buzby and Three Springs. Buzby also offered hoop house tomatos, while Ben Wenk of Three Springs mostly featured storage apples and prepared items, including ketchup as well as canned fruit, jams and preserves.

Blooming Glen was back with two kinds of ravishing radishes (traditional red globe and French breakfast), along with arugala, leaf spinach, green garlic and a few other items. Queen Farm had its usual assortment of oyster mushrooms and at least six varieties of greens.

Weaver's Way, the northwest Philadelphia food coop which operates two small-scale farms, was big on greens, too. Like Queen Farm they also offered colorful lilac flowers. Savoie Organic Farm had some cabbage, but otherwise only offered seedlings of tomato and vegetable plants for sale, as did Happy Cat Farm.

One new merchant this year: High Street, offering bread products from it esteemed bakery. Wild Flour Bakery was back in its usual spot. (Ric's baked goods are expected back next week.)

Sue Miller of Birch Run Hills Farm with her cheeses (and veal and pork products) returned, as did Hillacres Pride, offering cheese and other dairy products as well as meats. And Shellbark Hollow returned with its capric dairy offerings.

Other vendors at  the season's first market: Bennett Compost, Good Spoon (soups), Griggstown Farm (poultry, pies), Green Aisle Grocery (jarred foods), John + Kira Chocolates, LaDivisa (charuterie), Longview Floweres, Market Day Canele (sweet and savory baked goods), Paradox Vineyard (wine), Philly Fair Trade Coffee Roasters, Shore Catch (fish), and Spring Hill Farm (maple syrup).

Thin Crowds for Peak Produce

Beets from North Star

When is the summer produce peak? Right now. Mid-August is when tomatos and corn are at their best, peaches are bountiful and beautiful, summer squash vines droop under the weight of fruit, and farmers harvest peppers by the truckload. Plus, we've still got some blueberries, blackberries are in full flavor, and late summer apples are ready for picking.

The irony is that on a mid-August Sunday, fewer people are in town to take advantage of the bonanza at farmers market like the one today at Headhouse Square. Certainly the market wasn't empty, but the crowds are thinner than in June or even early July. Everyone's at the shore or the Poconos or standing on line waiting to get into the Louvre.

But that's okay. That means there's more for you and me to gather on our weekly trip to the farmers' market.

Making its seasonal debut today at Headhouse was North Star Orchards, which specializes in apples and pears, but had plenty of vegetables, too, including gargantuan red and orange beets. Plus three varieties of apples.

Here are some more photos of finds at today's Headhouse Farmers' Market:

Ripe bell peppers from A.T. Buzby

Also from Buzby, Sicilia and common eggplants

Melon man from Tom Culton

Cherry tomatoes from Savoie Farm

Tomatillos from Blooming Glen Farm

Peppers Galore

Sweet frying peppers from Blooming Glen

Jalapenos from Blooming Glen

Peppers in all their tasty and colorful variety are flooding farmers markets. Whether sweet bells or frying, long hots, cubanelles, poblanos or jalapenos, there's a lot of ways to use them in the kitchen.

Sweet frying peppers from Savoie Farms

Poblanos are the go-to pepper for chile relleños, even if you bake the cheese-stuffed peppers rather than batter and deep-fry, a messy (though worthwhile) proposition.

For scallop or any other ceviche, dice a jalapeño or two as a garnish. I served it yesterday accopanied by slices of avocado and dusted with cilantro.

Sweet bell peppers of any color take well to roasting or grilling. And they're great in gazpacho.

Got a steak on the grill? Fry up some sweet frying peppers with garlic and/or onion to go on top.

Bell Peppers from Tom Culton

Cherries, Blueberries, Raspberries Arrive

Beechwood Orchards

On the first Headhouse Farmers Market after summer solstice produce stalls were full with cherries, blueberries and even a few raspberries.

The sweet cherries were a bit of a surprise, given that this year's crop will be lean. Prices hovered around $8.50 a quart (at the Reading Terminal Market, Ben Kauffman's Lancaster County Produce was asking $9.99).

Although the red cherries tasted bright, sweet and fresh, they weren't 60 percent better than the $2.99/pound commercial Washington State Bings purchased later in the week at the Cherry Hill Wegman's. While the store-bought fruit wasn't quite as intense in flavor, it was close enough and just as sweet; the individual fruits were also larger, though that's a tertiary consideration as far as I'm concerned. The sweet cherry, it appears, is one of those fruits that can be shipped cross-country, when properly packaged, successfully.

The local orchardists say the sour cherry crop is also slim and hence will be pricey, too, when it shows up in another week or so. Dave Garretson of Beechwood Orchards said he has a too few early variety sour cherries to make harvesting worthwhile, but expects to bring in mid-season Montmorency pie cherries when they're ripe. Beechwood also offered Rainier sweet cherries last Sunday, priced slightly higher than the sweet reds.

Queens Farm tomatos

Wanna buy some superfruit? Well, blueberries are back, $4.75/pint at Beechwood. Three Springs Fruit Farm had them, too, along with the season's first red raspberries. I've been enjoying the blues in yogurt for breakfast this week. Ben Wenk of Three Springs expects good crop of raspberries this year, especially the black variety. He cultivates both but said the wild raspberry patches he's seen are full of fruit.

The early tomato crop from Queens Farm remains tasty. Although pricey at $3.60/pound for its mixed heirloom varieties, they are a pure taste of summer.

Just in time for gin and tonic season, limes continue their downward price trend. Over at the Reading Terminal Market this week Iovine Brothers Produce has been selling nice-sized and heavy fruits at 20 cents a piece, a far cry from the buck (or more) apiece limes commanded in early spring.

Another crop making its seasonal debut at Headhouse Sunday: sweet corn. South Jersey farmer A.T. Buzby was selling its at 75 cents an ear.

Last Sunday may have been the last we'll see of English peas and strawberries, but there's a chance some farmers in cooler climes may have them. I took the $5 pint of sweet and fresh shelled peas purchased from Tom Culton and turned them (after the briefest boiling and then shocking in ice water) into a salad with some diced and well-fried Irish bacon, thinly sliced shallot rings, shredded gruyere cheese and homemade ranch dressing.

Here's a quick tour of some of the more photogenic produce seen at Headhouse last Sunday:

Summer yellow cukes from Savoie Organic Farm

Radishes in two colors from, iirc, Weaver's Way

Chard from Blooming Glen Farm

Red onions from Tom Culton

I Love June

Three Springs Fruit Farm at Headhouse

In April we see small, nearly-hidden harbingers of what's to come: fiddleheads, ramps, perhaps morels if we're lucky. Then in May the bounty starts with cool-weather crops like lettuces, greens, and, late in the month, our first fruit: strawberries.

Now that it's June the welcome crush of produce has commenced.

The strawberries are peaking and will remain in their full glory for at least another three or four weeks, getting us through the Independence Day weekend with cakes, ice cream, tarts and just mixed with yogurt or eaten plain. The quality has been excellent once we got beyond the early crop. The berries I picked up the last two weeks from Beechwood Orchards, both at the Headhouse and Fairmount farmers markets, have been excellent: red to the core, sweet, flavorful, juicy. Prices, however, have held steady at $7/quart from most vendors, with an occasional offer of $5.50. I have no doubt pints and quarts from vendors other than Beechwood are just as good. The Wenk family's Three Springs Fruit Farm, like Beechwood located in Pennsylvania's Fruit Belt in Adams County, north and west of Gettysburg, also was selling good-looking berries today at Headhouse. So was A.T. Buzby from South Jersey's Salem County, as well as smaller farmers. But as is almost always the case, the best deal on local berries is at the Reading Terminal Market, where L. Halteman Family Country Foods sells them for more than two bucks less a quart.

Chinese lettuce

Cool-weather lettuces are also plentiful. One of the most unusual is the Chinese lettuce sold by Queens Farm at Fairmount and Headhouse. The dense firm stalk can be stir-fried or added to soups, though I'm not a fan. What has been delicious from Queens Farm is its tomatoes. We're still a month away, at least, from the real tomato crop, but Ed Yin has brought in a taste of late summer before the solstice arrives. He starts out his heirloom varieties under plastic but in the ground, rather than a hothouse. Queens Farms is also the place to buy oyster mushrooms and Asian greens.

The prior Sunday I went mad buying sugar snaps and snow peas. I passed by one stall and grabbed a pint of sugar snaps and brought them back to the car. Then I headed back under the Headhouse shambles and found snow peas, forgetting all about the sugar snaps I just purchased, and bought a pint of those, too. I never bothered to cook any of them. Some were consumed out-of-hand, others dressed with either a vinaigrette or mayo-based dressing. I'm thankful our houseguests during the week helped me go through them. That allowed me to pick up a pint of yellow string beans from Tom Culton at today's Headhouse market, along with Chiogga beets.

Another late spring treat from a number of vendors: red new potatoes. I turned a pint from Culton to a simple potato salad, but they'd be great boiled or steamed to accompany a slab of salmon.

Culton's cornichons

Cucumbers have been showing up with some regularity, both the traditional "garden" variety and kirby cukes, ideal for pickling. Last week I bought a pound and a half of Culton's "cornichons", though they looked like kirbies to me. After three days in a simple salt brine (with fresh dill, lots of garlic and some coriander seeds) they were ready.

She Who Must Be Obeyed loves red radishes, and there were plenty to choose from today at Headhouse. I picked up a bright red, white and green bunch of French breakfast radishes from Savoie Farm today.

Hull peas, a.k.a. English peas, have also been available since last week, both in the hull and shelled. Culton was selling the latter like hotcakes today at Headhouse, and other vendors offered them, too. They'd be a great veg (and a New England classic) to go along with that salmon and potatoes, especially if you use lots of butter. For those who really enjoy shelling legumes, Culton and Queens farm are selling Fava beans.

Speaking of legumes, Iovine Brothers Produce at the Reading Terminal Market has had fresh chick peas (garbanzos) for a few weeks, $3.99/pound. Shell them and briefly boil them as you would English peas. I passed them by only because I had just defrosted a container of cooked dried chick peas I made a couple months ago. Kauffman's Lancaster County Produce also offers shelled peas.

Headhouse: We've Got Green Stuff

Lettuce, bok choy and fennel bulbs from Blooming Glen

Crops that do best before summer's heat waves wilt them and us were the most attractive produce items during my visit to the Headhouse Farmers Market this morning.

Though the cheeses, meats and prepared foods always have their allure, when an item of produce is at peak, that's exciting. At least to me.

When you enter the Shambles from the Lombard Street entrance, you're greeted by the always-attractive displays put together by farmer Tom Murtha of Blooming Glen Farm. His lettuce, bok choy and small, young fennel bulbs, pictured above, were just some of his offerings, which also included spring onions, fresh green garlic and cooking greens.

Queens Farm was chock-a-block with spring produce too, from mustard to fresh bamboo shoots to a Chinese style lettuce whose stalk can be cooked. And, of course, their pristine cultivated oyster mushrooms. Other vendors with plenty of cooler weather items included Weaver's Way, Savoie Farms, Root Mass Farm and Beechwood Orchards which over the last year or so has expanded beyond tree fruit.

 

Culton's new signage

Another late spring crop that likes cool weather made its first appearance of the season: snow peas. Tom Culton was selling half-pints for $3, full pints for $5, as indicated by his chalk board, a new addition to the stall this year. Tom wasn't around this morning, so I couldn't ask about the provenance of the signage, but a Google search suggests "Red Rose Farm Feeds" is/was in Whiting, Vermont. Culton still had plenty of colorful rhubarb, asparagus, dress, and cucumbers among other items.

Strawberries were still in limited and pricey supply, with A.T. Buzby having the most stock at $7/quart. Savoie Farms had a few pints at $4.50 each. Maybe next week.

One of my purchases last Sunday was a couple of veal chops -- one rib, one loin- from Birchrun Hills Farm, the cheese producer. Of course, if you've got dairy cows you're going to have calves and, as I'm always told by some women friends, the males are mostly useless. In the case of male bovines, that means veal. Since Birchrun proprietor Sue Miller runs a caring operation, these are not penned up calves that provide most of the veal available in supermarkets. As a result, her veal is rosy rather than a ghostly white, but it's got more flavor and remains tender. Veal, no matter the source, is not for the parsimonious; as I recall the price was somewhere around $16/pound. But grilled to medium with just a hint of pink the center (you don't want to eat veal rare or medium rare), after a rub of cut garlic, a light application of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt, pepper and crushed rosemary, these chops were an incredible treat.

Catching Up: Headhouse

I've been caught up in the late summer doldrums, so it's been almost a month since my last post. There's a lot of catching up to do.

Let's do it by photos, with commentary where warranted.

Savoie Farms adds a bit of levity to its tomatoes.

Three Springs Fruit Farm mixed cherry tomatoes and mini eggplants for a pretty picture

Beechwood Orchard's plums have been spectacular this season

Tom Culton has featured lima beans the past few weeks

Rainbow chard always makes a good photo.
These are from Blooming Glen.

Headhouse News Note

Tom Culton says he planted his mirai corn late this year, so if you've missed it that's why. It should show up in the next week or two. Mirai is a Japanese hybrid which is exceptionally sweet and tasty. In late August Tom had a red sweet corn variety, for which is charged a buck an year. The going price this year at farmers' markets has been 50 to 75 cents.

Headhouse: Garlic to Cherries

Green Garlic from Savoie Farms

I'll let the photos do most of the talking from my visit to the Headhouse Square farmers' market this past Sunday. As usual, Tom Culton's displays tend to be the most photogenic, though there's no less artistry to be seen in produce from any of the other vendors.

Strawberries were also still around, and probably will be for another week or so. But cherries have appeared (only Beechwood Orchards had sour cherries for pies) and should become more plentiful over the next few weeks. If you're lucky, you might also come upon some raspberries or apricots. Zucchinis and yellow squash are already in abundance.

Fava beans from Queen Farm joined a table laden with greens, radishes and oyster mushrooms

Tom Culton's slate claims these are cornichons, but that's just a fancy way of saying these
are small, immature cucumbers (a.k.a. gherkins) ideal for pickling

Culton offered two varieties of sweet cherries

Red and white spring onions at Culton Organics

The less crowded side of Headhouse, home of Otolith
(shown here), Happy Cat,

Yogi-ism at Headhouse

No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded -- Yogi Berra

Enter the Sunday Headhouse Square farmers' market from the Lombard Street side and find yourself enveloped in an over-populated mass of humanity, squeezed between Blooming Glen's pristine display of greens, squashes and radishes on the left and Wild Flour Bakery's baguettes and brioche rolls on the right.

Wander just a little further down and join the line where they must be giving produce away.  Oops. No, it's Tom Culton and Matt Yoder's lengthy stall, filled with exotic produce you never knew existed. And they are definitely not giving it away.

In manoeuvering through the Times-Square-on-New-Year's-Eve conglomeration you've also got to contend with double-wide prams and dogs on leashes threatening to trip passersby flat on their derrières.

But keep on walking. As you draw nearer to Pine Street the crowd thins, making shopping at Headhouse almost pleasurable.

Happy Cat Organics

Root Mass Farm

Savoie Organic Farm

Vendors at the far end of the Headhouse market suffer from their location. Just ask Dave Garrettson of Beechwood Orchards, who saw his sales increase when he obtained a slot nearer the center of the Shambles.

So if you want to insure a variety of producers at Headhouse, be sure to patronize vendors near the Lombard Street end for more than tacos, lemonade or a sausage sandwich. You'll find great purveyors of produce and protein.

Like Otolith Sustainable Seafood, the peripatetic Alaskan seafood purveyor. Their blast-frozen frozen vacuum-packed seafood is usually no more expensive or within a couple of dollars per pound of the price you'd pay at retail fish stores. And if you buy prawns, rockfish, pacific cod, or sablefish (a.k.a. black cod) from Otolith, you'll be making your purchase from the same people who caught it: Amanda Bossard, Otolith's owner, and her husband, Murat Aritan, who fish Alaskan waters for those species on their 65-foot long-liner. The other fish they sell, primarily salmon and halibut, are purchased from other harvesters who "share our commitment to sustainability," says Bossard

Also closer to the Pine Street end is Happy Cat Organics of Kennett Square. You won't find the masses of produce that some other vendors offer, but what you will find is choice. This week Tim had lots of different onions and plenty of radishes, among other items.

Savoie Organic Farm is the place to go for potatoes, though that's hardly all Barry and Carol Savoie offer. This past week they had plenty of fresh greens and radishes, but the new potato harvest is getting underway, too. They typically produce 10 different varieties of specialty potatoes, including Onaway, Red Cloud, Rose Gold, Carola, All Blue, Cranberry Red, Butte Russet, and Rose Finn Apple fingerlings on their South Jersey farm.

Root Mass Farm in Oley offers all the good produce we expect this time of year:  garlic scapes, salad and cooking greens, radishes, green onions, snap peas, asparagus, etc. But if you want to learn something about farming, check out Lindsey's and Landon's video, all about how to use a broad fork to disrupt hardpan. 

North Star Returns to Headhouse

Virtually every stall space at the Headhouse Square Farmers' Market was occupied last Sunday, and willl be for the next two months at least. Back at the market last Sunday as North Star Orchards, showcasing its pears, peaches, nectarines, apples and tomatoes. A sign boasted they offered 17 varieties of tomatoes, most of them heirlooms, all priced at $2.50/ pound. North Star's Shinsui variety of Asian pears were also $2.50, but all other fruit was $2.

North Star is at a different location under the shambles this year, placed near the north end not far from the Pine Street entrance.

Blooming Glen offered plenty of tomatoes, too, with heirlooms at $3, field tomatos $2, and all colors of cherry tomatoes $2.50/pint. Over at Savoie Farms, heirlooms were $4/pound, cherry tomatos $4/pint.