Category: Our blog

We have something very cool going on here at Glade Road Growing that you probably don’t even know about.

Since August, about once a month, a group of high schoolers from Eastern Montgomery High School in Elliston have been coming out here for a field trip. Not just any field trip, though. 

An immersive series of field trips.
Part classroom, part fieldwork, part farm tastings.
And then some.

But first, meet Garrett.

“If we want to have a healthier population, it starts with teaching young people not only how to grow their own food, but to have more respect for what it takes to grow food…”

-Garrett, during our interview Friday

Garrett started working with us about 3 years ago. He’s grown into being the lead on our vegetable side and has an interest in agriculture education. So much so that he got certified to teach and was offered a job as a high school horticulture teacher in 2024. I was pleasantly surprised, maybe even a bit in disbelief, when he told us he’d turned it down.

Turns out he saw potential in the kind of ag education he wanted to do, the really-hands-on kind, here.  Even though we work together, I wanted to interview him to get more of his insight into what he’s started here and where he sees it going. The quotes here are Garrett’s words from that interview.

So, Garrett got started. He designed an immersive field trip experience for high schoolers. He built it to follow the seasonality of what was going on here at Glade Road, through the months of the farm calendar.

Crop planning, seed starting, pepper harvest, chicken processing.

He wrote lesson plans and tied them to Virginia SOL’s. He reached out to the agriculture teachers at Eastern Montgomery High to invite them to try his pilot program. And I went out and asked people I knew for funding to make it happen free for the students, which we thankfully received.

Now we’re in March and the students have come out, on a school bus during the school day, about seven times so far since late summer.

During each visit, they experience a few hours of life here on our working farm (and business). Garrett has it all set up when they arrive. He has tables and chairs in our outdoor classroom if the weather is agreeable, or in the greenhouse when it’s not. He presents the theme of the day, gives the students a brief ecological explanation, asks some questions to get their minds turning, and then they all head out to the field. We close with a farm-based snack and some journaling.

“For me, working with high school students is always fascinating and enjoyable because I can ask them questions, and I can give them space to sit with the why behind all these things.  So I never just want to tell them ‘Hey, you should eat healthy’ or ‘Hey, we’re just going to do XYZ task’… I always want to frame it so they’re thinking about why we’re doing the things, that specific farm task in the way we’re doing it, and how can we make it an enjoyable thing.”

Garrett’s thought process revolves around real-world activities, what we would be doing here on the farm that day, but centered on asking the students, “Why do you think we would do it like this?”

Some days the group harvests tomatoes and talk about plant families. Sometimes it’s transplanting seedlings, and the discussion is about nutrients and temps for the babies. One day was on marketing, and they delved into farm stand display. One day was on soil health, and they got out there with buckets and soil probes to explore what’s underground.

“In that growing your own food, even though it’s hard and it’s dirty, that it’s really satisfying. And you can walk away with this visceral sense of accomplishment, where you and your classmates got to put plants in the ground, and then three months later you get to harvest from those same plants, and then you got to try what they tasted like.”

We have a few more months of spring here, where the farm calendar and the public school calendar overlap. We look forward, during this crucial time of the growing season, to inviting them out more, to see through their eyes all that’s going on on a vegetable farm to set up for a successful year.

I think we’re learning the most, though. That’s how these things go.

Hopefully, we’ll get to see a new crop of students this fall and watch a fresh kind of cycle begin here on the farm.

And with that, here are some quotes from the students themselves this year. We ask them to journal briefly before they leave. Here are real responses from four different students for this prompt:

How has this program changed the way you think about agriculture?

🍅”Thinking that there is a bigger future in agriculture than I once thought.”

🥚”It shows how much work farmers do to put food on the table for us.“

Yes!

Watch part of our interview here.

Groundhog Day was Tuesday.
And for many of us parents of school-age kids, Groundhog Day has felt like every day this week.
Wake up, is there school?
Not today. Yes, snow, I see why.
Try again tomorrow.

But lucky for me, Tuesday was more exciting than that.
Tuesday for me was Tortoise Day.
And I got to meet…drum roll, please…Shelley🐢💕.

Charlie had been asking for a tortoise for several months and got some Christmas money from his loving grandparents. Maybe I’m a sucker for Charlie’s freckles. Maybe I get nostalgic about the few months I fostered a tortoise 17 years ago. Whatever it was, we made the decision, did the research and enclosure-build and finalized a plan with a reptile rescue center 4 states over.

She’s a 4-year-old Hermann’s tortoise. Charlie came up with the name Shelley (genius). I don’t know much about her backstory except that she started as a household pet baby turtlette and was deemed unwanted or unable to be cared for any longer by the previous caretakers.

Her surrender to the reptile center was a familiar story last year. Christina, the woman in charge there, said they had over 400 admissions, almost double from the year before.

“I hope your grandkids like tortoises”, as the saying goes. Me too, since Hermann’s tortoises can live for 40 or more years with proper husbandry (a new word for JP for this week).

Once we made the decision to get Shelley, like many a new mom, I felt like I had to become an expert in a very short amount of time. And like many a new mom, whether I liked it or not, all the ways I could accidentally cause her demise arose in my mind. So I started reading.

The language I found on what to feed pet tortoises was quite telling.

 ” In nature, much of their day is comprised of grazing or browsing for edible vegetation. Unfortunately, many uninformed keepers turn to supermarket produce which is generally lacking in acceptable fiber levels and is too high in sugar… Sometimes, supermarket produce may be your only option. Whenever possible, purchase only organic greens…”

– C. Leone of the tortoise refuge Hermanni Haven at Garden State Tortoise

Wow. So grocery store greens are not fit for my tortoise.

Noted.

Honestly, it’s a little confusing on what to feed her. Different internet authorities disagree on what’s best for her diet. Leafy greens, yes, but only certain ones. Too much can make her obese (!). Supplemental calcium is necessary daily, says one; supplemental calcium causes long-term bone damage, says another. Sound familiar?

The one dominant and agreed-upon advice for feeding my tortoise is this:

“The key to providing your pet with balanced nutrition is VARIETY! So make it your goal to provide as many different kinds of [suitable] foods to your pet tortoise as possible.”

– M. Healey on the Russian Tortoise Care Sheet on Reptifiles

Ok, I can do that. 

Right now, Shelley is resting. She dug herself a little burrow in the 8′ by 4′ box JP built her in the living room (and filled with about 800 lbs of sand and clay).  She had a busy day upon arrival, lapping her enclosure too many times to count, eating a big plate of our fresh garden leafy greens (romaine’s a fave), and receiving many neighborhood children visitors, out of school from snow, and happy to say hi to the newest girl on the block. 

We’re going to build her an outdoor enclosure, too, in the flower bed outside our house for springtime, and hopefully another walled garden bed at the farm stand this summer.

I’m so looking forward to the other half of my life as a tortoise caretaker. Shelley already has lots of lessons for me. Move slower, Sally.

Look at things first.

Think long-game.

Work towards a design that will outlast dinosaurs.

🐢We can’t (can?) wait for you to meet her this summer. If we do our job right, she’ll outlive us here. 

---

Recipe for Fresh Winter Greens Salad & Lemon Vinaigrette

Ingredients

• 2/3 pounds of fresh greens mix (any blend of lettuce mix, baby mustard salad mix, arugula, or Italian mix of radicchio and endive, and/or baby spinach)
• 2 pinches of microgreens
• 1 carrot, grated
• 1 purple daikon radish, or watermelon radish, cut into thin slices
• 3 tablespoons of toasted sunflower seeds
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• ¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• ½ tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 1 garlic clove, crushed, or 1 tablespoon of minced shallot

Directions

On a wide and pretty serving platter, fluff the greens as a base. Top with the microgreens, carrot, and radish slices. If sharing with your tortoise, stop there and feed that to her, about the amount equivalent to the size of her shell.

For you, add sunflower seeds. Mix the remaining dressing ingredients together in a jar. Drizzle over salad platter just before serving. 

Now, I relish a good day’s hard work as much as anyone.
I’m like a donkey who’s happiest when she’s pulling a cart.
And I *almost* (keyword: almost) won our farm staff’s “biggest stick in the mud “award this year.

But now it’s time to play.
Because the Blacksburg Holiday Parade is this Friday at 7:30 pm in downtown Blacksburg.
🦢🥕And our float is the best!

Yes, I used to be like you, poo-pooing holiday parades.
“Ugh, the crowds!”
“Grr, the cold!”
“Yuck, the gaudy!”

But now I see our handmade parade float as a vehicle for fun and for good.
🥕🦢🥕

Picture this…a giant carrot-colored goose (recipe below).
👩🏼‍🌾Us, your very own handsome farmers, handing out sweet potatoes and carrots instead of candy (you don’t like candy, anyway).
😎And as much propaganda as we can project to indoctrinate your innocent children into believing eating vegetables is cool (which it is).

You’ve got to see us to believe us.

Recipe for Glade Road Growing Parade Float

Ingredients

• chicken wire
• old 2×4’s found around the farm
• 1 bag Portland cement
• used bed sheets from farm crew, stripped into strips
• donated paint (Thanks, Spectrum Paint in Blacksburg!)
• pine and bittersweet trim cut from the farm fencerows
• bows and sparkle from Anne, the Flower Queen
• string lights, power pack and trumpet player from Baseline Solar
• borrowed flat-bed trailer from Bell Electric
• bins and bins of Glade Road grown sweet potatoes & carrots
• farmers, farm kids, and groupies to march and hand out the swag

Directions
Start talking about your crowd-wowing and never-done-before parade float ideas in July with the farm crew when it’s summer and the weather is nice, and you have plenty of time to work on the float. 

Actually start working on the parade float the week before the December 5th parade, when it’s freezing and you’re tired from a whole season of farming. Save time by dressing up last year’s float. 

Patch the holes in last year’s goose by dipping strips of cotton bedsheets in thin cement over the frame of 2×4’s and chicken wire JP threw together for you last year. Let the cement dry (mostly) until you have to start painting, because otherwise you’ll run out of time to paint.

On the day of the parade, call your buddies from Baseline Solar and Bell Electric, who actually have the trailer required for the float and the power pack to light it up. Thank them again profusely for all that they do for you, not just last-minute on parade day, but all year long. Assemble goose, greenery, and bittersweet with lights on the trailer.

Hope that Anne, the Flower Queen, will happen to walk by that day and be drawn in by the greenery and take pity on you, and offer some glittery bows and ribbons from her personal decoration collection.

Dress up in your warmest clothes, grab the kids and head downtown in the tractor, which is pulling the float at a speedy 7 mph from Glade Road to the Turner Street line up downtown.

Hope all the farm crew that did lots of parade talking in back in July shows up now in the cold dark downtown to help you hand out your hard-grown produce. Be elated when they show up in force.

Remind the farm kids that they’ll get squashed if they walk in front of the tractor and to stick to one side of the road to hand out their sweet potatoes to parade goers.

Remind parade goers that sweet potatoes are, in fact, edible and you can microwave them.

Finish the parade at Eheart Street. Double-count that you didn’t lose any kids on the way. Go to Sugar Magnolia for celebratory ice cream (hey, candy might be bad for you, but ice cream is not).

Drive back to the farm at 7 mph in the dark with the float. Allow 1 hr plus driving time.

On the following morning, walk downtown with your kids to do some Christmas shopping. Notice some discarded sweet potatoes, scuffed and left haphazardly on the sidewalk. Hear your little ones’ slight gasp of disbelief. Answer their puzzled expressions honestly. Don’t try to sugar-coat it; kids are excellent at recognizing a lie.

“But mom, you don’t think these are OUR sweet potatoes, do you?”
“Son, there’s a one hundred percent chance those are our sweet potatoes.”
“But…why??”
“Some people just aren’t there yet. Yet“.

🍠🎄❄️🎁🥕Happy Holiday Parading from the farmers at Glade Road Growing!

Currently housed in Dublin, Virginia, it’s been around for 63 years.
We’d never entered produce in the competition there until this year. 
🥇Lured in by the chance at $8 prize money per blue ribbon, JP couldn’t resist.

You have to know some things about JP to appreciate this. He is ultra-competitive. Think college-athlete-bound competitive mixed with vegetable farmer. Everything’s a contest. That’s JP.

What did that mean? It meant he spent two full days, combing (and recombing) through all his gardens and fretting over which exact vegetable specimens to enter at the fair, for the win, and in which categories. 

He tortured me with speculative questions for days.
🤔Would his haricot vert green beans have a better chance of winning over green bush beans? 
Should his miscellaneous vegetable entry be his sleek purple eggplant or exotic baby ginger?
What were my true feelings about his jalapeno peppers?
I had to cut him off.

We made two trips to Dublin and had 47 produce entries at the end of it. 
We spent over $200 attending the fair itself (unlimited ride wristbands for the fam + the kid buddy, corndogs, funnel cakes, fair games, etc).
We had a blast.

How’d he do, you ask?

Now, to be fair (get it?), JP extends nearly all the credit to our top-notch veggie crew.
And he did consider for a millisecond protesting the categories he didn’t nail (competition was pretty cutthroat for basil).

But for 47 entries, he took home 41 ribbons for his veggies. Not bad, I told him.

Now, it’s not bragging if you can back it up.
Though he feigns modesty most of the time, JP is dying to back it up for you.

So, here’s how his babies placed at the 2025 New River Valley Fair produce competition:

😁Oh, and I’ll mention that I got a blue ribbon for brown eggs and a red ribbon for duck eggs, too.

Now taking sign-ups for our Winter Veggie Share.

“These flowers make my week!”

A smiling customer told me this Tuesday, as she held up the cheery bouquet she had just cut of fresh sunflowers and zinnias. It made me smile, too.

We’ve really improved our U-Pick flower garden and now it’s ready for you to come and enjoy. This year we grew primarily sunflowers, zinnias, and marigolds for cutting. And now finally…

🌻U-Pick Flowers are Open🌻 
public entry during farm stand full-service hours only

Tuesdays 9 am – 5:30 pm
Fridays 9 am – 5:30 pm
Saturdays 10 am – 3 pm

Entry is per visit:
$10 adult
$3 child (ages 5 and up)
Free for kids 4 and under 
Free for current farm share members (expanded hours for members, too)

 I  know you want to know all about how it works, so I wrote this…

Here’s how our U-Pick flowers work:

• 💲Pay entry at the farm stand. Then enter flower garden through the red gate by the new farm pavilion. Entry fee includes the flowers you cut to take home.
• 🚶🏻‍➡️U-pick flowers are only open to the public during our full-service farm stand hours shown above.
• 🏠U-pick flowers to take home are for personal household use only. No picking to resell or use as decorations for your wedding venue.
• ✂️Use shears/scissors to cut the stems. They don’t “pick” easily and need to be cut with scissors/shears. We have shears to lend by the sink at the farm pavilion. Return them there when done.
• ⛳Only pick flowers from the long rows marked with orange flags (sunflowers, zinnias, marigolds, etc)
• ❌DO NOT PICK the daylilies, dahlias, and from the decorative display beds that are not in long rows.
• 📷Professional photographers must contact us before doing a photo shoot here.
• 📛Dogs NOT allowed in the flower field. It is a dog-free field. Our farm dogs do not have access to the flower field. It is a dog-free field. 
• 🐝Watch out for bees, lightning, heat exhaustion, uneven ground, and all the inherent risks that come with visiting a farm.
• 👑You may see Anne, the flower queen, working in there. If you have questions, just ask Anne or us at the farm stand.

Looks like a lot of rules, I know, but remember, boundaries set you free.

Here’s a welcome vignette from Anne, our flower queen, herself:

I’d like to take this opportunity to reach out to a young fellow who took a risk.  If you know this fellow, please let him know – he made my week!

On the opening day of our U-pick flower season, from a distance up the hill in the zinnias, a little boy called out in a reedy, yet bold, burst, “flower queen!”

Could that be what I think it is?  I turned to catch his eye, but his gaze was cast down; perhaps he had momentarily lost his nerve.  

This near encounter occurred before I had read the newsletter in which Sally had shared with the world the nickname teasingly given to me by a fellow Glade Road farmer.

So take a cue from my young friend. Don’t be shy. Come on down and say hello. Ask questions, make suggestions. Our goal is to have flowers blooming in spring, summer, and fall.  Share our excitement about the developments in our Flower Garden.

Now, on to the educational part…

Guide to Cutting & Keeping Beautiful Fresh Flowers

Tips for spotting younger zinnia blossoms

• Flowers will last longer for you if you cut ones that are just on the cusp of being fully emerged. Over-mature blooms will have a shorter vase life.
• Harvest zinnias when the small, yellow florets (stigmas) in the center are just starting to emerge and the inner petals are still unfurling. See my picture below.
• Select zinnias with firm necks. They won’t get firmer once you harvest them and will just stay floppy.

Tips for making your cut flowers last in a vase

• Put your flowers in water as soon as possible. Think of them like ice cream that will start to melt unless you get them in water soon. Bring a container, even with just a little water in the bottom, so that they can have a drink as you travel home. 
• “Keep your vases as clean as your tea cups”. If it’s not clean enough for you to drink out of, then it’s too dirty to make your flowers last. Dirty water from a dirty vase is the fastest way to kill cut flowers. Change the vase water daily if you can.
• Put a fresh cut sprig of mint or basil in the vase. Mint will try to root in the water and since it’s actively living, it helps keep the water cleaner for the other stems. We have mint growing near the farm stand, at the brewery entrance sidewalk so harvest a fresh sprig to go with your bouquet before you leave. If you need help identifying mint at the entrance, just ask.
• Strip the bottom leaves off the stem before putting them in water.
• Keep your vase of flowers out of direct sun.

Got all that?

🌻Now throw it all out the window and just have some fun down in the flowers with us.

🥕We’re so excited to have you in our Veggie Farm Share.
This is our 15th season. We’ve had a farm share since our very first year, 2010.
🤣It only had bok choy in it back then! Just that, every week, no joke. 
I remember washing the dirt off and bagging it up in the sink of the staff break room at the VT office I was working for at the time. 

We’ve come so far.

I’m here to answer any lingering questions you have about our awesome Veggie Share that is today.
Already in our farm share?
Thanks so much! (and pass this along to your NRV bf who could use more fresh in their life)

First, what is a farm share?

A farm share is a pre-paid season-long subscription to our farm’s produce. But the benefits of being a member extend so much more beyond simply food.

9️⃣Here are nine FAQ I get most often about our Veggie Share, our farm baby pride ‘n joy.

1. 🥕Now, how does it work?

Here’s how our Veggie Farm Share (CSA) works…

• 👉🏽You get to choose what you want. For the next 18 weeks, July 1 through Oct 28, you visit our farm each week to pick out the exact veggies you want, fresh from the farm stand display. We have what we call a point system for our market display. You add up the points for the veggies that you want, 30 points a week for small shares, 40 points for large.

2. ⌚When do I need to pick up?

• You can come any day of the week, on your schedule, since our on-farm pick-up is self-serve. You don’t need to check out with us- farm share member pick up is self-serve and on your honor. We typically have our best selection Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturday morning.

3. 📌Where do I pick up?

• At our beautiful farm, at 2351 Glade Road in Blacksburg. We share a location with Rising Silo Brewery and are directly across the street from Heritage Park. The Huckleberry bike trail is just yards away. We’re less than 1.5 miles from University City Blvd.

4. 🤔What if I miss a week?

• No worries if vacation comes up. If you miss a week, you can roll over those points to get extra veggies on the weeks you’re here, or on any week during the duration of the season. Alternatively, you can let a friend pick up in your place or ask us to donate it to the Interfaith Food Pantry, which we give to weekly.

5. 💞How do I know I’m going to like it?
We get feedback like this all the time from our members:

• 👉🏽”I really love the market style option. With how often we travel in the summer, it takes the pressure off not always being able to pick up items and gives me flexibility when I want to make a specific dish to choose what I need. Thanks for being so awesome! :)”
• 👉🏻”Variety gets better each year, excellent value, pick up flexibility.”
• 👉🏿”There was great variety! I did not expect so much from a small farm but it was exciting to try new things.”
• 🌈Plus last year we were voted the Best Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in southwest Virginia by Virginia Living Magazine. What an honor it is to serve you by being your local farmers! And⚡ Metallica even came and found us because they heard how good our veggies are 🙂

6. 🍅So what kind of vegetables are in the Veggie Share to choose from?

• Oh, so much! July’s the perfect time to jump in on the Veggie Share, which runs through October. 

Here’s what we’re growing for you: heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, head lettuce, lettuce mix, onions, sweet peppers, cilantro, summer squash, zucchini, garlic, carrots, cucumbers, basil, kale, spinach, eggplant, winter squash, beets, broccoli, dill, green onions, cabbage, Asian greens, collards, salad turnips, mushrooms, kohlrabi, parsley, potatoes, salad radishes, sweet potatoes, chard, arugula, beans, cauliflower, celery, fennel, leeks, celeriac, watermelon radish, perennial herbs, parsnips, hot peppers, rutabagas, and more.

• Selection varies with season, but you’ll see that with each week, new crops come on for you to enjoy.
• Eat in peace knowing all our veggies are Certified Naturally Grown, meeting and exceeding USDA’s certified organic standard.

7.💰 Is a Veggie Share worth the value?
Absolutely! Where else can you take care of so many nutritional needs for just $4.48 a day?

• Besides feeding your belly, we also feed your soul. Over the years we’ve created an accessible farm space outside the overwhelming rush of your day-to-day. Our veggie pick-up is within sight of the crop fields and pastures where we grow. Think of it as a weekly visit to your own farm. Without even leaving Blacksburg town limits, feel a sense of calm as you get out in the country, breathe a breath of fresh air as you pick out your produce, and even unwind for a moment in our U-pick flower field for members.

8. 🌻Tell me about the bonuses!

• 🥗Each week I send you a delicious, simple, and healthy veggie-based recipe and cooking tips highlighting what’s delicious and in season. You can also check out any of our cookbooks on display.
• 🔪Free access to our Kitchen Equipment Library, available only to farm share members. We have a food processor, dehydrator, tomato canning supplies, and more.
• 🌻Free access to our U-pick flower field. Which is just about ready! We grow sunflowers, zinnias, marigolds, and more. It’s our way to say thank you.

9. 🫱🏽‍🫲🏽Do you accept SNAP EBT or have any cost assistance?

Access to nutritious food is as important to us as it is to you. We’re proud to be one of the first direct farms in Virginia to accept SNAP EBT and offer Virginia Fresh Match to reduce the farm share cost by 50% for our members using food stamps.

We can set up a monthly payment plan for anyone by request to make our healthy produce budget accessible to you. 

Need help with the cost? Thanks to the generous donations from our members, we have reduced-cost and no-cost farm shares available to those in need by request.

We hope you do!

June is here. I can’t believe it!
Another bit that’s hard to wrap my head around? Glade Road Growing has been around 15 years this past May.

So much has happened since 2010, when we first started renting a piece of farm land here at 2351 Glade. JP and I knew we weren’t creative types, so we just named our farm after the road. 

You know what else we woke up to find this year? Jody is turning 10. We had him back in June, 2015, literally in the living room here. You’ve probably watched him grow as much as we have.

Maybe because JP and I didn’t grow up on farms ourselves, we’ve been really excited to roll our kids into the farm fold, as much as they’ll have it.
Some things take with them and some things don’t. We play that by ear each day.

🚜Ever since he was 1 and an excavator came to the house to dig a line for us in the backyard, Jody has shown an affinity for operating large equipment. That became even more apparent to me when I sat down to ask him a few questions about his experiences on the farm thus far.

>> Here’s a video of a 4-minute interview I gave Jody yesterday. 
Unedited, one take.
Side note: Have you ever videoed an interview with your kids? It’s interesting.

One thing I forgot to ask him during the interview was: “Do you have any advice for me?”

I posed this question to Jody later that evening, when we were swimming at the pond.
His response:
“Advice for you? I don’t know. I’m not in interview mode right now.”
Then he jumped in the water from the muddy bank, making a big splash that startled the frogs.

That’s my answer right there.

I hope you have many adventures of your own, big and small, your next 10 years, too.

Oh, man. You’ll never guess who called me this week…multiple times.

⚡METALLICA⚡

Yes! Well, sort of.

Alicia, who assists their private chef, Mitch, did. Turns out they were looking for real ingredients to prepare for the band members when they came through Blacksburg this week for a show and wanted to pick up…get this…VEGETABLES from us.

And fresh herbs. And duck. And more.

Wow. 

I’m still wondering if it all happened. Except that I have the signed picture from Metallica thanking Glade Road Growing to prove it.

So why is the private chef for Metallica seeking us out? Because these heavy metal rockers, now in their 60’s, are into healthy eating. “Cocaine is out, kale, celery and spinach are in.” it says according to an article on Mitch, their personal chef of 10 years, in The Times.

“Mitch’s philosophy is that he doesn’t make diet food — it just has to be healthy and tasty. This is what is wanted by all the bands Mitch has worked with, something he describes as a “crazy sign of the times”. Over the past decade or so there has been a broader societal shift towards understanding how we use food to protect our health and prevent disease; rock stars are just following the trend. ‘It’s the antithesis of what it used to be.’ Mitch laughs as he describes the reactions of people who encounter Metallica sipping their green juices: ‘Is this for real?’”

-Charlotte Ivers of The Sunday Times, London, 7/28/24

It is for real.

And then all our brush with fame dreams started coming true.

Mid-day Tuesday, in the midst of our farm share season opener bustle, Mitch and Alicia appear. Mitch, Metallica’s private chef, is standing outside the farm stand, taking a video of the farm with his phone. I recognized him from the photo in The Times article.

It was all I could hope for. Mitch and Alicia were super polite. They were genuinely interested in our farm. They were so excited that we were here. We were excited they were here.

They wanted to go on the farm tour we offered, but regretfully just didn’t time. They conversed with all our staff, who wanted to talk to them about soil microbiological health, lard-based skin care, wild ramps, how we slaughter chickens.

They stayed here for nearly an hour. We gave them Glade Road t-shirts. They bought lots of ingredients to cook for the band. They were lovely. I’m still high on the experience.

I feel so validated. I’ve been saying this all along! If you want to rock it into your golden years, you gotta eat chemical-free vegetables and real meats and eggs.

Metallica gets it. Metallica went the extra mile to seek us out. They are The Heroes of The Day.

It’s easier for you than it was for Mitch and Metallica to get fresh kohlrabi.

Because we’re right here in Blacksburg where you live.

You, too, can eat like a rock star, fueled by duck breast, causing seismic activity with your jumping. Eat the real stuff and you’ll be halfway there.

By the way, Mitch graciously sent us his Blacksburg show menu. Here it is.

So, I know you’re dying for the GRG-grown shopping list that Metallica picked up. Here it is:

• Arugula
• Kohlrabi
• Spinach
• Microgreens
• Pea shoots
• Lions mane mushroom
• Oyster mushroom
• Daikon radish (?!)
• Salad radish
• Fennel
• Dill
• Oregano
• Baby Zucchini
• Buttercrisp head lettuce
• Bok choy
• Kale
• Green garlic
• Scallions
• Rainbow chard
• Ramps (the last of them)
• Cedarwood lard balm
• Duck breast
• Chicken breast
• Whole chicken
• Chicken stock

⚡AND you can imagine how much I was beaming when they called the NEXT day to pick up the following Glade Road meats to take to Columbus, Ohio, the next town they’re playing in:

• Berkshire pork spare rib rack
• Whole duck
• Duck confit kits (legs + wings)
• Chicken wings

⚡AND how over the moon I was the THIRD time they came to our farm, this time to give us a signed thank you photo of the band.

So… the lesson.

You, too, can rock on into longevity, and you’re going to love eating real vegetables and happy meats on your way there.🫛🥕🥬

We’re doing a new-to-us event at the farm today- Garlic Mustard Derby! Carol, the Sustainability Manager with the Town of Blacksburg last year hosted an event at Heritage Park aimed at ripping out this invasive weed. And I thought, what about adding a part of the day where we talk about eating it?

A little garlic mustard background. Did you know that garlic mustard is rapidly spreading through Heritage Park? This invasive plant can fast outcompeting native flowers, grasses, and shrubs that wildlife depend on for survival.

Garlic mustard is also edible, specifically when it’s young. It’s a leafy European herb with delicate young leaves that’s a member of the brassica family (includes broccoli, cabbage, turnips and mustard). The young leaves contain vitamins A, C, and beta-carotenes.

So what are the best ways to eat garlic mustard? I have been trying out some things in my kitchen this week, which I’ll showcase today at the farm.

Here are some tips from my experiences working with it this week:

• Garlic mustard is aromatic and garlicky– perfect to use as a flavoring herb when proper garlic is not ready yet.
• Garlic mustard is also BITTER. It’s flavor to me is reminiscent of strong arugula. Sometimes full-strength bitter greens is what you want in your dish. Other times you want a hint of the bitter and garlicky flavor with the heavy bitterness mellowed out somehow.
• Pinching off and using the smallest leaves in recipes will be milder than using larger, older leaves with tough stems attached.
• Blanching in salted water and then rinsing in cold water helped to mellow the bitterness.
• Blending it with creamy, fatty ingredients like the ricotta, olive oil and mayonnaise help mellow the bitter.
• Blending with sweet ingredients like the balsamic glaze or honey for a dressing also complements the bite
• A little goes a long way. The basis for the best recipes call for mincing in the food processor and then adding to other ingredients. I recommend adding a little garlic mustard at a time and tasting as you go to not overwhelm your dish and “ruin” it.

Here’s some insight on the recipes I tried out this week. The Forage Chef blogger is a good resource for garlic mustard recipes.

The recipes that came out best for me were the following:

• Garlic mustard ricotta (the best of the recipes) 
• Garlic mustard pesto (when cut with half fresh spinach, half garlic mustard)
• Garlic mustard pesto salad dressing (basically the pesto then blended with balsamic glaze) 

I also tried the following which were sorta good if you like bitter, but may be a hard sell to your everyday Jane:

• Garlic mustard stems sautéed in butter
• Green tender tops sautéed in smoked bacon fat
• Garlic mustard leaf+ stem “crisps”, basically cooked like kale chips

Join us today and try some for yourself!

 

 

“I’m just amazed at [how little] some people in our area live off of,” a good friend said to me last night when we were having dinner together. He just finished another day volunteering with an NRV group that offers free tax filing assistance.

Food insecurity in the New River Valley can be sneaky and misleadingly subtle.

Do you know someone in the Blacksburg area who would like to be a member of our farm share but needs help with the payment?

Let them know that we have openings for free and reduced-cost farm shares and currently have Virginia Fresh Match funding for free produce for SNAP EBT beneficiaries.

👉🏽Reach out to learn more and get connected with our local food assistance programs.

Here at Glade Road Growing, we’re into food so let’s talk local food access.

Since we started our farm, we’ve had the joy of combining forces with other community groups to make our produce available to more people.

Here are some of the ways we grow fresh food for families in need in our community:

• GLEAN Team Foodbank program through St. Mary’s Church
  • In our 7^th season now, we work with private donors to purchase local vegetables and distribute at the Interfaith Food Pantry in Blacksburg
• USDA Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement
  • Also in collaboration with the Glean Team, the YMCA and VT Cooperative Extension, this grant purchases fresh vegetables to distribute at Interfaith Food Pantry and beyond (ending this June)
• Virginia Fresh Match for SNAP EBT recipients
  • With LEAP in Roanoke, we’re able to double the value of SNAP EBT (food stamps) towards free produce at our farm stand and through our farm share
• Farm Market Fresh
  • We work with the Montgomery County Department of Social Services to accept vouchers to use on fresh produce at the farm stand for low-income seniors and women, children, and infants (WIC)
• Give towards a farm share
  • Our in-house food donation program. We invite our customers to give directly towards offering reduced-cost farm shares to those seeking financial assistance. We helped 6 families last year with free and reduced-cost farm shares and look forward to expanding in the future. We haven’t turned anyone down yet for lack of funding.

Lots of federal funding decreases are happening this year with our food donation programs that are outside our control.

Except for our in-house food programs directly sponsored by local individuals, most of our programs are sponsored by USDA funding which is slated to diminish this year.

We can choose to feel grumpy and powerless in this situation.

OR…

We can look around at what we can do to support food security for our neighbors and local small farms at the same time.

Do you want to help out financially with this?

Here’s how:

👉🏾Contact us to donate to the Glean Team of St Mary’s Church- Help fund their work supporting local farmers to grow and provide vegetables to be distributed weekly at the Interfaith Food Pantry in Blacksburg.

Are you able to make a large donation to the Glean Team foodbank program (for $1000, $2000, $5000, or more)? Farms like us turn these donations into nutrition-packed produce, freely distributed at the Interfaith Food Pantry. We can help you get set up for a tax-deductible receipt through one of our partner non-profits.

👉🏾You can also Give towards a Farm Share– Our own in-house program where we use the funds to provide low-cost or no-cost farm shares to individuals upon request.

Contact me to learn how to turn your donation into local produce for families in our area.

We’re always building more ways to work collaboratively to make local food available. 

Just as importantly, reach out to me for details on the food assistance we currently have available to you.

Regardless of the situation we’re in, we each have the agency to do what we can.

One of the many benefits of being a small family farm is our ability to directly help those in need with little overhead costs. All the funding we receive goes directly to food production with minimal admin and overhead.

Dollars turn around into leafy kale for a single mom at the Interfaith Food Pantry.

Or a weekly farm share basket of sweet potatoes, fresh eggs, and lettuce for a low-income senior.

There are lots of ways we all feed our community and there are lots of ways you can help too.