Without much provocation, you might find me singing the praises of Two Small Farms CSA, a box brought about by a collaboration between High Ground Organics and Mariquita Farms, both near Santa Cruz. We subscribed to the TSF box for most of last summer and fall, and suffered through the winter, when the CSA goes dark for a couple of months. One of the many terrific things about TSF is the dedication the farmers have to exploring new crops, heirloom varietals of seeds, and vegetables popular in European and Latin American markets but widely unknown, and used by American home cooks. For example, last week we got cardoons, which Alli and I saw in markets in Italy but had never eaten, much less cooked.

But the real prize of the infant spring season for me was the greens called agretti that showed up two weeks ago. Agretti, also known as barba di frate (“the friar’s beard”) looked like chives but even grassier, and when cooked were utterly delicious and interesting: a little sour, as the name implies, but a perfect vehicle for scant salt, red pepper, and olive oil. Our farmer claims that agretti are the edible, baby form of tumbleweeds. Far out!

Another, more predictable (hippie) aspect of the farm service is that at the pick-up spot near our house there’s a box for trades. Inevitably there’s going to be somebody who, whatever, hates fennel or something, so they can drop their fennel in the box and pick up arugula, which somebody else hated. We don’t really hate anything, but how stoked was I when, yesterday, I found two bags of agretti in the trade box!! Ciao, delicious but omnipresent salad greens.