Webb City Sentinel column - 5-31-13

I expect I’m not alone in wishing I could sometimes turn back the clock and handle a situation differently. Seems like I can come up with the perfect response – about five hours later.

That happened toward the end of Tuesday’s market. I was chatting with Carrole Palmer at her stand, Fairhaven Gardens, when a man came up to Carrole complaining bitterly that, “I feel like I’m in a foreign country. This place is full of foreigners.”

Carrole just looked down, but I had to respond – “And we’re lucky to have them.”

As a market manager, I feel very fortunate that we have lots of growers, including our immigrant growers. Without them, our market would be significantly reduced both in produce variety and in produce quantity – and in smiles.

At my response, he pretty much exploded and stormed out of the market.

Instead of responding like a market manager, I should have more directly addressed his comment, perhaps by telling him that if he were referring to the Asian vendors, that every one of them at market that day was a U.S. citizen just like me, and, I guess, like him. But I didn’t and I regret it.

I am, of course, assuming that he was referring to our Asian vendors and not our vendors from Germany, France and Great Britain.

I wish I’d told him – not only are most of our Asian vendors U.S. citizens, but pretty much all of the younger ones were born in the U.S., and most of the others are naturalized U.S. citizens. They are all legal residents of the U.S.

I should have told him:

– That our older Asian growers lost their homes, their lands and many family members because their people allied with the U.S. during the Vietnam War.

– That many of these very people he disparaged lost mothers, fathers, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles because when we (the U.S.) left Vietnam, the Viet Cong massacred their people in retribution for befriending us.

– That many of our older Asian farmers spent years in refugee camps in Thailand until our country welcomed them because of their service to our country.

I should have told him that while these farmers may not have personally sheltered and guided our airmen to safety, they and their families bore the consequences of that aide.

Frankly, I expect that neither this man’s family nor mine has sacrificed as much as our Asian farmers have for supporting the United States.

And had he given me the opportunity, I should have told him that I have never met a more generous and hard-working people than our Asian farmers. Obviously generalities can’t be applied to a whole people, but I am blessed to know and work with these farmers who, though they suffered extreme loss, are positive and productive members of our community.

I have to admit that my reqret at being inarticulate and unresponsive was almost matched by my dismay when told by Carrole that, “It happens more often than I’d like to say. I just don’t respond to them.”

I noticed Carrole also didn’t ask him if he wanted to buy anything. The Palmers are as kind as they come and have taken the Asian vendors into their hearts and often have taken the younger ones into their arms, giving them a hug whenever they meet. They were proud as punch when Mina, a young woman who had helped at her parents’ stand since high school, graduated from college this month.

So bless the good souls like the Palmers and the other native-born farmers at our market who have befriended our immigrant farmers.

And bless our immigrant farmers who try so hard, load me down with gifts of produce and pitch in to help clean tables and take down the umbrellas at every market.

And especially bless our dear customers who treat all our vendors with respect. Thank you.

Perhaps next time, I’ll be better prepared to respond, and I hope you will be too. Some folks are justifiably leery, having seen very questionable farming practices in other countries.

You can assure them that all of our farmers are trained in safe food production. Interestingly, our immigrant farmers are the most trained. All the farmers are required to take the workshop given by the Missouri Department of Health and University of Missouri Extension every five years. Most of our immigrant farmers retake it every year.

You may have noticed an abundance of a new product at the market, particularly on the Asian farmers’ tables – green (or fresh) garlic. Storage garlic must be dried and won’t be ready until the end of summer, but green garlic is ready now. Lindsay Supplee, nutrition program associate with the Jasper County University of Missouri Extension, will have samples of garlic croutons at the market today and explain how you can use the market’s green garlic to make your own.

Tomorrow, you’ll get the rest of the story when Market Lady and nutritionist Susan Pittman teaches how to make Raspberry Vinaigrette and Aunt Trish’s Salad Dressing.

The salad fixings at the market are fabulous right now. There must be more than 10 varieties of lettuce and other salad greens. I found a new one at the Lee Family Farm stand Tuesday – about 6 inches across and 4 inches tall with the curliest little leaves I’ve ever seen on lettuce. I loved the way it looked in the salad and it was tasty too.

Plus, we’ve got a wonderful selection of extras for salads like strawberries, sugar snap peas, snow peas, green onions, cucumbers and radishes. And, of course, tomatoes! We should have three farmers with high-tunnel tomatoes on Friday and two on Saturday.

On the market stage today will be the Gospel Strings. We shall miss terribly Treva Dawson, one of the Strings players. Treva died unexpectedly last week. We’ll miss not only her music but her gentle smile, her calm competent manner, her kindness and generosity. Webb City is a smaller place without her, but she would appreciate and encourage her fellow Gospel Strings musicians to continue sharing music of faith and patriotism with the community.

The Granny Shaffers at the Market menu today will be chicken and noodles, chicken salad sandwiches and strawberry/spinach salad.

Tomorrow, NALA volunteers will serve breakfast from 9 to 11 a.m. NALA teaches adult literacy, English as a second language and GED classes (allowing dropouts to complete their high school education). The Josh Jennings Band will play.

On Tuesday Granny Shaffers at the Market will serve lunch, and Drew and Rob Pommert will play. The Joplin Business Women will be back selling their Rada knives as a fundraiser for their scholarship program.

Kohlrabi - good for you & tasty too!

U of Mo Extension is doing cooking demonstrations every Friday at the market this summer and for their debut recipe they did Sauteed Kohlrabi. I thought it was tasty and I guess others agreed because our four farmers who grow kohlrabi sold out of it!

Sauteed Kohlrabi

4 small kohlrabi, peeled and trimmed of leaves
1 teaspoon salt
1 medium onion, sliced
2 T of butter
1 tsp of crushed dried basil leaves or 1 T fresh chopped basil leaves

Wash hands and surfaces (yes, a little food safety teaching is not a bad thing!)

Grate the kohlrabi and place in a colander. Sprinkle with salt and allow to sit 30 minutes. Squeeze water out.

Melt butter in a skillet. Add onions and brown.

Add in kohlrabi. Turn heat to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Uncover and turn heat to medium. Cook another 2 minutes. Sprinkle with basil.

Refrigerate leftovers immediately.



It looks like it might say "Take me to your leader" but kohlrabi is tasty and super-good for you. Even the leaves are edible and taste a lot like kale.

Webb City Sentinel column - 5/24/13

The asparagus is hitting peak season here in southwest Missouri. And strawberries will be peaking in the next few days as well. That means it’s time to get down to the market!

Above, one of our customers was pretty pleased with her strawberries last week.

Pre-order your berries from your favorite strawberry farmer if you want to do some freezing or jam-making. They will be happy to bring you a flat while supplies are plentiful. Our two large strawberry growers are Kenney Farms from Stockton who come on Fridays and Tuesdays and Fairhaven from, surprisingly enough, Fairhaven who come most market days. Hang Farm and Rocky Horse Ranch also have strawberries.

Want to make some jam? We’re giving away samples of Ball’s RealFruit Pectin, good for making 2 half pint jars of no-cook freezer jam. Just stop by the recipe demonstration table for your free sample. That will be in the center of the pavilion this weekend. When more farmers come in and the pavilion becomes crowded with vendors we’ll move the cooking demonstration to the north end under a fixed canopy. In fact I had planned to put the canopy up this week but decided to hold off until the winds settled down. I could just imagine our canopy ending up in Springfield with the weather we’ve been having.

We have two very different recipe demonstrations this week. Today Lindsay Supplee with University of Missouri Extension demonstrates sautéed kohlrabi. You’ve probably seen kohlrabi at the market. We have at least three growers who sell it in the spring and fall. It’s a light green color with a ball on one end about 3 inches in diameter and large leaves growing out the top. Frankly it looks a little other worldly. It has the earthy sweetness of cabbage but with a bit of the bite and heat you’d expect from a radish or turnip. You can eat it raw sliced or cooked and, like most of our veggies, it’s super good for you. It’s a great source of fiber and vitamin C. The only nutritional complaint I’ve come across about kohlrabi is that most of its calories come from sugar – all 36 calories per serving. Doesn’t sound like a big problem to me.

On Saturday, Market Lady Trish Reed is demonstrating Cheese Cake Strawberries. And, yes, there’ll be samples both days. For the recipes, go to marketladyblog.com or webbcityfarmersmarket.com.

We’ve been putting a Market Lady tip up once a week or more on the blog. Susan Pittman shared three of her favorite ways to prepare asparagus earlier this week. Next week, we’ll feature Trish’s trick for hard boiling farm-fresh eggs.

Here’s a sneak preview:

We’ve all boiled eggs that we then had to demolish to get the shell off. It’s the freshness that causes the shell to be so tightly stuck to the egg. The membrane between the egg and the shell needs time to separate – as in days and weeks. It doesn’t seem to be a problem with most store-bought eggs, but you can really run into difficulty with market eggs (market – fresh – get the connection?). That's a photo of the eggs Trish used at the market on Saturday. She had bought them at the market the day before! Trish’s tip is: add 1/4 cup or more of table salt to the water before boiling. After the eggs are boiled, drain the water and replace with cold water. Crack the small end of each egg and let them sit in the cool water for 15 minutes. The shells should come right off.

Like The Market Lady facebook page or check the blog for more tips and recipes. The Market Lady is a project of the Webb City market funded by a USDA special crops grant. It promotes consumption of fresh local produce throughout southwest Missouri.

We have solo artists at the market this weekend. Drew Pommert, the talented son of our talented Tuesday musician Rob, will play today. Tomorrow, William Adkins plays. My husband Phil who ramrods the Saturday benefit breakfast always enjoys Bill’s playing (I think because he sings a lot of golden oldies).

Granny Shaffers will serve lunch today. The Carl Junction Chapter of the Order of Eastern Star serves breakfast in the morning.

The Kids Community Garden is moving right along. It’s located just west of the kindergarten on school grounds and we have a lovely bunch of kids gardening. We were really pleased that the pepper and tomato plants weathered the storms. This week the kids learned how to cage tomato plants, to plant sweet potato plants, and seed in zucchini, green beans, cucumbers, carrots and radishes. My farmers clued me in on the carrots and radishes. You mix the seeds together before planting. The carrots take what seems like forever to sprout while the radishes are up and ready to pull in no time. It’s almost instant gratification which is always a good thing when working with kids, plus you know where you planted those silly carrots which won’t peek out of the soil for weeks.

Speaking of instant gratification, after we spent an hour planting and mulching, one of the kids wanted to know if we were also going to harvest before calling it a day! This would be our second week in the garden. The peppers are blooming but we are still a long way from harvest. Patience is just one more thing we’re learning in the garden.

Luckily our farmers started planting a couple of months ago and we’re seeing lots of harvested produce at the market. Hope you can come by to enjoy some of it.

Webb City Sentinal column - 5-17-13

It finally feels like the market season has begun. We had big turnouts for both Friday and Saturday, new growers and products are showing up all the time, and we’ve started the Kids Community Garden in earnest. (photo below - Granny Shaffer's strawberry/spinach salad is served on Tuesdays and Fridays. It can be served without the cheese making it a good vegan choice)


Middle school counselor Karen Brownfield did a great job of recruiting gardeners for us this year. We have about 20 kids working in the garden. That can be a challenge with only 50 by 60 feet of space, but there was plenty to do on Wednesday. The garden was tilled on Tuesday. It was grown up in wheat about three feet tall so was quite a challenge to till. I’d like to claim the wheat as a cover crop but it was just accidental. It seeded from the wheat straw that we’d used last year for mulch. Still it made an excellent cover crop and it was so thickly planted that, had we the time to let it mature, we could have harvested enough to bake some bread. But it protected the soil from erosion all winter and it made an excellent green manure for the soil when tilled.

Garden volunteers Dale Mermoud, Nancy Carlson and myself divided the kids up. Nancy took the bulk of them, showing them how to pull and gather the stray wheat plants that didn’t get completely tilled under. Dale placed the potted plants where they were to be planted and I took the children, two at a time, and showed them how gently remove the plant from the pot, how to dig the hole and to what depth, the type and amount of fertilizer, how to gently press the soil around the root ball. Everyone got a turn planting tomatoes, peppers or herbs. One young gardener worked with Dale in planting a row of green bean seeds. Then we all pitched in and mulched the plants with straw (I see more wheat cover crop in our future). The children always tend to be very conservative about mulching, carefully sprinkling a bit here and there. None of that for me. “Take a quarter of the bale and peel off layers of 3 to 4 inches and place them around the plant.” I have no interest in weeding if I can beat the weeds down with a thick layer of mulch.

Then Mother Nature blessed us with a nice rain.

It was an excellent beginning, but only possible through the generosity of our market farmers. Green’s Greenhouse and Garden, Frederickson Farms and Fairhaven Garden supplied us with the plants so the kids will be harvesting the same good produce that our professional farmers bring to the market.

Education is a key component of the market’s mission. The market invests considerable time and money in the kids garden, but we don’t neglect our area professional and hobbyist growers.

This winter we sponsored a Winter Production conference held at Granny Shaffer’s that exceeded all our expectations. Not only did we have over 150 people attend, but the conference received rave reviews from the participants. The best responses that we have received were from growers that have already implemented much of what they learned at the conference. Of course, we had an ulterior motive in organizing the conference. We want a better winter market. I’m pretty sure we’re going to see substantial improvement next winter as a result.

We partnered with Extension on the winter conference as we have on many education projects for almost ten years. Patrick Byers and Nashon Bishop, with University of Missouri Extension and Lincoln University Extension respectively, will be at the market today to visit with folks about their gardens and fields. We are very fortunate to have their expertise once a month during the growing season at the market. They’ll also visit with all our market growers about challenges they may be experiencing. So even if you’re not a gardener you’re benefiting from their expertise in getting better produce at the market.

Another of the market’s education programs benefits our customers even more directly. Beginning next Friday, Extension will do cooking demonstrations weekly using fresh local products from the market. On Saturdays, one of our market ladies will demonstrate good-for-you recipes. Tomorrow Trish Reed demonstrates Easy Spinach Salad. You may remember Trish from several years back when she was our Friday lunch caterer.

Today, in addition to gardening advice, you can enjoy the traditional Irish music of the Plainsfolk. Granny Shaffer’s is serving homemade chicken and noodles with mashed potatoes, strawberry/spinach salad and chicken salad sandwiches. Kenney Farms will be at the market for the first time today (yes, you remember them – they specialize in strawberries!).
Tomorrow volunteers from the Ronald McDonald House serve breakfast. They’ll also serve each customer a sample of maple syrup sausage from Madewell Meats. Doesn’t that sound good? Madewell’s is at the market on Friday.

Currykorn will play at the market for the first time in several years. This fun family group from Columbia is normally beyond our budget, we can’t afford the mileage, but we were able to book them on their way home from a festival in Oklahoma.

Rocky Horse Ranch returns to the market for the first time this season tomorrow. Rocky Horse uses all-natural growing practices and expects to have asparagus, and some broccoli, strawberries and rhubarb.

On Tuesday, Granny Shaffer’s serves freshly grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, as well as their strawberry/spinach salad and chicken salad sandwiches. Rob Pommert, with his gentle rock, jazz and classical guitar is back for our Tuesday music.

It’s shaping up to be another great week at the market.

Here’s Trish’s recipe that you can sample at the market tomorrow.

Easy Spinach Salad

10 ounces of fresh spinach
Red onion, sliced and separated
6 boiled, peeled and cooled eggs, cubed
8 ounces chopped cooked bacon, drained and cooled
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 cup miracle whip
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 cup sugar or equivalent sugar-free sweetener

In a small bowl, mix together ketchup, miracle whip, oil and sugar. Mix well and refrigerate. In a large bowl, combine spinach, red onion, cubed eggs and bacon pieces. Toss well. Drizzle dressing over salad mixture and toss well.

Go to our Market Lady web site (themarketlady.com) for weekly recipes and tips – Trish’s tip this week is how to dry lettuce and spinach.

Webb City Sentinel market column - 5-10-13

Last week reminded me of a Nic Frising cartoon about Missouri weather. Half of the character pictured was dressed in winter clothes, the other half in summer duds. Saturday was the first day ever that I’d looked out from the pavilion during a market and seen snow falling!

Despite the weather, we had a good turnout for the Saturday market. Over 100 children received a free tomato plant grown for us by Green’s Greenhouse and we finished handing out the 400 serviceberry trees that we had ordered from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Hopefully weather is now fading from the conversation and we can talk about other things – like what’s happening at the market this weekend. On both days we’ll be loaded with flowers in pots, planters and baskets. They’re all gorgeous and have been under expert local care from planting to sale.

Be sure to stop by Fairhaven at the south end to admire their handcrafted planters. Filled with colorful flowers, each has its own personality and the prices are quite reasonable. They’re even running a children’s special on Saturday for their smaller planters so kids can buy a gift for Mother’s Day. (But bring a child to make the purchase because the price is only available to children. Life is full of disappointment for us adults. We had several Saturday who would have gladly bought one of the free tomato plants for children but Tim sent them to Frederickson Farms. He was only giving away tomatoes on Saturday. Today his tomato plants will be for sale without regard to age.)

Don’t forget that it’s time to plant your herbs for a summer of culinary delight. Tim Green has some lovely basil plants, while Tami Frederickson and Paul Spangenberg have many, many varieties of herbs. Paul is one of our new vendors, PT Gardens of Nixa. You’ll find him on the south end of the pavilion right across from Fairhaven. They sell their herbs as plants, fresh cut and dried. They also use their herbs in creating a variety of seasoned salts and sugars.

Today, Jon Skinner, the urban forester with the Missouri Department of Conservation, will be at the market. If you have a sickly shrub or tree, bring a sample showing the symptoms (like damaged leaves or insects in a plastic bag) or a photo for him to look at. He can also talk to you about the best trees and shrubs to plant in your yard for the purposes you’re seeking. Want something to attract birds or bees? Jon can help you out. Maybe you want a tree with great fall foliage or one that is very low maintenance or one to plant near utility lines. Come to the market today and get advice that will benefit you for decades. Jon will be in the center of the pavilion on the east side.

Granny Shaffer’s is offering several choices on Fridays. The choices in May include last year’s favorites: homemade chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes for $5 (you can also take home a 3/4 pint of chicken and noodles for $), chicken salad sandwich with a choice of chips or drink for $5, and a strawberry/pecan spinach and feta cheese salad for $6.
The Granny Chicks will play today.

Tomorrow, we’ll be an even better place to get those Mother’s Day gifts because we’ll have all the wonderful plants and planters, plus our artists and seamstresses.

The Carl Junction chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star will serve breakfast until 11. And while you enjoy your biscuits and gravy and farm fresh eggs your pleasure will be doubled by the music of the Green Earth Band.

We are bringing The Market Lady project to the market every Saturday this summer but the market lady will have multiple personalities. We are really pleased that we have four professionals to demonstrate good-for-you seasonal recipes this year: nutritionists Theresa Dohm and Susan Pittman, former Webb City High School family and consumer sciences teacher Carolyn Smith (we used to call that home ec), and caterer Trish Reed.

This Saturday, Theresa Dohm starts us off. She’ll be in the center of the pavilion. Stop by for a sample and a recipe.

On Tuesday, Rob Pommert returns to the market with his gentle singing. Granny Shaffer’s serves lunch. Next Friday, Shon Bishop of Lincoln University Extension and Patrick Byers of University of Missouri Extension will be on hand to answer gardening and growing questions. And next Saturday we have a special treat when Currykorn appears at the market. We can’t normally afford this excellent family group from Columbia that specializes in bluegrass and gospel but we caught them as they return from a concert in Oklahoma.

And, of course, we will have more and more local produce coming in with each market. The lettuce has been fantastic and will be gone once the weather gets hot so load up on it now.

OK, I admit it, I’m still talking about the weather. I guess you just can’t work with farmers without the weather being forefront in the conversation. So here’s to better weather this year. We sure deserve it.

Webb City Sentinel column 5-3-13

We’ve had a rather inauspicious beginning to the regular season. Despite it being May, we’re back in winter. Opening weekend felt more like November and this weekend we seem to be in the depths of January! For the first time ever, we’ve cancelled the meals and music this weekend. It’s just too cold to picnic.

But we expect all our vendors, both today and tomorrow, so we’ll be loaded with cool crisp veggies, along with all the other goodies you expect at market. It should be easy to dash in and dash out (we’re sure not expecting long lines), so don’t let the cold keep you from enjoying fresh and local this weekend – Please! Make the chilly day we volunteers and vendors spend at the market worth our frozen toes.

And we’ll make it worth yours as well with over 10 farmers on Friday and six on Saturday plus all our other regulars. And we have a new baker on Saturday – Harvest Lane Bakery specializing in cinnamon rolls, country breads and dinner rolls.

Stop for breakfast or lunch on the way to or from the market – two of our vendors will be open at their home base today and tomorrow – for home-style cooking try Granny Shaffer’s and for organic and vegetarian choices try Eden Bakery-Café (33 South Main Street).

We’ll give away tomato plants on Saturday to every child at the market. And we still have Serviceberry trees and shrubs to give away.

And even with this dreadful weather, we can at least be thankful that we don’t have to deal with an emu plague.

How random is that? Well, not that random for farmers in Western Australia.

As you may know, I am blessed with a darlin’ two-year-old granddaughter in Perth, Australia, (that's her with her "sticker face") and I am doubly blessed that I am able to spend a couple of months with her and her parents each year. Naturally, I go in the winter. While you all were suffering with the snow and ice this February and March, I was enjoying the sun and surf there. I was also enjoying their delightful neighbors, Robert and Ann Barwick, and that’s where the emu plagues come in.

Robert and Ann were farmers prior to moving to Perth. With his father and brother, Robert had inherited 1,000 acres his grandfather acquired in 1913. Over the years, they expanded the farm to 15,000 acres. It was on the edge of the “marginal” areas, about 10 miles inside the barrier fence.

Ann grew up on a sheep station on the other side of the barrier “in the marginal area” – a station is their word for a really big farm – stations are usually measured in square miles, not acres. So what made the area marginal? Rabbits. The rabbit/fox/dingo-proof barrier, which is actually three connected fences, was completed in 1907 and stretches 2,021 miles. And being protected by the fence is what makes farming possible in Western Australia.

Robert and his brother grew wheat on 7,000 acres. On the rest they raised 3,000 merino sheep, 200 pigs, and 200 cattle each year.

The average annual rainfall was 13” (in our area it’s 46”) so to our way of thinking even with protection of the fence the land was pretty marginal. Each sheep required five acres for grazing. They only received 8” of rain during the growing season, so you can imagine how little rain they received during drought times. Zero would probably be on target. During a two-year drought they were doubly hit. Wheat production on the farm fell from 3,500 tons to 140 tons. And then the emus arrived. Six thousand a day invaded the farm, desperate for water. Normally the barrier stopped them, but with numbers like that they simply piled up against the fence until they could scramble right over on the backs of others. One thousand acres of wheat fields were trampled under their feet.

And then there were the rabbit plagues, when rabbits managed to break through the barrier and multiply like, well, rabbits.

And the grasshopper plague …

It’s going to be mighty cold at the market this weekend, but I’m thinking I won’t complain too much. At least we won’t have 6,000 emus stampeding the pavilion.

With 30 years of farming, Robert has lots of fascinating stories, but then so did Ann. Like the time she went to take the test to get licensed to drive the big wheat trucks to the granary. The tester said “Ann, didn’t I see you driving the wheat truck yesterday? (without a license)” Hmmmmm, yes. “Right, then. Here’s your license. (Apparently she passed the test without taking it.)”

If you look up the station Ann grew up on, the Karara Station, you’ll find that it is now a huge mine. Her family scratched a living out of that land for decades only to learn after they no longer had it that they’d been sitting on a vast fortune of iron and hematite.

Like most farmers, Robert and Ann worked incredibly hard most of their life. Now, in retirement, you can see their love of farming in their yard. Pretty as their front yard is, a short walk down the drive to the back takes you to a veritable Eden. These people know how to grow and they love doing it. And what good neighbors they are. Robert trimmed Cora’s palm trees while I was there (not a skill you acquire in Webb City) and Ann popped by with some apricot chutney she’d made. And they’re great pals of my granddaughter Madeleine so how could they not be wonderful?

We should be back to semi-normal weather next week. William Adkins is back on Tuesday with lots of great songs. Granny Shaffers serves lunch on Tuesday and Friday. I had their strawberry spinach salad last week. Very good.

On Friday the Granny Chicks are back and Jon Skinner, the urban forester with the Department of Conservation, will diagnose tree and shrub problems.

On Saturday, the Carl Junction chapter of Eastern Star serves breakfast and the Green Earth Band plays.

Maybe next week will be the real beginning of a great market season.