Harvest Monday : Soup of Spring

We have been feasting on farm food the past few days.  Saturday we made stinging nettle pesto with pasta. Rog steamed it lightly to remove the sting before  blending it with olive oil, toasted almonds, garlic, lemon and parmesan to make the pesto. Amazingly tasty and so nutritious!

Last night we  roasted one of our chickens with homegrown garlic and herbs on a bed of farm-grown sweet potatoes, beets and leeks, served with spinach salad with pansies and the first purple radishes of the year.  

Today, I  made stock from the chicken carcass.  We went for a walk after work and gathered up ingredients from the prairie, garden and greenhouse for soup: lacinato kale, radishes, asparagus, chives, leeks, thyme, chioggia beets and scallions. Not shown are the wild parsnips Rog pulled during our walk- a problem invasive, but very tasty to eat.

(We have  devoured the last of our greenhouse carrots,  I just planted remaining  fingerling potatoes we wintered over, and no tomatoes yet, so those ingredients were store-bought.)  

We  ended up with a pretty and delicious springtime soup.

Harvest Monday: Asparagus and Eggs

The asparagus is up!  Even the purple asparagus, which I just planted  last year as 2-year-old roots.

This is the  second year for the green asparagus (Martha Washington) and we only harvested a few spears last year, so I  am hoping for a more abundant  harvest this year. It was well-disguised in the weeds and grass--we never got to cleaning up the poor asparagus bed last fall.

I LOVE asparagus, but have never grown it before.  I  knew it took several years to establish a bed and I never anticipated we would stay long enough in any one place  to make it worth the wait (but then we ended up staying in the last two homes 10 and 12 years.)  Asparagus was the very first thing I planted when we moved to the farm, but then we got cows and it turned out I had planted it in the pasture --so I had to start over.  Finally, at age 54, I have asparagus!!

We are now getting about  3 dozen eggs a day from our sweet hens, so...

the obvious supper tonight was scrambled eggs with spinach and scallions from the high tunnel, steamed asparagus, and whole grain toast. We dined outside on the patio,  despite the gale-force wind, because at least it was a tropically warm wind, and how often can you eat home-grown asparagus and scrambled eggs outside in March in Minnesota?

I have just joined Harvest Monday and will attempt to report on our weekly harvest. Check out what other gardeners harvested today at  Daphne's Dandelions.
.