We have an April alarm clock at The Willows Inn on Lummi Island. An apple tree sits right outside the kitchen window. Its blossoms blink open, and provide the wake-up call to the bright, bushy luster that leads us out of wintry darkness and into the lively greening of our servings. Come, then, the pollen, the heightened smells, the soft-pastel petals. It’s the first month of growth in the wild. The forest floor cracks open with shoots, nettles, and sprouts of wild lettuces and herbs everywhere in the underbrush, wildly varying in types and flavors.
While we wait a month to pull specially-selected herbs and flowers from the first seeding of our new farm, Loganita, our chef staff forages Nature’s potpourri. Myriad tastes of green and tender decorate the plate and arouse the palate. Stinging nettles provide a main course with fresh cheese and wild lettuce. Seaside, razor clams wash to our beaches, and oysters lurk off nearby shores, and the fishers of the mighty halibut haul in 200-pounders all around us. Meanwhile, our newest addition to providing you the best, our full-time culinary gardener named Mary, suffered no foolishness on April 1 as she sowed the first of many crops to come on a farmstead aged 120 years or so. Tales of bounty for another day. Come May.