Eat fresh.
Eat Maryland.

Asparagus Season Is Short, and It Starts Now

Asparagus at a Maryland farm stand in late April is about as close to a seasonal event as vegetables get. The spears go from soil to market in the same morning, and you can tell. The cut ends are still moist, the tips tight and almost purple at the edges, and when you snap one raw it makes a sound that grocery store asparagus stopped making somewhere in the cargo hold between Lima and Baltimore. The imported stuff tends to arrive in those rubber-banded pencil bundles, uniform and slightly exhausted. Local spears come in a range of thicknesses, a little dirt still on them sometimes, and they cook faster than you expect because they haven't lost moisture sitting in a cold chain for two weeks.