Down In the Holler

Last Saturday I woke up early and pedaled my bike all the way across town to the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market  in Buckhead so that I could volunteer at the Slow Food Atlanta table. I’ve only been to this market one other time and while it is on the other side of town from where I live, it is one of the best weekly markets in Atlanta. There are lots of vendors with a huge variety of foods in addition to the fruits and veggies that you expect at a farmer’s market. It is a really fantastic way to spend a Saturday morning.

My volunteer job was to stand at the Slow Foods Atlanta table and talk to people about what the Slow Food movement is all about as well as promote and sell tickets to an event that I think many of you will want to attend.

First let me speak to the glorious Slow Foods movement which was started in Italy by Carlo Petrini as an anti-movement to fast food. From the website,

Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable. Today, we have over 100,000 members in 132 countries.

This organization bascially takes a bunch of things that I find really important: health, the environment, social justice, culture and delcious food and wraps it all up together in to one fantastic movement. If you aren’t familiar, cruise around the websites for Slow Foods International, Slow Foods USA and Slow Foods Atlanta or come out and visit me at the market this month.

So as for that upcoming event that Slow Foods is sponsoring. Imagine if you were to have a chili cook-off where you buy a ticket and get to taste as many samples as you like of unique creations from a big group of both professional chefs and home chefs, but then you took away the chili and replaced it with ICE CREAM!

Saturday June 27th at the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market from 12-1pm Slow Foods Atlanta is hosting that very event! A super delicious ice cream social where all the ice cream offerings are homemade, but the flavors are sure to be unique and exciting. Tickets are $10 for all the flavors you can cram in. You can purchase tickets here. Or even better, you can come visit me at the market this coming Saturday or the day of the event and buy a ticket from me while you are picking up your groceries for the week.

Hope to see you at the market!

While I still consider myself to be a novice gardener, I’m starting to feel like I might be slowly approaching intermediate status. Every time I get out in the garden and poke around, I learn new stuff. There are continually sucesses (fava beans!) and failures (carrots) and things that fall somewhere in between (Brussels sprouts). This learning process humbles me; especially to the farmers who do this for a living and grow the food I eat.

Since we started working in the yard (January 1st 2008) we have drastically made improvements. It’s been quite a journey from the days when our primary biomass came from kudzu to today when we are cultivating a fairly decent variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers and other various plants.

When I share with people I have a garden, they almost always ask me what I’m growing. So here it is:

Vegetables

Fava beans (Windsor)

English peas (Grandma Denlinger’s Sugar Pea)

Southern peas (Whippoorwill)

Tomatoes (Roma, Brandywine, Beefsteak)

Peppers (Ancho, Cayenne, some mystery peppers that our friend gave us)

Lettuce (Bon Vivant Spicy Mesclun Mix, Oakleaf, Drunken Women Looseleaf, Buttercrunch, Bibb, Vivian Romaine)

Swiss Chard (Five Color Silverbeet)

Kale (Lacinato, Red Russian, Blue Dwarf)

Potatoes (Yukon Gold, Caribe, Russian Banana Fingerling, Rose Gold, Red Cloud, Cranberry Red, Carola, Rose Finn Apple Fingerling)

Zucchini (Tender Grey, Black Beauty)

Winter Squash (Delicata Honey Boat, Waltham Butternut)

Carrots (Little Finger)

Red Cabbage

Brussels Sprouts

Red Onions

Fruit

Blackberries

Raspberries

Blueberries

Pomegranates

Nuts

English Walnuts

Herbs

Sweet Basil

Thai Basil

Peppermint

Cilantro

Rosemary

Thyme

Oregano

Sage

Tarragon

Sorrel

Feverfew

St John’s Wort

Citronella

Flowers, Shrubs & Other Stuff

Cala Lilies

Cana Lilies

Hydrangeas

Gardenias

Sedum

Euphorbia

Yarrow

Daylilies

Irises

Nasturtiums

Roses (Knock Out)

Hellebores

Virigated Liriope (aka: Washington Grass in my family…another story for another day)

Vinca

Ferns (Christmas, Leatherleaf)

Creeping Raspberry

Yew

Nandinas

Acuba

Hops (Cascade & Chinook)

Things that grow whether we like it or not

Kudzu

Poison Ivy

English Ivy

Mimosa Trees

Mulberry Trees

There are things that are not on this list that we have grown in the past and may or may not grow again. There is a ton of stuff not on this list that I plan to grow eventually. One of the areas that I really want to turn my attention to next is more herbs, particularly perennial herbs.  I also have no experience with citrus, but I’d like to give it a try. Perhaps some dwarf varieties in containers? Have any tips for citrus or favorite herbs you’d like to tell me about?

Last Friday, the 29th, we picked up an adorable new addition to our pet family from some friends across town. May I introduce you to Sassafras Peppercorn?

This little bundle of trouble is already creating quite a stir. We’ve mostly been keeping her isolated in the bathroom until she’s weighty enough to get vaccinated, and she’s wasted no time finding cute little messes to make. The toilet tissue tower has become a climbing toy.

Our friend Kevin Griggs came over last night to take some glamour shots of the new baby. He posted a few choice samples to Flickr, and she even made the first picture in a “Kitten Tuesday” post on their blog! Clearly, with all this activity, we have a heart-breaker on our hands.

It will be exciting to see how she matures, and how Binky (our other cat) takes to her. After the untimely passing of our cat George (may he rest in peace), I was half-jokingly excited to get another pet named George II, but Kip managed to knock some sense into me, and Sassy here is the result!

Please enjoy responsibly.