OK, it was as easy as A-B-C up to now, but now we have to start jumping around in the alphabet. The seasons just don’t produce fruits and vegetables in alphabetical order! Besides, apart from Dill, Dandelion and Daikon, there isn’t much under D – well not that we’re harvesting in an interesting enough manner to warrant even a short post. So lettuce it is.

We’re not having the best early summer ever. The tomato and pumpkin-family seedlings are growing really slow and even an easy crop like radishes are going to seed almost straight away. Some of the fruits are growing OK but they are far from harvesting – we haven’t even let all the bird nets down yet. We are harvesting some berries here and there, but the best by far at the moment is the lettuce.

We have quite a few lettuce types that are doing OK – they are all inter-mixed, potager style. At times we had so much that Patricia started getting inventive. This dish is called steamed lettuce. You basically steam fresh lettuce in a steamer for a minute or two, then dress it with olive oil, salt or with garlic butter. A yummy alternative.

Although we had a bit in excess, there was never yet enough to swop or trade in any meaningful manner. In fact, our lettuce is now getting depleted so fast, we can’t keep up. Our salads are being rationed – we have serious competition for our resources! The little chooks just love it when we throw fresh lettuce into the brooder or in the area where they are getting “trained” to free-range. Forbid they should discover the lettuce patch… these guys don’t know about “fair share”; I doubt they ever will.