Fife farmland

You folks may remember my local afternoon close-to-home trip about a month ago to the Fife Levee Pond Park.  That pond was full of ducks and geese and such.  It was right across the road from the Puyallup River which had the fisher-folk standing in the river and fishing.  I said I’d check back there in the near future to see what was up … and so I did.

But I didn’t go to the Pond.  I parked there, in that same parking lot by the Pond, but then I got distracted by these fields with crops that I didn’t recognize and so I walked over to the fields first, before going to the Pond.  And … well, I never got to the Pond.  But I saw some interesting things and I’ll share them here with you.

The first crop I came across was Leeks … rows and rows and rows of Leeks.  They sure looked like they were ready for harvest.

Right next to the field of Leeks was this stuff (above).  It looked really fluffy and pretty but I had not a clue what it was.  I wandered around that HUGE field to see if I could find some information.

A closeup photo of the plant (below) will probably tell lots of you folks what it is, but I still didn’t have a clue.  It sure was interesting.

In time, I came upon a portion of the field that had been harvested, maybe one acre had been harvested.  That’s what it looked like above.  It confused me because lots of the fluffy, upper green material had been left on the ground, as well as lots of the white “bulb” material.  I wondered what parts they used and why they left so much on the ground.

And then I picked up some of the white bulb material and smelled it.  Fennel!  No doubt about it. 🙂  It had just a hint of licorice odor, but sweeter.

I was standing there enjoying my surroundings and appreciating my discoveries when I felt a decidedly cooler breath of air waft over me.  I looked up to find the sky had turned dark and menacing.  Rain would be here any moment.  Time to head back to the truck.

Oh, but wait, there’s another field over there!  Another field was just across the road from the Leeks and the Fennel and this new one held all manner of different varieties of squash.

Hurry up though, rain is coming!

Rows and rows of all different sorts of squash.

Nice round pale yellow ones with dark yellow stripes.

Big pale yellow ones, with no stripes.

Small and very dark green ones.

Great big, round, bright orange ones.

Huge dark green ones with yellow stripes.

And these very large and weird looking mottled orange and green ones.

And then about five seconds later, the sky opened up and the rains poured down!  Whoa.  I ran for the truck but got pretty drenched anyway.

It didn’t matter.  I dried out. 🙂  And I had a great afternoon and saw some interesting things.

I’ve never cooked with Leeks or Fennel.  What do you folks do with them?