StrawberriesPhontoTomatoesMaudeUmaSunflowerPeppersA&ZCherry TomatoesApplesPippin Cabbage LeafPotatoes FloweringApplesRed Sunflowers3 GenerationsChicoryCrimson CloverMaude FaceshotTeam in BroccoliRadicchioRomanescoArtichoke FlowerStrawberry in HandZinniasZ Harvest Basket3 GenerationsJos Tree DannyBeetsRoberto LacinatoBrusselsGreensCleo Red PepperRomaineFavas3 AbreastCaneberriesChardBasketsKids on MaudeRhubarbFarmstandGiant PumpkinsJules Asian PearShiroZ CauliCarrotsBouquetKids TransplantingJack and Lily Cover Crop GerminatingGraffiti

The Valley Flora Farmstand is Open for Fall Hours!

As of October 2nd, our farmstand is open on WEDNESDAYS ONLY from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm.

There are two ways to get our farmstand produce: pre-order online, or swing by and drop in to shop when we're open. If you pre-order you'll have access to our full array of seasonally available produce, which changes every week. There is usually a smaller selection available for drop-in shopping.

If you’d like to pre-order and haven’t registered an account with Local Line (our online store), it’s quick and easy. Simply follow the instructions below to set up your account. Once you do that you will begin to receive our weekly availability emails with a link to our “store.”

You can also go directly to our Local Line store to shop: https://valley-flora.localline.ca/farmstand

Farmstand Details and How to Order:

  • Anyone is welcome to shop our farmstand. You do not need to be a CSA member and there is no waiting list to join.
  • The farmstand is located 1.5 miles up Floras Creek Road at the shed just after the bridge. Directions
  • Our Wednesday farmstand is typically open May through December from 11:30 to 2:30 pm. Our Saturday farmstand operates mid-June to late September, 11:30 to 2:30 pm.
  • If you want to pre-order produce, go to our online store where you can set up an account or shop as a guest.
  • The ordering window for our Wednesday farmstand is open from Thursday morning by 9 am until Sunday night at 8 pm. Farmstead Bread is available on Wednesdays only. 
  • The ordering window for our Saturday farmstand opens on Monday morning by 9 am until Wednesday night at 8 pm.
  • There is a $20 minimum on orders. The "Place Order" button will not appear until you have met the $20 minimum.
  • Once you register an account, you'll start getting our weekly availability emails (Thursday morning for the Wednesday farmstand; Monday morning for the Saturday farmstand). 
  • You can always access our online store by clicking the "Order Farmstand Produce" button on the left sidebar of our homepage, following the link below, or going directly to https://valley-flora.localline.ca/farmstand.

Thanks for your support of the farm and your passion for eating local, seasonal produce!

Shop the Valley Flora Store for Farmstand Produce Now!

Our CSA is Sold Out for the 2024 Season!

Add Yourself to our Waiting List for 2025!

We are full for the 2024 season, but please add yourself to our waiting list so we can contact you if a space becomes available, and when sign-ups begin for 2025 (usually in late February/early March). Thanks for your interest!

To learn more about our CSA, visit our Harvest Baskets and CSA page.

When you sign Up for our CSA with SNAP, Double Up Food Bucks Pays Half!

Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) is a program that helps low-income Oregonians purchase more fruits and vegetables while supporting local, family farms. You can purchase one of our Monthly Pay Plan CSA shares using your SNAP/Oregon Trail card and DUFB will provide 1:1 matching funds (you pay half the cost of the CSA with SNAP* and DUFB covers the other half). It's a win-win that strengthens our community by providing better access to fresh, healthy food while helping local farmers earn a living.

One in eight Oregonians experience food insecurity, and for families with limited incomes the cost of fresh produce can be prohibitive. Double Up Food Bucks helps SNAP participants heap their plates high with fresh, local veggies when they purchase a Valley Flora CSA share. 

Click here to learn more about our 28-week CSA!

*Applies to SNAP food benefits only. If you receive SNAP cash benefits (allowing you to buy non-food items), unfortunately you will not be eligible for the DUFB program.

 

Valley Flora - Growing Good Food for Local Folks

Valley Flora is a mother-and-two-daughter collective nestled on the banks of Floras Creek near Langlois, Oregon. Together with the help of our draft horses, a handful of fantastic employees, one little tractor, trillions of soil microorganisms, thousands of pollinators, and 12 kilowatts of solar power, we grow hundreds of varieties of vegetables, berries and fruit to feed our local coastal community year-round. Our farm was founded in 1998 with a deep commitment to ecological and organic farming practices. We rely on crop diversity, compost, cover crops, and crop rotation to keep our farm healthy and thriving both above and below ground. Our love of the Floras Creek valley – the fertile loam and the river that runs through it - inspires us to farm with the next generation in mind, and the next.

We are also deeply committed to strengthening our community-based food system on the remote southern Oregon coast. We collaborate with a number of other local farmers, ranchers and wildcrafters to promote and distribute their high quality goods to our customers. All of this food supplies our 130-member CSA, our farmstand, local foodbanks, and a number of stores, restaurants and co-ops up and down the coast. We are passionate about place, in love with plants, and grateful to be a part of this community. 

Week 25 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Sweet Beets!
  • Winter Carrots!
  • Celeriac (aka Celery Root)
  • Head Lettuce
  • Violet Queen Turnips
  • Spaghetti Squash
  • Treviso Radicchio
  • Fennel

On Rotation:

  • Chard
  • Collards

New Winter Veggies This Week:

  • Celeriac: The gnarly orb-like root with the green buzz cut is celeriac, one of the many under-appreciated winter vegetables that we love to introduce to our CSA members each year. Celeriac is indeed closely related to celery, with a similar - albeit more mild and "rooty" - flavor. You can eat celery raw, but it develops an added sweetness when cooked. Check out this eclectic collection of recipes from Epicurious for ideas. It's a great soup ingredient, adds depth to a sheet pan of roasted fall roots, and brings a special je ne sais quoi to mashed potatoes (boil the celeriac with your spuds and mash all together).
  • Spaghetti Squash: Spaghetti squash rarely garners the glory compared to the ever-popular and super-sweet Delicata or Butternut squash, but it's not an altogether fair estimation. Spaghetti squash does something none of the other squashes do, which is impersonate spaghetti! That's great news if you want a gluten-free noodle alternative, or just a change of pace. Try this Spaghetti Squash Parmesan, which is nothing short of indulgent thanks to some fresh mozz and homemade marinara.
  • Treviso Radicchio: As we roll out our fall radicchio line-up, it becomes clear just how much diversity there is among the Italian chicories. Treviso is a tight, dense, upright, football of a variety with beautiful wine-colored leaves and white ribs. This one is a joy to grow and harvest (and eat) every year. I highly recommend checking out this fantastic collection of radicchio recipes, and in particular you might want to make the Salad with Caramelized Fennel, Apples and Radicchio, given that this is the last juicy bulb of fennel you'll be getting in your share this season.

Thanksgiving Ahead!

A reminder that the farm will be closed the week of Thanksgiving. We will be harvesting and packing your "Thanksgiving Share" next week and delivering it to CSA pickup sites on our usual schedule (on November 20th and 23rd). We'll resume deliveries the week of December 2nd for the 28th and final week of the season. 

Have a great week, and hang onto your hats!

Newsletter: 

Week 24 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the Harvest Basket this Week:

  • Brussels Sprouts, on the stalk
  • Leeks
  • Delicata Squash
  • Carrots
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Bunched Spinach
  • Head Lettuce
  • Shinseiki Asian Pears

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower

Asian Pears!

We are certainly rounding the corner into deep Fall, with the weather trending chilly and wet and the food listing towards the dense and durable. This will likely be the final week of sweet peppers (sniff, not sure how I'll carry on without a fridge stuffed full of those sweet snackers). The sugary consolation prize is this week's Asian Pear, a variety called Shinseiki. For years I was convinced this was a dud variety - not very flavorful, kinda meh. I even considered cutting the trees down and replacing them with something else. One year I just didn't pick them - what was the point? - and then noticed that they were still clinging steadfast to the tree in November. I went out to the orchard and sampled one, only to discover a beautifully bronzed pear - sweet, juicy, and pretty dang good! The epiphany was that I had been picking this variety too soon, before they'd developed their full flavor potential. There's always some gusty storm in October that threatens to knock all the Asian pears to the ground, hence a premature scurry to harvest any fruit hanging on the trees. Well, lo and behold, Shinseiki knows how to hang on through high winds so it can ripen to its full, yummy, November goodness. It's also a reliable fruit-setter, which means we usually have a good crop (and often have to thin it in the early summer because it over-sets fruit). Not a bad problem to have when it means fresh Asian Pears in November!

Delicata!

Also new and sweet this week, Delicata Squash! This is probably our most beloved winter squash variety of all, due to its fantastic flavor and ease of prep in the kitchen. It's one of the few squash varieties with skin thin enough to eat, so if you dread peeling your squash before baking/roasting, no need with this one. That said, it's pretty easy to strip them down with a regular veggie peeler if you want a smoother eating experience (my preference). We often make "Delicata boats" the centerpiece of dinner - cut in half, scoop out the seeds, bake face down on a cookie sheet with some water in it (to create steam) at 400 degrees until soft. You can enjoy them plain, with melted butter, or fancy it up with any kind of stuffing: meat, grains, sauteed veg. Our other go-to prep is "Delicata smiles:" peel (or not), cut in half, scoop out the seeds, cut into half-moons, toss with olive oil and salt, and roast at 425 until soft and slightly browned (flip and stir with a spatula occasionally to get all sides browned).

If you want to take it to the next level, this is a fantastic recipe that knocked our socks off last year (and which we had for dinner last night, and lunch leftovers again today - hooray!). It'll use any kind of winter squash, or a mix of types, and you can sub spinach for kale if you want to make it with what's in your share this week: Winter Squash and Kale Pasta 

Brussels Sprouts!

And finally, those Dr. Seuss-inspired stalks of Brussels sprouts! If you don't have much fridge space, I recommend snapping the sprouts off the stalk and storing them in a plastic bag in your fridge. Like a tiny cabbage, they'll keep for weeks, but why wait?! I know, there are some people out there who have reasons - they think they hate Brussels sprouts - and that's most likely due to the fact that they've only ever had them boiled or steamed, and probably overly-so. Overcooked grey Brussels sprouts are indeed bleh! So instead, roast! The magic formula of high heat + fat + salt + VF veggies works wonders on Brussels. We usually cut them in half first, toss with olive oil and salt and roast at 450 on a sheet pan until they get crispy-browned. Or peruse this collection of recipes to get other inspiration: 42 Best Brussels Sprout Recipes Even Haters Will Love. There's something for everyone in that smorgasbord of recipes.

Newsletter: 

Week 23 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Head Lettuce
  • Marinanta Radicchio
  • Sunshine Winter Squash 
  • Yellow Potatoes
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Carrots
  • Red Onions
  • Purple Mini Daikon Radish
  • Curly Parsley

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower

New This Week: Radicchio! Sunshine Squash! Purple Daikon!

  • Marinanta Radicchio is the first of our radicchio varieties to come out of the field. Marinanta is highly expressive, and by that I mean she's a shapeshifter. Some of the heads look like tight cabbages; others look like upright torches of light green streaked with pink; and still others form crunchy whorls of twisted leaves. I always think this variety must somehow be a distant cousin to iceberg, given her light green-to-blanched coloration, crispy-crunchy texture, and often squatty stature. You can certainly eat her like iceberg, and depending on whether you want to experience that telltale hint of bitterness that all radicchios have, you can either pre-soak her or not. If you DON'T like bitterness, cut up your head of Marinanta and soak it in cold water for about ten minutes. Then spin dry and use just as you would regular head lettuce. The cold water soak pulls all of those bitter compounds out, leaving you with very tame "winter lettuce." This works for any radicchio variety, so as they come your way during these final few weeks of the season, you can always use that trick to mellow the flavor. You can also cook with radicchio and that will reduce its bitterness. I'm a huge radicchio fan, both from a farming/food production standpoint and as an eater. Radicchio is tough as nails when it comes to weathering the rough weather of late fall and early winter (cold? wet? stormy? snowy? Bring it on, says the radicchio!). A plant that can handle all that, and better yet, THRIVE through all that, earns my deep respect. But my tastebuds and eyeballs love radicchio as well: it has more interesting flavor than lettuce, all the many varieties present a mind-blowing array of colors and shapes and textures, and it dances in a salad bowl with bold dressings, strong cheeses, salty nuts, roasted winter squash, and dried fruits like nothing else.
  • Sunshine Squash is a scarlet kabocha. If I had to choose one adjective to describe it, it would be "tropical." Easy to peel, deeply sweet and flavorful, and versatile as all get out, this is one of my top three faves in the winter squash realm. Peel, cube and roast with olive oil and salt. Slice into watermelon-like wedges, veer towards the agrodolce, and never look back. Peel, chunk and pressure cook into delectable squash soup. Make pie. Mash. You can do it all with this one. 
  • Purple Mini Daikon is a stunner of a fall radish. All the spice is in the thick rind, which peels easily if you want to keep it mild. The interior is a sweet, crunchy, juicy starburst of lavender surprise. Slice these on your salad and ogle their beauty.

Winter CSA Sign-Ups Begin this Week!

Lots of you have been asking about the Winter CSA. We plan to get sign-ups going this week, so if you are a current CSA member keep an eye out for a direct email from us with details and sign up info. We offer half as many winter shares as summer shares (70 spots versus 140), so we always give our existing summer membership first dibs before opening it up to the wider public. We'll be doing sign-ups through Local Line (the online platform we use for farmstand orders) instead of via our website, so if you haven't registered your CSA Local Line account yet, now's the time! We just sent out a reminder email to our 27 unregistered folks today, so if you get that email you are still not registered with our Local Line platform. :)

Thanks for your year-round support of the farm! We love that these fields can feed so many people 12 months of the year!

Newsletter: 

Week 22 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Savoy Cabbage
  • Carrots
  • Winter Kohlrabi
  • Lettuce
  • Yellow Onion
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Sugar Pie Pumpkin
  • Beets
  • Hot Peppers - Serrano & Jalapeño

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant
  • Romanesco

Short and Sweet this Week!

We're in the final push before the rain to get ​​​​​​​
our last winter cover crops in, and to form up the new beds for the 2025 strawberry patch. Every dry hour counts right now, so this newsletter is going to be brief! Mainly, a little coaching on two of the big, hefty orbs in your share this week: Winter kohlrabi and Sugar Pie Pumpkins.
  • The winter kohlrabi are colossal, as they always are, but you can carve on it for weeks if you store it in the fridge in a plastic bag. The cut edge will discolor in storage, so just shave it off each time you go to cut off a new slab. This variety is the sweetest, crunchiest, yummiest kohlrabi of the whole year, so enjoy!
  • Like I mentioned last week, the Sugar Pie Pumpkin in your share this week is multi-purpose: it has hull-less seeds that will roast up into tasty little snackable pepitas, AND it has sweet meat ideal for homemade pumpkin pie. OR, of course, you can carve it for Halloween. It is a pumpkin after all...

Be it known that this is the last of the eggplant for the year (whether you are cheering or depressed at that news, it is a fact, seeing as I flail mowed the plants down to stubs on Monday in preparation for cover crop).

Next week, get ready for those delicious purple daikons, potatoes, and the first radicchio of the season! (I know I'm excited about that, and I will do my best to help you become excited, too.)

Until next week!

Zoë

 

Newsletter: 

Week 21 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Hakurei Turnips
  • Acorn Winter Squash - Starry Night and Night Shift
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Fennel
  • Red Onions
  • Eggplant

On Rotation:

  • Chard
  • Collards
  • Romanesco
  • Purple Cauliflower

Winter Squash, Pumpkins, Gourds, Oh My!

The first of our winter squash varieties are landing in the Harvest Basket this week: two diferent kinds of Acorn squash called Starry Night (the stripey one) and Night Shift (the green/black one). We had actually planned to send them your way last week, but there's been so much other fresh food coming out of the field of late (broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, fennel, peppers!), we decided to hold off so as not to overwhelm the share. From here on out, however, you can count on seeing some sort of squash in your tote each week, including different varieties of Delicata, Kabocha, Spaghetti, Butternut, and pie pumpkins. ALL of the squash you are going to receive are edible and delicious, so while they will make for a festive seasonal centerpiece, we encourage you to eat them eventually (most of them will store for months on the countertop). I always like to remind our CSA members about knife safety with winter squash: it can be hard to hack through those tough shells. Chainsaw? Hatchet? Bandsaw? Nah, you'll be fine with a sharp and pointed kitchen knife and some common sense. Watch this little video on how to cut winter squash without an ER visit if you want to brush up on some practical knife skills. And remember, if you don't want to wrestle with cutting them up, you can always bake squash whole or pre-soften them in a microwave before going on the attack. Just be sure to poke a few holes in them first before you toss them in the oven/microwave.

Squash are lovely in that they give you permission to keep it simple: cut in half, bake at 375 until soft, eat with a little butter (and maple syrup, if you wannna go for full indulgence). Or, you can dress them up, like this Savory Herb Roasted Acorn Squash with Parmesan, or this recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks (gifted to me by a longtime CSA member many years ago), Six Seasons: Roasted Squash with Yogurt, Walnuts and Spiced Green Sauce. Depending on what you're doing with them, many of the squash varieties are interchangeable in recipes. Most of them will roast up wonderfully (Acorn, Delicata, Kabocha, Butternut), so feel free to substitute if you don't have whichever variety is called for in a recipe. Your Kabocha and Butternut are your soup-making superstars. Your old friend Spaghetti squash is really the only one with a slightly more limited repertoire, but it does its own thing well (and I promise to share some recipes with you when it's spaghetti squash time). And next week, on the eve of Halloween, we'll be sending you a pie pumpkin that is a multi-tasker like none other: edible hull-less seeds, sweet meat for pie-making or savory dishes (feel free to hang onto it until Thanksgiving for that homemade pumpkin pie), or carve it into a mini jack-o-lantern (but save the seeds for roasting!).

But why go mini when you could go MAXI with one of Pippin's carving pumpkins, now available at the farmstand while supplies last! You can also find Cleo's wacky gourds at the farmstand (and I give you full permission to use those for centerpiece decor so that your edible winter squash can be put to work in the kitchen instead). The farmstand is open every Wednesday from 11:30 to 2:30. Come by for some produce, or place an order online between Thursday and Sunday and have your goodies waiting for you on the following Wednesday (pre-order offerings include Farmstead Bread, Aguirre Farms Eggs and Wild Coast Brew Tea, in addition to Valley Flora hot sauce and produce). The farmstand will continue to be open every Wednesday until December 11th, with the exception of Wednesday, November 27th (the farm will be closed the week of Thanksgiving). And while you're here, you might try some pumpkin rolling, Uma's new seasonal sport (just kidding, and please don't sue us if you try it and break something). :)

 

Newsletter: 

Week 20 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Spinach
  • Lacinato Kale
  • Asian Pears
  • Carrots
  • Eggplant
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Tomatoes
  • Yellow Onion
  • Broccoli

On Rotation:

  • Romanesco
  • Purple Cauliflower

Dinner, Last Minute

Dinner in our household is usually dictated by whatever new vegetable is coming out of the field on that particular day, and I often come up with (or don't come up with) a meal idea on my five minute drive home from the farm at around 7 pm. I've always wished I could be that kind of put-together person who figures out the entire week's menu on Sunday and have half of it already prepped for lightning fast weeknight meals. But alas, I've never been able to pull that off. Maybe because I've already spent all of my planning energy on the farm crop plan for the whole year, which in a way becomes the family dinner plan as the season unfolds. Or maybe because I'd rather use my Sunday to go on an adventure with the kids, or tackle a project around the homestead. The result of this extemporaneous, last-minute approach to making dinner is that it's always vegetable-dominant, the whole thing is built around what's in season, and we never eat early. I like to justify it by explaining that we're on an old world schedule, ala España, where they never eat dinner before 9 pm :). Part of what makes the 11th hour dinner plan work is that we have a deep pantry at home, plus a big chest freezer, so we're fairly well-equipped to make meals from whatever we have on hand. And good thing, because I'm rarely (er, never) home in time to pick something up at the Langlois Market before they close at 6 pm. 

Tonight I'm inspired to do something with the purple cauliflower that's just starting to come out of the field and this is exactly the kind of recipe that I gravitate to: Roasted Purple Cauliflower with Crispy Chickpeas and Lemon Herb Tahini. It's all about vegetables, but has the added protein from the garbanzos, plus a zesty sauce (gotta love a good sauce!). I'll probably make a pot of quinoa and a spinach salad studded with sweet peppers to go along with it. You can use whatever herbs you have on hand, and if you don't have the middle eastern spice blend known as za'atar, there are various subsitutions you can use instead. You'd probably consider most of what we eat "slow food" - homegrown, prepared from scratch - but canned chickpeas are one of the "fast food" staples we keep on hand in the pantry. They can transform a chopped salad of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from a side dish into a hearty main course, or add dinnertime heft to roasted sheet pan meals like this one. I think of them as a secret weapon for vegaholics like us who also need to slip some extra protein onto the plate. I especially love them "spiced" and then roasted or fried. 

Believe it or not, strawberry u-Pick is still going! Flowers, too!

Yup, it's true. This warm, dry weather is encouraging the strawberries to keep pumping out sweet red fruit, and our u-pick flowers (especially the dahlias) are the best they've been all summer. U-pick is open on Wednsdays only from 11:30 to 2:30 during our farmstand, and the crowds are minimal. This is your moment ot have the run of the patch and to fill buckets to your heart's content. If you still want to make jam, fill your freezer, or make a batch of strawberry fruit leather, come on down! We'll be tearing out the berry patch by late October in time to get our cover crop planted, so get 'em while you can!

Newsletter: 

Week 19 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the Harvest Basket this Week:

  • Yellow Onions
  • Romaine
  • Violet Queen Turnips
  • Eggplant
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Hot Peppers: Jalapeño & Serrano
  • Poblano Peppers
  • Carrots
  • Tomatoes

On Rotation:

  • Romanesco Cauliflower
  • Broccoli
  • Cilantro
  • Italian Parsley
  • Zucchini

This is the Last Week of Abby's Greens Salad Shares...

Sad but true, the Abby's Greens Salad Share season comes to an end this week for our CSA members. Outdoor salad production becomes more and more challenging as we dive headlong into Fall, due to slower and slower growth in the greens field. Abby will continue to supply a handful of outlets as best she can in the coming weeks, including our Wednesday Farmstand, the Port Orford Co-op, the Langlois Market, and McKay's Market in Bandon. If you'd like to source them through our farmstand, we recommend pre-ordering through our online store (our online "store" is open for ordering from Thursday morning through Sunday evening). Huge thanks to Abby for her unparalleled dedication to the production of beautiful salad greens. There's no other salad like it on Earth!

Bulk Sweet Peppers and Storage Onions Available by Special Order!

If you just can't get your fill of sweet, juicy peppers (or want to preserve some for winter - freeze, roast, can), or you want to stock your pantry with some long-keeping storage onions (red or yellow), our CSA members are invited to place a special order for delivery to your CSA pickup site. We should have an abundance of peppers for the next few weeks, and plenty of onions for the next month or two. Choose the delivery date that best suits your schedule and we'll do our best to get them to you on that day. If we can't fill your order on that date, we'll reach out to arrange for an alternate day.

Enjoy the rainbow of food this week! And if you need a recipe to inspire you, this Crispy Poblano Taco recipe caught my eye for using your cilantro and poblano and jalapeño peppers. You could easily jazz it up by adding some sauteed sweet peppers to the filling, or replace the chicken altogether with roasted romanesco and/or mixed veg.

Buen Provecho!

 

Newsletter: 

Week 18 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week!

  • Fennel - here's a yummy frittata recipe that uses your onion, fennel and parsley - a favorite in our house!
  • Head Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • Eggplant
  • Red Onion
  • Sweet Peppers Galore! (Read all about it below!)
  • Tomatoes
  • Zucchini

On Rotation:

  • Italian Parsley
  • Cilantro
  • Broccoli
  • Romanesco

Our Fall crops are starting to make their debut, kicking off with broccoli, romanesco cauliflower, and a whole host of autumn root crops (turnips, radishes, daikon, and more). Broccoli and romanesco will be on rotation in the coming weeks, and everyone will be seeing some lovely Hakurei and Violet Queen turnips soon. 

At this time of year it all adds up to a blazing cornucopia of color: purple eggplant in juxtaposition with wine-red onions, next to traffic-cone-orange carrots, jumbled together with sunset-colored sweet peppers.

And oh, the peppers!! Yes, my favorite food (I have already munched two this morning and it's not even 11 am yet). You're starting to see some orange and yellow varieties in the mix, which are from our outdoor production (versus all of the red peppers you've received to date, which are grown by my mom, Bets, in protected high tunnels where they mature earlier). Our field-grown peppers are hitting their stride big-time this week, and I had to admit to my crew yesterday that my crop planning around peppers was perhaps a tad bit driven by produce favoritism. No, we probably shouldn't have planted four full rows of peppers (maybe two would have been enough?), and no, we probably shouldn't put ten peppers in the CSA tote (although if I was a CSA member I'd LOVE that idea). So what in the world was I thinking last January when I decided to plant a thousand peppers in 2024?

Well, here's the backstory: all these years Bets has been the primary pepper grower at Valley Flora. We're all in charge of different crops, and since the beginning of time, peppers were her purview. This year, at the spry age of 72, she decided to scale back a little and ceded the yellow and orange pepper production to me (she's still growing the reds). It was like winning the lottery, or inheriting the throne, being bequeathed permission to grow peppers at scale. And like a lottery-winner, I guess I went a little wild. We planted out six kinds of yellow and orange sweet peppers (including a couple new trials), plus a bunch of poblanos and a novelty patch of padróns. That should have been plenty but I couldn't leave out reds altogether, so we threw in two red varieties, equals four long rows of peppers, equals a whole lotta pepper picking right now.

Even thought Bets has been the official pepper person all these years, I've always grown a small experimental patch of outdoor peppers, driven by a curiosity about what varieties can perform well for us without greenhouse protection (peppers like heat), and to ensure that I have an endless personal supply of peppers to gorge on come fall. Those outdoor trials led us to discover a sweet pepper named Glow F1, which we fell in love with. It was an orange pepper, somewhere between a bell and an Italian type (Italians, or "cornos," are cone shaped with thinner flesh, great for fresh eating or roasting). Glow had the the thick juicy flesh and incredible sweet flavor of a bell, the problem-free nature of an Italian (less prone to sunburn and rot), and it was also early, consistent, and high-yielding in our coastal climate. In other words, a five star pepper in every way. It soon became a core part of Bets' commercial production in her greenhouses, where it also thrived, and I grew it outside for sheer pepper piggishness come September/October.

And then one terrible day in 2022, Glow was discontinued in the seed catalogues. It's not clear why - the economics and politics of seed production can be very opaque from the outside. It was a hybrid (a variety that is the result of cross-pollinating two different parent varieties), so we were reliant on some far-off seed company to produce the seed for us each year (versus saving our own seed). Crestfallen and frustrated by the fickleness of the hybrid seed industry, I made two decisions last year:

  1. To trial as many potential Glow replacements as possible in the 2023 growing season, in hopes that we might discover an off-the-shelf replacement, and
  2. Plant our last one hundred Glow F1 seeds and grow them out in isolation on the farm apart from the rest of our pepper production, thus embarking on our first-ever seed breeding project. The goal? To de-hybridize Glow in hopes of breeding it back to a stable open-pollinated variety with all the awesome pepper traits we loved, and to never have to depend on a seed company again for my favorite pepper! Amen!

Last year's pepper trials taught us mostly what we don't want to grow, but they also revealed a couple of peppers we liked. We're growing some of those at scale this season and they're starting to show up in your tote - a yellow Italian variety called Escamillo and a few smaller orange and yellow varieties called Cornito Arancia, Cornito Giallo and Oranos. They're good - 4 stars! - but not quite the 5 star caliber of Glow. 

Meanwhile, we're growing out the F2 generation of Glow from seed saved last year. Breeding back to a stable open pollinated variety can take upwards of seven years and must be done in isolation from other peppers so they don't cross-pollinate. Typically you see a lot of genetic diversity in the F2 generation, when all the traits from the two parent lines of your hybrid start to be visibly expressed. I expected to see a rainbow of diversity in the Glow F2 patch this year - I imagined there would be peppers in every shape, size and color and I'd get to play a fun game of plant selection as I went about saving this next generation of seed. But alas in actuality we're getting surprising uniformity: of our forty F2 plants, all the peppers are orange, and many have the same shape and wonderful flavor of the original hybrid. From a pepper-eating and pepper-farming perspective, it's great news! From a gene-selecting, seed-saving, plant geek perspective, it's kinda boring. But not to complain: having a pile of delicious Glow F2 peppers on my kitchen counter feels like reuniting with a dear old friend who you're happy to discover is still pretty much the same person you knew way back when.

Maybe the best thing about saving pepper seeds is that you get to eat the pepper - and in doing so, justify your sweet pepper gluttony in the name of science. It's become a participatory plant breeding project in our household: my girls each take a whole Glow F2 pepper to school with them every day for lunch and if it's an especially good one, they bring home the pepper top with it's stubble of white seeds and scrape them into the bowl on the kitchen table where the seeds dry on a paper towel before getting transferred into a little jar for next year's planting. Last night one of five Glow peppers I sliced up to put on our salad (yes, five peppers on a single salad - I'm not kidding about the gluttony) blew me away with its flavor and juiciness. I was inspired to pull out a separate bowl from the cupboard, line it with a paper towel, scrape those little seeds into it, and make a special label: "Super Duper Deliciosa." 

We'll see what Super Duper Deliciosa does next season - may she be orange and sweet and productive and disease-free (!!!) - but you never know. In the meantime, I will doggedly continue in my plant-breeding pursuit of pepper perfection: twist my arm as I eat another Glow, making it a baker's dozen for the day.

Enjoy this pepper peak, AND if you want more of them we'll be offering bulk sweet peppers by special order to our CSA members very soon! (Because we have so many! Because 1000 pepper plants is too much! Please order some and put them in your freezer/mouth/canning jars so that my crew will stop making fun of me!)

:-)

 

Newsletter: 

Week 17 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Rainbow Chard
  • Red Beets
  • Cipollini Onions
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Tomatoes
  • Zucchini
  • Hot Peppers - Jalapeño & Serrano
  • Red Potatoes 

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant
  • Head Lettuce (Wednesday CSA members only)
  • Tomatillos (Port Orford only)

The red potatoes in your share this week are a substitute for our beloved "Desiree" potatoes, which were unavailable from our potato seed supplier this year. We source certified seed potatoes from a sustainable/regenerative family farm in Colorado, Rocky Farms, where they do a beautiful job of using cover crops, animal rotation, and companion planting to build soil health and produce high quality specialty and seed potatoes. They were sold out of Desiree this year, so instead they sent us "Carla Rosa," a new variety for us. We planted our seed potatoes into near-perfect conditions in early May but unfortunately the emergence on the Carla Rosa was spotty compared to our five other varieties. After a season of watering, hilling and weeding, we finally started digging them with the help of the horses a couple weeks ago, only to be deeply disappointed when we discovered that some of the Carla Rosa - which look perfect on the outside - have "brown center" and/or "hollow heart." It's very difficult to detect the problem; our best clue is a slighter darker eye at the end of the tuber. We've cut into hundreds of potatoes over the past week, trying to determine how widespread the issue is. Half the time the suspect potatoes are perfect inside. The potatoes that are afflicted have a brown internal discoloration, a hollowed out core (like a geode), and sometimes some internal rot. No fun! You can cut around the problem areas and salvage the good part of the potato, but still - there's nothing I hate more than an insidious, invisible, and unpredictable defect that makes it hard to guarantee the quality of our produce.

I reached out to Rocky Farms to see if this was a widespread problem with the Carla Rosa, since we haven't noticed it in our other varieties yet. Some potato varieties are more susceptible to brown center and hollow heart than others, so perhaps Carla Rosa is among them - I'm still awaiting their reply. When brown center and hollow heart show up in a potato crop, the problem is typically blamed on environmental stress, particularly when a dry spell is followed by excessive rainfall. In our case, our potatoes are on a consistent biweekly irrigation schedule, so they're not usually subject to major moisture swings throughout the season. All of which leaves me a little befuddled and a lot disappointed.

We painstakingly sorted this week's harvest in hopes of sending you the best potatoes possible, and we also packed everyone an extra pound of spuds in case you end up with any ugly ones. Unfortunately our red potatoes make up about a quarter of our potato production, so we can't afford to toss the whole crop. Nor can we simply leave them in the ground and till them under, lest we want a potato weed patch in that same spot next year! That means that we'll continue to sort them with utmost care and beg your forgiveness if you run into an imperfect tater. Hopefully that extra poundage in your share will make up for it.

Also in the CSA tote this week, Cipollini onions (pronounced the Italian way, CHIP-OH-LEE-NEE). This is the first onion I reach for in our dry storage room, which is now stacked floor-to-ceiling with thousands of pounds of cleaned onions (thanks to our hard-working crew; they've been cleaning onions in every spare moment the past couple weeks!). Cipollinis are typically a small, flat onion measuring one to two inches across - pungent when raw, but divinely sweet and flavorful when roasted or caramelized. Most recipes call for using them whole, due to their diminuitive size. But for whatever reason, they grow to thrice that size (and larger) at Valley Flora, so I usually slice or quarter mine up before cooking. If you want to make some homemade pizza, do NOT skip the caramelized cipollinis on top. Outta this world. You might have to shed a tear or two in the process, but I promise: it's worth it.

Happy official start of Fall this weekend! 

Newsletter: 

Week 16 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Sweet Corn (the final harvest!)
  • Leeks (the first harvest!)
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Poblano Peppers
  • Napa Cabbage
  • Tomatoes

On Rotation:

  • Zucchini
  • Eggplant
  • Tomatillos
  • Lettuce
  • Rainbow Chard

We're setting you up with some of the key ingredients for a little Mexican feast this week: sweet corn, mild Poblano chiles to make homemade chile rellenos or stuffed Poblanos, and tomatillos to make a batch of roasted Salsa Verde (which is deeeeeelish on top of both!). The stuffed Poblano recipe is a vegan one, but you can easily sub in a different protein and regular cheese if you prefer to go non-vegan. If you still have your hot peppers from last week in the fridge and an onion on hand (red or Walla Walla will work great), you'll just need to drum up a little cilantro, lime and garlic for your salsa verde. In our household, I make a huge batch of salsa verde every Fall and can it by the quart, so zealous is the fan club around here. It livens up our burrito bowls year-round. 

I've never laid eyes on Poblanos quite so large as the ones we plucked off the plants this week, so they might require an XL slab of cheese when you stuff them for your rellenos. :) Poblanos are the traditional chile used for chile rellenos, picked when they are green and fresh. If you let a Poblano ripen to chocolatey-red and then dry it, it's known as an Ancho chile, which has a sweet, smokey, complex flavor with a little spice. We've always grown them on a smaller scale for the farmstand, but decided to scale up production to supply our CSA this year because they're such a beautiful pepper.

Napa cabbage and leeks are also new this week, and both are harbingers of Fall. If you look up napa cabbage recipes online, mostly you'll get recipes for cooked or stir-fried napa. All good, but for some reason I always lean into raw napa salad recipes like this instead, and love to throw in sliced sweet pepper for extra color and seasonal flair. It's such a light, tender, mild cabbage with just the right amount of mid-rib crunch. Napa is also the foundation of traditional Korean kimchi.

Leeks are one of the hardiest crops we grow, and they get the prize for living the longest life of any annual vegetable on the farm. We seed them in early February in the greenhouse, they get planted outside in mid-April, and they spend all summer slowly sizing up in the field until our first variety is ready for harvest in early September. We'll be pulling our early and mid-season varieties throughout the Fall until we're left with only our big, girthy winter leeks, which can last until April. They withstand every kind of weather - snowstorms and hail beatings - stolid and steadfast. But what do you do with a leek? My simple answer is that you can do anything with a leek that you would do with a cooked onion. The are in the same family of Allia as onions and will impart a similar flavor profile to any dish. If you're new to them, here's a great how-to on cleaning, cutting and cooking leeks.

Enjoy this shift into Fall food, the long evening shadows, and this lovely little rain!

Newsletter: 

Week 15 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In this week's CSA share:

  • Carrots
  • Sweet Corn
  • Eggplant
  • Head Lettuce
  • Serrano & Jalapeño hot peppers
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes
  • Walla Walla Sweets

On Rotation:

  • Strawberries

It's that sorrowful week when the farm goes quiet because the kids are back to school. Of course it's a good thing, but how we miss their belly laughs and barefoot glee and mischievous shenanigans as they roam feral around the farm all day! This year we found ourselves unexpectedly short-handed in July and for the first time ever the kids stepped up and stepped in, filling essential roles during packout on Tuesdays and Fridays: Cleo (age 13) took over flower production/making boquets and Uma (age 9) was our go-to girl for packing up green beans and cucumbers. Both of them have also been super helpful getting the CSA totes packed the past 6 weeks, which is always the final step in our 13-hour-long Tuesday and Friday marathons. It's hard to say how we'll survive September without them, now that we're short-handed again AND broken-hearted :). Needless to say, it has been SO SWEET and special to have them in the mix, getting real work done and doing it beautifully (stop by the Langlois Market this week to pick up a boquet of flowers, thanks to Cleo who put in her final day in the barn yesterday).

On the farm this week we're looking forward to In a Landscape (this Saturday at 5 pm - tickets are still available!). What else? We're cleaning a motherlode of onions in the greenhouse in order to clear out space for our next big storage crop that's almost ready to come out of the field: winter squash! We'll also start digging our first storage potatoes tomorrow with the help of the horses. Pretty much the next month is all about stuffing the barn, walk-in coolers, and any covered space with as much food as possible for fall and winter (it's easy to imagine what it's like to be a squirrel at this time of year). But meanwhile, summer persists!

  • The u-pick strawberry patch is still fruiting abundantly. It's a great time to come out and pick - you'll likely have the run of the place on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That said, this might be the final week you see them in the CSA share. The berries have a shorter shelf life in the Fall, so we encourage practicing instant gratification rather than delayed (eat now, not tomorrow!) and keeping them refrigerated. 
  • Uma's watermelon crop is ready! You can pick up one of her super-sweet-n-juicy open-pollinated melons at the farmstand on Wednesdays and Saturdays for the next couple weeks while supplies last!
  • We should have another two weeks of sweet corn, this week and next. Get your fill while it's here!

Savor the abuandance, it doesn't get much better!

 

Newsletter: 

In a Landscape Coming to Valley Flora September 7th!

Get Your Tickets!

Join us for a magical evening at Valley Flora on Saturday, September 7th at 5 pm.

Hunter Noack returns to the farm with his grand piano to play a benefit concert for the Wild Rivers Land Trust!

 

Good Neighbor Program

IN A LANDSCAPE’s Good Neighbor Program provides access to those who might not otherwise be able to afford a ticket to this outdoor classical music experience.

Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Cardholders use promo code: “inalandscape” (EBT card required at check-in)

To request a Good Neighbor ticket for another reason, please email gnp@inalandscape.org

 

Newsletter: 

Week 13 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Share this Week:

  • Curly Parsley
  • French Fingerling Potatoes
  • Sweet Corn
  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Red Onion
  • Green Beans
  • Tomatoes
  • Zucchini
  • Hot Peppers (Jalapeño & Serrano)

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant

Surprise! I'm sending out a newsletter after all this week due to a last minute change of plans. It's now highly likely that there will be NO NEWSLETTER NEXT WEEK, but I'm guessing you all are figuring out what to do with sweet corn and tomatoes without too much help from me :).

As we head into late summer, certain seasonal shifts are underway: shorter days and chilly nights are slowing down growth in the lettuce field, hence the pause in head lettue this week. Cucumber and summer squash yields are down dramatically while eggplant and sweet peppers are revving up. All of our storage onions are out of the field - just in time ahead of this week's rain, making way for our first fall cover crops. The winter squash are fully sized up and turning a bright medley of fall colors on the vine, with harvest just a few weeks away. Fennel is at its best (fat and juicy and mild), the green beans are abundant (much to my crew's chagrin due to countless hours scooching down the bean rows on their knees lately), and our field of fall and winter Brassicas is filling in rapidly in vivid stripes of deep green and blue. We have one toe in Autumn, but the other foot is still firmly planted in summer: blueberries! blackberries! and the best strawberries I've tasted all season coming out of the u-pick patch. This crescendo moment of produce is one worth reveling in.

The arrival of fresh albacore at the dock, combined with this week's CSA share, has you perfectly poised to make Nicoise Salad: potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, red onion, fresh tuna.....

Or try this simple recipe for French Potato Salad using your pretty rose-hued French Fingerlings, parsley, red onions and green beans. 

I love it when I look at my plate and marvel aloud: all this came from our backyard! Always with that one caveat, "except the olive oil" :). But thanks to climate change we might eventually be harvesting our own Valley Flora olives - not a bad silver lining!

Newsletter: 

Week 12 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • Head Lettuce
  • Red Beets
  • Green Beans
  • Cucumbers
  • Orange and Purple Carrots
  • Red Long of Tropea Torpedo Onions
  • Tomatoes
  • Zucchini
  • Basil

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli
  • Cilantro
  • Eggplant

In a Landscape Coming to Valley Flora September 7th!

Hunter Noack returns to the farm on September 7th with his Steinway concert grand piano! 

Founded in 2016 by classical pianist Hunter Noack, IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit outdoor concert series where  America’s most stunning landscapes replace the traditional concert hall. A 9-foot Steinway grand piano travels on a flatbed trailer to State and National Parks, urban greenspaces, working ranches, farms, and historical sites for classical music concerts that connect people with each landscape.  

To meet the acoustical challenges of performing in the wild, music is transmitted to concert-goers via wireless headphones. No longer confined to seats, audiences explore the landscape, wander through secret glens, lie in sunny meadows, roam old growth forests - and at Valley Flora, walk throughout our organic farm fields.

In the spirit of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Music and Theatre Projects, which presented thousands of free concerts and plays in theaters, public spaces and parks across the country during the Depression, IN A LANDSCAPE events are offered primarily in rural communities for free or on a subsidized basis. 

Since 2016, IN A LANDSCAPE has presented 275 concerts in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, New York, Utah, Wyoming, and California to over 55,000 people. Guest artists have included poets, visual artists, dancers, and musicians playing everything from banjos to pianos.

Join us at the farm on Saturday, September 7th for this transcendent experience!  Get Tickets Here!

Bulk Basil Still Available by Special Order! - Order your bulk basil and we'll deliver it to your CSA pickup site in the coming weeks!

No Beet Box Newsletter Next Week - Heads up, we will not be sending out a newsletter next week. You can look forward to the first sweet corn of the season next week (!!) along with a pile of other peak-of-season produce. Hope you're enjoying the bounty!

Newsletter: 

Week 11 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In This Week's CSA Share:

  • Lacinato Kale
  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Head Lettuce
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini
  • Green Beans
  • The First Tomato 

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli
  • Dill
  • Cilantro
  • Eggplant

I hope the past ten weeks of being a CSA member has gotten you in shape to eat your veggies, cuz it's a haul this week! You might call it an "Olympic" share, and maybe for some of you a true test of your ability to put down the produce. We're headed into that time of year when there is just so much good stuff to eat, it can be hard to keep the CSA share from getting out of control (especially when your farmers themselves eat inordinate quantities of vegetables and might possibly have a totally skewed sense of "normal"). This is the moment to eclipse all that "daily recommended servings" stuff from our somewhat outdated food pyramid and put veggies at the bottom. Make them your foundation and you should have no trouble getting through a peak season Valley Flora tote in a week (and you'll probably notice that powering your body with lots of plants feels pretty dang good). From what I hear, the strawberries rarely make it home from the pickup site, especially if you have kids in tow, and the same goes for the carrots and cukes. If you're getting backed up on other items, here are a few tips that might have you wishing for more:

  • You can disappear kale in a heartbeat, by way of your blender (smoothies!), your oven (kale chips!), your steamer basket, or your hot wok/frying pan. Lately we've been eating about two bunches of kale every night in the form of kale chips (instead of popcorn) while we catch up on the Olympic highlights from the day. You can use any variety of kale, including this week's Lacinato. 
  • If you eat salad every day, that mondo head of lettuce won't seem like enough (confession, we eat at least one to two of those almost every night, which means my personal CSA share would need to contain about ten heads of lettuce to get our household through a week - maybe I should seek professional help?). Big lettuce leaves are also great for making lettuce wraps. Stuff them with the filling of your choice, meat or vegetarian.
  • Walla Walla Sweet onions, when caramelized in a skillet or roasted on a sheet pan, cook down into a succulent little pile of candy that you can put on pasta, pizza, burrito bowls, anything. I challenge you to not stand there in the kitchen eating it by the spoonful. And then, voila! your onions have disappeared!
  • Zucchini fritters or zucchini bread or zucchini parmesan are great ways to burn through your zukes.
  • Broccoli is winding down until Fall, so this will be the last week or two we have it. Here's a smorgasbord of recipes that put it to good use.

I'm guessing that your one lovely debut tomato won't require any pointers, nor will the first taste of fresh green beans.

Go for the CSA gold this week. As that ubiquitous Olympic sponsor likes to say, Just Do It. 

Newsletter: 

Week 10 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In the Harvest Basket this week:

  • Head Lettuce
  • Red Long of Tropea Torpedo Onions
  • French Fingerlings
  • Broccoli
  • Red Cabbage
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Zucchini
  • Persian Cucumbers
  • Slicing Cucumbers

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant!
  • Cilantro
  • Dill

Bulk Basil by Special Order - Available Now!

Calling all pesto makers! The basil is abundant and luxurious right now, and it's your turn to place dibs on a pound or two (or more!) for your pesto-making delight. You can order online via our Local Line platform (you will have to log in to your new Local Line account to place the order - if you have not yet registered your account, please do so - I just sent all unregistered CSA members another account invite to make it easy).

When you go to place you're order you'll be prompted to choose your pickup location and date. Please choose your regular CSA pickup location (PO, Bandon, Coos Bay or Valley Flora) and your preferred delivery date. Please note that we will try to deliver your order on that date, pending availability. If we can't deliver it that day, we'll communicate with you via email and let you know when to expect it.

All orders placed via Local Line require online payment. Yes, we are slowly shedding some of our check-in-the-mail Luddite ways...but don't worry, we won't take it too far: the Valley Flora anthem will continue to be the sweet jangle of trace chains behind two bay draft horses pulling a century-old culitvator through the fields. But back to online payment....You have two options:

  1. Pay with a credit card using LocalPay. A 3.5% credit card convenience fee will be added to your order. 
  2. If you like the check-in-the-mail way of doing things, we have a Store Credit option on Local Line. You can send us a check for any amount and we will apply it to your Local Line account in the form of Store Credit. That credit will then automatically apply to your future online orders (CSA or farmstand). Store Credit never expires, and it's a great way to avoid the 3.5% credit card processing fee. If you want to go the Store Credit route, mail us a check with "store credit" written in the memo field and we'll apply it to your account as soon as we receive it. Make checks payable to VALLEY FLORA and mail to PO Box 91, Langlois, OR 97450. In the meantime if you're antsy to place a basil order you can pay with your credit card and then use your Store Credit next time. 

Now order up some basil while the gettin's good!

Busting the Supermodel Myth One Cucumber at a Time

If you've ever grown cucumbers, maybe you've noticed how most of them bear little resemblance to those straight, uniform, supermarket slicers? How, in fact, a very large percentage are curved, tapered, scarred, bloated, tiny, crooked, twinned, sun-splotched, or pocked by cucumber beetle bites? Such is the reality of being a regular field-grown cucumber. The "supermodels" - long, straight, slender and smooth-skinned - make up just a fraction of any harvest. Kinda like humans: women who fit the requirements of a supermodel make up about 1% of the population; meanwhile, in real life, 90% of women have cellulite, 70% of women have stretch marks, less than 17% of Amercian women have blue eyes, and fewer than 3% of American women are 5'10" or taller. This is the cucumber analog of those statistics:

Which is why this week, while spending many, many hours bent over upside down in the cucumber patch (cuke harvest is at its peak right now), I started pondering why this feminist farmer is playing into the supermodel myth every time I sort the cucumbers for packout in the barn! When I fill up the foodbank bins with all the "differently-shaped" cukes, I'm only perpetuating the myth that every cucumber is a "perfect" cucumber - an impossible ideal! What am I doing, when I know firsthand that those "ugly" cukes are a big part of the mix and taste just as great (I know because that's the only kind of cucumber we ever eat at home, since all the "good" ones go to market)?!

So this week I am making a conscious effort to share some of the general cucumber population with you. Yes, we did put a supermodel-ish cuke in each tote yesterday - old habits die hard - but we also put some wonky ones in there in honor of the fact that cucumbers, like us, come in myriad shapes and sizes, and it's what's inside that really counts. 

Here's to phenotypic diversity in plants and humans - the world would be a boring place without it. :)

Newsletter: 

Week 9 of 28 from Valley Flora!

In your CSA share this week:

  • Bunch Carrots, hooray!
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Broccoli
  • Basil
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini
  • Head Lettuce

Wa-wa-wee-wa, Walla Wallas!

The arrival of the Walla Walla Sweets is a true marker of July at Valley Flora. We grow seven or eight onion varieties on the farm, but there's a certain place in my heart reserved for this special open-pollinated variety. They're easy-eating: juicy, mild, sweet, versatile (check out this long list of Walla Walla-centric recipes from the Walla Walla Sweet Growers Association). But they're also fleeting compared to most of our other varieties, which store well into winter. This is a truly seasonal onion, only available from us from now until September (Walla Wallas have a higher water content than other onions, making them less suitable for long-term storage). We start them from seed, along with all of our other varieties, in early February. They spend over 10 weeks in seedling trays in the greenhouse, slowly girthing up as we nurse them through the cold, dark days of late winter and early spring. By the end of April, weather permitting, we transplant all our onions, shallots and leeks into the field (close to 23,000 bareroot seedlings that get hand-planted over the course of a few days) and then tend them for another three months until first harvest. There's a lot of hand weeding that goes into organic onion production, since they're slow growing and don't form a competitive canopy to shade out weeds. The hope is that all that TLC will add up to an abundance of onions that will see us through the rest of the season and into next spring, starting with the Walla Wallas.

I'm happy to report that this year's onion crop has been coming along spectacularly, healthy and vigorous. We always start harvesting our Walla Wallas fresh from the field while they still have green tops (those tops can be eaten like green onions if you so chose). As the onions finish maturing in the field, the tops start to dry down and flop over, at which point we pull the remainder of the crop and "cure" it in our greenhouse for 10 days. Once the tops are fully dry, we trim the roots and tops and put them in our dry storage room, which extends our Walla Walla season into September. By then we will have also harvested our yellow and red storage onions, cipollinis, and shallots and will be using every spare minute to get them cured, cleaned and stashed in climate-controlled dry storage.

We've still got a few weeks to go until the big storage onion harvest is upon us, which makes cherry-picking big, fat, fresh Walla Wallas from the field evermore enjoyable right now. I hope you feel the same way about eating them :). Buen provecho!

Newsletter: 

Week 8 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • Fennel
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onion
  • Zucchini
  • Cucumbers
  • Gold Beets
  • Broccoli
  • Italian Parsley
  • Head Lettuce

On Rotation:

  • Chard
  • Collards
  • Sugar Snap Peas

Sugar Snap Peas are winding down this week (so long until next year, sniff), but cucumbers are on the rise! You'll likely be seeing our good old open-pollinated slicer, "Marketmore 76," in your share this week, alongside "Diva," a Persian-type cucumber with thin skin, few seeds, and extra-sweet flavor. Cucumbers are a favorite in our household, so they often get center stage. These are a couple of cucumber-centric salads that I love: Asian Cucumber Salad and Sweet & Tangy Cucumber Salad (you can thin-slice your Walla Walla Sweet in lieu of red onions, and lean into your Italian parsley if you don't have dill handy). Walla Walla Sweet onions are a seasonal wonder unto themselves (from now until September): huge, fat, juicy, sweet onions that lend themselves to any purpose: sliced/diced raw, onion rings, or caramelized (do them up with sauteed fennel to make Finocchio, one of my favorite dishes - eat it by the spoonful, or atop pasta/polenta, or on toast). If you're still not convinced about fennel, you might try this recipe from our trove of recipes on the VF website: Caramelized Fennel with Honey, Lemon Zest, and Chevre.

Big bunches of gold beets are landing in your tote this week as well. Of the three beet varieties we grow - red, Chioggia (candystripe), and gold - the golds tend to be the most mellow. That earthy flavor that turns some people off to beets is due to a compound called geosmin ("geos" as in "earth"). It's the same compound that we associate with the smell of forest soil and summer rain (like yesterday's wild thunder showers). Some folks are much more sensitive to it than others, which explains why some people complain that beets taste like dirt, and others love them. If you eat beets raw - grated in a salad, for instance - the geosmin will be the strongest, so we don't recommend that if you're already anti-beet. Better to coook them - roasted or steamed - which neutralizes the geosmin considerably and brings out the natural sweetness of the beet. A lot of chefs prefer the gold beets because they don't "bleed" like red beets do (or color your pee/poop, which has startled many a new CSA member, one of whom went to the ER years ago because they thought they had internal bleeding - er, probably should have mentioned that when you got red beets for the first time a few weeks back....). Get your hands on some of Abby's baby arugula (at the farmstand or the co-ops) and make this Roasted Golden Beet Salad. The beets pair wonderfully with goat cheese and walnuts.

Enjoy!

Newsletter: 

Week 7 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • New Potatoes
  • Broccoli
  • Sugar Snap Peas - a motherlode of 'em!
  • Fava Beans
  • Zucchini
  • Strawberries
  • Head Lettuce
  • Cucumbers

On Rotation:

  • Artichokes

Oh holy heat wave! Glad that's over, SHEESH! I don't know how those inland farmers do it - dealing with heat like that, and temperatures ten to fifteen degrees more extreme, on an increasingly regular basis. Climate change is no fun as a farmer, I can promise you that. Heat waves force you to spend a lot of energy throwing extra water at crops; trying to outpace the sun as it vaults into the morning sky during harvest; trying to keep your own body cool and hydrated and conscious; doing your absolute best to keep produce from wilting while you pick it and pack it. We hit the high nineties/low hundreds over the weekend, temps that we've seen before on the farm, but it's always been one random day here or there - never a string of consecutive, unrelenting, oven-broilers. Certain summer crops soaked up the heat happily: the peppers, sweet corn, onions, winter squash, green beans and eggplant all bushed out and doubled in size in the span of a few days. But some of our "spring" crops that don't like extreme temps, like peas, tried to outrun us. We put in an extra harvest day to avoid losing them all, but even so our Monday haul broke every yield record in the history of growing Sugar Snaps at Valley Flora because the pods were so fat and filled out (still sweet, thank goodness). That explains why you're getting a huge pile of them in your share this week...:). We also lost a bunch of lettuce to bolting, the aphids moved in on the broccolini, and the strawberries are in a mild state of heat shock.

It's a huge relief to see our forecast returning to the lovely 70's for now, a temperature that both flora and fauna thrive in. That said, there's a part of us that is constantly braced nowadays, trying to stay mentally, emotionally and physically prepared for the next heat wave or climate catastrophe, because it's coming at us no matter how much we hope it won't. Climate change means that farmers and farmworkers have to dig that much deeper, work that much harder in uncomfortable - if not downright dangerous - conditions, and reckon with the financial reality of climate-related crop losses. Wish us - and the global food supply - best of luck, and consider the connection before you hop willy nilly on an airplane, eat lots of meat, or cast your ballot. Your choice to source your produce from us - a local, organic, solar-powered farm - and eat a plant-forward diet is a very important step in the right direction (30% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to the food system, nearly 20% of that 30% is food mile emissions, and 36% of that 20% is from fruit and vegetable food miles). So it's significant when you get your fruit and veg nearby, and especially significant when your produce doesn't travel by air. While you might have been motivated to join our CSA for the flavor, freshness, or health benefits of peak-of-season produce, you're also engaging in a form of climate activism when you pick up your CSA tote, farmstand order, or buy Valley Flora produce at the Port Orford Co-Op, Coos Head Food Co-op, the Langlois Market, McKay's, Crooked Creek Farmstand, or any of the other wonderful outlets that support the farm. Thank you so much for being part of the solution! We hope it feels good and tastes great.

P.S. If you don't know what to do with fresh fava beans, this guy'll help get you started :) and here are a few recipes to consider.

Newsletter: 

In A Landscape Returns to Valley Flora September 7th!

IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild™ is an outdoor concert series where America’s most stunning landscapes replace the traditional concert hall. Guests explore the surrounding environment while listening to the music through wireless headphones, creating an immersive experience that fosters a connection with the music, nature, and with one another. Explore the full 2024 series at this link.

Join us for a sublime evening of virtuoso piano with Hunter Noack amidst the farm fields at Valley Flora! The piano will be situated in the middle of the farm, north of the horse corral. Concert check-in opens at 4:00 pm, and the performance begins at 5:00 pm. Please carpool since parking is limited, and arrive early enough to park and walk to the site.

Thanks to the sponsorship of Wild Rivers Coast Alliance, Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation, and Travel Southern Oregon Coast, a portion of ticket sales will benefit the Wild Rivers Land Trust, a non-profit organization working to protect watersheds, open space, and working ranches, farms, and forests for future generations.

This event takes place on the ancestral and occupied homeland of The Confederated Tribes of Siletz including the Tututni peoples.

Accessibility and other FAQs

Parking at our location is extremely limited and we encourage carpooling. Guests may have to park up to 1/2 mile from the site, depending on roadside parking availability, so please plan ahead. There will be a drop-off area near the site for guests, chairs, and picnics. There will be a small # of reserved parking places for those with ADA placards. The site itself is on grassy uneven terrain. There will be no shuttle service provided. Please see the Eventbrite page for additional details on accessibility, dogs, food, and other answers about our specific location.

Good Neighbor Program

IN A LANDSCAPE’s Good Neighbor Program provides access to those who might not otherwise be able to afford a ticket to this outdoor classical music experience.

Eligibility at this site:

  • Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Cardholders use promo code: “inalandscape” (EBT card required at check-in)
  • To request a Good Neighbor ticket for another reason, please email gnp@inalandscape.org

Buy Your Tickets Here!

Newsletter: 

Week 6 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • Head lettuce
  • Broccoli
  • Green Cone Cabbage
  • Basil
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Purplette Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Kale

On Rotation:

  • Artichokes

If ever there was a "signature" Week 6 share, this is it: dainty Purplette onions, fat Sugar Snap peas, tender-sweet Caraflex cabbage, heavy heads of broccoli, bright red strawberries, luxurious basil. With one major exception: artichokes! Starting this week artichokes will be on rotation, which has never happened in the July CSA shares before. We typically move our artichoke patch every five years or so, usually in the late Fall. We missed the window to do it last fall, so they got divided and moved in February instead. That delayed their development by a couple of months, so instead of budding in April/May, which is their usual peak season, we're getting July chokes instead. These new plants are HUGE - wading through them for harvest feels like a journey into some prehistoric thistle patch, with spiky chokes bobbing above the foliage everywhere you turn.

The Valley Flora artichoke is somewhat of a local legend. They've been in our family for over fifty years, since the early 1970's when my mom's friend gave her a division from her garden on Short Street in Bandon. My mom tended and divided that plant and turned it into multiple clumps of artichokes in her own garden. Throughout my entire childhood we savored those chokes in the late spring (dipped in melted butter of course). When I moved to Portland after college in 2003, my mom gave me a few divisions for my own backyard. They threw chokes reliably, even in Portland's more extreme inland climate. When I finally moved back to Langlois, I brought my artichokes with me: forty bare root divisions that I planted out into the field next to 300 Green Globe starts that I'd germinated from a seed packet.

Once those Green Globes started producing that first season, it became apparent immediately how superior the "Mother Choke" was: those forty original plants out-yielded the three hundred Green Globes; the chokes were more beautiful and uniform; they had far better flavor; and, most striking of all, they were practicly chokeless (the "choke" is the hairy part of the flower bud, just above the heart as you eat down through the leaves). When you eat a smaller Valley Flora artichoke, you'll find that you can eat it from the bottom up, no hairy choke to choke on. The Mother Choke also puts out a smaller, secondary flush of chokes in the Fall (bonus)!

As the plants came through their first winter of frost, snow and heavy rain, it became obvious that there was no point in keeping those Green Globes around. The Mother Chokes took every beating that winter threw at them - including a 17 degree cold snap - and bounced right back, while the Green Globes faltered and many died. I wasted no time in tilling the Globes under, dividing the row of Mother Chokes yet again, and replanting the patch with our own stock. Sixteen years later they're going stronger than ever on the farm - in July! 

If Valley Flora had a mascot, most of the public would probably chose the strawberry. But deep down, I think it's the artichoke. It represents the five+ decades that this land has cupped us in its palm along Floras Creek, generously feeding us unusual and beautiful things every season over the span of three generations. People usually speak of humans as the ones who "tend" and "nurture" a piece of land - and while it's certainly true that we spend our every waking moment loving on this place - at the end of the day I feel like it's the land that's tending, nurturing and filling us with life.

There is a Kalapuya saying that I keep on a post-it note at my desk:

A homeland, an Ilihi, cannot be possessed, it possesses its people, it holds them.

For this beautiful homeland, and for the artichoke that grows so well within it, nothing but gratitude.

Newsletter: 

Week 5 from Valley Flora!

  • Romaine - go big with a Summer Solstice Caesar Salad. Make this Caesar Dressing, my all-time favorite!
  • Sugar Snap Peas - whoopea!!!
  • Red Beets
  • Dill
  • Strawberries
  • Fennel

On Rotation:

  • Rainbow Chard
  • Collards
  • Broccoli
  • Zucchini

Oh yeah, here it comes! The Week 5 CSA share is often the gateway into summer food, and the moment when I let out a big sigh of relief as a farmer. Believe it or not, June is the leanest month on the farm, in spite of all the daylight and sunshine. That's because all of our overwintering and storage crops from last season are exhausted (potatoes, onions, squash, shallots, beets), and everything we have to harvest is newly-planted and at the mercy of capricious springtime (for instance, our first four carrot seedings were demolished by slugs, delaying our first outdoor carrot harvest by a month+ this year). That means that most of June is usually about leafy greens, lettuce, fast-growing root crops like turnips and radishes, and if we're lucky, strawberries. We're also suddenly trying to fill twice as many CSA boxes every week (instead of half as many every other week, like we do for our Winter CSA from January to May), stock our farmstand, and keep all of our wholesale accounts happy (the co-ops, grocery stores and restaurants that loyally purchase VF produce). The CSA shares are typically smallest in June, and as someone who is perhaps overly-obsessed with stuffing those CSA totes to the gills, I love it when we drop into the abundance of summertime, replete with heavy, sturdy things like beets, fennel, broccoli, and carrots (coming soonish!).

The cherry on top is sugar snap peas, which are one of my all-time favorite early summer delights. They are the very first thing we seed outdoors (March 10th this year, in a tiny little window of sunshine in between incessant rainstorms), and then we spend 3+ months tending and training them up a towering trellis until this moment, when finally those little snackers are hanging heavy on the vine. It's a labor-of-love kinda harvest - many, many crew hours will be spent combing through those long rows in the next few weeks - but the reward is more than worth it. Enjoy them while they're here because it's a short 3 week window of harvest.

Also new this week: fennel, red beets, dill, and collards and chard (on rotation). I laughed when I realized both fennel and beets would be in the share this week - our two most controversial vegetables. In fifteen years of running our CSA, I have learned that people tend to fall into two hardline camps: fennel haters v. fennel lovers and beet haters v. beet lovers. Sorry to throw two polarizing vegetables at you at once, but honestly, they make for a stellar pairing in something like this: Roasted Beet and Fennel Salad with Citrus Dressing (I'd toss some crumbled goat cheese on top if I were you...). 

I've given this sermon to CSA members in the past, but studies show that it can take up to 20 tries for the human palate to learn to like a food. So if you think you're in one of those hater camps, give fennel/beets a try this week - 20 little bites is all it might take to join the lovers (here's a little more info on fennel - eating it raw, eating it roasted, learning to love it...). Good luck, and let me know if you're among the converted - it's a beautiful world on this side.

Newsletter: 

Week 4 from Valley Flora!

  • Baby Arugula 
  • Rhubarb - You can go sweet (crisp, compote, cake, muffins) or savory with this one
  • Basil - the first harvest!
  • Strawberries
  • Hakurei Turnips - last week of these little morsels until Fall!
  • White Kohlrabi - the big, tender cousin to the purple kohlrabi from last week. Peel and slice it into your salad for yummy crunch.
  • Head Lettuce - butterhead, leaf or romaine

On Rotation:

  • Zucchini
  • Broccolini

Coming Soon!

  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Broccoli
  • Red Beets
  • Fennel
  • Cabbage

 

Newsletter: 

Week 3 from Valley Flora!

  • Purple Kohlrabi
  • Strawberries
  • Mizuna
  • Kale
  • Head Lettuce

On Rotation:

  • Zucchini
  • Broccolini
  • Cilantro
  • Hakurei Turnips

For some of you this might be your first encounter with kohlrabi. Those pretty purple bulbs are edible from top to bottom: you can use the leaves as a cooking green, just as you would kale or collards. The bulb requires peeling (¡que lástima! you have to peel away that plum-colored exterior). But the interior is a crisp, white, crudités delight, not unlike jicama or the tender peeled stem of broccoli. There are various recipes that call for cooking kohlrabi, but personally I think it's at its best when eaten raw. If you want to keep it simple: peel it, cut it into sticks or slices, and dip it in your favorite dressing. Or try a kohlrabi slaw recipe - there are lots of variations on this theme, so take a gander on ye olde internet and search for "kohlrabi slaw" to find the flavor profile that sings to you.

 Mizuna might also be a new one for some of you (the bagged baby green with light green, serrated leaves). Mizuna is a mild Japanese mustard green and can be enjoyed raw as a salad base or sauteed. This Mizuna Salad with Ponzu Dressing is the kinda thing that makes my mouth water. It's also a recipe that will most likely require you to improvise a little, since it might be hard to track down shiso leaf and Japanese ginger. But no worries, even if you just make the ponzu dressing and toss it with naked mizuna (and/or try some of the recommended substitutions) you'll have a lovely little flavor bomb.

Kale is finally showing up in your tote this week, a little behind the normal curve for us. Our spring planting came under attack by root maggots and symphylans, but we've been singing encouragement to the plants for the past month and all of our kale, chard and collards are finally taking off. If you want to get yourself addicted to kale, make some kale chips. You can also throw raw kale into a smoothie, steam it, sautee it, or make any number of riffs - from deluxe to monastic - on raw kale salad.

Easing into Summer: Our Current Farmstand and U-Pick Schedule

We are slowly easing into our summer schedule with the farmstand and strawberry u-pick. The farmstand is currently open on Wednesdays only from 11:30 to 2:30 pm and strawberry u-pick is open on Saturdays only starting at 11:30 am (the berries are still limited while the patch comes into full production). We plan to add our Saturday farmstand to the schedule in the next couple weeks, and Wednesdays to the u-pick schedule once there are enough berries.

If you want to shop the farmstand, we strongly encourage folks to pre-order their produce in advance via our online store. We do stock the farmstand with limited produce for drop-in shoppers, but you have the widest selection and best guarantee if you pre-order.

Finally, a quick heads up that next week's newsletter will be either 1) very short, or 2) non-existent because I won't have muy usual office time on Wednesday to spin farm yarns for you :).

Have a great week!

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 2 from Valley Flora!

  • Radish Micro Mix
  • Baby Arugula (bagged)
  • Yellow Spring Onions
  • Head Lettuce
  • Purple Radishes
  • Strawberries
  • Pea Tendrils

On Rotation:

  • Broccolini
  • Zucchini

We couldn't be more grateful for the almost 2" of rain on Sunday night - enough to help keep the hills green and the creek full. There's also a bit of magic in real rain, as opposed to irrigation water, that makes plants go crazy. Rainwater is slightly acidic (thanks to colliding with CO2 as it plummets through the atmosphere) and when it hits the soil it catalyzes the release of important micronutrients like zinc, copper, iron and manganese, all of which are essential to plant growth. Rainwater also contains nitrates - the form of nitrogen that plants can readily absorb through their roots - which gives crops a noticeable boost. And, it rinses off the dust that collects on the leaves of plants, allowing more sunlight to reach their cells and boost photosynthesis. It's no wonder that in the week following a good summer rain we sometimes see our field crops double in size.

Growing up here as a kid, June was always a misty, drippy, green month - a little maddening when you're ten years old and school's out for summer and all you want is to head for the swimming hole, if only it weren't 60 degrees and drizzling. In the last decade that's changed noticeably, such that June as become much more of a dry, sunny, summer month here. I suppose that's great for swimming season, but not for drought. A June without rain means less feed and a thin hay crop for the ranchers, water scarcity in the creeks and rivers, and higher risk of wildfires - our new, unnerving, normal courtesy of climate change. Even though rain makes a mess of the strawberry patch when it's loaded with ripe fruit, I'll take it any day in the summer! That's what strawberry jam was invented for: a great use for rain-battered berries.

This week you're seeing a few new things in the CSA share:

  • Baby Arugula, thanks to Abby - wonderful as a stand-alone salad green, blended into pesto, tossed into risotto, sauteed, or used as a pizza topper.
  • Radish Micro Mix - a superfood packed with vitamins and minerals, great as a topper on tacos, salads, pretty much any dish - or add it to your smoothie for a nutrient boost.
  • Pea Tendrils - whimsical, wonderful, delicious pea tendrils! The entire thing is edible, flowers and stems included (although the lower stems may be tougher/woodier and worth avoiding). You can do just about anything with pea tendrils; here are a few recipes to help you decide which direction to go. These are a great prelude to our sugar snap peas, which are growing like gangbusters and should start yielding in a few short weeks. 

Salad Shares Begin this Week!

As of this week we'll begin delivering marked red coolers to all CSA pickup sites containing Abby's Greens Salad Shares. If you did not sign up for a salad share this season, DO NOT TAKE SALAD from the coolers! If you did sign up for a salad share, be sure you take the correct size bag each week. There are half pound and full pound shares, so please double check that you have the right size bag.

Enjoy the early summer harvest!

Newsletter: 

Week 1 of the 2024 CSA Season!

In your first share this week:

  • Red Spring Onions - a labor of Allium love, planted last fall and finally ready for harvest this week!
  • Purple Radishes - juicy with a little kick; if you like it less spicy, peel them!
  • Bunched Arugula - a mildly spicy green, wonderful in salads or alongside a slab of fish
  • Bunched Tatsoi - a dark green, spoon-shaped leafy green with white ribs, great sauteed or stir-fried
  • Head Lettuce - red butter, red oakleaf or redleaf plus a mini romaine
  • A SunOrange Cherry Tomato Plant - see below for planting tips!

On Rotation:*

  • Hakurei Turnips - our favorite salad turnip, buttery-sweet and good enough to eat like an apple
  • Zucchini - the first tender harvest out of our field tunnels
  • Strawberries - starting to come on strong in the field! We'll try to get you as many pints of these over the summer as we can! :)
  • Cilantro 

*These are crops that we don't have enough of all at once to put in every CSA tote in the same week, usually because they are just coming into production and aren't yielding fully yet. Some pickup sites will receive them this week, others in a future week - we keep track so it's even-steven all year :)

Hello CSA Members and Welcome to our 2024 Season!

We're tickled that you all have decided to embark on this 28-week seasonal eating adventure with us! The CSA is the biggest ever this year, thanks to a tsunami of unprecedented interest, so THANK YOU for being a core part of it! We are especially delighted that we have more SNAP members participating than ever before, thanks to the Double Up Food Bucks Program, which covers half the cost of the CSA for folks with SNAP/Oregon Trail benefits. Our CSA membership is the backbone of our farm economy and community (some of our members have been with us for 15 years!) and we make you our absolute first priority, ahead of our other sales channels (wholesale and farmstand). Some CSA's are managed the other way around: sell everything you can to other outlets first and then dump the leftovers on your CSA. Not at Valley Flora. Our commitment to our CSA is what drives the crop diversity at Valley Flora - we want to keep those totes interesting and abundant for you every week! - which has a beautiful ecological ripple effect on the farm: hundreds of different crops and varieties growing in coloful, organic polyculture, and supporting all kinds of vibrant life (other than the vegetables themselves), like this baby Pacific tree frog that greeted me in the lettuce yesterday:

For  those of you who are new to the Valley Flora CSA, an extra special welcome. It takes a certain adventurous spirit to commit to 7 months of the unknown, but we promise to do our very best to keep you stoked and stocked with peak-of-season, fresh-harvested produce every single week from now through December. As returning members can attest, it can be a lot of food! We hope it motivates you to eat more plants, and I, Zoë, will also do my best to offer tips, recipes, and backstory for all that produce in this here weekly "Beet Box" newsletter. These days the internet is rife with great recipes - easily searchable by ingredient - so I trust that many of you can find inspiration online or in your own collection of cookbooks. That said, I'll try to do some extra coaching when we throw something more unusual your way. There is also a collection of recipes on our website organized by vegetable: check out our Recipe Wizard, and feel free to contribute your own favorite recipes there! If you make something that knocks your socks off, share it with me and I'll pass it along to the rest of the CSA membership in the next newsletter.

A little housekeeping: if you haven't already familiarized yourself with our Pickup Instructions and Protocol, PLEASE DO THAT BEFORE YOU PICK UP YOUR FIRST CSA SHARE this week! Our CSA sites are all essentially unstaffed, which means they are run by YOU! Help us avoid SNAFUs and mix-ups by brushing up on how things run, and make sure that anyone else in your circle who might pick up your CSA is briefed as well. We thank you, and so do your fellow CSA members!

Also remember that Abby's Greens Salad Shares start NEXT WEEK. There is no salad this week.

Finally, be sure you grab a SunOrange cherry tomato plant this week at your pickup site. There is one per Harvest Basket and they will be in bright yellow bins. We don't grow cherry tomatoes for the CSA, but we provide you with our all-time favorite variety, SunOrange, to grow in your own garden or pot. It's an improved Sungold the produces tons of tangerine-orange fruits from August through the fall (Abby was still picking tomatoes off of a plant in her greenhouse in February!). The flavor is exquisite - tropical/tangy/sweet. For best results, plant your tomato as deep as possible in a warm, protected location (it's good to bury the stem and some of the bottom leaves; the plant will sprout new roots underground and add to it's root mass). If you're planting it in a pot, use at least a 5 gallon container and put it in a warm, sunny, wind-protected location. Give it a balanced organic fertilizer and water deeply. You'll need to provide some kind of trellis or support because this variety is an indeterminate, which means it'll climb, and climb, and climb. Prune excess leaves as it grows, leaving all fruiting/flowering stems and suckers. With a litte TLC it should be yielding fruit for you by August. These little cherry bombs are fantastic snackers, are awesome sliced up in salads, and also make the best dried tomatoes I've ever eaten - like little candies.

Thanks again for being a part of this beautiful thing called community supported agriculture. 

P.S. In addition to cute little tree frogs, the farm also supports other wildlife, such as invasive garden slugs. Because we don't use any chemicals (herbicides, pesticides, etc), you might say we're an equal opportunity habitat haven. Despite our best efforts, you might find one of these in your head lettuce this week, and I'll let you decide what you want to do with it when it plops into your sink. Me, I know I'll be getting reincarnated as a slug in my next life, and in that life an organic farmer will come along on a lovely May morning and cut me in half or stomp me flat, which is what I deserve after 20+ years of slug-slaying (never Banana slugs though, they eat nothing but detritus and are a wonderful native species!). If nothing else, the slugs that might be lurking in your head lettuce are good motivation to wash your produce well (we "field rinse" everything, but you should wash it at home before eating it).

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