The Strawberries are Coming?
May 30, 2008 farming, general food
Having spotted a commercial for Eckert’s last night I went to check out their website and noticed they now have a blog and and on it the news that the strawberries hit for them last weekend. Pick-your-own will be happening there again this Saturday.
Also, for the less farm savvy simply speculating about rain and crop delays another entry says, “2008 has been the wettest year since the 1920’s. Here at Eckert’s, we have received 22.5 inches. Planting has been delayed for many of us, but it is not too late.”
Whether or not most of us make it to a pick-your-own farm, hopefully that means there will be more than a handful of pints coming into the local groceries and markets. I, at least, am yearning for some fruit that isn’t bananas, citrus, and apples (the only ones I’ll buy in the supermarket). Environmental reasons aside, everything else just tastes like crap.
On a mildly related note, the strawberries I did manage to buy at Maplewood this week had a wonderful aroma and a great strawberry flavor, but they were a bit tart. In part I know this is a result of all the rain, but also, when I’d read The Taste of Sweet (which was good), some of the researchers trying to hybridize the perfect strawberry sort of hinted at its being the one crop that engineering and cross pollination has actually improved dramatically. Their point was that what people have come to long for in a strawberry isn’t what a strawberry initially was at all. The original breeds are smaller and less sweet/more tart.
(which was good), some of the researchers trying to hybridize the perfect strawberry sort of hinted at its being the one crop that engineering and cross pollination has actually improved dramatically. Their point was that what people have come to long for in a strawberry isn’t what a strawberry initially was at all. The original breeds are smaller and less sweet/more tart.I honestly don’t know how true that is in part because most of my life I’ve only known what’s in the grocery store. Granted, I’m not someone that believes everything they read, but the point as a whole was compelling because strawberries are the one fruit that always seem to be a bit of a crap shoot locally. You can look in the comments for Kevin Willmann’s tip on where to pick-your-own though. I had those strawberries last weekend, and they were pretty damn good.
Tags: eckert farms, Kevin Willmann, strawberries
From the mountains of Panama and Ethiopia, to the urban-jungles of Portland and Chicago, journalist Michaele Weissman takes us behind the scenes for a look at the world of third-wave specialty coffee. How did we get to Starbucks, and where we go from here?
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
so, i was in Edwardsville Sat morning after my stop at Clayton Farmer’s Market. Seeing the line of 20 deep there for strawberries sent me on a mission to the land of Goshen…and i wanted some iced coffee and a pecan loaf. So, I bought one quart of berries from one vendor and a small pint from another. The differences were astounding! The ones from the quart were small, dark, juicy and sweet…really good strawberry flavor…the ones from the pint were very tart. Bad Annie forgot which batch was from where b/c I kept getting paged about transplants. Needless to say…I’m savoring the sweet ones and Simon made a strawberry shake out of the tart ones.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 am
Last Friday I picked up several qts of local berries at Kirkwood Farmer’s Market….rhubarb/strawberry tartlets and probably jam with the remaining 5 qts today.
Nothing says Spring like putting up strawberry jam.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
There was one farm at Soulard with a bunch of local strawberries but I forget the name of the farm off hand. I believe they were in Millstadt, IL