Pie from the Garden

I’m so excited to share our first homegrown garden harvest story of the year - something completely new to me, yet a very traditional staple for many - rhubarb!

This is quite literally the first time I had ever tasted rhubarb, but I’ve known for a while that I wanted to grow it, and I knew without a doubt that I would love it, just like I love all things tart and sour! I was not disappointed!

When Jordan was building my raised beds two years ago, and I was filling them with layers to create the composted soil, poring over the book ‘Lasagna Gardening’ by Patricia Lanza, I came across the section on rhubarb where she talks about growing lots of it to use as a ‘filler’ to make double the amount of fruit jam, combining it with blueberries or strawberries or whatever might be in season. I knew then that I had to grow some of this magical stuff!

So, now let me take you on a tour of our very small vegetable garden of this season, and we will end with making a rhubarb pie!

My current garden space is mainly a very deep, large, and long raised bed. It’s been filled with composted manure and hay (thank you Flossie the milk cow!) as well as dead leaves, grass clippings, chicken feathers, peat moss, kitchen scraps, and goodness knows what. But the payoff now is the loveliest, softest, blackest dirt that is chock full of earthworms. So I know I’m doing something right. This year, with sweet Robert being a newborn during the spring garden season, I intentionally kept the garden very low-key- really just a token garden, but I didn’t want to give it up entirely, and I most especially didn’t want to lose the progress I had made on the raised beds by letting them get overgrown and neglected for a whole year. So - here we are. We have exactly six tomato plants, various heirloom varieties from a local nursery that Alan picked out for us, a smattering of herbs, a few pepper plants, a small contingent of volunteer cucumber plants from last year's scattered seeds, two watermelon vines, three okra plants, a dozen sweet potatos, and some fledgling collard greens that I just planted in this week. Oh yes, and my one rhubarb….

I ordered two little rhubarb seedlings from Azure Standard last year. This is the one survivor that overwintered and has exploded in growth this spring. I’m so happy!! The kids and I have been anxiously waiting for enough stalks to mature, and finally it seemed the time had come. We all trooped out to the garden (no one wanted to miss the important moment, of course) and harvested a basketful of rhubarb. I think we could have used a bit more ideally, but it was close to the amount called for in our pie recipe, so we proceeded.

I began the pie, but Marian kindly took over for me when Robert needed Mommy time. She had lots of willing helpers and tasters too. We followed the recipe from ‘The Joy of Cooking’ for Lard Flaky Pastry, and their Rhubarb pie filling. It baked up beautifully, and smelled heavenly. After supper we got to try it -we all loved the taste. I really enjoyed the kick of tanginess in the fruity flavor. I’ve made hundreds of pies in my life, and this might just be my favorite flavor yet.

Thanks for following our little adventure! Did you grow up eating rhubarb?