The final market is upon us at Historic Lewes Farmers Market (HLFM) for 2015. Please join us this Saturday, November 21 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Shields Elementary School. It has been a great year and many many thanks to all of you for your support, both at the market and here at the garden.

This is also the last week at Hattie’s Garden for our normal Thursday and Friday hours. As always, we are sticklers for post-harvest care and anything you buy at the end of this week should last very nicely until Thanksgiving.

For your last minute Thanksgiving shopping, Hattie’s Garden will be open Tuesday, November 24 from 1 to 5 p.m. We will not be open on Thursday or Friday, November 26 and 27.

The Rehoboth Beach Farmers Market will have its special holiday market on Saturday, November 28 from 12 to 3 p.m. They plan to have lots of hand made crafts, red and green shopping bags, free cider and cookies, and live holiday music by the Camp Rehoboth Chorale!

What’s Available This Week from Hattie

The following will be available from Hattie’s Garden on Thursday from 3 to 5 p.m., or Friday from 1 – 5 p.m., and Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the HLFM.

• Salad Greens — We will have plenty of nice gourmet young lettuces, flavorful arugula and delicious, tender mesclun for your large holiday salads. All the salad greens are triple-washed and will be offered in two sizes for Thanksgiving.
• Elegance Greens Mix — Ready to harvest this week is this wonderful salad mix from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. The Elegance Green Mix includes red and green pac choi, purple and green mizuna, bright red mustard and leaf broccoli. Eat it raw, juice it, use as a braising green, steam lightly or stir fry.

  Tip for easy braising greens: Rinse and chop your greens (do not discard the stems — they are succulent and delicious). Over medium heat, toss the greens with olive oil until they have just wilted. Add broth or water, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Use about a 3/4 cup of broth/water for each bunch of greens.

• Mustard Greens — We will be harvesting beautiful young mustard greens in all kinds of colors, textures and flavors.
• Young Carrots — This week we will be pulling our final bed of carrots for you. We should have more than we normally do, but with the demand, you will want to come early to Market, or come out to the Garden on Thursday or Friday if you would like them sooner.
• Hakurei Turnips — We will be harvesting a beautiful bed of Hakurei turnips. We used row covers on this batch to keep the greens especially nice.
• Young Red Russian Kale — We have lots of young, delicious Red Russian kale for our Thanksgiving harvest.
• Radishes — A new bed of these rich, bright red roots are ready for the table. These radishes are crisp and tasty.
• Berggarten Sage — German sage with large oval leaves that sets it apart from common sage. Absolutely wonderful earthy aroma and flavor. We save this hearty herb for the holidays!
• Mojito Mint — Wonderful variety for all your mint uses, including cocktails.

What’s Available from Other Vendors

The following will be available only on Thursday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., or Friday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Hattie’s Garden. Note: These items cannot be brought to the HLFM on Saturday.

Black Hog Homestead

• Duck Eggs — Fabulous farm-fresh tasty duck eggs from their own free range ducks.

Deep Grass Organics

• Orange Sweet Potatoes — These organically grown sweet potatoes should be showcased on their own and are so sweet already the mere suggestion of a marshmallow casserole is heresy. Please don’t add sugar! Even butter is overkill for some of us. Roast them whole and serve them.
• Yukon Gold Potatoes — Deep Grass will provide more of these delicious of potatoes.
• Red Onions — Mild and sweet, multi-purpose red onions.
• Candy Sweet Yellow Onions — Sweet, yellow onion.
• Garlic — Nice large heads of beautiful garlic.
• Acorn Squash — It derives its name from its distinctive acorn shape.
• Butternut Squash — Perfect small butternut squashed that can be halved for individual servings.
• Salsa — Medium heat in 12 oz. jars.
• Hot Horseradish Mustard — Available in 12 oz. jars.
• Free-range Chicken Eggs — These eggs are so much better than their commercially-produced, store-bought counterparts.

Hattie’s Garden Off-season Delivery Service

Hattie’s Garden Delivery/Pickup Service begins Saturday, December 5. You will receive more information about the service next week. We are still working out the details, but we should be representing about a dozen vendors, all of whom participate in the HLFM and many of whom also participate in the Rehoboth Beach Farmers Market. We think you will be just as thrilled as we are with the vendors who are participating this year.

As we move into the delivery/pickup season, we need all our time to get orders ready for Saturday and not hold open hours on Thursdays and Fridays. Instead, we ask that you select the items you would like from the order form you will receive each Sunday afternoon or evening. Deadline for ordering is Wednesday at noon.

As soon as you submit an order using the form, an electronic acknowledgement is sent to your email inbox for your review. Within about 24 hours, you will also receive an electronic invoice serving as the actual confirmation of your order, although final changes are made for estimated items sold by the pound. Changes to your order can be made by contacting Hattie prior to the Wednesday deadline.

There is an extra charge for Saturday morning delivery. At this time, we are delivering to Rehoboth Beach, Lewes and Cave Neck area in Milton. There is no requirement to have your items delivered, and if you prefer, or if you are outside of our delivery area, you may pickup your order at the house anytime during daylight hours on Saturday, or another day by appointment. Extra produce, eggs, honey, jams, jellies, etc. will be available for sale on Saturday.

We are really excited about doing this again this year and look forward to bringing you great local food! Aside from being extremely fresh, this food is simply not available in the supermarket. This is a great way to make it through the winter in style!

Yours in the garden throughout the winter,