Turnip-rooted Chervil (Chaerophyllum bulbosum) has been naturalized at Roughwood Seed Collection outside of Philly. Over the last couple years I’ve tried eating the larger roots (picture small, stout, brown-beige, carrot-shaped) baked whole in butter, garlic, and sage like fine tater tots and they are wonderful. We’ll see if I can get them to grow from seeds, which are short-lived and in need of stratification. I’ll select for larger roots. For more info, check out the Cultivariable Growing Guide. This plant is native to Europe and Asia, and still popular in France. #chaerophyllumbulbosum #turniprootedchervil #rootchervil (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania)
Something about the shape and texture of these Turnip Rooted Chervil seeds is so satisfying to me. I may save them just for fun, but apparently they are short-lived like Parsnip seeds. I hope to dig up a bunch of first year roots to select a critical mass of bigger ones (as described in the Cultivariable Growing Guide) to replant, save seed from next year, and repeat until there are larger and larger roots. These wild ones self seed at Roughwood and are about the size of tater tots, but much tastier! #Chaerophyllumbulbosum #turniprootedchervil #rootchervil #chervilroot #cultivariable #roughwoodseedcollection (at Devon, Pennsylvania)
Turnip-rooted Chervil (Chaerophyllum bulbosum) has been naturalized at Roughwood Seed Collection outside of Philly. Over the last couple years I’ve tried eating the larger roots baked whole in butter, garlic, and sage like fine tater tots and they are wonderful. I’m trying grow them from seeds, which are short-lived and in need of stratification - but so far it seems like I didn’t have them in the cold long enough - they aren’t germinating. Today, I dug these plants at Roughwood and am planting the bigger ones at Mill Hollow Farm. For more info, check out the Cultivariable Growing Guide. This plant is native to Europe and Asia, and still popular in France. #chaerophyllumbulbosum #turniprootedchervil #rootchervil (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania)
Tuberous-rooted chervil, aka Chaerophyllum bulbosum. The photo of the plant/hand was taken by William Whitson of Cultivariable, who suggested roasting or eating in soup. So I roasted them in olive oil with sage, salt, and pepper. It was terrific, like a unprocessed tater tot with a subtle hint of celeriac or parsnip (same family). I’ve read they are best after a few months of storage so the sugars can increase and the flavor can develop (reminiscent of chestnut apparently). We have hundreds of these growing like weeds at Roughwood! Free food! #parsnipchervil #turniprootedchervil #tuberousrootedchervil #chervil #chaerophyllumbulbosum #roastedroots #carrotfamily
Sistah Seeds! Truelove Seeds took a trip to visit and help out at Amirah’s farm today (@sistahseeds). The kids wanted us to have grass in our mouths like real farmers 😂
Amirah is growing dozens and dozens of heirloom African American and other African Diasporic seed crops, many of which will end up in our catalog, inshallah. She takes the cake amongst our roughly 70 growers for having the longest list of seeds on her growers agreement for this year, or ever. She worked with us for four years before branching out to start her own operation. I’m so glad to remain so deeply connected in our work and community.
Thank you Amirah for welcome us to your beautiful farm! We 💜 you!
It’s pretty surreal to see Truelove Seeds featured in a magazine I grew up seeing on my grandma Letty’s coffee tables. If only she was here to see this AND read her own grandma’s name (Leticia Truelove) in print. Our work is so much bigger than Chris and me: so many other people (including @cryptogam_ @ainbaz @sarastaylor @claykitchenstudio @honnih @sa__a__a @sistahseeds and countless apprentices, seed growers, and community partners/friends) spend their days and energies and inspirations making Truelove what it is through stewarding their beloved ancestral varieties and making them available to gardeners and farmers far and wide. That said, this is a lovely design and a good write-up, and it’s a real honor to grace the pages of this historic issue alongside some of our other favorite seed companies! #seedkeeping @betterhomesandgardens (at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChbC0UCOBJE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
EP. 12: MRS. PEARLIE MAE JACKSON TROTTER: A JEWEL OF THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA
This interview overflows with deep wisdom, rough experience, and a heapin’ side of humor all in Ms. Pearl’s pecan smooth Mississippi cadence and style. It is uncharacteristically long for our conversations and we know you will be BLESSED by every minute! Ms. Pearl is a daughter of the delta and migrated north. She was born and raised in what would today be considered deep poverty in the then and now poorest state of the union in a time and place where slavery was dead in name only. White supremacy and deep oppression of the working class was and remains a very real and present danger to peace, health, economic and spiritual progress in our beloved Mississippi.
There will be some parts of Ms. Pearl’s personal life story that might be hard for some listeners to hear. Also Ms. Pearl will be speaking from her deep life experiences, in her dialect and through her ways of knowing the world in which she matured. Please listen as always with a beginner’s mind and an open heart to her intense sharing.
Odell’s White Watermelon, sizing up, with morning dew.
Odell’s Large White Watermelon fruits are gigantic with sweet, pink, juicy flesh, light green skin, and white seeds (though not very many). The rinds are tender, almost as sweet as the flesh, and great for pickling.
While watermelons were first domesticated in Africa, this is one of few that are known to be a variety connected to a particular African American person, who in this case is an unnamed man who selected this variety during or before the 1840s on a plantation in Pomaria, SC. Our original seed came from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Theirs came from Rodger Winn whose wife Karen Metzes’s family has stewarded this melon since 1880. Our former coworker Amirah Mitchell advocated for us to include this variety at our farm this year.
Amirah is also growing this variety for our catalog at her new farm project, Sistah Seeds, among dozens of other seed crops important to Africans and African Americans in the diaspora.
Rodale interns came down to the Truelove Seeds farm today and it was lovely. After their visit last year, we began our relationship with then Rodale interns @sfstern, now of @seededfarm near DC, and Bianca and Ethan, now of @thegrowersgrange in Oregon. Both farms are growing their ancestral seed crops for our catalog this year, each with sweet layers of mentorship and deeper collaboration as well. Today we roamed the field telling lots of seed stories and exploring our farming systems for hours. It was so fun. And it seems many of them will be visiting us throughout the season to learn more along side of us. Thanks @rodaleinstitute and @rodaleinstitutefarm! (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgh-p2Xu5hp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Last year, @nitalvadalia suggested we grow Guar Gum - also known as Cluster Beans, Guvar, Guwar, and Cyamopsis tetragonoloba - because it is such an important vegetable crop for so many people originally from India, and very hard to find here. We found some seed from Caribbean Garden Seed, and it’s actually growing pretty nicely in our little trial plot. I harvested the first two dried seed pods today!
This year, Tika Jagad is apprenticing with us with a particular focus on her Indian and Jamaican ancestral plants (see the post about the Chana!). Turns out Guvar is another important food from her childhood, and she had a heartwarming conversation with her father about their food memories of this “Indian string bean” as she calls it, and her experience with it at our farm. She says you just can’t find good quality fresh pods here, even at the Indian groceries. So we hope to make the seeds more available some year soon!
It is not known where this plant originated since it seems to be nowhere in the wild, but people suspect it was cultivated from another species in Africa, and further selected in South Asia. Yes, this nitrogen-fixing legume is the same Guar Gum used for its gel in many processed foods.
It’s an important part of crop rotations, especially in northwestern India and Pakistan.
@therealmaryjblige is the meanest part of this American Gothic 😂
Chiamaka and Rocky with their Lumper Potato harvest. It was their first time lifting potatoes! This was the potato of the Great Hunger in Ireland, one that I grow to remember my great grandmother Mary Lenihan and her potato farming family in Galway. Of course, potatoes originate in the Andes where they were first domesticated and where their diversity is still the greatest. They made their way to Ireland as a field crop in the seventeenth century and became a staple in the eighteenth.
