Winters in Sullivan County can be cold and harsh, and spring creeps in very slowly with small splashes of color here and there. By the end of May, there is still no guarantee that the weather will be warm enough to plant your tomatoes, but the azaleas, rhododendrums and lilacs are ablaze and it’s time to pull out the lawn mower from winter storage. Sprinkled throughout the yard and woods around our house, the wildflowers start popping up.
I know spring is in full swing and summer is on its way when our local farmer’s market in Barryville opens for the season in mid May. There we see our favorite farmer, Greg from Willow Wisp Organic Farm, and Mark has long chats with the folks from Java Love Coffee from Bethel – Mark loves a good espresso.This year we also bought a few tomato seedlings from Silver Heights Farm Nursery after a mysterious blight took over our own little tomato seedlings.
In season now: Rhubarb!
Cake photo 1: One of my favorite rhubarb recipes (I skip the whisky cream and just go with ice cream or heavy cream): Country Rhubarb Cake
Cake photo 2: A rhubarb compote from Joy of Cooking (I added a little lemon zest) with a buttermilk cake made with fresh buttermilk from Tonjes Farm Dairy in Callicoon, NY.
Owls and Pigeons 
I vote for a rhubarb desert at the next family event!
I feel the same way about the market! I also got tomato plants there. I did not make anything so yummy with the rhubarb. What is wrong with me? Do you know what the wildflowers are?
Laylage, I have it on good authority (Greg) that both rhubarb and strawberries will be at this week’s market, I see strawberry rhubarb pie in our future! As to the wildflowers, I asked my mother-in-law, who is an excellent wildflower/plant reference, about the sweet star-shaped flower her response from Peterson’s: “Trientalis borealis, also known as the Starflower”. The first purply flower with the sedum is Irish Moss. As for the other flowers, I don’t know what they are except that when we were little we used to call the yellow flowers “Buttercups” and hold them under our chins, if there was a yellow reflection that somehow indicated that we liked butter. I don’t know where we picked that one up.
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