Marshall

When I see people get excited by the enormous hollow, or hard white-centered, strawberry-like products marketed across the land most of the year, I despair. It’s tragic that so many consumers have been conditioned by a cynical agricultural industry to think that these nasty things are what strawberries are supposed to be. I protest by refusing to consume them.

My friend Leah Gauthier is doing something else about this, and she needs our help. She has rescued the Marshall variety strawberry, once on Slow Foods’ most endangered foods list, and is now offering the plants for sale so that we can spread the variety around again. The berries are rumored to be delicious (full disclosure: I’m expecting a tasting). They were touted by James Beard as the best berry he knew, and that man knew his berries. And, this is key, they are easy to grow, and produce a lot of runners so that they should keep coming back year after year.
You can order Leah’s Marshall plants (each in a hand-sawn fabric container, numbered as a limited edition) on-line or pick them up in person in Bloomington, IN, and… right here in Brooklyn, NY. This weekend, they will be available at the Brooklyn Flea via Kind Aesthetic. The plants can be pre-ordered for pickup at the Flea.[Photos all by Leah Gauthier]