Good Thing Fifteen: My Brother is a Farmer

My older brother--Richard Stewart--trained in college to be a graphic designer and we always thought he would be an artist. He was always drawing and painting and sculpting. But when the recession hit just after 9/11, he was the last hired at his design firm, and so was the first fired.

So, he went to work for my dad (also Richard Stewart) on the family farm. I don't know if he knew if it would stick or not, that it was his future. . . or if maybe it felt like just a temporary thing until he figured out his next step.

Ten years later, he's still going strong. He's built up a truck garden/organic/farmer's market presence in Cincinnati--selling veggies and honey at farmer's markets and to local restaurants. He's a bee keeper. He's become a sort of farmer celebrity in Cincy and northern Kentucky. Just yesterday at the Northside farmer's market, he was selling honey, dried black beans, corn meal, turnips, and carrots.


Once or twice a year, the farm, Carriage House Farm LLC, is a part of farm tours and my family gives lectures on growing things, keeping bees, foraging for food in the woods (have you eaten a pawpaw grown in the wild? yum).

He's happy. That makes me happy.


Plus I totally get free honey every time I come home for the holidays.

September Farmer's Market

It's all I could do this summer to fight the monster of glumness. But without fail, the farmer's market was there to brighten each Saturday. . . and then to fill the week with food that I am sure is helping me heal and get healthy again.


Right now, my own garden is cranking out herbs and tomatoes and string beans and hot peppers.


The farmer's market is augmenting that harvest with broccoli and melon and peaches and the first apples of the season. It's going to be fall soon and the fruit will drop off, replaced by butternut squash and pumpkins and chard and onions and leaks and spinach. But I'm certainly enjoying the last hurrah of summer.

Prettiest Broccoli Ever

Courtesy of the Oak Park Farmer's Market. . .


Just didn't want you to miss it. . .

Ist Farmer's Market of the Year

Today was the first Oak Park Farmers' Market of the year.

Fresh Produce is back!

And the famous Oak Park Farmers' Market Donuts.

Market

Today was the last day of the Oak Park farmer's market. . . which means no more fresh veg or church donuts again until next May. It's a blow combined with falling back thanks to Day Light Savings Time.

But at least today, we had donuts and found the most beautiful carrots (for Catatoes! or Mashed Parrots!) brussel sprouts and butternut squash. Good eatins the rest of this week!

Oak Park Farmer's Market

So, my folks were up this weekend--bringing furniture and manure for the garden (city mice still need their country mice for the good stuff!!!!) and Dad's plumbing skills to work on battery-powered sump pump installation with D.

But the whole weekend couldn't be all sump pumps and furniture moving. . . so we also ate our way through the weekend recreationally. Dinner at Fogo de Chao (fun, really good food, bad atmosphere, probably won't go again. . . but everyone should go once), chez Stewart/Phillips ala Jamie Oliver and food from the market, and breakfast at the Oak Park Farmer's Market and Nookie's in Lincoln Park. Luckily the gym was still open on Sunday after the folks drove away.

But from the offerings at the farmer's market (besides the redonkulously yummy donuts), it's clear that we've reached the thin footbridge between summer and fall. We still have musk melons, but broccoli and greens and late root veggies are beginning to take over, as corn and tomatoes and peaches dwindle off. Usually I'm sad, but not this year. I'm getting better at enjoying all of the seasons. . .

D had carrots in the early summer from Carriage House Farms and was floored--so in love was he with the unbelievably carrotyness of homegrown carrots. So, now he's more interested in carrots at farmers' markets.

My folks were most impressed (after the donuts and the prices that farmers can ask for their produce in Chicago) by the Pilgrim Church building and the bluegrass band.

The Farmer's Market Is Back

Winter in Chicago can drag on forever and ever. . . except that eventually the farmers' markets come to neighborhoods all across the city, chasing winter away.

This is our first visit of the year to the Oak Park farmer's market. The OPFM is a very special market. Good farmers have good produce to sell, but there's also a bluegrass band that plays every market, rain or shine. And there's a group that sells the most amazing freshly made donuts--powdered, plain or cinnamon and the cinnamon are the best hands down. Sometimes, I think the OP crowd can be a little self involved and that translates often to rudeness, but if you can focus on the donuts, the music and the sweet sellers, it's a great way to spend a Saturday morning.