One of my favorite farming memories is from my first year working on a farm. There was a guy working there who lived in a bus that had already lived several previous lives itself. Before he owned it, it had been a rock band’s tour bus, painted black with flames on it, and before that it had been a school bus. He once told me he wished humans had kibble because eating would be easier (I’m sure the recent “boy kibble” trend is why this is on my mind).
He also told me he didn’t like cherry tomatoes.
Then he harvested the cherry tomatoes we were growing and couldn’t stop eating them.
What he actually didn’t like, of course, was not cherry tomatoes. He disliked the bland, watery versions most people are used to: grocery store cherry tomatoes in winter, or the sad little ones that show up on a diner salad. A good cherry tomato is almost a different food entirely.
I think about that a lot when people talk about novelty in vegetables. There is a certain kind of excitement around unusual crops: rare heirlooms, obscure greens, or vegetables with names that sound impressive at the market. And I get it. Some of those things are genuinely great. We’re growing mâche this year, which still feels fairly novel in the United States, and I’m excited for it. We’re also growing ground cherries, mostly because ground cherry jam is my favorite and I need it to survive the winter.
Baby mâche. AKA Lamb’s Lettuce. A mild, sweet, & distinctly nutty gourmet green. Popular in France.
But in general, I’ve never been very interested in being a novelty farmer. Friends and family have encouraged me to find some special niche over the years. They’ve suggested everything from sunflower oil to chinchilla farming. And I get the practicality and appeal. But what interests me more is how good the so-called boring vegetables can be when they are grown well.
The staples. The vegetables that nourish a family and fuel a life.
This year we’re growing one of the most boring of them all: iceberg lettuce. I have never had homegrown iceberg lettuce in my life. My personal history with iceberg is mostly Subway and bad buffet salads. To me, it is one of the blandest vegetables imaginable. Which is exactly why I want to grow it.
I want to see what iceberg can be when it is a variety chosen for flavor (not shelf-life), grown well, and eaten close to harvest. I like the idea that the blandest thing I can think of might turn out to be surprising.
That, to me, is more interesting than novelty for novelty’s sake.
I’m not against unusual vegetables. I like unusual vegetables just fine. But I think the deeper pleasure is not in obscurity. It’s in revelation. In tasting something familiar and realizing it never had a fair chance before. In discovering that what you thought you disliked was really just a bad version of it.
This is true of vegetables more often than people realize.
Carrots that are actually sweet. Lettuce with real flavor. Cherry tomatoes that taste like candy and acid and sunlight instead of watery nothing. The point is not that ordinary vegetables are secretly exotic. It’s that they are worth taking seriously. They are worth rediscovering.
I think about that as a farmer, but also just as a person who eats.
Most people do not build their lives around obscure heirloom vegetables. They want lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, onions, potatoes: the things that make up actual meals. The practical vegetables. The vegetables that show up over and over again in home kitchens. To grow those well…to make them taste vivid, distinct, and satisfying…feels like worthy work to me. Maybe even more worthy than chasing novelty.
Or at least more useful.
I do love a few oddballs. I’m not pretending otherwise. But I’m much more interested in growing vegetables that change your mind than vegetables that simply sound interesting on paper.
Sometimes the most exciting vegetables are the boring ones.
Or maybe more accurately: sometimes the real thrill is finding out they were never boring at all.
