I’m working on a super-awesome post about our onion-planting party, but instead of just doing something logical like writing about how getting help from our community is amazing (!!!!) I am writing a sociological exegesis on labor and technology and human organization.
See why grad school didn’t work out too well?
In lieu of the exegesis, please have this post about your new favorite vegetable: collard napini.
So, napini is actually an Italian term referring to the flowering shoots of plants in the brassica genus. (Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, collards, and kale are all brassicas.) I was admittedly kind of skeptical when Ben told me the flowering shoots were both edible and tasty—lettuce, for example, gets bitter when it flowers—but I have learned to be an adventurous eater where vegetables are involved, for fear I will miss out on something delicious.
And, oh, man, I am so glad I didn’t miss out on collard napini. Unlike the traditional Southern method of preparing collards, napini is best gently and briefly steamed until the leaves turn an unbelievable blue-green. There are no photos of it cooked because every time we’ve had it I’ve been too busy with my fork to reach for my phone, but napini is sweet and tender with just the most delicate flavor of collards, and only needs a little salt, pepper, and olive oil or butter for seasoning. I keep insisting I’m going to make Hollandaise sauce to serve with it, so I better actually do that soon, huh? And carrot cake. After I put together all the bee boxes I ordered. Oh goodness.
But if my enthusiasm isn’t enough to convince you to buy our napini or hit up your local brassica farmer to sell you some “worthless” flowering shoots, you should know that everybody I’ve talked/forced into trying the collard napini has been similarly blown away by how great it is. I am not at all sorry for literally forcing it on friends and customers.
The moral of this story is that brassicas are amazing, exegeses on technology/labor/community are, um, really long and exhausting, and I miss my blog when I can’t get to it because I love writing about farming ALMOST as much as I love farming.
* * *
OH. A crucial part of the long blog that is not going up today is my heartfelt, if bewildered, thanks to everyone who’s told me they read this crazy blog (reposted through the In Good Heart Farm Facebook/website). I am just so endlessly touched by your interest and attention. (But, uh, did you know there’s a whole internet out there full of much more interesting and capable bloggers?)
Blogging about blogging is a little too INCEPTION for me, but I feel like I ought to say a few things anyway:
1) I’m going to unintentionally offend you, sooner or later, probably in regards to what I have to say about capitalism and/or gender, and I hope if I offend you I also make you think, so I’m not really sorry in advance.
2) I’m always going to swing radically back and forth between talking about the theoretical and practical aspects of agriculture and between my own emotional and impressionistic experiences of agriculture.
3) I blog for myself, and while Patricia and Ben have my full permission to repost anything I write to their online venues for the farm, anything I write is wholly mine and not necessarily endorsed by them OR representative of the farm. Please, please, do not mistake my words for theirs.
3a) I’m not going to do product endorsements or advertisements or anything like that on this blog, ever. This blog exists solely as a place to motivate me to write personally and academically.
That dispensed with, THANK YOU. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to read what I have to say. I am just shocked and awed and humbled into lovely perplexed speechlessness every time anybody tells me they’ve read this silly thing, and I will do my best, I promise, to honor your attention with halfway decent content.
Anneliese Marvel 