This site is about my life as a farmgirl, wife, mother and grandmother. We have a beautiful granddaughter and the cutest grandson. We own two farms in Craig County Virginia, leasing one and raising beef cattle on the other.
Have you eaten them? Have you ever heard of them? Creasy greens are a vegetable I grew up with and every spring we went to cornfields in the area to pick them. They are fresh greens found in the spring and if you pick one wrong green you can spoil the entire batch. One green that is smooth leaved will bitter an entire pot.
Since landowners and farms have started spraying their corn patches to kill weeds, the creasy green is hard to find. So, we buy them at local farm stands by the bushel.
A case of creasy greens from Ikenberry’s Orchard in Botetourt County.
We love these greens with pinto beans, corn bread, and fried potatoes. This is one fine country girl meal! A case is a lot of greens, so I clean all of them, blanch them and freeze them after packing enough for one meal in Food Saver bags.
Greens stemmed and bathed twice.
Start looking for them in your local farmers market in March, depending on the weather. It was 1* here this morning so I won’t be looking for any!!
A case of creasy greens from Ikenberry’s Orchard in Botetourt County.
A very, very special friend of mine went to Ikenberry’s last week and ordered a box of these spring greens that we absolutely love!! She started cleaning them and decided to give me a call to see if I wanted some of them. I took off for a visit because we both stay home all the time and we needed a “friend break”. What a wonderful visit we had and I came home with almost a full box of those greens.
It took me four hours that evening to top the greens ( means removing the lower stem and keeping the green tops), give the greens several baths to get sand and dirt off of them and cooked them on the top of my stove in a large pot for three hours. The smell of cooking greens just says pinto beans, fried potatoes w/onions, cornbread and greens!!!
Greens stemmed and bathed twiice.This picture shows the stems and base of the plant. The stems are very hard to cook tender.Two sinks were full and I had another large pot that I would finally put them in to cook.
We haven’t eaten them yet but I froze four quart bags of them cooked which is four meals. I see this meal in our dinner this week and I can actually smell them just thinking about them. Best greens in the world.
When we were first married we had cornfields behind our house and we picked them every spring. We had to be careful and not mix them with another green that was similar but bitter and one would spoil a whole pot when cooked. We have trouble finding them now because everyone sprays their cornfields for weeds so creasy greens no more. I got two packs of seeds this spring and after the potatoes are harvested in one of the three gardens we plan to have this year, we will sow the greens in the fall and hopefully have our own field full of creasy greens in 2022!!
Betty, thank you so much for the greens! I know I’ll think of you with every bite I take!! See you soon!!!
This is the blog for our little farm in Skagit county. Here we have Shetland sheep and Nigerian Dwarf goats. In addition we have donkeys, cattle, pigs, chickens, geese, and peafowl. The blog describes the weekly activities here.
countrygirl-lifeonthefarm 