"I got to where I could pretty much tell it was an heirloom collard patch from the road," Davis said. "That is a time when we would never go without them." "They remind me of Thanksgiving at my grandma's house," says Mitchell. The leafy vegetable, he said, provided much-needed nutrients in a diet that typically included hominy, corn, salt fish and pork.Ĭollards continue to be a staple in Soul Food restaurants and many Black households - enjoyed throughout the year and especially as part of holiday meals. Twitty, a culinary historian and James Beard Award winner, during the Project's 2020 Collard Week festival. Collards were "superfood powerhouses for the enslaved and poor whites," said Michael W. Historians trace the roots of collards to the gardens of enslaved African Americans in the South. They looked prettier even when they had a little bit of bug damage on them." I absolutely adored them because they were a little bit more tender than the other varieties. "Oh my goodness," says Mitchell, who recently launched Sistah Seeds, a Pennsylvania farm that specializes in producing seed, rather than produce. Other types can likely be found in backroad gardens of aging stewards, but countless varieties have vanished in the U.S.Īmirah Mitchell, founder of Sistah Seeds, stands in the greenhouse at the incubator farm where she runs her Black heirloom seed business in Emmaus, Pa. Many of the heirloom varieties Wallace and her friends grow are rare, some once teetering on extinction. These aren't commercially produced collard greens typically sold in supermarkets or restaurants. "But look at that color! And that's anthocyanins. "Purple is a color that develops in the winter much more strongly," Wallace explains, as she probes the frost-damaged leaf. Its creamy-white veins stretch upward across the green leaf, narrowing as they reach purple-tinged tips. She has separated a single leaf from the large baskets of unusual, parti-colored collard greens she got from a friend's farm. Ira Wallace ambles around the butcher block countertop in the kitchen she shares with a community of farmers in central Virginia. "Purple is a color that develops in the winter much more strongly," Wallace says. Ira Wallace talks about collard greens at Acorn Community Farm in Mineral, Va.
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