Pictured above: One of our first Candy Roaster crops some years ago.
Welcome back to our weekly farm blog, chefs!
This week is special on a couple different levels. We’re having a wedding on the farm, celebrating Theron Bradford & Ava Howard. This means they will be in their honeymoon next week and Nat will take his place in sales for the week, he will be the main point person for questions, requests, etc. Theron’s phone will be off.
Candy Roaster squash from our farm is back this week for the fall and winter seasons! Candy roasters aren’t all that uncommon in the market today, but chefs have let us know that something about ours is different, and it’s better. We don’t know what that means exactly, the only candy roasters we’ve ever had are the ones that come out of our field every October. A unique heirloom breadline from an Appalachian family, these seeds aren’t on the market anywhere, no seed catalog or grocery store. They are available now on the weekly ordering guide and you can try for yourself!
Our family Bradford Collards are back on the menu now too, so all of you guys who have been hurting for them can get your fix now!
COMING SOON
- Brussels sprouts
- Kohlrabi
- Rainbow Chard
- Green cabbage
- Orange beets (pending)
- Rutabagas
- Purple top turnips
- Bradford Collards
- Charleston Wakefield cabbage
- Dutch Fork pumpkins
- persimmons
SPECIAL REQUEST: We kindly urge you to consider adding at least one of our own Bradford Farm grown crops to your weekly orders. We are working with quite a number of other farms to bring you the best access to regional flavor that we possibly can, but the heartbeat of our farm is our homegrown crops. We can’t exist without moving our own crops too. So please review the crops we offer under Bradford Farm Crops below and consider adding one or more of them. It helps us a ton.
Important Notes
-
Heirloom, ancestral Red Ripper peas
- Kale and red chard
- Prickly pears
- Southern mustard greens and rapa greens from Dorr
- Bolero carrots
- parsnips
- watermelon and rainbow daikon radishes
- Rosaine Little Gem Lettuce from Wild Hope will resume mid week
⚠️ **Highlights of the week**⚠️
NEW! Bradford Farm Candy Roaster Squash
The Fall 2026 crop of Candy Roaster Squash iis in! This is a great native vegetable bred and developed by the Cherokee Indians of the Piedmont region of the Carolinas in the early 1800s. It has been gaining in popularity among chefs and the public in recent years, although the mountain folk have maintained it as a mainstay in their home gardens for generations. What you’ll find most commonly today are the smaller banana shaped candy roasters that are features in seed catalogs. The ones we grow come from a more ancient version of this variety. It’s closer to what the Cherokee would have been familiar with: a large cylindrical hard squash. Of course there is a lot of variability in sizes and colors as with many heirloom crops, but the ones we grow tend to weigh between 10lbs and 20lbs - some even over 30lbs!!
We grow a special heirloom strain of this squash we received through friends of an old mountain couple that gave them one. It sat on our shelf for 18 months before we finally decided to cook it. The flesh was dense and silky sweet even after that much time! We saved the seeds and have been steadily increasing the crop ever since. Chefs say ours is the best, worth the wait - try for yourself.
NEW! Bradford Collards
Our family collards date back to around the 1850s. They are completely unlike any of the commercially available collards today. Ours have been selected for 170 years to be sweet, tender, and crisp cooked or raw. It is a common acceptance to throw away the stems and stalks of the modern collards. This is because they are tough and fibrous being bred for shippability and shelf life. Ours, however, have been bred for flavor and tenderness. There is no waste with our collards. The stems and stalks are sweet and crisp too! Chefs are discovering they are good for kraut and kimchi, collard wraps, grilling, braising, salads and coleslaw. Of course, they are great prepared the traditional way stewed with ham hock too. They are available in whole plant as well as rinsed, chopped and bagged, ready-to-use.
NEW! Red Ripper Pea - Johnny McNair
The Other Pea: The Red Ripper and the Fame It Never Got
Every family has one. The sibling who got the spotlight, the magazine covers, the seat at the best table. And somewhere behind them stands the other one, just as gifted, who got the same inheritance and none of the credit.
In the Southern pea patch, the famous one is the Sea Island red. The one who stood behind is the red ripper.
Two peas, one crossing
Both peas begin in West Africa, where farmers domesticated the cowpea more than three thousand years ago. They grew it alongside millet and sorghum, prizing it for its protein, its leaves and its gift to the soil. That knowledge crossed the Atlantic with the enslaved Africans who were forced to carry it. Seeds, and the know-how to grow and cook them, took root in the American South and became part of its cooking.
From there the two peas went separate ways. The Sea Island red settled along the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia, planted among the rice. The red ripper moved inland, planted alongside corn, especially in Alabama and South Carolina. Same ancestry, different ground. One system of rotation and intercropping, African in its logic, fed both.
The pea farmers trusted
The red ripper was no obscure curiosity. It goes back to at least the 1850s, when it was also known as the Tory pea, and it was a staple in Southern seed catalogs for generations afterward. By the early 1900s the catalogs were praising its toughness in drought and heat. Farmers of the era valued its heavy growth as a way to build up worn-out soil, and a look through antique catalogs from the Southeast shows it listed as a must-have.
It had vigor. In poor, tired soils where other crops sulked, the red ripper performed. It fed the family and healed the field in the same season. It was also good to eat, which is the thing that finally keeps a seed alive.
So when the story gets told that one pea, the Sea Island red, proved vigorous enough to survive into the 1900s, ask what that leaves out. The red ripper was growing in those same fields, in those same decades, and it didn't just survive. It was bought, planted and trusted. The story we've been handed names one pea and skips the one that was standing right beside it.
How the red ripper got left behind
The Sea Island red got a story, a brand and backers. When the Slow Food movement began celebrating heritage ingredients, the Sea Island red was positioned as the great survivor of Lowcountry cooking. Food historians took it up, then chefs followed the historians. Marketing and real investment carried it to the broader market and onto menus across the country.
Meanwhile the red ripper sat by and watched. Nobody was writing its story. Nobody was putting it on menus or telling cooks why it mattered. It slipped out of the conversation, then out of the catalogs, then out of most people's memory. The pea didn't get worse. It just lost its publicist.
That's the injustice. The Sea Island red earned its place, and it is not the villain here. But a pea doesn't deserve to be forgotten because someone else got the microphone first. The red ripper has the same African roots, the same Southern history and the same worth. And now, with its story nearly erased, it carries something extra: it's a pea worth rescuing.
A flavor from the past
The red ripper has been grown in the soil of this region for generations. Johnny McNair grows it in our sandy loam, the same kind of ground it has always known. That gives us an honest picture of how this pea tasted in the past. When you eat it, you are tasting a story and a history.
Open a pod and the colors alone tell you this is no ordinary pea: brick red, clay brown, ivory cream, some speckled and spotted, and a few the color of dry-sage green.
The flavor is rich and deeply savory, with a mineral, earthy note that tastes like the soil it grew in, and a slightly sweet finish on the back of the palate. The texture is meaty and hearty and holds together instead of collapsing. For a cowpea it's a generous pea, a bit bigger than the Sea Island red, but not so big that it gets unwieldy. It cooks evenly all the way around. No blown-out skins, no hard centers.
And here is the part cooks will love: these red rippers are harvested fresh, at the green-shell stage, not dried like most Sea Island reds on the market. There is no overnight soak. You can go straight from the pod to the pot.
An invitation to the kitchen
The red ripper is the pea of Southern farmers, of an African inheritance and of ground made healthy again, and it has been waiting for a cook to notice. For the chefs of South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina, here's a chance to put a forgotten heirloom back where it belongs, and to tell the whole story of Southern peas instead of half of it.
Give it the love it was robbed of.
These peas are available now, fresh-frozen, from our weekly ordering page.
DISCOUNTS & PROMOTIONS
Heirloom tomatoes - mixed flat - Clem’s and Dale Acres
Buy 2 flats - $5 off
Buy 4 flats or more - 10% off
Standing orders
- Reference - a la carte price - $55 each
- 1 flat per week - $53
- 2-3 flats per week - $51 each
- 3-5 flats per week - $49 each
- 6+ flats per week - $47 each
Reach out to us if you’d like to get included on this deal!
Field peas and butterbeans - standing order options
A la carte price for comparison - $59 per bag across all varieties.
Option 1: Sign up for a weekly recurring order of any field pea or butterbean for 12 weeks - $57/ bag
Option 2: Sign up for weekly recurring order of any combination of 2 or 3 bags for 12 weeks - $56/ bag
Option 3: Sign up for weekly recurring order of any combination of 4 bags or more for 12 weeks - FREE Winter Squash Sample Box (Value of $30) + 1 free bag, $55/bag every week after (total value of at least $280)
*note - you can switch varieties of peas and peas anytime, any week. Just notify me!
Key:
** - limited availability
*OUT- currently out of stock
*OFS- out for season
NEW- recent addition
(SlowFood AOT)- appears on the SlowFood Ark of Taste for its exceptional qualities, flavor, story, and historical significance and/or usage.
✅ Bradford Farm Crops: ✅
-Bradford collards bagged/chopped (spring crop)
-Bradford collards whole plant (spring crop)
-Hybrid green cabbage *OUT
-Purple cabbage
-Shredded hybrid cabbage
-Shredded purple cabbage
-Bradford Okra (through October)
-NEW! Candy Roaster squash (SlowFood AOT)
🤝 Partner Farms: 🤝
-Fruit
——Apples - Lively Orchards
———Fuji
———Golden Delicious
———Gala
———Granny Smith
———Ambrosia *OUT
———Jonagold
———Asian Pear (exclusive)
——Scuppernongs (bronze native grapes)
——Muscadines (purple native grapes)
——Cantaloupe
——Watermelon
———red seedless *Almost gone
———yellow seedless *Almost gone
----Prickly Pear - Wild Hope Farm
-Tomatoes
——Heirloom slicer mix - Clem’s, Dale Acres
——Grape, red
——Red round - Osage, Rabun Gap GA
——Gold slicer
——Roma
——Tomatillos
-Beets
——Gold
——Davidson River Red - Clem's
——Baby Davidson River Red - Clem's
-Roots
——Bolero - Clem’s Organic Gardens
----Parsnips - Clem's Organic Gardens
----Turnips, Hakurei - Clem's Organic Gardens
----Radish, Watermelon - Clem's Organic Gardens
----Radish, Rainbow Daikon - Clem's Organic Garden
-Potatoes
——Appalachian Gold - Clem’s
——Baby Appalachian Gold - Clem’s
----Pee Dee Sweet Potatoes
-----Large
-----Medium
-----Jumbo
-Peppers (sweet, savory, or mild)
——Green bell - Wild Hope Farm
----Red bell - Amish
----Italian, Carmen (frying pepper) - Wild Hope
——Jimmy Nardello - Wild Hope *OUT
——Heirloom Shishito - Dorr
——Anaheim (California Green Chile) (low heat) - Wild Hope
-HOT Peppers
——Jalapeños - Dorr Farms
——Serrano - Dorr Farms
——Cowhorn - Dorr Farms
——Baby Banana peppers - Dorr Farms
-Squash & Zucchini
----Zucchini - Dorr Farms
——Yellow Crookneck - Dorr Farms
----NEW! Patty Pan Mixed - Dorr Farms
----NEW! Snow Globe White & Green Ball - Dorr Farms
-Hard squash
——Butterbaby Squash - Clem’s
——Mini Spaghetti squash - Clem’s
——Autumn Frost butternut - SC
——Koginut - Wild Hope
——Delicata Heirloom - Wild Hope & Lake City
——Acorn - SC
——NEW! Cushaw (aka Crenshaw, aka Tennessee Sweet Potato Pumpkin) - SlowFood AOT - Amish
——NEW! Blue Hubbard - Amish
-Greens
——Kale, Scotch Curly - Wild Hope, Dorr
——Kale, Tuscan (Dino) - Wild Hope
——Red Chard, Rhubarb Supreme - Wild Hope
----Mustard, Curly - Dorr
----Rapa- Dorr
-Legumes
----NEW! Peas, Red Ripper (fresh-frozen) - Johnny McNair
----Butterbeans, Green (fresh-frozen) - Johnny McNair, Josh Johnson
----Butterbeans, Speckled (ff) - Johnny McNair, Josh Johnson
----Peas, Pinkeye (ff) - Johnny McNair, Josh Johnson
----Peas, White Acre (ff) - Johnny McNair, Josh Johnson
-Eggplant
——Italian Purple
-Sweet corn - Dorr Farms
-Cucumbers, Kirby - Dorr Farms
-Green cabbage
-Blue Lake Pole Snap Beans - Dorr Farms
-Broccoli - Dorr Farms (soon)
-Pecans (fresh, shelled, halved) - Johnny McNair
Coming soon:
MORE COMING SOON
….let us know if there is something else you are interested in that isn’t on our list