Tomato Seedlings, Sippin' on Shrubs & Volunteer Opportunities
#47: Spring Happenings @ Featherstone Garden
Welcome to Featherstone’s Spring 2022 Garden Happenings Newsletter. Each week we will share a rotating variety of garden updates: from heirloom seasonal produce features, to farm fresh subscriptions, plant-centered recipes, community partners, and more. As a subscriber, you will be the first to know all about our Garden Happenings. If you’re not a newsletter subscriber but would like to be, click below to signup.
Welcome to Featherstone Garden’s SPRING Happenings
By: Renee S.
Hello all! It’s been several weeks since our last full fledged ‘Garden Happenings’ newsletter, and we hope everyone’s enjoying the spring season in all of it’s glory—both rain & shine, chilly & warm.
In today’s newsletter, we have a couple of updates and exciting news to share, a new spring botanical-themed recipe, and an upcoming volunteer opportunity. During our busier Spring and Summer seasons, we plan to get back on track with sharing our newsletters filled with new recipes, farm stand offerings, upcoming culinary subscriptions, community partner features, and more on a weekly basis. If you have friends who might enjoy our content, please forward our newsletter along by clicking below. Many thanks!
Tis the Season for Tomatoes
With tomato planting season in full swing, we’re currently cultivating a variety of cherry and slicing tomato plants for the upcoming season. For those interested in purchasing our tomato seedlings (shown above), they are available for purchase on Featherstone’s Online Marketplace, at POST Detroit, Olive’s Bloombox (Ferndale), and Guastello’s Village Market (St. Clair Shores). We will be sharing tomato planting tips and guidelines on our ‘Garden Goodness’ blog in the coming weeks, and you can be sure to find new tomato-forward recipes after the first harvest.
New(ish) to the Featherstone Crew
By: Annie H.
Throughout the last four years, Renee Sandoval—Featherstone’s designer and brand manager (and my best friend)—has been working remotely from NYC but is now back and working full time on the farm! Renee moved back to Detroit from New York only 2 weeks ago, and has already begun to integrate into the daily operations at the farm. Many exciting collaborations to come, from selling her homemade baked goods and stationary collection (now available at POST Detroit!), to learning the ins and outs of working as a farmhand, all while continuing to manage and develop Featherstone’s overall brand.
Welcome back to Michigan Renee, we are so happy to have you!!
MorningSide Community Campus Build-out this Saturday
Join us and our partners at Motor City Grounds Crew to cleanup and build-out a new community and pollinator garden at the MorningSide Community Campus (right in Featherstone’s backyard). Make sure you wear closed toe shoes and bring work/garden gloves if you have them!
This Saturday 5/21 from 10am-1pm
(weather permitting)
4143 Barham St.
Detroit 48224
Email annie@featherstonegarden.com to RSVP. If you can’t make this volunteer event but would like to be invited to others, please email Annie!
Sippin’ on Homemade Shrubs
By Renee S.
Today, I’m sharing a recipe for making a homemade shrub. For those who are unfamiliar with a shrub, the best way to describe it is a vinegar-based non-alcoholic syrup, though it’s not quite syrup-y in texture. Shrubs are a healthier alternative to artificially flavored drinks, and much lower in sugar content than most juices and mixers sold in stores. My favorite approach is to add a few tablespoons to a plain seltzer (like Topo Chico, for instance), or to make uniquely flavorful mocktails and cocktails without all the unnecessary additives found in store-bought mixers.
If strawberry-jalapeño isn’t your jam, I want to encourage our subscribers to substitute ingredients if you prefer a different flavor profile, and the best part of making this at home is that there are endless possibilities. The next batch I want to test out is a pineapple shrub with sprigs of rosemary. If you want to go all out, you can garnish your shrub sodas and cocktails with edible flowers—a perfect addition to any summer gathering! Once our summer Farm Stand is open mid-June, you can purchase Featherstone’s edible flowers there. We will share all the details in subsequent newsletters and on the gram, so keep your eyes peeled for the latest updates by subscribing and following us on social (@featherstone.garden)!
Recipe: Strawberry Jalapeño Shrub
As a rule of thumb: the fresh fruit to vinegar ratio for a shrub should be about 1:1, so for this recipe, I’m doing 2-cups of fresh strawberries to 2-cups of vinegar. Sugar is optional, though it is very vinegary without sugar, so I’m adding 1/3 of a cup of coconut sugar to balance out the flavor. Feel free to eliminate the sugar all together if you’re on a low sugar diet.
Yields: 2 cups
Ingredients:
1-pound container of strawberries; only use the top half of strawberries with the stems on, which will roughly equate to 2 cups of strawberry tops, (set aside the bottom half for snacking on!)
1 jalapeño, halved lengthwise, seeds removed (or keep seeds intact for added spice)
1 cup rice vinegar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup sugar (we prefer coconut sugar, but any sugar will do!)
Directions:
Combine all ingredients into a glass mason jar, leave at room temp on counter top for 24-48 hours with lid on. Strain, discard strawberries and jalapeño, then store in fridge for up to a week.
Serving suggestions:
Add 2-3 Tablespoons of shrub per cup of seltzer, garnish with edible flowers (optional), wedge of citrus, or your favorite sprig of fresh herbs (i.e. rosemary or basil). Add 1 shot of gin or vodka for a summery cocktail. If you prefer a sweeter cocktail, try adding 1 teaspoon of agave syrup (or other sweetener of choice).
If you’re interesting in reading more about this topic, check out this article & recipe from Food 52 on how to make homemade shrubs.
Worthwhile reads
For your reading pleasure, the team members at Featherstone will occasionally share an article or link we found to be a worthwhile read. We hope you enjoy our pick of the week.
Renee’s Pick: The Women Who Invited the Kitchen, by Alexandra Lange
An interesting and quick read about the women who created a more efficient method for moving about the kitchen, which is still being used today in modern kitchens across the globe. Spoiler: one of her twelve children wrote a memoir about their lives which you may have heard of—Cheaper by the Dozen!
“The test of the efficiency of the new kitchen was made with strawberry shortcake…The cake was first made in a typically haphazard kitchen…Then an exactly similar shortcake was prepared in the Herald Tribune Kitchen, which has the same equipment and utensils as the other kitchen, but has them arranged for efficiency. The results of this test were so startling as to be almost unbelievable. The number of kitchen operations had been cut from 97 to 64. The number of actual steps taken had been reduced from 281 to 45—less than one-sixth!”
Thanks for reading!
For more about our garden, follow us on instagram (@featherstone.garden), and check out our website. Feel free to email us or comment below with any questions or suggestions.
Have a great week,
Annie, Aaron, Renee + Chili & Bean (our farm cats)
