GazeboNews

Salad Days At Elawa

The salad fixings are sprouting at Elawa Farm, which is great news for those following the locavore movement. The farm is harvesting potatoes, swiss chard, kale, sweet peas, beets and lettuce in time for this week's Garden Market. Flowers also are available in abundance, and tomatoes and broccoli should be ready soon. Unless you're growing a farm in your backyard, you can't get more local than this. Elawa's produce is grown on site in Lake Forest or at Didier Farms near Lincolnshire (Didier also sells at the Lake Bluff Farmers' Market, another great source for locovores). In addition to veges, the Garden Market sells soups, muffins, jams and other products that are made in Elawa's shiny new kitchen by Farm chef Sarah Bellini and other foodies. Most of the ingredients are grown at Elawa or Didier. In one of these photos, personal chef Sharon Scott of Lake Bluff is preparing peach muffins with Didier peaches.

Ms. Scott is part of a team of food experts lined up to teach kitchen workshops at Elawa, which include a class for adults called "Sling the Zing" on Aug. 22 taught by Barbara McCormack, and a "Growing Gourmets Series" taught by Ms. Scott, proprietor of a personal chef service called "Prairie Girl Kitchen." The workshops include "Lil' Sprouts in the Kitchen" on Aug. 8, and "Farm to Table Pizza Workshop for Kids" on Aug. 15. You can get more information at the Elawa Farm website. The Garden Market runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays up till Halloween. All proceeds go toward sustaining the Garden at Elawa, so the more you buy, the more these volunteer farmers can grow.

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Elawa Farm In Living Color

It's fun to see how artists interpret places that many of us take for granted. Here's a link to a blog by a LaGrange artist who recently painted a scene "en plein air" from the Middlefork Savanna in Lake Forest. She's a member of Wilderness Painters of Chicago, which meets at locations once a month to paint in the open air. Her first stop with the group was Elawa Farm, where she had a diverse menu of natural scenes to choose from, including a creek, forest, wetlands, building, bridge, garden and savanna. The artist, Christine Kane, focused on the savanna. She posted a photo of the scene on her blog, followed by more pics and descriptions of the painting in various stages. It's interesting to see how it evolved--that's the final version at left. For more information on Ms. Kane, visit Lets Paint Nature.