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With chilly temperatures leading up to winter’s official start on Dec. 21, you might be yearning for hearty and warming soups, along with other comfort foods that complement more time spent at home this time of year.
At Limerick Homegrown Produce & Trading Post in Schwenksville, they are enjoying lots of hearty greens and other garden goodies at the tail end of their growing season.
Owned and operated by Michael Panamarenko, his partner Jessie Kanagie, and their four daughters, their nine-acre farm specializes in certified organically grown vegetables you might recognize from visits to Pottstown’s FARM: Farm & Artisan Regional Market where they were vendors the past two years.
In addition to markets, they sell their produce to restaurants and operate a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.
“We grow 30 to 40 different varieties of vegetables on the farm,” said Panamarenko. “We also raise honeybees and have local, raw, unfiltered honey.”
Their dinner plates these days usually feature kale, spinach, arugula and an artisan gourmet lettuce mix, along with other crops they harvest frequently this time of year.
“We just picked root vegetables – beets and carrots,” he said.
Passion for home gardening
It was three years ago when Panamarenko changed course in his professional life from working at his family’s outdoor sporting goods business to pursuing farming full-time stemming from a passion for home gardening that served as his primary hobby.
“The primary reason was to live an independent lifestyle and a self-sufficient one and to pass those qualities onto the kids,” he said. “I also really like working outdoors.”
Not long after making the shift, they began working with Rodale Institute in Berks County to help get their 9-acre farm certified organic.
“I learned on a small scale and was self-taught, which snowballed over the years to more knowledge,” he said.
Preserving food
Now that Panamarenko is living the self-sustaining life he’s always wanted by utilizing what’s grown on his farm, he credits Kanagie for processing all of the various foods they preserve to use throughout the winter.
“This is the time of year when we’ll do our own food prep,” he said. “There’s enough left to harvest for ourselves to can, dehydrate and freeze. We can literally live off of that for the entire year.”
One of their family’s favorite side dishes is pickled beets.
“We eat them at least once a week with any regular baked chicken night,” he said. “Usually 80% of what’s on our plate was grown at our farm.”
Salads are also a regular feature at their dinner table.
“We have raw spinach salads every night with our homemade vinaigrettes using herbs we grow,” he said. “We have our own onions, carrots, radishes and peppers right now — everything you can think of in a salad, we grow.”
Favorite meat
Aside from chicken, another favorite meat this time of year is venison.
“We hunt, so this is the time of year we harvest deer,” Panamarenko said. “We like to have venison steaks and a spinach salad.”
The tomatoes they preserved might make an appearance in bruschetta that features olive oil, basil and garlic that they also grew.
“It’s a great topping to have throughout the year,” he said. “It’s great on a piece of Italian bread and you can use it on a pasta as a topping or on top of a baked chicken breast.”
Panamarenko is typically the one who comes up with the ideas for dishes all year long and cooks their dinners.
“You have to think outside the box to use vegetables that aren’t in season that you have available,” he said. “It’s very fulfilling, gratifying and satisfying to know we are able to live off the land that mother nature provided us.”
A family-owned and operated certified organic farm located in Schwenksville, PA, Limerick Homegrown Produce & Trading Post provides the local community, restaurants, and their CSA members with healthy organic produce. For more information, visit www.limerickhomegrownproduce.com
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