Today’s post started because we wanted to share a picture of a cool fish that Kurt caught on Raccoon Creek last weekend.
It’s the longear sunfish, Lepomis megalotis, a native fish found exclusively in North America, mainly in the Mississippi River and Great Lakes regions. It thrives in small creeks like the ones we have throughout southern Ohio. Whenever we’re lucky enough to encounter one we are shocked at its beauty and how tropical it looks.
A native passion fruit grows in Ohio. Our friend Chris Monday grows it at Veggie Vision Farms, where it grows voraciously. We’ve heard it can be a nuisance in local gardens because of how it proliferates. Yet, the native passion fruit is delicious- it tastes a lot like its tropical cousin (the P in POG!). As I prepare for the Pawpaw Festival cookoff, I’m thinking about how well the passion fruit would go with another delicious native fruit- the pawpaw a.k.a. hillbilly mango.
While the appearance of brightly colored sunfish, passion fruit, and pawpaws may seem tropical, obviously we’re not in the tropics, apparent from the historic drought of ’24. Appalachia is one of the most biodiverse temperate landscapes on earth- it is comparable to Amazonia.
Historian Katherine Newfont says of the southern Appalachian mountains in her book “Blue Ridge Commons,”
“A single Blue Ridge cove may rival all of Europe in the number of tree species it sustains…no other temperate region on earth can surpass the southern Blue Ridge in biological wealth.”
These mountains are old. Very old. They’re Pangea old. The Appalachian mountains were part of a mountain range that spread all the way to what is now China and Japan. Just this past month Kurt and I visited Cranberry Glades in Pocahontas county West Virginia, a group of bogs that were formed by glaciers that moved south, carving mountains thousands of years ago, bringing with it species of plants and animals that are usually found much further north in sub-arctic Canada.
This 750 acre glade feels like a secret place, protected from the outside world by mountains on each side. It is the southernmost habitat for many species that are found in the muskegs of the north. It felt surreal to be plopped into a boreal cranberry bog, standing on top of twenty or more feet of squishy peat, among many rare and unusual species for these parts, the descendents of plants that were rooted there 10,000 years ago. It’s so cool.
Athens Farmers Market menu for September 7, 2024:
Frozen dumplings!
- Three Sisters: corn, squash, beans (v)
- Roasted Mushroom (v)
- Classic Vegetable (v)
- Classic Pork (featuring Rockcamp pork!)
Ready to eat snacks!
- Kimbap (vegetarian Korean sushi roll)
- SPAM MUSUBI w/ side cucumber pickle
Pickles!
- Bread & Butter Pickles by the pint
- Sour Corn by the pint
See you at the market-
Irene
p.s. You can now find our vegetarian kimbap at Kindred! Deliveries going out on Tuesdays and Friday mornings.