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Potato Grower Delights in Crop
August 1, 2007
Potato Grower Delights in Crop
Farmers' Markets DENISE MILLER For the Journal
Editor's note: Every other week, Denise Miller of the New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association will spotlight local growers and their crops, along with tips about how to cook them.
Afresh spring sits below the meadow where Effie Chavez tends to her garden. When she heads there, she is content. In fact, she is more than content. She is rapturous.
Lucky customers at the Bernalillo Farmers' Market get to share in this delight when Chavez tows her vegetables to market each week. She grows carrots, eggplants, peppers, corn, squash, radishes, potatoes, herbs and more.
"The joy comes from having little kids come around and see what carrots really look like," Chavez explains.
It also comes when people discover blue potatoes for the first time.
Chavez says she is the only grower at the Bernalillo market to have potatoes, and whether you choose her small red or blue, Yukon Gold, or larger Russets, you will taste potatoes as they are meant to be eaten -- fresh out of the ground.
One great thing about growing potatoes and other root crops like beets, Chavez notes, is that even if the weather gets wild as it did a year ago July when hail wiped out her tomatoes, everything under ground is just fine.
She also admires the beauty of the potato plant, which flowers and then dies back to let her know when it's time to dig them up.
Differences between the varieties -- with the exception of Russets meant for baking -- are slight, but Chavez has a few suggestions. She particularly likes the small reds in stews or roasts because of their texture. She also enjoys them sliced and fried for breakfast with eggs, green chile and tortillas.
Blues make beautiful mashed potatoes, and buttery Yukon Golds are great boiled or mashed, she says.
When Chavez thinks of the benefits of locally grown food, she is flooded with memories of growing up in the South Valley and eating fresh apricots, peaches and plums from neighborhood trees.
"That's what we remember growing up," she says wistfully. And it is that experience of homegrown food that she relishes sharing with young and old alike.
Take, for example, the time she decided to bring some garden veggies to the elderly at the Placitas Senior and Community Center. First, she identified some wild greens on her property, quelites (wild spinach) and verdolagas (purslane). She then prepared these in recipes as best she could remember from her childhood and served them with calabacitas and warm tortillas.
While Chavez didn't grow up farming, her partner, Doug Moland, introduced her to the magic of the garden. What began as a small garden behind their Placitas home in 1996 kept growing each year.
Then, three years ago, Chavez realized the farmers' market was the perfect outlet for her increasing bounty. "For a long time, I just gave it away, but how many people can you offer carrots to?"
When Chavez and Moland are not digging up potatoes, they co-own and operate a retail store called Angel Town in Old Town that is now coming up on its 10th anniversary.
All of their produce is pesticide-free, and when shoppers ask how they accomplish it, the answer -- if not the method -- is simple. Chavez says they pick off the bugs one by one and put them in a pail of soapy water.
"The most wonderful thing about local food is the flavor. Here you get what grows in our soil. And food grown near the Rio Grande tastes different than food grown in the mountains or in the valley," she says.
Sharing the food she is so proud of brings much joy to Chavez -- and her customers, no doubt. And when you see her beautiful potatoes that barely need a recipe, remember that simple never means plain.
FEATURED GROWER
WHO: Effie Chavez
WHERE TO FIND HER: Bernalillo Farmers' Market
FEATURED CROP: Potatoes
NUTRITIONAL VALUE: When not fried or loaded with butter and sour cream, potatoes are a low-calorie, high-fiber food that offers significant protection against cardiovascular disease and cancer. They are a good source of vitamin C, vitamin B6, copper, potassium, manganese and more.
SEASON: Now through end of August (or later)
