A delicious EASY pickle recipe!

We have a bumper crop of pickling cucumbers right now, which begs the question, what do you do with a pickling cucumber? You make pickles, of course! Not everyone has the time or equipment for canning pickles, so check out the recipe below for an easy, refrigerator pickle that will make those radioactive green grocery store pickles obsolete.

Refrigerator Dills

8 cups pickling cucumbers

4 dill heads

2 cloves garlic

4 cups water

1 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup pickling salt

Wash and dry cucumbers and prick a few holes in each. Place one dill head and one clove of garlic in each sterilized quart mason jar. Pack with cucumbers and top with remaining dills.

Combine water, vinegar and salt in medium saucepan. Heat to boiling, then cool to room temperature. Pour over cucumbers. Be sure they are covered, and seal!

Store in the refrigerator for at least a week before eating. Yields two quarts.

Farmstand Grand Opening!

Yesterday was the Grand Opening of our farmstand on Jimmy Daniel Road and it was a smashing success! We sold out of nearly everything and got to meet a lot of people who are interested in local, sustainably grown food. Thank you to everyone who came out to support Native Sun. It was such a treat to give farm tours and answer questions about how we grow. It was also pretty adorable to get to see so many children experience baby goats for the first time! We plan to staff the farmstand every Saturday so we'll have the opportunity to give farm tours and meet as many customers as possible. The farmstand will operate for self-service Tuesdays-Fridays. If you come by this week, expect to see new potatoes, squash and zucchini, cucumbers, fresh herbs and greens. Heirloom tomatoes and edamame will be coming in any day now! If you can't make it to the farmstand, check out our market on locallygrown.net. They have a convenient in-town pick-up at Ben's Bikes on Thursday evenings. Happy Eating everyone!

Radish...peas?

As I mentioned in the last post, we've been planning the farm since November of 2009. We've planned for all kinds of things; irrigation, soil amendments, varieties and quantities. We spent hours pouring over seed catalogs and diagramming what would be planted where. We planned every crop from the moment the seed was pushed down into the soil to its expected date of harvest. Something we didn't plan for? Radish peas. (If you've never heard of radish peas before, don't feel bad; we made that name up. They are more commonly referred to as radish seed pods.) Farmer Brent and his trusty farmhand (read: his mom) unintentionally discovered them in the field last week as they were harvesting sugar snap peas next to a row of radishes that had become overgrown and gone to seed. Farmhand Pru reached over, snatched a few pods off the stems and popped them in her mouth, declaring them delicious. Now, the peculiar epicurian delights that Farmer Brent's mom enjoys has a long and sordid history, so needless to say, Farmer Brent was somewhat skeptical of her assessment. Nevertheless, he plucked a few for himself and was surprised to find that not only were they edible, they were incredible. Before running out to the markets, Farmer Brent investigated their culinary aptitude and sure enough, they are legit. There's even a blurb about them on Wikipedia. The next day he harvested a bag full, took it around to some friends and potential buyers for taste testing, and sold his first pound that evening. A local chef purchased some to garnish a ham soup and a few friends picked some up to top salads.

I would encourage you to try a few if you find them in a farmer's market, or if your radishes bolt and go quickly to seed like ours did. Radish peas look like a smaller, lighter sugar snap pea and they pack a peppery punch like a radish, without the intensity. They are delicious alone as a crunchy snack, but really shine when used as a surprisingly zesty garnish. We will have them on hand at the farmstand and on locallygrown.net for the next few weeks for our local foodies.

It's a beautiful thing when you discover something amazing and you never even had to plan for it.

The Native Sun Story

First of all, welcome to our blog! If you've found your way here, then you probably care about the kind of food that you're eating. We do too! Native Sun Farm is a small, family-run, all-natural fruit and vegetable farm just outside Athens, Georgia.

Native Sun Farm is operated by us, Brent and Amy Lopp. We both graduated from the University of Georgia with degrees in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, respectively. After graduating from UGA and getting married, we picked up and moved to Fort Collins, Colorado where Brent pursued a passion for the brewing industry and I worked as a glamorous landscape architect. After two wonderful years in Fort Collins, we decided that 1,000+ miles was just too far away from our families so we moved on back to Georgia. Back in Georgia with no jobs and no real place yet to call home, we decided a little sabbatical was necessary to figure out our next move. In February of 2008, we set out from Springer Mountain in north Georgia to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail. About six months and a thousand stories later, we finished our thru-hike at Mt. Katahdin in Maine. After all that time in the woods pondering our future, we returned to Georgia and decided to move back to where our relationship started (sorta) and where Brent had grown up. We returned to beautiful, funky, progressive Athens, Georgia. Back in Athens, Brent dabbled in the brewing industry again working at a local brewery and I honed my newly acquired outdoor gear skills working at a small outdoor shop. While we were both thoroughly enjoying themselves, something was stirring under the surface. We started reading books like The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. We planted a huge garden and learned about preserving foods through canning and freezing. We went to farmer's markets and tried to eat sustainably. The food revolution had arrived at our doorstep. After a delicious summer of eating backyard tomatoes and devouring homemade pickles, we were sold. Brent left his position at Terrapin in November of 2009 and started planning Native Sun Farm.

Here we are in May of 2010 and Native Sun has almost two acres under cultivation. The fields are full of sugar snap peas, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, okra, corn and plenty plenty more. The weeding is done by hand. You can reach down, pluck something out of the earth and pop it in your mouth without fear. Unless you're afraid of dirt - in that case, you can rinse it with a little water first. The produce is sold through the online farmer's market at locallygrown.net, through the farmstand on Jimmy Daniel Road and also to local restaurants and "food box" providers. Farm tours are always on the menu as well. Native Sun loves to show off what is growing and how it was grown.

This is our first year as an operating farm and we are just so excited to finally be doing something that we whole-heartedly believe in. Stop by and see us - let us know how we're doing and what kinds of food you might like to see cropping up in the fields.