I picked up a "second-cut" bunch of asparagus from Specialty Farms of San Juan Bautista while at the Heart of the City Farmers Market last week. It was the only farm that had asparagus, and a subsequent check at my neighborhood Real Food indicated that it was still selling asparagus from Mexico. I was happy when I found it as I have been dreaming of it for a couple of weeks now.
I’ve been checking the seasonality chart provided at www.marinfarmersmarkets.org to identify when the next crops might arrive, and have been chomping at the bit to find asparagus. It’s one of those vegetables that I could eat 7 days a week. Aside from green garlic, asparagus appears to be the only new crop that becomes available starting in February.
The second chapter of Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is entitled 'Waiting for Asparagus.' In it, she describes how her family (which had just started a yearlong experiment of eating only home-grown or locally grown foods) was seeking a sign that their experience & journey had begun. Of asparagus, she writes:
Now, in March, as we waited for a sign to begin living off the land, this completely bare patch of ground was no burning bush of portent. (Though it was blackened with ash – we’d burned the dead stalks of last year’s plants to kill asparagus beetles.) Two months from this day, when it would be warm enough to plant corn and beans, the culinary happenings of asparagus would be a memory, this patch a waist-high forest of feathery fronds. By summer’s end they’d resemble dwarf Christmas trees covered with tiny red balls. Then frost would knock them down. For about forty-eight weeks of the year, an asparagus plant is unrecognizable to anyone except an asparagus grower. Plenty of summer visitors to our garden have stood in the middle of the bed and asked, “What is this stuff, it’s beautiful!” We tell them it’s the asparagus patch, and they reply, “No, this, these feathery little trees?”
Asparagus off-season
An asparagus spear only looks like its picture for one day of its life, usually in April, give or take a month as you travel from the Mason-Dixon line. The shoot emerges from the ground like a snub-nosed green snake headed for sunshine, rising so rapidly you can just about see it grow. If it doesn't get its neck cut off at the ground level as it emerges, it will keep growing. Each triangular scale on the spear rolls out into a branch, until the snake becomes a four-foot tree with delicate needles. Contrary to lore, fat spears are no more tender or mature than thin ones; each shoot begins life with its own particular girth. In the hours after emergence it lengthens, but does not appreciably fatten.hens, but does not appreciably fatten.
Enjoy your asparagus!
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