Ah! That’s better! Although there were sprinkles of rain off and on, at least it was sunny at times and not nearly as cold as last week.

We were kept company while preparing the baskets by five of the chickens who had escaped their pen. Funny birds! They will come right up to us while we’re doing something, but if we walk to another spot they scatter in every direction.

The young turkeys are now minus their mother. Did she leave to join the neighbouring flock? Or did she meet her demise? Your guess is as good as mine. The youngsters still keep quite close together and they too seem used to seeing us around.

Baskets today contained an assortment of winter squash, swiss chard, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, summer turnip, sunflower and alfalfa/clover sprouts, bunching onions (they look more like chives!), and jerusalem artichoke.

The sunflower sprouts aren’t as nice as we would like. We have more tests to do to determine the proper density of seeds to work with — this batch was much too crowded, which is why many of the sprouts haven’t turned green. I doubt that we will ever be able to remove all of the hulls, but with the proper density we should have better success with that as well. In the meantime, it means a little more effort for folks on the receiving end to tidy them up a bit. Thanks for your patience!

Jerusalem artichokes, or sunchokes, are a vegetable in a class all to themselves. No relation to globe artichokes, they are an indigenous plant, which means of course that they are perfectly adapted to growing here. The edible part is a widening of the root, so to harvest them the plant is cut and the roots dug out to about a foot underground. Not as challenging as burdock root, but close!

Because they are freshly harvested, you can scrub them rather than trying to peel them. They can be eaten raw or steamed and mashed or added to casseroles. They have a nutty flavour and provide lots of iron and a good amount of Vitamin C. Info on cooking sunchokes here.