Did you know the Spring Equinox is on March 20?
We’ve had blips of warm sunny days here in Boonville that make it feel like spring is already here, followed up quickly by frost warnings to help bring us back to reality. We keep our eyes peeled for plants waking up and starting to flower. A few California Poppies have bloomed in our yard and the yarrow plants by our front door are showing off their white flowers. Some mornings we awake to frost fans in the nearby vineyards that keep the ambient temperature up so that the budding grapevines stay safe from the frost. And others we awake to rain.
With a transition from winter to spring, our taste buds shift from citrus and winter squash to fava beans, asparagus, and juicy strawberries. It’s the time of year that we get asked every week, “Do you have strawberries yet?”
Fresh berries, no. But something to fill the gap? Absolutely.
We're lucky to work with the Philo Apple Farm to preserve our strawberries each year into a delicious Strawberry Jam so that at times like this, we can still satisfy our cravings for spring berries.
Sweet Spring Flavors to Enjoy Now
If we lived in a warmer climate like Southern California, we would be starting the big push of the strawberry season. But it’s still pretty wet and cold in Boonville (we’ve got a few inches of rain in the forecast for this week as well as temps in the 30s!). And while some days have been sunny, many have been overcast and cold.
Our strawberry plants are also still quite small (see below). We harvest off the same strawberry plant for 3 years before tilling the plants back into the soil and starting over with new. This was a new plant year and we were able to get the strawberry crowns in the soil at the end of January. While they are growing big leaves and starting to flower, they are a long way off from producing sweet berries (they need sun and warm weather to do that!).
But until then, there’s plenty of Strawberry & Chile Preserve to enjoy! Our Strawberry & Chile Preserve is made with just picked strawberries and a touch of Piment d’Ville to add some depth and little heat to the sweetness. We harvest the berries in the cool, foggy mornings and then drive the flats of berries down the road to The Apple Farm.
There, preserving master Cruz takes our berries and turns them into a perfect preserve. She tops each berry and then cuts it in half or in quarters. She doesn’t mash up the fruit while it cooks in large copper pots. Instead, Cruz gently stirs the fruit so that each piece retains its shape. The addition of Piment d'Ville makes this Strawberry Preserve uniquely ours. The flavor of the Piment d'Ville comes through the sweet strawberries without being overwhelmingly spicy. It's a good balance of flavors that can be used just as any other strawberry jam.
Why Our Strawberries Taste So Dang Good
Head to any grocery store and the strawberries that are for sale are more than likely from Driscoll’s. Driscoll’s has come to dominate strawberry distribution in the U.S., producing 60% of organic strawberries back in 2017. The focus of their strawberry breeding program is to develop strawberries that are perfect and consistent in appearance. They want strawberries that are big, firm, and can be picked ¾ ripe and withstand shipment from California (or the multitude of other places where they grow berries) to places as far as the Middle East (and be eaten 2 weeks after harvest). Flavor is seemingly an afterthought. If you want to dive deeper into Driscoll's I'd recommend this 2017 piece from The New Yorker.
It’s pretty easy as a small grower to compete with Driscoll strawberries on flavor (price and distribution? Definitely not!). Anything that is allowed to fully ripen will be filled with sweetness and taste like the summer sun turned into a little perfect candy. This is how we are able to grow incredibly flavorful and delicious strawberries here on our farm. We’ve chosen a variety of strawberry that prioritizes strong sweet flavor over shelf life. And that variety is the Seascape Strawberry.
Seascape strawberries were developed in 1991 by the strawberry breeding program at UC-Davis. Compared to a Driscoll strawberry, Seascapes are red all the way through. Take a bite and you’ll be surprised to not see any white flesh. The berry is a day-neutral variety, meaning that its flowering and fruiting habits are not affected by the number of sunlight hours a day has. While each plant may produce fewer fruits each day or week, it has fairly continuous production for a longer season. Compare this to a June-bearing strawberry plant that produces only for 2 weeks or an ever-bearing strawberry plant that has 2-3 flushes of fruit during the growing season.
Seascape strawberries work well for us since we want lower yields over a longer time compared to a few big pushes of berries that we don’t have the market for in Anderson Valley. Though, I definitely curse the strawberry plants at the end of August/early September when they are still producing ripe berries that need to be harvested. These berries are incredibly flavorful and have a very short shelf life, making them the perfect variety to eat as many as possible at once, freeze for smoothies, or immediately process into something like jam!
Recipes for Spring: Strawberry & Chile Jam
Everybody has their go-to ways to use things like strawberry jam. And even though there's a bit of chile powder in ours, don't be scared to consume it the same way you would any other jar of jam. Slather it on a piece of buttered toast. Use it in a PB&J. Add it to a bowl of plain yogurt and granola. It's up to you! Here's a handful of other ways you can use the jam with a bit more creativity:
1. Nutty Overnight Oats with Pistachio Butter and Strawberry Jam: I'm not a breakfast lover, but since many of my mornings start early and involve working outside, I'm constantly on the hunt for a filling and not too sweet breakfast. Last week I ate Oaxacan black beans with avocado, cheese, and tortillas. This week I'm trying overnight oats. We have a jar of pistachio butter we were gifted last year and I'll skip the freeze dried and fresh strawberries and use our jam instead.
2. Austrian Torn, Fluffy Pancake with Strawberry Jam Sauce: Weekends are for fun breakfasts and with a more relaxed weekend ahead of us, I'm excited to try my hand at these pancakes. Deb Perelman's description makes them sound utterly fantastic: "The batter is simple, close to that of a crepe or dutch baby, but you whip the egg whites separately and fold them in at the end, resulting in a puffy butter-fried mega-pancake. But wait, there’s more! You then shred, tear, or chop it into bite-sized pieces and continue to fry it until each is a glorious golden-edged, custardy-centered nugget. It’s finished with a drift of powdered sugar and served with tart fruit compote." I'll serve it alongside our preserve.
3. Easy Jam Tart: Every time I see a tart recipe, it reminds me I need to purchase a tart pan. Maybe now is my moment! This tart can be eaten for dessert, breakfast, or as an afternoon pick me up. It has a simple flour and cornmeal crust, a jam filling, and the option of making as fiddly of a top for the tart as you please. It's a great "we're done with winter, yeah?" kind of tart that showcases fruit flavors that happened to be preserved.
4. Honey Custard with Roasted Strawberries or Jam: I'm a big fan of things like buttermilk panna cotta with a spoonful of jam. And this recipe feels like the perfect departure to something still quite similar, but with an easy set of instructions. You make a honey custard and top it with roasted strawberries (if you have them) or a spoonful of our Strawberry & Chile preserve.
5. Jammy Fruit Bars: Inspired by Icelandic hjónabandssæla, this is basically a strudel bar. It uses the same dough for the base of the bar as well as the crumb topping and when your favorite fruit is back in season, you can swap out jam for blueberries, strawberries, or rhubarb. I'm always looking for flavorful and simple desserts to share with friends and this looks perfect.
6. Old Fashioned Jelly Roll: I've made exactly one rolled cake like this and it absolutely cracked and tore when I rolled it up for a holiday party. This recipe claims to have conquered the cracks. While it calls for a cranberry jam, I think our chunky strawberry preserve would be a great replacement.
7. PB&J Sandwich Cookies: Take a few steps beyond the PB&J and make sandwich cookies with our strawberry preserve! I like that there is peanut butter added to the cookie dough itself and then also piped onto the cookie with jam before eating. Let me know how these turn out!
8. Basic Crepes with Strawberry Jam: In my high school French class, we would make crepes for holidays and special French occasions. I'm not a fan of a Nutella crepe (too decadent!) and generally prefer a simple crepe with sugar and lemon juice or one with a thin layer of jam. Give a nod to France with our French chile powder inside, too!
A Note on Agriculture Policy: Here in California, the Farms Together program abruptly lost funding from the USDA Local Food Purchasing Assistance Program last week. This program purchases produce from small and medium sized family farms and distributes the food to food banks, community food distribution programs, and boxed food programs to people in need. Not only does this mean more California grown produce gets into the kitchens of Californians, it also means that farmers get paid in full for their produce. Generally, farms have a hard time working with food banks who cannot pay full price for their produce and farms will instead donate seconds or unsold produce (which is still a good thing!) but the fact that farms were getting paid in full through this program was really great.
Last year, we sold about 1,000 bags of our whole dried chiles through the Farms Together Program through the Mendo Lake Food Hub and FEED Cooperative. And were getting an order finalized for these chiles this week. Then the funding was frozen.
Not only does this funding freeze affect the food banks that were receiving really great produce through the program, it majorly affects the farms who had scaled up and had plants in the ground (and ready to be harvested!) for this program. A farmer friend down in Riverside scaled up her leafy green and strawberry plantings this year in order to sell to more food banks in the LA area. Her family farm will lose $10,000 per week that this program's funding is frozen. She doesn't currently have another market to sell the produce that is in the field and ready to harvest.
In total, this program purchased $20.7 million of produce from 533 CA farmers last year. If you live in California and want to urge congress to do what they can to unfreeze this funding, you can find more information from the Community Alliance with Family Farmers here including a script to use when calling your reps
UPDATE: The funding for this program has been restored through the rest of its contract (basically until the funds run out this summer) and the current administration has plans to cancel the program for the future. Please keep calling your reps and tell them about the importance of programs like this for the future.
