Eating from the Garden …
Be It Yours or Talmadge Farms’

Ah, these golden days of summer.

My vegetable garden is green and growing, the tomatoes are ripening and the potato bugs are getting fat.

But about this time every year, the rosy glow of gardening begins to wear off. The initial blush of planting has passed and for the past several weeks it’s been weeding and battling things that crawl and chew, fly and chew, walk on four legs and chew or don’t move around much … but chew. After all that digging and watering and babying and slapping things intent on chewing me, after all of that, now I need to do something with what I’ve grown.

I’ve eaten my fill of fresh tomatoes and other produce, and the inside job has just begun. It is the time of salsa making, tomato stewing, beet pickling, green bean pickling and, of course, pickle pickling. Now begin the late nights of canning and trying not to fall asleep during the next 20 minute water bath for the veggies. Timing is everything. Just as the house begins to cool for the day, I ferociously start four pots of water boiling into the wee hours. And this is the fun part.

At least, I think it’s fun. That satisfying “pop” of a sealing lid is the hallelujah chorus for the rabid canner. I just love it.

But you don’t have to love either gardening or canning to enjoy things fresh (or pickled) from the garden. There are plenty of farm markets around Lake Superior that feature items grown or canned by others.

Of particular interest for produce and gorgeous floral arrangements is Talmadge Farms, just outside of Duluth. Kathy Jensen, sole proprietor of the farm, provides an imaginative, mouthwatering line of products that taste just like the ones Mom used to make - if your mom was good at these sorts of things - only without the marathon canning and heating up of the kitchen.

“My pickles were pretty much from Mom and Grandma’s recipes,” says Kathy, “but my best sellers are a little less traditional, like Horseradish Jelly, Raspberry Jalapeno Jam and my Zippy Relish.”

Nineteen years ago Kathy started Talmadge Farms intent on her first love, flowers. She would grow and dry the flowers that she brought to sell at the Duluth Farmer’s Market, along with a few jars of her homemade pickles and jams. The rest, as they say, is history. She now plants two of the farm’s 30 acres. She hires help for the plowing, mulching, planting and harvesting, but there’s one thing she does herself.

“I’m the one in charge of making the jams and pickles, personally.”

Kathy’s pickles and relishes are sold at Tobie’s Restaurant & Bakery in Hinckley and the Whole Foods Co-op, the Blue Heron Trading Co. and Mount Royal Fine Foods in Duluth. Kathy’s spectacular seasonal fall arrangements attract attention at her Farmer’s Market booth, coupled with her canned goods and produce or cut flowers.

“I still love to make wreaths and arrangements to sell, but the real focus of my business now is on quality preserves, pickles and relishes.”

Kathy Jensen of Talmadge Farms does wonderful arrangements top left, for sale at her Farmer’s Market booth.

Her products are at a number of area grocery stores and “Pizza Lucé now has my Horseradish Jelly on the breakfast menu,” says Kathy with pride. “Other folks tell me they use it as an appetizer, or as a complement to roasted meats, and one person even makes a barbecue sauce out of it combined with orange juice!”

Does she grow everything she cans?

“I grow all my own cucumbers,” says Kathy, “but I get my horseradish from a farm in Eau Claire, and Bay Produce supplies me with green tomatoes year-round for my green tomato pickles.”

So if you lose your tomato ripening race to frost this season and end up with green tomatoes, you could be inspired to turn them into pickles. Or you could just stop by the Farmer’s Market and see Kathy.