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From Justin Richards at CL Sarasota:

After researching my UrbEx story about Hydro Taste farms in Myakka, where they grow fruits and veggies in vertical stacks using minimal resources, I brought a harvest home to try for myself. I put the veggies in fajitas, and while they were juicy and full-flavored, it was hard to get a good taste under all the sour cream and taco spice.

But the peach I ate, my God. It was this warped and deformed peach, with a little tumor-baby growing out the side of it. The twin-peach had its own sad little pit, even. But it was so good. It's like, the flavor of a normal peach was within the flavor of this peach, but this went so far beyond. Peach-flavor receptors, long dormant after generations of industrial farming, were awakened in my mouth.

They're not paying us, I swear. I seriously doubt the head of the farm will even read this post. I have no reason to endorse this fruit. It was just damn good.

The killer Freakonomics blog at the NYT profiled the economics of growing your own food a few days ago. Blogger Stephen Dubner comes down against the locavore dream of backyard farms (largely, it seems, due to his own ill-fated experiment making sherbet), but his evidence is largely anecdotal. Until, that is, he quotes a study recently published in Environmental Science and Technology that researched the impact of food production and transportation.

Turns out that the production side of industrial farming consumes the lion's share the environmental impact, 83 percent by their figuring. Transportation only contributes 11 percent to the total environmental bill. And, since red meat production is by far the most climatically damaging, the study's authors conclude:

"Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food."

Huh. I still that growing your own can have a benefit, but maybe it's more psychological than economic. Unless, of course, your blood pressure goes up every time you find rat bites in your heirloom tomatoes.

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I put in calls to two local farms that either sell at or run their own markets to see what crops are coming to market this weekend. Break out the cookbooks and start planning next week's menus based around the freshest local produce around, bought from the hands of the people who pulled it from the ground.

Worden Farm

(Based in Punta Gorda, this organic CSA sells extra produce at Sarasota's Downtown Farmer's Market from both their farm and other local farms)

According to Eva Worden, they'll be bringing: onions, potatoes, cooking greens and lettuces, watermelon, squash, lots of herbs, sunflowers ("mother’s day this weekend, of course"), Florida peaches from a neighbor ("the white ones are the best, but they.re tender and bruise easily"), tomatoes, beautiful crop of asian eggplant, sungold tomatoes (sweet cherry tomatoes), grapefruit, cabbage, carrots, beets, radishes, leeks, scallions, green beans, maybe some of the purple beans, and maybe cantaloupe.

Tomorrow I'll post up the list from Sweetwater Organic in Tampa.

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1. Greens - April and May mark the end of the growing season for salad greens in the area, which suffer heavily as temps gear up for the summer. Kale is good for you!
2. Strawberries - It's almost the end for on of our area's biggest crops and some local farms will be opening their fields for personal picking, now that most of the big harvesting is done. This time of year, strawberries are usually super-ripe and exceptionally sweet, perfect for jams and jellies, or you can add a little sugar and freeze them in their own syrup for later use.
3. Cucumbers - These guys are just coming into their own this time of year and you can usually find low-seed pickling varieties at farmer's markets and bigger ones at the supermarket.
4. Sweet corn - We don't grow a lot of this around here, but if you can find it the ears will be ready to go. Here're some tips for cooking.
5. Rhubarb -I love to eat these sweet-tart stalks of pseudo celery straight out of the fridge, but you can also make a mean pie with some late-season strawberries.
6. Grapefruit - Some varieties keep coming in through the summer, but April is the end of the season for most. Buy a bunch an juice them for a better than orange breakfast treat.
7. Valencias - These (often) seedless wonders are just hitting the market and great for juicing.
8. Potatoes -- Yet again, we don't grow a lot of these around here, but those we have will be sweeter than the supermarket selections. I've seen some at several local farmer's markets.
9. Tomatoes - This is prime time for Ruskin's finest. Get 'em while they're bright and fresh.
10. Blueberries - They're ripe and ready. You can make a crumble, but I like 'em in muffins, or just tossed in with my morning Cheerios.