Late Winter Garden Kale Raab

I live in a climate where kale thrives in the garden all winter long. At the end of winter or the very beginning of spring, I get tempted to pull the overwintered kale plants up to make room for new starts and seeds to sow. But I always wait until I can harvest these delicious tender shoots that start coming off the kale before I dig the plants up and clean up the garden. They look a lot like broccolini or broccoli raab (my all-time favorite vegetable), and they’re basically the closed flower buds of the kale plant before it goes to seed. You want to harvest these kale raabs before the stems get too tough and before the buds open to reveal little yellow flowers, though I also like to leave some of those flowers for the bees to pollinate. I love lightly cooking them in lots of garlic and olive oil and tossing them with pasta or eating them with eggs. I feel like it’s the kale plant saying its last goodbye before it is done for the season and goes back to the earth as compost, or gets eaten by my flock of hungry chickens to be turned into fuel for their beautiful eggs. The cycle of the seasons and the cycle of life…what a beautiful thing.