News Coverage
With strawberries, the trick is tenderness
Published May 20, 2004
Joe Schwartz may upset those of you who like your strawberries so hard they sound like apples when you cut them. He may disorient those people accustomed to seeing strawberries on the Environmental Working Group's list of 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables.
Because Schwartz, a native of Switzerland, grows his strawberries in nearby Crawford County, Ind., and can get them to Louisville unblemished, even when they are as tender and juicy as storybook strawberries. In addition, he uses as few chemicals as he can when he's growing them - he uses chemical fertilizers but no pesticides or herbicides.
"You don't have to wash them," says Schwartz, because they're clean.
Those of us who have been buying quarts of his berries at the Highlands and St. Matthews farmers markets were introduced early to the berries. Schwartz gets early berries by keeping the ground warm with black plastic and growing them under a cover, which is rolled back to expose berries to sun but protects the plants from bad weather.
"A lot of people at the farmers markets didn't want to take my word that they were grown here," says Schwartz.
Anyone who has spent time in the Ohio Valley knows that a "normal" year produces strawberry crops toward the end of May. But the telltale sign of a fresh, locally raised berry is tenderness. Strawberries as tender as these just wouldn't travel well.
In the eight quarts I've bought since May 8, I have found not one berry that had a blemish or a white top. When I hull them, I remove the green and no more, because there's nothing hard or pithy about any of these.
Seven of the quarts we've eaten as berries. One was served with a dish that Louisvillians call Swedish cream. It's a Bavarian of sorts, resembling a panna cotta - sour cream, cream and a little sugar gelled to the trembling stage with a little gelatin. It's just one variation on strawberries and cream.
Joe Schwartz sells his strawberries for $4 per quart on Saturdays from 8 a.m. until sellout at the Highlands market, 1722 Bardstown Road, and from 3 to 7 p.m. Monday and Thursday at the St. Matthews market, in the rear parking lot of St. Matthews Episcopal Church at Massie Avenue and Hubbards Lane.
But anyone who grows strawberries should have strawberries now; we're heading into peak season.