Farm Bulletin: Response to a Reader

Under normal circumstances I don't post reader comments, but in this case I felt contributor Anthony Boutard's response to the question about short-straw grains, from his previous post about the durum wheat he grows at Ayers Creek Farm, was important to understanding the whole story.

A reader commented:

I read a book recently that said the short straw varieties were specifically developed for warm climates like Mexico and India where rust is a serious problem. In your climate I'm guessing it's a wash.

Anthony Boutard responded:

Often the second half of a story is left out to create a myth, this is especially true with respect to the “Green Revolution.”* Short-straw grains allow fungicidal sprays to penetrate into the planting more effectively, and that is one of the reasons they are favored. In the spring, spray buggies douse the field to control rust and tall plants would make it hard to get the penetration needed for effective control of the disease. Outside of organic systems, rust is managed by fungicides.

Pesticide spraying rig.

Tolerance for rusts in grains is genetic and I see no evidence that it is linked to straw length. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. Next spring, take a moment and see where the rust and other fungal diseases develop in the grain field. It is in the low areas where airflow is impeded. You can easily see the yellowing of the plants in these patches.

The problem with short-straw grains in an organic setting is the rain splashes soil and fungal inoculum onto the leaves and they take longer to dry out in the morning. Rust inoculum that blows into the field can thrive on the wet leaves and stems. Modern varieties are shin high, right in the splash zone. The durum, wheat and barley we grow are over waist high, so the foliage is well out of the splash zone. They do well in an organic setting. Bear in mind, these long-straw small grains have been grown successfully for eight millennia or more without employing a chemical arsenal. That is why we favor them.

Aerial spraying of pesticides.

The pernicious nature of spraying was driven home when we were planting melons and a neighbor sprayed his wheat field. As the buggy passed by, the brown ground spiders exited in a mass, crawling over our hands and legs. Thousands and thousands of refugees, an indelible moment, along with the chemical stench of the insecticide.

Unfortunately, pushing short-straw grain varieties that require heavy use of chemical inputs including fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides and herbicides have damaged the health of farmers and ecosystems, especially in countries such as India and Mexico with lax environment controls. The Bhopal disaster was the result of a factory producing carbaryl, the insecticide marketed as Sevin.

Read more about legislative attempts to regulate spraying of pesticides in Oregon.

* Top photo shows an agricultural worker spraying pesticide on a short straw variety in India. These varieties require heavy use of expensive industrial pesticides (note the worker is unprotected from the spray). Often the seeds were genetically modified patented varieties, so farmers could not save the seeds from their crops as they had for millenia, and were forced to buy new seed every year or face prosecution.

Farm Bulletin: Return to Durum

James Robinson, an organic dairy farmer in Cumbria, recently wrote that farmers are always playing the long game. A female calf born today will not enter his milking herd for two years, and it will be two years after that before she will return much profit to the farm. Anthony and Carol Boutard have been developing varieties of organic corn, grains and other crops at Ayers Creek Farm, a process that can take several years before they'll know whether it fits their rigorous requirements. 

Sixteen years ago, we started growing durum, also known as hard amber wheat, for making parched green wheat, or frikeh. The original Economic Botany paper that described the process specified durum, so we abided. Durum is used for couscous, bulgur, fregula, tarhana and flatbreads, and is grown extensively in the Middle East and India. It is the region’s grain at hand, which explains its incidental use as a parched grain. The variety we were growing at the time had a short straw, so the heads were hard to harvest by hand, and it also turned out to be very susceptible to the strain of wheat rust that spread through the valley five years later. We abandoned the durum and started using a soft red wheat, which is a very long straw or tall variety, and resistant to that strain of rust. As we were parching the heads before maturation of the grain, the protein structure of the mature grain was unimportant. Still, we really loved the durum. A couple of years ago, we tried a different strain of durum and it has grown nicely.

Durum wheat at Ayers Creek Farm.

Botanically, durum is a cultivated species developed from wild emmer wheat, about 7,000 years ago. It is a very different beast from the hard and soft bread wheats, which were developed from wild einkorn and two other grass species. Durum and emmer have four copies of their seven chromosomes, and thus are termed a tetraploid species. Bread wheat and spelt have six copies, or hexaploid. Corn is a simple diploid. In the case of durum and bread wheat, the ploidy level simply points to two different ancestries. Although durum has higher protein content, those proteins do not produce as strong a dough as bread wheat. For this reason, it is used for pastas and flatbreads.

The milling fragrance and quality of durum are distinct as well. Because the grain is so hard, it does not mill to a flour using a traditional stone mill. Instead, the stones yield a semolina which we pass through a #26 bolt, removing most of the bran. For comparison, our cornmeal passes through #14 bolt. All foods have a standard of identity that is defined by the Food and Drug Administration under 21CFR137. Cornmeal must pass through a #12 bolt. Farina and semolina are defined as the fraction that passes through a #20 bolt. Flour is the fraction that passes through a #70 bolt. Consequently, our semolina and cornmeal are slightly finer than called for in their standards of identity. Before the development of wire cloth, sieves were made from loosely woven hemp, linen, cotton and silk. The bolt number is number of threads per inch, and silk produced the finest bolts. Mesh and bolt are synonymous, but we prefer the historical reference to a bolt of fabric, even though we now use sieves made of stainless steel wire.

La Faneuse by Émile Claus, 1896.

Our current durum strain is a much taller plant than the earlier sort, so we have a backup for parching if needed. We suspect it is also a much older strain. One of the key features of “green revolution” grains was reduction of straw length. When draft animals powered agriculture, the straw was as valuable as the grain. Long straw is also easier to scythe, then gather and stack (shock). The gathering and bundling of the plants was a task traditionally carried out by women and children. The captivating and sympathetic paintings of Émile Claus (1849-1924) and Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844 to 1925) document the structure of field economy and society at the time. The early farmers in the west had neither labor nor machinery to harvest and transport the grain. Instead, they would “hog out” the grain by turning swine into the field and shipping the animals or cured hams.

Short straw varieties move through the combine more efficiently and are less prone to falling over (lodging) under heavy applications of fertilizers. On our farm, we appreciate the long straw because it is a good source of organic matter for crops following the grain and efficiency is not a hallmark of our endeavor anyway. We have also observed that the taller grains have fewer disease problems, possibly because of better air movement in the field as the leaves are higher above the ground. Carol has been using the milled durum in her sourdoughs at about 10 to 15 percent. It lends a pleasant sweetness to the bread as well as a moister crumb. Durum is also used to make Indian flatbreads such as chapati.

Read Anthony's response to a reader's question about short-straw wheat, pesticides and the Green Revolution.

Top: Harvest by Léon Augustin Lhermitte, 1874.

Guest Essay: A Grain of Wheat

There's the old saw that the best way to teach kids to swim is to toss them into the deep end of the pool. While I may not agree with that theory (Hello…Red Cross swimming lessons???), the idea of learning by doing is a good one. So when my friend, hunter, forager and author Hank Shaw, found wheat growing in his yard, he decided to see what it took to grow, harvest, thresh, winnow and grind his own flour.

“I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” - John 12:24

How little we consider the grains that sustain us.

Tiny seeds that contain within them the power to change humanity, and by so doing render themselves almost invisible in their ubiquity. By the time The Gospel of John was written, somewhere around 70 AD, wheat, rice, barley, rye, millet, and, here in the Western Hemisphere, corn, had already dictated our existence for eight millennia.

Grain, or more accurately dependence on grain, is what separated farmers from foragers, Jacob from Esau. Grains underpin civilization: portable, easily renewable, nutritionally dense foods that can be grown in surplus and stored—or kept from those the holder deems unworthy.

Every culture that tamed a grain, although it could easily be argued that the grains tamed us, has held that grain sacred. In Japan, there is a saying that each grain of rice contains 88 souls, and to waste one is a sin. Similar proverbs exist all over the world.

So how did grain fall from sacred to commonplace? To become something tossed about without thought, wasted, even scorned?

I have been guilty of all of this. And chances are, so have you. I can distinctly remember times when I’ve thoughtlessly poured several cups of flour into a bowl to dust a piece or fish or schnitzel, then tossed the vast majority of it into the trash when I finished. It’s just flour, right?

Well, yes. But then, one day, I decided to make flour.

I started with acorn flour. Why? Well, I am a forager living in California. Here, the native people relied not on grain for their daily starch, but on flour made from acorns. California acorns have the decided advantage of being large — sometimes three inches long in the case of the Valley oak. And, again in the case of the Valley oak, these acorns can be low in tannins, and plentiful. Very plentiful. One old mother tree can drop a literal ton of acorns in a good year.

Making flour from acorns requires that you leach out the tannins first. You do this by shelling the acorns, breaking them up into small bits and soaking them in multiple changes of water. It is a lengthy, but not difficult process. (If you are interested, here are my directions for making acorn flour) When your acorns are no longer bitter, you must then dry them and grind once more to get flour.

When I did this, I became acutely aware of how much work this all was. How precious this flour truly is. I do my best not to waste a teaspoonful.

But acorns are not grains. Grains, by definition, are the seeds from grasses. They offer a distinct advantage in that they are annual. If my village is dependent on a grove of oak trees, many of which may be a century old, and you come and burn down my oaks, my village starves. But I can hide a sack of grain seeds in a hole. And when marauders have burned everything and left, I can replant, and, in a year, rebuild. From one seed comes many grains of wheat.

As it happens, I got a chance to see this first hand. No, marauders did not come to my house and burn down my oak trees. Rather, my yard became an impromptu wheat field.

Holly [Heyser, Hank's partner in crime] bands doves for the state fish and wildlife department. To do so, she is given bags of mixed grain to bait them into a live trap, so she can capture the doves, band them and let them go. Apparently doves vastly prefer safflower to wheat, because when the rains came in October this past year, it was wheat that began to grow in our yard. Lots of it.

I became determined to harvest this wheat. I had no idea what the yield might be, nor did I care. I wanted to see what it actually takes to harvest a grain of wheat.

In late spring I began with green wheat, called freekeh or farik in North Africa. You harvest it when the grain heads are fully grown, but the plant still holds moisture; typically when it begins to yellow.

Now if you’ve seen a wheat grain head in all its glory, it is a beautiful sight. You can see why gatherers all those millennia ago would want them. Large seeds (for a grass) that are, relatively speaking, easy to collect and remove.

I gathered a mess of green wheat and set the sheaves on a steel plate. To make farik, you then set them on fire briefly to burn away the little spikes on the grain heads, and to parch the seeds a bit. You then let all this dry in the sun for a day or two, which makes it far easier to thresh and winnow your wheat—literally separating the wheat from the chaff.

Read how Hank threshed his wheat. Read how Hank winnowed his wheat. And read one of the very practical reasons our ancestors may have ground their grains into flour.

Top photo by Holly Heyser; the rest by Hank Shaw.

Farm Bulletin: Lammas, Chesters and Garlic

This week the farm gets into full swing with the appearance of the Chesters, the pride of the Wapato Valley, and contributor Anthony Boutard and his wife, Carol, are busy with deliveries, visitors and getting ready for the market.

Thursday marked Lammas Day, the day of the loaf mass. The mass celebrates the first loaf baked from the new wheat harvest. The wheat harvest was a time consuming effort involving all members of the community, from the elderly to young children, each playing a specific role. The grain could be cut at maturity and raked into cocks like hay, but more commonly wheat and other small grains were scythed just shy of maturity, at the hard dough stage, bundled in sheathes and tied (top photo). The sheathes were carefully stacked for shocking. The structure of the shock varied by region and environmental factors. There were round shocks, capped shocks and Dutch shocks for very wet areas. Shocked grain was easier to thresh as it pulled away slightly from the hull as it dried, and had better color. In the more remote regions of the west, barley and wheat were also "hogged off" by turning pigs into the field, pork being easier to transport than grain. The combine eliminated the shock as a form of regional architecture.

For those of us with a background in tree and other woody plants, Lammas growth is the second growth of shoots that takes place in midsummer, sometimes in response to hail or some other damaging event. In our climate it not a problem, we sometimes encourage it with summer pruning, but in colder areas Lammas growth may fail to harden off properly and suffers frost damage.

Chester blackberries.

We are a bit tardy on our wheat harvest, but it is not that we have been loafing around as will be abundantly clear when we arrive at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market this Sunday. Following ancient practice, the market opens with the chime of a bell at 10:00 AM, or thereabouts.

Coincident with the Lammas, Jeff Fairchild, the produce buyer for New Seasons Market, visited the farm on the first of August as Carol was making the first round of deliveries to the various New Seasons stores. Josh Alsberg, the Produce manager at Food Front, has also visited us many times. As members of the co-op, we are one his many of bosses, and when he sells lots of our berries, no only do the stores pay us, but we also get a better patronage check. Some deal. Buffy Rhoades of Pastaworks put in her order as well, and we are waiting for her to visit us someday. Fortunately, all of these stores carry the Chesters, so there is no need to get cut short midweek, stuck with a bunch of grumpy Chester lovers bemoaning your lack of foresight. We enjoy working with Jeff, Josh, Buffy and their staff. As they say in fair Gaston, "Chester, it's the blackberry people ask for by name."

We will also have a good supply of Triple Crowns on hand. The season is shorter for this variety, and they are in the top of their form this week.

Garlic pre-Carol.

In addition to the berries, we will haul in our last Imperial Epineuse prunes. Next week, the green-fleshed plums will take over for a spell. This is the likely the last week we will haul in the preserves, popcorn and dry beans for a while. Real estate in the van is getting scarce and fresh fruits and vegetables need the space. We will have frikeh. Good looking heads of lettuce and the very first Opo fruits of the Ayers Creek Pepo Project will be added to the mix. More on the ACPP later.

Oh yes, a bit of garlic and shallots as well. Carol spends a lot of time prettying up the garlic, limiting how much we can bring to the market. Yes, it looks lovely, but it will soon be stripped of its blushing raiment so another voice might ask why not let the customer decide whether they want to buy pretty garlic, or just rip off the field covering and enjoy its lusty flavor. If you are disappointed because the last pretty garlic has left the basket and your next meal will be a little less satisfying, tell us whether a dull bulb would meet your culinary needs just as well. The author is spoiling for dismissal and will leave it at that.

Photo of wheat by Curt Weinhold from The Tosefta Blog.

GMO Wheat in Oregon: Monsanto says, "Huh?"

It's a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself. Ten years after a strain of Monsanto's so-called "Round-Up Ready" wheat was tested in Oregon (Wait, you didn't know that?) the same strain of the wheat, which was abandoned by the company and was said to have been completely destroyed, has been found in an Eastern Oregon farmer's field.

Subsequently, Japan, which bans "organisms modified by modern biotechnology (living modified organisms)," has summarily canceled existing and future orders for NW wheat. Other countries are threatening to do the same in what could amount to a blow to Oregon's wheat crop valued at between $300 million and $500 million dollars.

What does Monsanto have to say in its defense? Well, it's floated accusations of "industrial sabotage" by unnamed parties, but basically, as Stephen Colbert quotes in the clip above, it says "it is completely mystified by the appearance of the wheat."

In the meantime, I'm going looking for my deerstalker and Calabash.

Farm Bulletin: Wheat Fruits

If you're like me and have been confused about wheat, corn and whether to soak beans or just cook them and get it over with, contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm has the answer for you. So stick with this one, read it all the way through, and all will be revealed.

Not too many years ago, the term "wheat berry" slipped into the culinary lexicon, probably from the purveyors of sugary breakfast material. We know it is a lost cause, but as berry and wheat growers, it still sticks in our craw. Not only is there nary a trace of resemblance between a kernel of wheat and a berry, but it has also displaced two very good words to describe the food: wheat kernels and wheat grains. They are part of our language. We talk about a "grain of truth" or a "kernel of truth," never a "berry of truth." Ah, but as so often happens, there is grain of truth in the term, even though it obviously seeped out of some sort of crude marketing scheme now lost to memory. Both berries and wheat kernels are types of fruit.

A flint corn kernel split the same way as the wheat at top, with the embryo at the bottom. The lighter band of cells just under the skin is the aleurone layer.

The wheat kernel (top, with the relatively small embryo at the left) is a fruit characteristic of the grasses. Kernels of corn, millet, barley and wheat, and the seed you sow to grow a lawn, are all a fruit called a caryopsis. But, you aver, fruits are seeds surrounded by pulpy flesh, often sweet and delectable, and wheat looks just like a seed. Actually, a fruit is the ovary tissue that remains with the seed after it detaches from the mother plant, whether it is fleshy, pulpy or dry. The outer part of the wheat kernel, called the bran, or the pericarp among botanists, is actually the remains of the plant's ovary tissue that has dried, forming a hard protective coat. Inside the thin pericarp lies the seed itself. If you look very closely, the fruit of wheat has a characteristic shock of white bristles at the top of kernel.

If you soak a kernel of any grain for a day or so and, when it is soft, slice it lengthwise with a razor, you can easily see the various parts of the caryopsis with a hand lens or a microscope. I have found the macro setting on a digital camera with good resolution is a very useful microscope. As noted, the pericarp forms the outer skin. Inside, there a single layer of relatively large cells that looks almost as if someone drew a thin line just inside the pericarp. Called the aleurone, it is the outermost layer of the endosperm tissue. The kernel has a vault of food contained within the endosperm, and the aleurone layer provides the enzymes, the keys, needed to unlock the food. Inside of the aleurone is the starchy part of the endosperm. It is mostly starch with some protein and oils in the mix. This part of the endosperm contains the food necessary to grow a root in order to provide water and minerals to the growing plant, and a leaf to start the process of making sugars from the sun. Just add water, and life hastens again. Even when it is dormant, a seed is living and respiring, and this why seeds gradually loose their viability. Some after a year, some after a decade or more.

At the base of kernel lies the embryo, or germ as it is known to millers. This fatty bit of tissue is a fully assembled plant ready to grow roots and leaves. The first leaf is fully grown. Called the scutellum, and this leaf remains pressed against the endosperm, never to see the light of day. The scutellum is unique to the grasses, and its primary role is to absorb the nutrients released from the endosperm as rapidly as possible, and transfer them to the growing roots and leaves. Most of the fats in the kernel are in the scutellum. All plants except orchids produce endosperm cells. In most plants, the endosperm is absorbed by the embryo and stored in the seed leaves cotyledons. The two halves of the chickpeas are the seed leaves that absorbed the endosperm.

When cooking mature grains and pulses, such as wheat or beans, we always recommend soaking them overnight. Yes, this requires a modicum of planning and foresight. Some people resist and just cook them, or haul out the heavy metal in the form of a pressure cooker. True, if the grains or beans are fresh, you can soften them and render an edible food. But this impatience and lack of finesse means a less flavorful bean or grain in our experience.

Why is that, you might ask? Allowing the plant's own enzymes to work on the starches and proteins for a day or so, and starting the process of breaking down the starches and proteins naturally, makes for a more tender and sweeter grain or bean. Moreover, in many of the seeds, complex compounds are released into the surrounding soil during germination that are not always good to eat. The compounds may be protective in function, or serve as attractants to root fungi. You can smell and taste these compounds in the soaking water, and decide whether they will enrich your life. The only beans we cook in the soaking water are black turtles. One silly notion often floated out there is that soaking leaches out the minerals. This idea that nutrients pour out of a germinating seed willy nilly makes no sense at all, but is repeated endlessly. As noted, some of the compounds actively released by the seed are best poured down the sink.

Frikeh in the Making

An excellent video just out from my friends Rebecca and Fred Gerendasy at Cooking Up a Story with a great explanation of how frikeh is made. Plus you get to see contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm in action, a rare treat.

Great Grain

With the weather creeping toward summerlike, I'm thinking more about cool salads and picnics in a park, not to mention easy but impressive side dishes I can take to potluck dinners. This recipe for farro salad fits all those categories, and is perfect for any vegetarians in the crowd. And yes, I've posted this recipe before, but it's just so good I have to share it again.

Farro & Pecorino Salad
From Luan Schooler

1 c. whole grain Farro
Salted water
4 oz. good aged pecorino, cut into little cubes
1 c. halved cherry tomatoes
1/4 c. oil-cured olives, pitted & chopped roughly
A handful of basil leaves
6 tablespoons (more or less) of good, full flavored olive oil
Salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste

Cook the farro in the salted water at a bare simmer until just tender. Drain well and spread on a baking sheet to cool (or, if you're in a hurry, run under cold water and drain thoroughly). Gently combine the farro, cheese, tomatoes and olives. Drizzle with olive oil—start with about 4 tablespoons, let it sit a few minutes, taste and add some more if it seems dry. Tear basil leaves and fold into salad, then season with salt and pepper to taste.

Farm Bulletin: Planning for Winter

The Hillsdale Farmers' Market is one of two year-round markets in the area, the other being People's Farmers' Market in SE Portland. Anthony and Carol Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm have been stalwarts of the Hillsdale winter market since its inception.

When we first started farming here, autumn marked the time to wind down and put the fields to bed. That changed in July 2003 when Hallie Mittelman, with barely a season under her belt as a market manager, asked a few of us if we would consider growing crops for a winter market. We immediately dusted off the seed catalogues and got to work. Almost all of our crops are sown directly into the ground, and we have nothing under cover. In November, we will start our fifth winter season of harvesting purely field grown winter greens and roots. It is wonderful to see the verdant patches of winter crops offsetting the senescence of the summer crops.

A few years ago, we got a call from someone at OSU [Oregon State University]. They were putting on a conference panel dealing with season extension. The person told us they heard we harvested greens through the winter, and asked us what type of hoop houses and season extensions we employed. We explained that we used variety selection and diversity to grow through the winter, and had nothing under plastic. The person curtly responded that the panel was looking at structure options for season extension. We feel promotion of hoop houses is overdone, and an unnecessary capital expense in the Willamette Valley. We also know the greens are better when bathed gently in the moist Pacific rains, rather than sequestered indoors where they need to be watered.

The strictly field grown approach is not risk free. Each year, the mix is different, reflecting challenges and opportunities that happened months earlier. Unfortunately, shortly after the first planting of chicories, we had that nasty heat wave that literally steamed the emerging chicory seedlings. Second planting looks good, but a tad late. On the other hand, the mustards and turnips fared much better, as we planted them just as the flea beetle infestation ebbed. Sweet potatoes, corn and beans are all in good shape, but winter squash will be short. It is the summer heat, or lack thereof, that influences the winter harvest. For the most part, the plants take the winter in stride.

For the next month, we will be scurrying around planting durum, barley, wheat, garlic and favas, all to be harvested after the 2009 summer solstice.

* * *

Until then, Anthony leaves us with a recipe for those piles of tomatoes you may still have around:

Moroccan Tomato Soup
Here is our version of the classic tomato soup of Morocco. It is closer to a perfumed salad.

Take 3 to 5 pounds of tomatoes and run through a food mill. We use a mix of paste and slicers. Shoot for about six to eight cups of tomato pulp. The original recipe suggested peeling and de-seeding them first, but it is only necessary if you use a food processor. Put a quarter cup or so of olive oil in a pan and heat very gently. Add three or four cloves of minced garlic and cook until transparent. Add 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin and 2 teaspoons of ground coriander and cook until they foam slightly. If the spices or garlic burn, which happens in a thrice, discard and repeat. You want to warm the spices to make a fragrant oil. Add 2 tablespoons of paprika. Turn off the heat and stir gently for a few more moments. Pour the mix over the tomatoes. Squeeze in a lemon, stir, add salt to taste. Serve in a bowl or glass with some diced celery on top.

This soup is equally delicious fresh, after sitting for a few hours, or the next day. You can also run some peppers or cucumbers through the mill with the tomatoes to vary the soup a bit. But it really is perfection in its original state.

Ayers Creek and barley photos by Josh. Tomatoes by Kim Ferris.

Far-Out Farro!

I love to read about new food ideas (I can hear you saying, "Oh, really? I'd never have guessed!") and I'm always cutting recipes out of newspapers and magazines. But on a daily basis I tend to rummage through the same old bag of tricks to come up with solutions for meals. It's when guests are coming over that I'll look for something new and exciting, a side dish or dessert that will light up a meal and make the evening shine.

This was exactly the case when I read my friend Luan's blog about a salad that used a grain I'd heard of but had never tried, a variety of wheat called farro in Italy and known as emmer wheat here. It sounded like it might be just the thing to have with the grilled salmon filets we were planning to have that evening, and a nice summery alternative to the usual risotto or potatoes that we'd (yawn) usually have.

Extremely simple to prepare, it only takes about 10 minutes to cook the farro in boiling water till it's slightly al dente. While that's cooking, it's easy to chop the olives, cube the cheese and halve the tomatoes. Then toss those with the cooled farro (I ran it under cold water), a little olive oil, salt and pepper and torn basil leaves, and it's ready for the table. Perfetto!
I can tell this is going to be the new go-to side for our summer entertaining, and the leftovers are wonderful for that I-don't-have-time-to-cook quick lunch or dinner. Download the recipe from the Foster & Dobbs website here.