BACKCOUNTRY
EARTH CANDY
With the right dressing, bitter winter greens can be ‘charmed and disarmed’ BY ARI LEVAUX
T
he farmers markets of summer get all the glory, but pound for pound, the winter markets have more guts. These off-season centers of homegrown commerce run from about Halloween through Easter, and are like distillations of their summer counterparts, giving farmers the chance to make a little money, while offering locals an opportunity to buy some produce. Like some secret society for extra-cheerful and healthy people, those who know about the winter market show up while the rest of the world watches cartoons. The web page LocalHarvest.org provides online tools to help farmers thrive, and maintains a database of active farmers markets in the U.S. According to LocalHarvest’s Guillermo Payet, there are about 4,700 summer markets nationwide, compared to 1,911 winter markets. He recently added a winter market search feature to the LocalHarvest page, so shoppers can easily find the winter market closest to them. Winter markets are smaller, cuter and cozier, with more hot cocoa on tap. Like a summer market, the winter market is like a big, living microchip of the farming community. You find out who died, who got pregnant, who grew a beard, and who went to Costa Rica. Like a fire in the dark, winter
22 | Vamoose Utah • March 2020
markets provide heat and light when it’s needed the most. My winter market in Montana is flush with “normal” cold weather crops like potatoes, squash, onions and garlic. It also offers animal and value-added products like bacon, pickles, cheese and eggs. But thanks to advances in cold-weather horticulture, and with a little help from a warming climate, there are now summery foods available, like celery, tomatoes and apples, not to mention tropical foods like lemongrass. But the stars of the winter market are the winter greens, that large and delicious spectrum of leaves like spinach, tatsoi, arugula, broccoli, kale, and leafy cabbages like Napa. These greens, planted during the dog days of summer, came of age in cooler, shorter days. Under these conditions, plants build themselves differently. They are smaller but sturdier, denser and crunchier. Maybe it’s the bleak context in which they appear, but winter greens emanate a vitality that you can see and taste, like earthy, bitter candies. Here are three recipes to help you enjoy the winter greens in season today. These dressings will also benefit many non-green crops of winter too, like radishes or cauliflower. And when the time comes, these salad sauces will help us enjoy the bounty of summer.
