Mary Ann Fox: Legacy of a Seed Saver

In my role as an inventory technician for the Preservation Collection at Heritage Farm, I encounter the mundane and meaningful in almost equal parts. There’s no reliable rhythm to it. Some days are complete numbers-data tedium, while others are full of gratifying meaning.

My work over the past few weeks has been leaning heavily (in a good way) toward the gratifyingly meaningful. We have in just the past week received at Heritage Farm a large seed collection comprising just over two hundred bean varieties. This collection came to us from Mary Ann Fox, longtime listed member of Seed Savers Exchange from Shelbyville, Indiana, who died this past February at the age of 71. Mary Ann’s relatives, realizing the worth and importance of the collection and having to confront its monumental scope, were especially anxious to identify someone who could not only take the mass of seed off their hands, but who could also find eager stewards of Mary Ann’s seed-saving legacy.

Enter Jim Kelly, SSE member and friend to Mary Ann. Not only did Jim find a temporary storage location for the collection and move the countless plastic seed-filled bottles to the location, he also began imagining ways in which the collection could be shared among seed savers. Eventually Jim contacted Heritage Farm to find out if there were a way the staff here could collaborate and assist. Together, we came up with a plan to distribute Mary Ann’s seed collection at the Seed Savers Exchange 2013 Conference and Campout.

An important step in preparing the collection for distribution is a thorough inventory and labeling of each seed sample. This has been my task over the past few days and will likely take another few days to complete. While the work may seem tedious and mundane to the outside observer, handling these artifacts of Mary Ann’s legacy—noting the care with which she filed and labeled each variety—is a profoundly meaningful “chore.”

Would you like to celebrate and honor Mary Ann’s seed-saving legacy right in your own garden? Will you be attending the July 2013 Conference and Campout? Look for the tent with racks of beautiful bean seeds in clear plastic bottles. I’ll be there with a collection catalog to help you choose the two or three (or four or more!) varieties that you want to take home to your garden. Or just come by to meet and talk with me and other seed savers. There will be great conversations about the ways in which we have all benefited from past seed savers, and you might even be inspired to get more actively involved in seed saving yourself. See you there!

The Garden That Seeds Itself

Part 1: Springtime

"The Story of the Root Children" written by Sibylle Von Olfers was a book I read over and over to my children.  Each spring I am reminded of this tale when my garden is bare, completely void of any life on the surface, with a tremendous plant source lying beneath—the volunteers.

Soon after the first spring rain and the soil warms  I see evidence of life after winter, small sprouts all looking familiar and  similar.  The beauty and challenge of self-seeding annual flowers, herbs and sometimes vegetables is identifying them as volunteers.  Over the years I have learned to recognize the plants by their leaves, the order in which to expect their arrival, and where they reliably decide to grow.  I feel protective of these sprouts because they do not look much different than many weeds at this point.   Most plants are photographed when they are blooming and mature, not when they are just little sprouts.  Below are a few of these root children that I found in May while exploring my garden.  Look for them coming to your garden soon!

I appreciate nature's perfectly designed vignettes, combinations not found in any book or ones I want to compete with... so I don't.  I know 'Grandpa Ott's' morning glory will sprout and grow up the side of the barn, my 'Grandma Einck's' dill will volunteer in front of the 'Kiss-Me-Over-the-Garden-Gate,' the calendulas are fine companions for any plants, 'Love-in-a-Mist' will scatter themselves everywhere knowing they can blend into any group and be just fine. Borage is  in the strawberry patch, 'Outhouse Hollyhock' along the fence, and violets are usually blooming before I even get into the garden.

Visitors sometimes say my garden feels so natural… well it truly is, one that naturally volunteers itself.

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Check back to the blog throughout this summer and autumn for more posts and pictures of my garden.

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Founded in 1975, Seed Savers Exchange operates an 890-acre farm in northeast Iowa where thousands of rare fruit, vegetable, and other plant varieties are regenerated and preserved in a central collection. Its mission is conserving and promoting America’s culturally diverse but endangered food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants. For information visit www.seedsavers.org

Talking Trees Installation at Heritage Farm

Talking Trees is an outdoor sound installation created by Brooke Joyce and Harvey Sollberger.

Talking Trees began as a casual, post-concert conversation between composers Brooke Joyce and Harvey Sollberger in 2009. A shared interest in making music in non-traditional venues was discovered, as well as a love for nature and the wonderful landscape of northeast Iowa. Four years later, we are excited to share the fruits of our labor at the beautiful Seed Savers Heritage Farm.

Our goal is to provide visitors with a sensory experience that compliments rather than overwhelms the natural soundscape. As you walk the southern side of the Valley Trail, you will encounter four large, metal tripods, designed and built by Kelly Ludeking, which contain four small speakers. You’ll hear sounds that were recorded at Seed Savers last May. Each tripod features a single sonic theme:

I. Water

A stream runs parallel to most of the Valley Trail. You’ll hear sounds from this water source, along with raindrops and wind chimes. As the day progresses, the sounds become more resonant and reverberant.

II. Birds

Many varieties of songbirds make their home at Seed Savers. Several are featured in this part of the installation. The bird calls become less frequent and more resonant as the day progresses.

III. Frogs

Elsewhere on the farm are areas favored by frogs, captured here in the twilight hours. As dawn moves to dusk, the frog sounds become more reverberant, spacious, and sustained.

IV. Insects

In particular, chirping crickets and buzzing flies. As time passes, the buzzing becomes more sustained, and we begin to hear a more defined pitch center.

We invite you to wander and linger as you like. Begin by making your way to the Valley Trail, and take the right fork when it branches. The distance from the parking lot to the end of the installation is approximately 1.25 miles and takes about 25 minutes to walk (without stopping).

Throughout the month of May the installation will run every day from 9 a.m. – 7 p.m., rain or shine. If you visit at different times of day, you’ll experience different sounds, as each station in the installation goes through a transformation throughout the 10-hour cycle.

Please share your thoughts, either by writing on the notebook outside the visitors center, or by visiting brookejoyce.com and clicking on “Talking Trees.”

Coinciding with this art installation is an additional exhibit at Heritage Farm, titled "Grassfed." Both art exhibits kick-off on May 4th, accompanied by a rare plant sale from the preservation collection at Seed Savers Exchange. Read about "Grassfed" and the rare plant sale here.

Structural Design by Kelly Ludeking, technical assistance from Bruce Larson (electronics), Dennis Pottratz (solar panel) and Steve Smith (programming).  Technical Information:

• Sound Device: Raspberry Pi, running Linux
• Software: Pure Data
• Solar Panel: SunWize 55W
• Battery: Dura-Start Deep Cycle Marine Battery
• Speakers: Pyle PLMCA20 Motorcycle Speakers

Funding:

• Iowa Arts Council
• Luther College

Special Thanks:

Hugh Livingston, Benji Nichols, Brandon Schmidt and Dan Trueman

The Lillian Goldman Visitors Center at Seed Savers Exchange is open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Weekends 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Directions here.

Join the Facebook event here!

Cow Art. Talking Trees. Rare Plants.

Seed Savers Exchange will host two month-long outdoor art exhibits at Heritage Farm beginning in May.

•  “Grassfed,” by artist Valerie Miller of Steel Cow studio in Waukon, Iowa, features larger than life outdoor portraits of the Ancient White Park Cattle living at Heritage Farm.
• “Talking Trees,” a sound installation by Brooke Joyce from Luther College in Decorah, mixes the sounds of nature with composed music.

Both exhibits will run concurrently through May and are free to the public. These events will premiere on Saturday, May 4, 2013 (10 a.m. - 5 p.m.).  In conjunction with the exhibit opening, Seed Savers Exchange will be offering unique vegetable transplants from the preservation seed bank for sale to the public, on May 4 only. Local chef Justin Scardina from La Rana Bistro will be on site preparing food that day.

Rare Plants

The preservation plant sale, which will consist of hard to find vegetable varieties, will include staff favorites like the deep maroon amaranth ‘Kerala Red,’ a nearly black lettuce ‘Revolution-Evolution,’ a classic mustard known as ‘Myers’ Family Heirloom, and the relentlessly fruitful tomato ‘Tiny Tim Yellow.’  Transplants will be sold for $3 for 3 inch pots, and $4 for 4-packs, available in limited quantities.  SSE staff will also be on hand during the event to answer gardening and seed saving questions.

Cow Art

“Grassfed” is an outdoor exhibition of larger than life canvases by Waukon artist Valerie Miller of Steel Cow Gallery. The exhibit shows Valerie's Ancient White Park 'girls' and 12 of their closest bovine friends. Walk along the trails to view these jumbo prints placed in the pastures at SSE's Heritage Farm. The Ancient White Park cattle, a threatened heritage breed, roamed the British Isles over 2,000 years ago.

Kids of all ages are invited to help Valerie paint an outdoor mural on May 4th.

What is Steel Cow? With a camera around her neck and sketch pad in hand, Valerie Miller stomps around fields and farms all over the world searching out the perfect cows to become one of "the girls” in the Steel Cow collection. Each has her own whimsy, wit and personality, and is branded with either their farm given name or the names of family and friends.  The end result is an image that has the spirit and sweetness of each cow rarely seen by anybody other than the farmer.

Talking Trees

The Iowa Arts Council has awarded a major grant to Luther College associate professor of music Brooke Joyce.  Professor Joyce is using the money to create an outdoor sound installation at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah.

On May 4^th, and throughout the month of May, all ages will be invited to travel to Seed Savers Exchange to experience the outdoor sound installation, "Talking Trees," in which the sounds of nature mingle with music created by composers Brooke Joyce and University of California-San Diego composer-in residence Harvey Sollberger.

The project will provide a walk through the forest that mixes composed music with the natural sounds like rushing water and birds chirping. The type of music and sounds being played will vary according to the time of day and atmospheric conditions.

There will be four or five canopies placed along a trail at Seed Savers Exchange, each equipped with four speakers.  Joyce and Sollberger will power these canopies with solar panels and battery energy.

Both “Grassfed” and “Talking Trees” will be on display at Seed Savers Exchange throughout the month of May.  The Lillian Goldman Visitors Center is open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Weekends 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Directions here.

View, print, and share the May 4 Event Poster.

For more information, contact: Shannon Carmody Seed Savers Exchange shannon@seedsavers.org 563-387-5630

To schedule interviews with the artists or SSE staff, contact: Steve Carlson Seed Savers Exchange steve@seedsavers.org 563-387-5686

Located six miles north of Decorah, Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit membership organization dedicated to the preservation and distribution of heirloom seeds.  Seed Savers maintains a collection of thousands of open pollinated varieties, making it one of the largest non-governmental seed banks in the United States.  For more information, go to seedsavers.org

Apple Grafting to Preserve Diversity

“This apple comes from an old tree at my grandmother’s home, and it is the best apple I have ever tasted.” We hear this story a lot around here, and usually, the story ends like this: “Now the tree is dying, and nobody in the family remembers what variety it is.”

Well, there is only one thing to do, graft! Apples are propagated by grafting a part of the old tree, called scionwood, onto a new rootstock. Grafting is necessary because apple seed produces offspring unlike the parent plant. This propagation technique allows you to determine how large the tree will eventually grow – choose dwarfing rootstocks for a small backyard or a large pot on a patio, or graft onto a standard rootstock to grow a full-sized tree that will survive generations.

Join us and learn this ancient skill by attending one of SSE’s bench grafting workshops held on April 5 and April 12, 2014 (editors note: registration is now closed). Attendees will go home with three heritage apple varieties and the skills to start their own orchard. Workshops are led by Seed Savers Exchange orchard manager and apple historian Dan Bussey, who is nearing completion of his book documenting all of the named apple varieties grown in North America since the 1600s.

Listen to Dan Bussey's talk, "Our Apple Heritage," here.

View a short video introduction to apple grafting from Dan:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37KdQHL9koo[/youtube]

View a past SSE webinar on apple grafting here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mujxy4MG8wA[/youtube]

Distributing Diversity

Typical February Day in the Seed House

Around this time of year people ask us questions about what we do here at Heritage Farm during the "off season." Well first of all, just because the farm is buried in snow and closed to visitors from December to March does not mean it's the "off season." Though all Seed Savers Exchange departments are running full-throttle during these winter months, no one is quite as busy as our seed house staff.

As many of our members and supporters are aware, these are the months to plan your garden. The most important part of that planning process (and arguably the most exciting) is choosing your seeds. To give you a glimpse of what it takes to get those precious seeds from us to you, we documented what goes on behind-the-scenes in our seed house.

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If you haven't already, visit our online store to select the seeds for your garden today!

Evaluation Program Highlights for 2012

The Evaluation Program

Maintaining and distributing unique heirloom and open-pollinated seeds is the primary goal of the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) gene bank. The Evaluation Program is an important link between maintaining varieties at Heritage Farm and getting them into the hands of gardeners, chefs, and farmers.

The Evaluation Program, which is only three years old, was started with the financial support from people like you. The program allows us to collect data on a variety’s traits throughout its life cycle. This data includes characteristics such as plant height, flower color, days to maturity, and fruit size.

• In 2012 staff recorded more than 40,000 evaluation descriptors on over 1,000 different accessions.

Bringing Back Food Culture

The program also evaluates culinary usage—incredibly important in a world of unsustainable eating and forgotten food cultures. Modern fruits and vegetables bred for shipping and uniformity lack the diversity seen in heirloom varieties—like beets, potatoes, cabbages, and apples that store for months in a root cellar; horticultural beans harvested between the snap and dry bean phases for their higher protein content; and melons best suited for baking. The forgotten traits in these varieties are the building blocks to a sustainable food system.

The information collected through the evaluation program serves several purposes. It allows us to:

• Increase our knowledge about each variety and make that information available to gardeners.
• Make informed management decisions about the collection by developing a comprehensive profile of each accession.
• Reintroduce unique and rare varieties into the marketplace.

From the Preservation Gardens

For the first time ever, Seed Savers Exchange is offering a collection of varieties ‘From the Preservation Gardens’ in our catalog this year. These varieties were selected because of their interesting histories, unique characteristics, and popularity with staff—a direct result of the Evaluation Program.

• Join us in our efforts to preserve our garden heritage for future generations to come. With your financial support for the Evaluation Program, we can rediscover our food culture—one variety at a time.

A tax-deductible donation to Seed Savers Exchange will help us continue to maintain genetic diversity through projects like the Evaluation Program. Support our effort by making a donation or becoming a member online today, or call us at (563) 382-5990 (M-F, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm Central Time).

Thank you for your support,

John Torgrimson Executive Director

P.S. Donate $150 or more before December 31, 2012 and receive a free Seed Savers Exchange 2013 Calendar, which offers a beautiful glimpse of nature's seed bounty at Heritage Farm near Decorah, Iowa, where every seed has a story to tell.

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2012 Evaluation Highlights

Horticultural Beans (Shelling Beans)

Eating beans from the pod, when the beans are fully expanded but not yet dry, is becoming a lost culinary tradition in America. The plump, wet, beans do not store well, and they are difficult to shell mechanically because the tender beans cannot tolerate rough handling. For these reasons, shelling beans have been shunned by industrial agriculture. However, the flavor is rich and shelling beans are richer in nutrients than dry beans. We added a horticultural bean taste test to our 2012 bean evaluation and found that most beans taste good as shelling beans, and some taste really good! Many that performed well in our taste test were not necessarily known as shelling beans historically. For example, “Bessie” (Bean 6042) has been passed down maternally in Frances Sullivan’s family for over a century, each generation using it primarily as a green bean for fresh eating and canning.

Tomato 324 ‘D. Jena Lee’s Golden Girl’

This variety really caught our attention in the 2012 taste test. We described it as having “excellent robust flavor, sweet and slightly tart, low-medium acidity, firm and meaty texture but still juicy, great as a slicing tomato.” Curious about the variety, we investigated its history and discovered that it is mis-named in our collection and should be called “Djena Lee’s Golden Girl.” We are not the first to notice its outstanding flavor. It is promoted by Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, and won the Chicago Fair’s taste test 10 years in a row in the 1920s and 1930s. Though historically, women played a central role in developing and improving varieties in America’s gardens, Djena Lee was one of the few female plant breeders who enjoyed recognition for her efforts in early 20th century America.

Kohlrabi 44 ‘Giant Czechoslovakian’

Most kohlrabi reach market maturity in 50-60 days and quickly become woody if left in the field. For that reason, we complete our market mature evaluation at 60 days. One variety in our evaluation grow-out, ‘Giant Czechoslovakian,’ did not form a kohlrabi head at 60 days. We thought it did not care for the spring weather. But in our fall grow-out of the same varieties, it again produced no stem-swelling at 60 days. We began to question whether it was really a kohlrabi, or if our seed-stock was compromised by crossing with another Brassica oleracea. We researched similarly named varieties in commercial catalogs, promoted as a 130 day maturity kohlrabi that does not get woody even when large. Then we went back to the long-forgotten spring planting and found enormous kohlrabis! Harvested at 176 days, they tasted great!

 Squash 5080 ‘Dostal Cucumber’ Squash

This squash’s oblong shape, size, and dark green mature color make it look somewhat like a cucumber. A staff favorite as a winter squash, this year we evaluated this pepo squash as a summer squash as well.  To our surprise, ‘Dostal’ turned out to be a favorite 2012 summer squash - with its dense flesh and mildly sweet flavor. It went on to win accolades again in the 2012 winter squash taste evaluation for its buttery, smooth texture and complex, rich flavor. ‘Dostal’ has proven that we cannot make assumptions about the versatile varieties in our collection based on the limitations of more modern, highly specialized varieties.

Debunking the Hybrid Myth

At the Seed Savers Exchange Conference this summer, Dr. John Navazio 's talk, "Debunking the Hybrid Myth," laid out the hybrid vs. open-pollinated argument.  Here's a peek at John's speech, the whole speech is available here.  Also, check out Dr. Navazio's new book, The Organic Seed Grower, due out in December.

Why are hybrids favored?

• Once the parental inbreds are fixed it is easy to make the hybrids year after year.  You have two parental types and you cross them.
• You can maintain those two homogeneous, very uniform parental types, and every time you want to make some new hybrid seed just plant it out in the field, detassle one, and let the other one make pollen.  They’ve been inbred so much they’re very easy to maintain, unlike OP’s that have all that variation. You're seed savers, you’ve seen it, right?  Once you've inbred them you’ve basically made it so genetically narrow that you’ll see that the variation is gone.  Two uniform parents make a uniform hybrid.
• Companies liked it because hybrids allowed instant proprietary ownership. If you maintained your own inbreds and didn’t give it to anybody else you were the only one that could make that ‘Copper Cross’ hybrid and sell it.  Whereas, previously, if you were Ferry Morse and released ‘Detroit Dark Red’ in 1902, within three years every home garden, farmer, and seed company in America had ‘Detroit Dark Red.’ Owners of seed companies loved this little trick, this little wizardry, and the breeders liked it because of the stacking of traits it is actually easier to breed hybrids.

What are the disadvantages of hybrids?

• Inbred lines are genetically narrow and have less adaptation over time than many OP's.  That’s why so many of them died from inbreeding depression.  You reveal these deleterious traits and narrow their genetic base so much that they’re not adapting and evolving like our older varieties were at the hands of the humans who kept them.  In fact, in studies of inbred lines they found that the best inbred lines tend to have less of McClintock’s transposable elements which meant they stayed stable much easier and are the reason the companies loved them so much.   It’s anti-evolutionary.
• Hybrids are weaklings.  When you grow inbred seed, and I worked at a company where I grew inbred seed, you have to pour on the chemicals, use more water, more fertility, you really do have to baby them.  They are prima donnas.
• F1’s focus is often not on the best traits.  They’re really focused on the traits that are good for the centralized systems, where we do high input agriculture.  It’s the wedding of modern reductionist science and high input, high output.  That’s not the way Mother Nature normally works.  Vandana Shiva talks about how the focus of science has been reductionist, and it’s all about how can we figure out the input to get exactly what we need to get the right output.  At that point you are taking a lot of nature out of the system and the new variation that gives us all of the diversity that we honor so much here today just doesn’t show up as much.
• When you save seed from the hybrids, they don’t breed true, and when varieties are dropped they are gone!  You don’t save seed from hybrids, although there’s always an exception to the rule.
• Seed growing has become very centralized and very specialized.  A hundred years ago all farmers had knowledge of how to grow seed for most of their top line crops.  If you want to talk about loss of diversity, we have lost the people who know how to grow seed.  This is as tragic as losing the genetic variation itself.

What are the advantages of open-pollinated varieties?  

• They carry variability, and this results in genetic resilience.
• OP varieties can be bred to be tough in all stages.  We can select for that in all stages.  You can do that with hybrids too, but it’s easier if you have that built in resilience.
• They can be very regionally adapted and continue or always will be adapting year in and year out.  We need things like that right now, we’re going through this climate chaos, and so is everyone that I speak to all over the country.
• When you save seed they do breed true, if you followed your isolation, of course.
• Varieties are not lost due to a business decision.  Many of the farmers I work with actually went back to OPs' because they were sick and tired of seed companies dropping hybrid varieties that they’d actually come to know and love and learn to cater their system too.  All of the sudden it is gone one day.

What are the disadvantages of OP’s?  

• They are genetically variable, and not always consistent. I don’t know if any of you get frustrated on the garden scale of not getting as much uniformity as perhaps you would like - some cabbage plants don’t really make a head or something like that.  But we can also take advantage of this if we do our selection and upkeep, and learn how to foster that adaptation.
• They are harder to maintain.  I can attest to that having bred both hybrid and OP's.  It’s much harder to breed something that’s genetically resilient, while keeping in enough variability to keep it strong, and enough selection to make it uniform.  It’s a real paradox, how will I get a uniform enough variety but keep the variability?
• How do seed companies keep varieties exclusive?  If we’re just growing OP’s anyone can go and grow it.   That’s a biggie. And the question that I ask all the seed growers I work with is, "What is the incentive for you to proceed if there is no business incentive?"

Harvest Fest & Soup Recipes

Despite the gloomy weather, Harvest Festival was a cozy event under the post and beams of Heritage Farm’s old barn.  Nearly 300 attendees sampled dozens of different antique apple varieties, heirloom beans, and fragrant roasted garlic.  Tasting over 26 varieties of apples in one place was truly a unique experience.  Apple expert Dan Bussey commented, “I am always amazed that there is no one favorite apple, some visitors really didn’t like Black Gilliflower, one of my favorites.  Taste is so subjective, just another reason this diversity is so important.”

Area chefs Jim McCaffrey from McCaffrey’s Dolce Vita, Justin Scardina from La Rana, Mattias Kriemelmeyer from the Oneota Community Coop, and Stephen Larson from Quarter/QUARTER, went head to head in a soup cook-off featuring heirloom garlic varieties.  Chef Stephen Larson from Quarter/QUARTER was this winner.  Check out his winning recipe, or better yet, head over to his restaurant.

Garlic Insanity!!!

©Stephen Larson and QUARTER/quarter Restaurant LLC

Makes about 10 – 12 ounce servings

 For the soup:

• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 pound new crop garlic, cloves separated, peeled and crushed
• 1 1/2 pounds fresh oyster mushrooms (or substitute button mushrooms), divided
• 2 pounds fresh sweet corn kernels (or use frozen), divided
• 1/2 pound yellow fleshed potatoes (like Yukon Gold), peeled and cut into small chunks
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon Sriracha hot pepper sauce
• 6 cups corn cob stock (or use vegetable or chicken stock, or water)
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Reggiano Parmesan cheese

Directions:  Melt the butter in a large soup pot over low heat.  Add the garlic then cook it over VERY LOW heat, stirring occasionally, until very lightly golden (about 1 hour).  Meanwhile, trim the stems from the oyster mushrooms and reserve.  Set aside 6 ounces of the mushroom caps for the garnish then add the rest of the caps to the reserved stems.  Once the garlic is done cooking, add the reserved mushrooms stems and cap mixture, 1 1/2 pounds of the corn kernels, salt, sugar, pepper sauce and stock to the soup pot and bring to a boil over high heat.  Once it has come to a boil, turn the heat down to medium and simmer for 20 minutes (or until the potatoes are very soft).  Meanwhile, make the garnish.  When the soup is done simmering, stir in the cream and cheese then blend in batches on high speed until smooth, passing each batch though a fine strainer, to remove the corn skins, into another pot.  Continue below to finish.

For the garnish and to finish the dish:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• Reserved oyster mushroom caps, cut into julienne
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
• Reserved 1/2 pound of corn kernels

Directions:  Put the butter into a large skillet over high heat.  When the butter is melted, add the mushrooms and rosemary, and continue to cook over high heat until the mushrooms are lightly colored.  Add the corn and continue to cook until just tender.  Stir into the blended soup and serve hot.

Or try this one from Chef Jim McCaffrey:

Roasted Garlic, Braebern Apple, Sharp Cheddar Cheese Soup

• 1 Head garlic
• Kosher salt
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 Carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 Onion, chopped
• 6 Tbl flour
• 2 braebern apples, deseeded and cut into eighths
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
• 1 Tbl Dijon mustard
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 4 oz. can green chile, chopped
• Salt to taste.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cut tip end of garlic off.  Rub open garlic in kosher salt and sprinkle with olive oil.  Wrap with aluminum foil and bake in oven for forty five minutes. Take cloves out of paper.  Add ¼ cup olive oil to large sauté pan. Saute celery, onions, and carrots until carrots are soft. Add flour and stir it in until slightly browned. Add  garlic cloves. Puree in food processor. Add to large pot. Add two tbl olive oil  to sauté pan and sauté apples until soft.  Puree and add to pot. Add broth and bring to a gentle boil. Turn heat to low and add cream and cheese. When cheese is melted, add remaining ingredients and stir. Enjoy!