Might be a little bit of issues till it settles down sorry for any trouble!

Mid-day on January 19th, Floras Creek topped its banks and flooded the farm. The high water completely inundated all of our perennials - artichokes, asparagus, raspberries, strawberries, dahlias, grapes, marionberries, and the orchard - plus a good bit of our annual cropland. U-pick would have been possible only by canoe. Our equipment shed flooded, but we had moved most of our valuables out of it in anticipation of high water.  Fortunately, the flooding lasted only a half day, so we are crossing our fingers that some of our more water sensitive plants like raspberries did not drown altogether. We won't know until spring.

The last time the farm went under was in the high water event of 1996, when the field was still just pasture. We've been waiting with a mix of curiosity and anxiety for a flood event like this - unsure of how our cropland would fare. We have not yet assessed the full extent of the damage, but we are hoping that the deposition of some lovely new topsoil will make up for any setbacks. Our fall-planted strawberry field is sure to be a mess of drip tape and weedmat, but hopefully nothing that a few days work can't repair. The flood made us ever-more grateful for the trees we planted 20+ years ago along the bank. They not only helped stabilize the riparian zone, they also kept large debris from crashing through our fenceline and into the field. At least this time.

Ah, farming - never a dull moment...

 
What’s in your Share This Week?
Red Onions
Storage Kohlrabi
Cabbage (green or savoy)
Carrots
Potatoes
Broccoli
Rainbow Chard
BonBon Buttercup Squash
Turnips – Scarlet Queen or Hakurei
Head Lettuce
 
The New Stuff: How to chop it, cook it and keep it…
 
Storage Kohlrabi
This is the first year I’ve grown this variety, a behemoth called “Kossack” that can get up to 8” in diameter. Some – not all – reached that size, so hopefully the kohlrabi lovers amongst you received the lunkers this week.
 
Kossack is intended specifically as a storage kohlrabi (said to last up to 4 months in cold storage), but can be eaten fresh as well. We harvested these before we left for Italy, so they have been in our cooler almost a month already. I am always curious to experiment with veggies like this, in the interest of season extension. Given that we have the cold storage infrastructure now (in the form of our 12’x12’ walk-in cooler), I’m constantly on the lookout for varieties that we can harvest in the fall and hold in our cooler for distribution at a later date – in hopes of keeping the CSA share diverse, interesting and abundant – even in the darkest, wettest, coldest time of the year.
 
To enjoy your kohlrabi, remember that you need to peel it first to reveal the tender flesh inside. Most people liken the flavor and texture to that of peeled broccoli stems. Raw or sautéed, there are recipes to found via the Recipe Wizard in case you need a nudge of inspiration to put your kohlrabi to use – as something other than a softball or a doorstopper.
 
BonBon Squash
Your winter squash this week is a Buttercup variety with thick, dry, sweet, orange flesh. It’s probably most similar to Sunshine, the scarlet-orange squash you received a couple weeks ago. It’s hard to go wrong - no matter how you prepare any of the winter squash varieties - but BonBon’s drier flesh makes it especially well-suited for pie (sweet or savory), ravioli filling, or any other “stuffing” application. Or if you need a quick fix, just cut it in half, bake it face-down on a cookie sheet in the oven, and then slather it with butter and maple syrup. Ooooo, I’m getting hungry.
 
On the Farm: This Week’s Cabbage Lesson, Recordkeeping, Strawberry Planting, and a sneak peak at your Thanksgiving Share…
One of the things I love most about farming is that I learn something new almost every day – and get to apply that learning to the next season. This week’s lesson was that we should plant Storage #4 green cabbage for the last cabbage distribution of the year (this week), instead of savoy cabbage. There’s nothing wrong with the Savoy, but it was very clear as I sat in the cooler cleaning cabbages this Monday that the Storage #4’s (a tight, green, smooth-leaved cabbage) had held up far better in storage while we were away. I had to strip many layers of leaves off of the Savoy type to clean them up, whereas the Storage #4’s only needed one or two outer leaves peeled away. We harvested both types in the middle of October and have held them in storage for the past few weeks.
 
So how does a farmer remember all these little details as the season progresses, especially when she’s keeping track of over 100 different varieties throughout the year? The answer is good record-keeping. Every grower has his or her own system – or lack thereof – from the hi-tech iTouch approach to scrawling notes on the back of the hand.
 
My system in the field is a simple write-in-the-rain notebook that I always have on hand in the pick-up. Every week or two – or whenever I learn/observe something that could improve the farm in the following season – I sit down on the tailgate and jot down some notes. I usually start a new entry with the date and the crop written in all-caps, underlined – so it’s easy to find it when I flip through my notebook down the road. I also star things to indicate “take action on this item next year!” It works pretty well.
 
Along with that notebook, I have a binder full of field maps, planting calendars, and harvest records that gets updated throughout the year. Come December and January, I sift back through it all and start formulating the master crop plan for the next season. It’s a month-long planning process that always begins with decisions about our market – what markets (CSA, restaurants, farmstand, u-pick, etc.) are we going to grow for and how much are we going to grow. From there, I get into the details of timing, successions and varieties – fine tuning the previous year’s plan with all of the nuggets of info I jotted down during the season. The crop planning process culminates in a big seed order (usually on the order of $1000-$1500 in seed each season).
 
By February, the entire farm for the upcoming season is in my hands, in the form of hundreds of seed packets – all of which fit into a single Rubbermaid tote! It never ceases to amaze me that that single tote of seeds will transform into acres of vegetables and full-time employment for me, Roberto, my sister, my mom, and the handful of folks that help us part-time. I am reminded every year to never underestimate the power of seeds.
 

Week 23: November 8th
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
Brussels Sprouts
Parsnips
Celeriac
Watermelon Radishes or Scarlet Queen Turnips
Lacinato Kale
Butternut Squash
Leeks
Broccoli
Carrots
Sweet Peppers
Head Lettuce
 
Lots of new Fall food this week, some of it rather on the alien-looking side! If you’re not sure what to do with it all, there are recipes galore to be found with the Recipe Wizard and on www.epicurious.com. The emphasis on root crops at this time of year always suggests the easy and obvious meal to me: roasted roots extravaganza! Here are some basic tips and info in the meantime:
 
The New Stuff: How to chop it, cook it and keep it…
 
Brussels Sprouts
Your Dr. Seuss vegetable of the season has arrived! You may have never encountered Brussels sprouts on the stalk in the grocery store, but this is how they grow out in the field (plus a lot of leaves that we strip off when we harvest). Harvesting these stalks is one of the more athletic, samurai endeavors on the farm: every stalk gets whacked down with a machete, and then chopped again at the midriff to make them short enough to fit into the totes. Brussels sprout stalks are as woody as a young sapling at the base, so you work up a sweat in the process – and spend a good amount of time sharpening your machete along the way!
 
Brussels sprouts are another one of those “love ‘em or hate ‘em” kinds of veggies – often because people are forced to eat them as a kid – AND because most of the U.S. crop is grown on the central coast of California where temperatures don’t get cold enough to sweeten up the sprouts. Cold temperatures – and especially a frost – will replace the stinky old gym sock flavor with a wonderful sweetness and tenderness. I hope you’ll give these sprouts a chance. It hasn’t frosted yet, but they’re pretty good. Wonderful steamed or roasted.
 
To store, strip them from the stalk and put in a plastic bag in the fridge. If you get any sprouts that have some black funk on the outer leaves, just trim their butts with a paring knife and peel away the first couple layers of leaves – like a mini cabbage. You’ll find a perfect, clean sprout beneath those outer leaves.
 
Parsnips
The big, white carroty-looking roots in your tote this week are parsnips – another of the most underrated garden veggies in the U.S. But some will claim that parsnips deserve the “most sweet and delicious” award of all the root vegetables. Our parsnips always have a little bit of “rust” on their skins – a cosmetic defect that only goes skin deep. It’s easily removed with a peeler.
 
Due to their extremely long growing season (planted in May, mature in November), they don’t find their way into our seasonal kitchen until late in the fall. Like many of the autumn crops we grow, they improve in flavor after a frost – getting much sweeter as the starches convert to “anti-freeze” sugars. They were widely cultivated all over medieval Europe, and some of the sugary varieties were fermented into wine! They found their way to North America in the 17th century, but have never had a starring role in our cuisine, unfortunately.
 
Parsnips are high in potassium, have more vitamin C than carrots, and rival potatoes for their carbohydrate and vegetable protein punch. You can mash them, roast them, steam them, puree them with pears, sautee them with butter, grate them into salads, use them as a substitute for spuds in potato pancakes, roast them with other root vegetables, make soup…the possibilities are endless. They store well for many weeks in the fridge.
 
Celeriac
Also known as celery root, celeriac is closely related to its better known cousin. Its stalks and foliage are very similar to celery, but celeriac is cultivated specifically for its swollen, edible, bulbous root crown. Like parsnips, it has a long growing season (May-November here), and can be enjoyed all winter long with the right storage conditions.
 
It’s another of those veggies that is commonplace in Europe (we saw it in every grocery store in Italy, right next to the common head lettuce and bananas), but unusual in the U.S. Don’t be put off by it’s alien exterior. Beneath that furry façade lies a delicious, versatile veggie. It has a concentrated sweet, nutty, celery flavor that works raw or cooked. We love to cube it up and roast it with parsnips, Brussels sprouts, carrots, beets, spuds, fennel and any other roots lying around. It’s also wonderful boiled and mashed with potatoes, used in place of celery for seasoning up a soup or stir-fry, or raw – grated into salad, dipped into dressing, or plain.
 
To get to the heart of the matter, peel away the outer skin with a paring knife. Rinse off any dirt and have at it! Celeriac store best in the drawer of the fridge in a plastic bag – for up to a month!
 
Watermelon Radishes or Scarlet Queen Turnips
You’ll be getting one or the other this week. If you’re in the Watermelon radish crowd, you’ll see a bunch of pale-green-skinned radishes in your tote with a crown of tall green leaves. Inside those radishes – especially the bigger ones – is a mild, fuschia, juicy heart! If you slice up your radishes like a mini-watermelon, you’ll get the same effect: a tough green rind cupping a juicy, fruity pink heart! All the spice is in the skin, so take it or leave it, depending on your preference.
 

 
Week 18: October 4th
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
Leeks
Carrots
Lettuce
Sweet Peppers
Strawberries
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Broccoli
Napa Cabbage
D’avignon Radishes
Sugar Buns Corn
Summer Squash
 
We are fully aware of the fact that you all are receiving a hefty pile of food this week - about 15 pounds of it, to be exact. We weigh your totes each week and they tend to average 10-12 pounds apiece. This week is scale-breaker. As I explained last week, sassy old Mother Nature has decided to bring it on all at once, with our summer crops (like corn, cherry tomatoes and peppers) arriving later than usual and our fall crops coming early. Rather than let the Napa cabbage and broccoli rot in the fields, we’re sending it to you anyway, even if it is 2-3 weeks sooner than anticipated.
 
Wouldn’t it be great if we could control when every crop was ready and deliver the perfect amount of food all 26 weeks of the season? Alas, living in the Northern hemisphere dictates that September and October are our aptly named “harvest” months. Add some unpredictable weather to the mix and you quickly learn that this is the time to pull the Ball Blue Book off the shelf, buy some mason jars, be grateful for the fresh cornucopia while it lasts, and put some away for wintertime when it’s just good old kale, winter squash and cabbage out there!
 
That being so, some of you might be feeling overwhelmed by the bounty (welcome to the reality of eating seasonally! We are like manic squirrels at this time of year – canning, drying and freezing up a storm!). The good news is that many of the things in your Harvest Basket can be put up for later – either canned, frozen, or dried. I’m dedicating this newsletter to food preservation tips, in order to help you enjoy the produce crescendo, as opposed to resenting it and feeling guilty about wasted food! Also remember that many of the foods in your tote – like tomatoes – will cook down into a less daunting heap. Sauté up your leeks and peppers, add your tomatoes, and voila! You have a killer fresh pasta sauce and all your veggies have magically disappeared!
 
So here you go – Food Preservation 101 for this week’s share.
 
First, a couple of resource & tool recommendations in case you want to delve into the world of food preservation in a more serious way:
 
Books:
The Ball Blue Book – the “bible” for putting food by. Has recipes, instructions, safety info, and more for canning, freezing, dehydrating, etc. Available online or at just about any bookstore, kitchen store or thrift store.
 
Tools:
A food dehydrator. We use a 9-shelf, electric Excalibur. It will do large quantities, is quiet, and has a temperature control (also available with a timer, and it comes with a dehydration book called “Preserve it Naturally”). Note: if you have a gas stove, you can also dry foods in the oven on pilot. Food dehydrators are available online, through catalogues like Cabela’s and Lehman’s, at hardware stores, or if you’re lucky at a thrift store. We use it for cherry tomatoes, berries, and fruit. Also good for rising bread, making yogurt, and more.
 
A canning kit. Usually includes a big enameled pot for your hot water bath, a canning rack that fits inside the pot to hold your mason jars, a special funnel for filling jars cleanly, a magnetic lid lifter to pull your canning lids out of hot water, and a special grip to pull your jars out of the hot water bath. Available at hardware stores, Bi-Mart, thrift stores, etc.
 
Glass canning jars & metal lids & rings. All sizes and shapes: wide and narrow-mouthed half pints, pints, quarts, and half gallons, with lids and rings to match. Available at grocery stores, Bi-Mart, at garage sales, etc. If buying used, be sure that the rim of the glass jars is not chipped (it’ll prevent the lids from sealing), and most people do not recommend re-using the metal canning lids.
 
Freezer Bags. Use heavy duty plastic Ziplocs - or any brand- available just about anywhere, and cheap. We re-use ours for at least few years until they pop holes.
 
Pressure Canner: In case you want to can veggies (or meats/seafood such as albacore tuna) without brining them (as in pickling), you’ll need a pressure canner. They usually cost around a $100 new and are available at hardware stores and online.
 
Vacuum Sealer: You can get away with just using freezer bags, but vacuum sealers can be handy as well. Available at Bi-Mart, hardware stores, or online. Usually cost $50-$100 new, depending on the brand. Keep in mind that the special plastic bags you have to use are pricey, but you can re-use them to save some $.
 
Preservation Tips:
In general:

 
Week 16: September 20th
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
 
Head lettuce
Raspberries
Carrots
Summer Squash
Fennel (sorry, Gunta!)
Tomatoes
Heirloom tomatoes
Cilantro
Sweet Peppers
Shallots or Onions
Celery
 
On Rotation:
Spinach
Romano Beans
Cherry Tomatoes
 
The New Stuff: How to eat it, cut it, cook it, and keep it…
 
Celery
The poll results are in and the Celery Stalkers have won out over the Whole Headers: 25 to 9! (FYI, the Potato Pounders have also persevered over the Specialty Spudsters, 24 to 9). You can’t argue with a good, solid, democratic majority, so this week you’ll find a handful of celery stalks in your totes – hopefully a good amount to season up a soup, stir-fry, or to add to a platter of crudités.
 
But beware the Ranch dressing! I once heard of a guy who wanted to lose some weight. He went on a celery diet, because apparently it’s such a fibrous vegetable that your body burns more calories chewing and digesting it than it gains from the celery itself. This man – a friend’s grandpa – ate celery day after day, but ended up gaining weight. The moral of the story: if you want to lose weight, don’t dip your celery in the jar of Ranch dressing!
 
Celery IS a pretty darn fibrous veggie, though, and you may find that these first stalks are more so. As you well know, the outer stalks are always a little tougher than the more tender, inner, blanched ones. To harvest stalk by stalk – instead of head by head – we have to strip the plants from the outside in, so these celery stalks might seem more chewy. BUT, I think you’ll find that they aren’t lacking one bit in flavor.
 
Celery is a water-hog; its undomesticated ancestors were bog plants. At Sauvie Island Organics, where I worked before I came back to Floras Creek, we used to grow celery and water it with overhead sprinklers AND a double line of drip tape – meaning it essentially got twice as much water as any other plant on the farm each week.
 
I gave your celery no such special treatment this season – which means it’s not as succulent as something store-bought from California, but I also think it has a much more intense flavor – in a good, sweet way. A little will probably go a long way.
 
I wanted to find a recipe that would combine a bunch of your veggies this week, namely the celery, carrots (we sent you an extra large helping this time around), and the much-maligned fennel bulb. I can’t vouch for this recipe firsthand, because I haven’t had a second at home in the kitchen the past two weeks, BUT it sounds pretty darn tasty. Give it a try and let me know!
 
Chilled Indian-Spiced Tomato Soup with Crabmeat
 
To store your celery stalks, you could either put them in a plastic bag in the fridge, or keep them in a jar of water in the fridge with a bag over their heads. Remember that the leafy tops are a great addition to a quick homemade vegetable stock.
 
 
On the Farm…
Supper in the Field, what a magical night at the farm! Despite all the spitting and blowing from that tropical Pacific typhoon that blew through last weekend (2.5 inches of rain on the farm!), the fundraiser dinner was so much fun that we are still reveling in the revelry! We converted our equipment shed into a fine dining room for the night, replete with candlelight, flowers, white linens and lots of wine! Abby, Bets and I got to play waitress for the first time ever (decked out in black skirts and rubber boots), and loved it (not that we’re going to quit our day jobs or anything). We managed to not drop any plates or spill any glasses of wine on people’s heads. Miraculous.
 
Chef Scott Guynn of TuTuTun Lodge dished out a 5-course feast that left people smacking their lips and licking their plates (much encouraged on the farm). The music and wine poured forth in equal measures all evening, and we even managed to do the full lap tour around the farm before the single, dramatic downpour of the evening.
 
There aren’t words big enough to express our gratitude to all the folks who made the evening possible. To all the members of the farm and local community who attended, thank you for your support! To Scott of TuTuTun, Kristin of Black Market Gourmet, and Diane of Casa Bruno, WOW! What a team! To John and Carl for their music, to Terry Wahl for the lamb, and to Orion Ashdown for the fish, Grazie Mile! To Ulli Lau of Oregon Overseas Timber for the two loads of bark mulch and to Roxy Long for all of her flower power, you guys made the place sparkle!
 
As the night wore on, folks kept asking, “When’s the next supper?! Next month? Next summer?! You gotta do this again!” Well, we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, we are so excited to be heading to Terra Madre with the eighteen other Oregon delegates come October. As far as we know, we’re the first farmer delegates to ever represent the Southcoast – and we’re proud to do it! (And hoping to smuggle home some cool new seeds as well!!).
 
In gratitude and appreciation - heaps and heaps of it – we thank you!
 

 
Week 14: September 6th
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
 
Head lettuce
Strawberries
Raspberries
Summer Squash
Tomatoes
Carrots
Red & Gold Beets
Sweet Peppers
Hot Peppers
Parsley
Romano Beans
Fresh White Shallots
 
 
On Rotation:
Spinach
Pac Choi
Cucumbers
Cherry Tomatoes
 
The New Stuff: How to eat it, cut it, cook it, and keep it:
 
Romano Beans
At last, beans! Like most of our direct-seeded crops (corn, spinach, carrots, beets, dill & cilantro, etc.), the beans have come on late this year. We can blame it entirely on the weather we got in May & June – so much rain that it was impossible to successfully direct-seed any crops into our soggy bottomland. As a result, the beans didn’t get a chance until the end of June – which is why it’s now the beginning of September and you’re seeing them for the first time!
 
This particular variety is a large, flat, Italian pole bean that will grow as high in the sky as our trellising will allow. Don’t confuse them with other large, wide beans like favas. They are as tender and sweet as any skinny little green bean out there! Our favorite way to prepare them is to cut them on the diagonal into 2” pieces and then ever-so-lightly steam or sautee them until they’re bright green and still tender. Eat them naked, or let a little salted butter melt on top. Holy moly!
 
Your beans will keep in the fridge for a week or so in a plastic bag, but really, why wait?
 
Fresh White Shallots
Shallots are often lumped into the onion family, but in fact, are a much closer relative of garlic. They are common to French cuisine (especially to impart that Je ne sais quoi to sauces and dressings) but you can use them any way you would eat an onion.
 
We usually plant them as pencil-thick starts at the end of April (seeded in the greenhouse in February), alongside all the onions and leeks. This year we didn’t get them into the ground until late May, due to the weather. Fortunately, they sprang in action and have grown beautifully this season. A single shallot seedling will divide itself into multiple “bulbs,” somewhat like a clove of garlic turns itself into a multi-cloved head.
 
This is your first fresh taste of one of the three varieties we are growing: Olympus (white), Saffron (gold), and Ambition (red). It’s not very common to encounter fresh shallots; they’re typically sold cured, with dry skins and without tops. That said, there’s no reason not to eat them straight out of the ground for a juicier shallot experience! We decided to harvest the Olympus this week because they seem to be poorer keepers than the red and gold varieties. In the coming weeks we’ll be pulling the rest of them out of the field, curing them in the shade (a process of simply letting the tops dry down out of the sun in a dry place where there’s good ventilation), and then trimming them up for later distribution in October and November.
 
The amazing thing about cured shallots is their storage life. They keep better than any onion or garlic I’ve ever met. We still have cured shallots on our counter from last September, and they are perfectly perfect.
 
For these fresh shallots, keep them in the fridge in a plastic bag. They should hold for at least a week, if not longer.
 
 
Cherry Tomatoes
We started picking the first few cherry tomatoes from our outdoor planting a couple of weeks ago, and each week there have been more and more. Finally this week they added up to just enough to put them on rotation. The harvest will only swell as September comes on, so everyone should be seeing them in their totes over the next few weeks.
 
As many of you know, there is a mantra at Valley Flora: “everything we do has to be at least 51% art.” That is at least part of the reason I decided to grow six(!) different cherry tomato varieties this season, in hopes of filling those pint baskets with a rainbow of color and flavor. We’re growing the beloved Sungolds (orange & tropical); steadfast Sweet Millions (red and reliable with classic cherry tomato taste); late-bearing Isis Candy (an heirloom swirl of orange, red & yellow), mysterious Black Cherry (also a late-bearing heirloom, with a deep purple-black color); controversial Yellow Pear (cute but with somewhat insipid flavor); and perky Yellow Mini (cheerful lemondrops).
 
The heirloom varieties have yet to really hit their stride, but should begin bearing more heavily in the next couple of weeks – at which point the rainbow effect should really attain lift-off!
 
As for keeping your cherry tomatoes – and all tomatoes in general – don’t put them in the fridge! They will get sweeter and riper if you leave them on the countertop. I tend to enjoy them most like a candy snack – straight out of the pint. But they also make divine gazpacho, and are absolutely wonderful dried (for those of you who have a dehydrator or a gas oven with a pilot light). Dried, all of their sugars and flavors become concentrated and will add wonderful flair to winter pasta, soups, quiche and more. Simply cut them in half and dry them down until they’re just shy of crispy (usually takes a full day or so). We keep ours in a Ziploc in the freezer to ensure that they don’t mold in our damp climate.
 
Pac Choi
For those of you receiving Pac Choi this week, I feel like I should apologize. Or explain. Or….
 

In Your Share:
Strawberries
Head Lettuce
Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Carrots
Red, Gold & Chiogga Beets
Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Tomatoes!

On Rotation:
Spinach!
Rainbow Chard

There are some exciting new faces in your totes this week: Walla Walla Sweet Onions, Spinach (for Coos Bay & Bandon; Port Orford and Farm will see it next week), and the first of the TOMATOES! Also, you'll find a pound+ of mixed beets: red, gold and chioggia (or Italian heirloom candy-stripe beets...cut them cross-wise and you should see a perfect pink and white bulls-eye pattern!).

Walla Wallas:
So sweet and mild, they don't even make you cry! Slice them raw for sandwiches, make fat beer-battered onion rings, or sautee them on medium heat and render them down into a carmelized gooey mess of deliciousness. There will be more next week, so no need to save them for later. Keep them in a plastic bag in the fridge.

The Beets:
Rather petite, these beets are from our first spring planting. We decided to clear the whole bed and top all the beets in order to erase all those terrible memories of cold, grey, rainy May. As a result, some beets are big and some are baby, but they should all taste good. I find the red beets to be the sweetest, with the golds taking a close second. I like the flavor of Chioggia beets the least, but they have a lot of interior pizazz when you cut them open to reveal the candy-strip bulls-eye inside. We love to eat our beets steamed or roasted; just be sure you cut them to be a similar size so they cook evenly. These puppies will store for a long time in a bag in your fridge, so no pressure if you're distracted by other things in your Harvest Basket, like....TOMATOES!

Tomatoes:
That's right, they're here. This is the beginning of the Summer Solanum Celebration: tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, more potatoes...it's all in the pipeline and ripening nicely. These tomatoes come out of Betsy's greenhouses where they ripen more quickly than they will outdoors. In the coming weeks you'll also be enjoying a rainbow array of cherry tomatoes (grown outdoors), more slicing tomatoes, and some fancy heirlooms as well (they usually peak in early September). You can eat your first tomatoes however you please, but whatever you do, DON'T PUT THEM IN THE FRIDGE! They like to sit on the countertop, where they will continue to ripen and maintain their sweet flavor and good texture. Refrigerated tomatoes often get mealy and bland = yuck.

Spinach:
At last! Oddly enough, August seems to be our month for spinach at Valley Flora. We were expecting it in June and July, but every planting bolted. We're guessing it had something to do with the dramatic switch in the weather from cold and grey to hot and sunny, so quickly. Nevertheless, Abby's recent plantings are looking great - so we're finally able to bag some up and share it with you. You'll see it either this week or next week. Store it in the fridge. It should keep for up to a week.
On the Farm:
Yes indeed, help has arrived! We've hired one person full time and another to help on our big harvest days. Training is going well - albeit a bit frantic, given that it's August and we are in the thick of things! Nevertheless, we are so grateful and relieved to have found some stellar folks to work with us.

Sadly, help has also departed. We bid farewell to Marisa, my dear buddy from Hawaii, on Wednesday. After extending her visit by two weeks (!) in order to help us through our labor crunch in early August, she finally had to board a plane and go back to her life in Hilo. If all goes right, though, she might just be back in Langlois in a year to spend the summer and start a homemade ice cream CSA! We are particularly excited about getting to be her official taste-testers if she does it....:).

And about that cauliflower last week...I didn't mention it because some folks didn't receive theirs until this week, but I've been fielding some questions about it, like "Is it supposed to be bright orange?" "Why is it neon purple?" ETC. Well, the truth is, we grew three variety trials this year: a white cauliflower called Amazing (which was far from it), an orange cauliflower called Cheddar, and a purple cauliflower called Graffiti. Usually varieties like Cheddar and Graffiti aren't very vigorous, plus the specialty seed costs a whole lot - so I was fully expecting those two varieties to flop. Au contrare, mon freir! (Or however you spell that....:). The Amazing did pitifully, while the Cheddar and Graffiti were the most vigorous. We did have some teeny heads among the colored varieties, but I attribute that more to the fact that I planted them at the edge of the field where we thoroughly neglected them, let the weeds run wild, and only sort-of watered them. Even so, the Cheddar and Graffiti mostly pulled through...which means that next year we are going whole hog with the bright orange and purple color scheme!

If you are one of the people who got a boring old normal white head of cauliflower and feel kinda cheated, well, stick around for 2011 and we'll do our best to hook you up with some outrageous neon cauliflower, straight out of the 80s!

Hope you all have a great weekend,
Zoë

 
Week 10: August 9th
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
 
Head lettuce
Strawberries
Broccoli or Cauliflower
Carrots
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Potatoes
Dill
Cilantro
 
The New Stuff: How to eat it, cut it, cook it, and keep it:
 
Red, White and Blue Potatoes
Better late than never! We had hoped to send out our usual distribution of red, white and blue potatoes for the 4th of July, BUT here we are in the second week of August finally enjoying them. Our cold, wet spring and delayed summer slowed these early potatoes down considerably and also reduced their yields, unfortunately.
 
We did manage to “dig” them with the help of Maude and our new horsedrawn potato digger – a semi-kamikaze event on Monday evening that left a wake of drunken, swervy furrows and scattershot potatoes across the field. I’m hoping to refine our technique for the next dig!
 
The red variety is Red Pontiac; the blue is Adirondack Blue; and the white/yellow potato is Yellow Finn.
 
Potatoes store almost forever in the fridge. We usually put ours in a plastic bag in the crisper drawer. That said, there is nothing like a freshly-dug potato – they usually have much more flavor and juiciness than those that have sat around on the store shelves for months.
 
Some spud trivia for you:

• Potatoes are the leading vegetable grown worldwide, produced in 130 countries, from below sea level to above 14,000 feet.
• They are native to the Andean mountain region of South America where they have been cultivated for over 5000 years.
• Potatoes belong to the Solanum family, along with tomatoes and many deadly nightshades.
• Americans eat an average of 75 pounds of potatoes per year – mostly in the form of French fries and potato chips.

 
Dill & Cilantro
In a perfect farming world, these two herb crops would have come on a week apart, but no, we don’t get to control these things at Valley Flora. Instead, it’s an herb party this week in your harvest baskets! The potato-dill combo was entirely intentional….steamed potatoes with a little butter and dill…..yum. And then, fire up a meal with Latin flair the next night: huevos rancheros with homefries, smothered in cilantro.
 
Store your herbs in the fridge – either in a plastic bag, or in a glass of water with a plastic bag over the top. They’ll keep for up to a week.
 
On the Farm…
We are still looking for help on the farm. Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to start work for us on Monday never showed up. If you know of anyone hard-working, reliable and good-natured, please let us know!
 
Back to the fields I go!
 

 
Week 8: July 26
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
 
Head lettuce
Strawberries
Broccoli
Sugar Snap Peas
Purplette Onions
Baby Carrots
Hakurei Turnips
Baby Zucchini
 
On Rotation:
Cucumbers
 
The New Stuff: How to eat it, cut it, cook it, and keep it:
 
Purplette Onions
Purplettes are our earliest-maturing onion on the farm. They are meant to be harvested with green tops, which you can enjoy just like green onions. As for the onion bulb itself, it’s fairly mild – wonderful raw or cooked. We sliced some up the other night and grilled them with olive oil and salt – alongside some fennel, beets, and zucchini. Yummers. They will store for a week or two with tops in a plastic bag in the fridge.
 
The purplettes kick off the Allium harvest on the farm. Maturing behind them this year are Walla Walla Sweet Onions, a red storage onion, a yellow storage onion, three types of shallots, and two varieties of leeks. In general, I’ve noticed that onions take much longer to mature here on the southcoast than they did on Sauvie Island (where I farmed near Portland) or in California (where I worked for another organic farmer for a season). We were often pulling out the storage onion crop in mid-July in those places, whereas here we usually don’t pull the storage onions until mid-September – most likely due to our overall cooler summer temperatures.
 
Some of you may be wondering about the other key member of the Allium family: garlic. We haven’t grown garlic in years, after getting wiped out time and time again by white rot, a soil-borne disease that seems to thrive on our place. We may make another attempt on a new piece of ground this fall and see if we can out-run the rot.
 
Baby “Betty Olson” Carrots
You’re all enjoying the first carrot harvest this week, thanks entirely to Betty Olson of Port Orford – your fellow Harvest Basket member who has been coming to the farm and rescuing beds of carrots from the weeds. The carrots we dug for you this week came from the very first surviving bed we seeded in early May. It BARELY survived, which means we dug every last carrot in the bed in order fill your totes this week. They are mostly Mokums, an early sweet orange carrot variety, but mixed in you might also find a Rainbow carrot or two – purple, white, red and yellow roots. For best storage results, top them and keep them in a plastic bag in the fridge.
 
Overall, the carrot field is starting to look better thanks to all the weeding we’ve been doing AND thanks to excellent germination in the more recently seeded beds. My guess is that it’s going to be a great carrot year, but a late one. I’ve seeded a bunch of extra beds to make up for our spring losses, and they’re coming on thick. We’ll do our best to get you carrots as often as possible in the coming weeks, but the steady, heavy harvest probably won’t be here until late summer.
 
I won’t even bother to tell you how to prepare these little orange candy sticks: after months without homegrown carrots, we go into a fever over the first carrot harvest. Most of the time we eat them straight out of the ground with nothing more than a cursory dirt swipe on the leg of our already dirty pants! Nevertheless, they are great prepared in all kinds of other manners: steamed, sautéed, soup-ed, carrot caked, salad-ed, etc. There are lots of carrot recipes to be found on the Recipe Wizard, including a recipe for carrot top soup…..enjoy!
 
Baby Zucchini
You can thank my mom for these little morsels. She’s the cucumber/zucchini/tomato/pepper/basil diva at Valley Flora – and in that niche she grows the truest tastes of summer. The tomatoes and peppers are still a ways off, but the cukes and zukes are starting to come on strong. You should see them almost weekly for the next couple of months.
 
Zucchini and summer squash don’t store very well in the fridge. They’ll keep for up to a week refrigerated in a plastic bag, but often start to grow scum after that. Outside the plastic bag, they often go limp in the fridge. The fact is, they prefer to be kept at about 50 degrees – which can be a hard temperature to find in the summertime. Your best option: eat them within 4-5 days and look forward to the next batch!
 
Hakurei Turnips
The Hakureis aren’t new to any of you, but take note: this later planting is spicier than the spring plantings we sent out a month+ ago. They’ve got a little more of a radish kick, but still have that same wonderful creamy texture.
 
On the Farm…
Last summer a wonderful thing happened: my dear friend Marisa from Hilo, Hawaii, got on an airplane, flew to Oregon, found a ride from Portland, and arrived at the farm for the month of September. She dug potatoes like a machine, pulled carrot weeds until dark, got up at 5:30 am on harvest mornings, and picked so many strawberries her index fingers cracked. Then she would come home, can all the tomatoes, freeze all the berries, bake a cobbler, cook dinner, wash the dishes, and rub my shoulders.
 
She referred to it as a “vacation.” (!?!)
 
I referred to it as “crazy.”
 
This year, she came back for more, proving that I was right.
 

 
Week 6: July 12
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
 
Head lettuce
Strawberries
Artichokes
Sugar Snap Peas
Broccoli
Fennel
Arugula
Basil or Parsley
 
On Rotation:
Basil & Parsley
 
 
The New Stuff: How to eat it, cut it, cook it, and keep it:
 
Sugar Snap Peas
I don’t think it gets any better than crunching on sugar snap peas. In part because they are such a fleeting seasonal treat. Because they’re crispy and sweet and playful. And because they’re nothing short than a labor of love.
 
Three years ago I actually swore I would never grow peas commercially, in spite of my love for them – because I’d have to charge an arm and a leg to make the cost of picking them pencil out. My sister used to grow them, but she axed the “extras” this season, knowing she’d have little Pippin on her back. Facing the prospect of a CSA season with no peas, I decided to bite the bullet and break my own rule this spring: I seeded 3 beds of peas starting in early April through May. (What was I thinking!)
 
The first bed germinated miraculously through our cold, wet spring. The second bed suffered some, but still sent up a modest tangle of vines. And the third bed came up thick. This week we were picking the first bed, which means there will be peas in your future for at least another couple weeks. And some torturously slow harvest days for us!
 
It took us five hours to harvest 220 feet of peas this week, picking wild and fast! But no matter how quickly your hands fly, you still creep along the row a few slow inches at a time, gleaning fat camouflaged pods from the tangle of vines. It’s a lovely, zen undertaking when there is nothing else on the to-do list, but that’s never the case in early July!
 
Nevertheless, we emerged from the field with 100 pounds of peas – enough to ensure that every harvest basket gets a full, happy pound this week. Hopefully enough that they aren’t all gone before you get home from your pick-up site!
 
Some pea factoids:

• Peas are like corn – best eaten as soon after harvest as possible because their sugars rapidly convert to starches, reducing flavor and sweetness.
• Peas are as ancient a food as wheat, barley and garlic. They’ve been found in excavations dating back to 10,000 BC. They’re thought to have originated in northern India and migrated west into the Mediterranean, Europe and up into the British Isles.
• Peas are chock full of vitamins A,C, K and the Bs. Also high in iron potassium and phosphorous – over all a high protein, high carb, high fiber package!

 
The peas in your tote are a snap pea, not a shelling pea, so you can eat the whole thing, pod and all. They are hard to beat raw, but are also sumptuous lightly steamed or sautéed until they are lime green, no more than 2 mintues (don’t over-do it – make sure you leave a little crunch to them!). Here’s a quick recipe for a Fresh Pea Pod, Broccoli and Rice Salad.
 
Fennel
Fennel is a fairly uncommon vegetable in the States, compared to the notoriety it enjoys in Europe. It happens to be one of my all time favorites, so much so that last season I set out on a quest to convert as many Harvest Basket members to become fennel-lovers as possible. We had some great success stories, and as far as I know, we didn’t engender any fennel-haters. 
 
For most folks, fennel is a mystery. What to do with the stuff!? We sent you whole fennel plants, meaning the bulb and the feathery tops. This way, you’ll know what it looks like growing in the field or garden, but you can also put both the bulb and tops to good use. The bulb takes most of the glory, but the tops are commonly used as a fresh herb for seasoning or garnish. It can replace dill (it’s cousin), and is great on baked or broiled fish with a little lemon and butter.
 
There are also lots of recipes on the Recipe Wizard to give you a helping hand. Here are the basics once you have your fennel on the cutting board:
 

• Wash the bulb.
• Try crunching a raw fennel stem to get a sense of the flavor. It has a subtle anise flavor.
• Can be baked, steamed or sautéed with excellent results. You can also eat it raw, dipped into sauces or olive oil. We like to cut to tops off our fennel, slice our fennel bulbs in half from top to bottom, then cut the bulb cross-wise into thin slices. Then toss into a skillet with a little olive oil and cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. The fennel will start to carmelize like onions. Last night we tossed in some rainbow chard and fresh peas at the very end, salted it, and had a divine pile of veggies for dinner!
• Store in the fridge in a plastic bag. Will keep for up to 2 weeks, or more. The tops will go limp, so we suggest cutting them off and wrapping them in a damp towel in the fridge.

 
And in case you ever end up on Jeopardy, some back pocket trivia:

Week 4: June 28
 
What’s in your Share This Week?
 
Head lettuce
Strawberries
Raspberries
Green Kohlrabi
Arugula
Rainbow Chard
Broccoli or Broccolini
 
On Rotation:
Cucumbers
 
 
The New Stuff: How to eat it, cut it, cook it, and keep it:
 
Arugula
A wonderful specialty green that is a staple in Italy. When I was 9, we flew over to Italy for 5 weeks to stay with a friend who had rented a house near Bologna. It was a sprawling estate with an ancient vineyard and a castle built into a stone cliff – the kind of place that captivates the imagination of a little kid! We stayed in the villa below the castle and every day we were visited by an old woman named Maria who was the resident gardener. She would always bring us something from the garden in her wicker basket, and usually it was a weedy-looking spicy green. She was invariably enthusiastic about it and would holler it’s name at us - something that sounded like “Rucola, rucola!” We had no idea what it was. “Como?” And she would repeat, louder, a bit exasperated, “Rucola!”
 
Like, duh, you stupid Americans. Rucola. The stuff was nasty. Most of it ended up discreetly tucked into the compost.
 
After a few weeks at the villa, we traveled south to the Adriatic and got to explore the five little villages of Cinque Terra clinging to the cliffs above the sea. We ordered pizza for lunch, and it came out covered in that gross weed, wilted all over our pizza. Damn! The stuff was everywhere in Italy, and the locals loved it! “When in Rome”….well, we tried, but it was hard to gag their beloved green down day after day.
 
Back home in the U.S. - well, sure enough, a few years later arugula (“rucola!”) became all the rage on restaurant menus. It’s also known by the French term roquette. We soon discovered that there are other varieties – a wee bit less weedy, bitter and spicy that what we encountered in Italy – that are well worth growing and eating.
 
This tender baby arugula variety makes its way into Abby’s Greens each week, but it’s wonderful enjoyed on its own. There is an arugula pesto recipe on the website, or you can eat the arugula as you would mizuna: as it’s own salad (wonderful with goat cheese, fresh strawberries, and a light vinaigrette), under a slab of fish, or mixed into grain (rice, quinoa, orzo, pasta, etc.) salads. It has a wonderful spicy nip to it, as well as a nutty sweetness.
 
Store it in the fridge. Should keep for 5-7 days if it’s kept cold.
 
 
Rainbow Chard
We could keep it simple and just grow Ruby Red Chard or Fordhook Giant (the white-ribbed Swiss chard) – both of which are familiar supermarket standbys. But we can’t help ourselves. It’s that 51% art thing here at Valley Flora. We want all the colors, all together, all the time. Hence, your Technicolor bouquet of rainbow chard (aka “Bright Lights”).
 
It takes a few extra step to grow and harvest this chard. At planting, we separate all the baby starts out by color: whites, yellows, pinks, reds, oranges. They all get planted separately into color blocks. Then at harvest, we strip the leaves off each plant, count them, and keep them organized by color. The piles of leaves then come into the shady, cool barn. We figure out how many leaves we have, how many of each color can go into a bunch, and then we set to work “bouqueting.” 3 reds, 2 yellows, 1 white, 1 pink, 2 oranges...it’s very formulaic, and in the end we try to make sure every bunch as every color. Sometimes half the pleasure in food is the beauty of it.
 
As for eating it, chard – no matter the color – is a nutritious and versatile leafy green. It is high in vitamins A, E, and C, and minerals like iron and calcium. It is completely interchangeable with spinach in any recipe – lasagna, spanikopita, etc. – and in fact is more nutritious because it lacks oxalic acid, an element present in spinach that inhibits the body’s ability to absorb minerals.
 
Chard is the parent plant of beets; you can see the close resemblance in the leaves of beets and chard. It evolved in the Mediterranean, but is called “Swiss” due to its initial description by a Swiss botanist in the 16th century.
 
Great steamed or sautéed, chopped into soups, baked into quiche or scrambled with eggs, added to casseroles, or - one of my favorites - enjoyed southern-style: Steam it, drizzle it with a little vinegar, salt and olive oil and serve with black-eyed peas or baked beans and cornbread. Don’t be afraid to chop up the stems and eat them to; they add wonderful color and pizzaz to any meal!
 
Store it in the fridge in a plastic bag.
 
On the Farm…
Never have I seen a strawberry field like this one! The season started poorly with the wet weather, but now that the sun is out, whoooooo boy! Our new planting of strawberries is beginning to pump out red berries like nobody’s business, and everyday they get sweeter and sweeter and sweeter…..and bigger and bigger and bigger!
 
I’m convinced that the main reason this year’s new strawberries are so remarkable is because for the first time ever, I sourced my crowns from an organic nursery in Northern California. Like most strawberry growers in California, I grow out my plants from strawberry crowns that I buy and plant in the fall. These plants are runners trimmed from mother plants grown in high-elevation nurseries, most of which are located in Northern interior California. I order my plants in the summer and they usually come the first week of November, dry-packed in tidy boxes of 1000 bare root plants.
 

What's in Your Share This Week?
 
Head lettuce
Hakurei turnips
Crunchy Royale radishes
Baby Pac Choi
Mizuna
Chives
Artichokes
Broccolini (on rotation)
 
Lots of greens and spring food this week. Don’t be intimidated by the quantity of greenery – much of it will cook down if you don’t think you can go through the raw volume of it all. This week’s basket is a true reflection of eating seasonally during a wet, cold spring: all of the crops in your tote have done remarkably well with this soggy weather. What’s missing are the berries - which will hopefully be back in action next week with the help of the sun and some SOS gleaners this weekend  – and the asparagus, which came on a month early and stopped a month early. I guess you can’t expect everything to line up perfectly when you’re at the mercy of the weather.
 
And though it may seem like you’re getting a lot of greens in the month of June, remember to enjoy them while they’re here. Their primetime is relatively fleeting before summer’s dry heat begins to favor the rest of the vegetable kingdom instead. Also remember that in the coming six months, your harvest baskets will follow the arc of the growing season. That means that these early shares in June are always lighter and less diverse than those of summer and fall. This week’s basket is the first installment towards a produce climax that will probably leave you begging for mercy come September. At least we hope so. Aprovecho!
 
 

How to Eat it, Cut it, Cook it, and Keep it:
 
Head lettuce

• Stores best in a plastic bag in the fridge. Don’t let it get too soggy!

 
Hakurei turnips

• A Japanese specialty turnip that won the hearts of many a CSA member last year. White, sweet, and creamy all they way through – without a trace of that skunky, spicy turnip taste. We like to eat them raw – like apples! – but they’re also great cut up into salads (matchsticked or julienned is my favorite way) or lightly sautéed with other veggies.
• They store best without tops in a plastic bag. In fact, I kept a topless bag of hakureis in the fridge from October until May this past year – and they were still good until the bitter end. But don’t toss the tops – they are great stir-fried like mustard greens!
• For a quick and easy zingy salad using your turnips, radishes, chives & mizuna, try this recipe we invented this week. It went great as a side to homemade chicken enchiladas (made from Joe Pestana’s local pasture-raised chicken, frozen sweet corn from last season, frozen roasted peppers from last season, dried chiles from last fall, and home-canned tomato sauce from last summer – a dinner that came almost completely from the farm, via the freezer and pantry - YUM).

 
Crunchy Royale radishes

• Another favorite from last year – a sweet, not too spicy radish variety that gets as big as a beet without becoming pithy!
• Follow the same storage tips as with turnips. You can also eat radish greens – although they’re best cooked/sautéed in order to tame the spines on the leaves.

 
Baby Pac Choi

• A CSA member specifically asked for “baby” pac choi at the end of last season, after we returned from our culinary adventure in Thailand. Here you go – a succulent variety that steams, sautees, and can be eaten raw – anyway you like it. The slugs munched the outer leaves this spring – so feel free to either strip them down to the heart, or chop up those outer leaves and throw them into your stir-fry pan or soup pot. They still taste great, even if they look at little Swiss.
• Store in the fridge in a plastic bag. Like the lettuce, don’t let them get too soggy.

 
Mizuna

• To be honest, we had hoped to send out arugula this week, but it’s been growing too slowly with all this nasty weather. So it’s mizuna instead – which maybe is a good thing to help stretch your culinary imaginations right off the bat. Many people wonder what the bleep they’re supposed to do with mizuna. Let us know what you like to do with it on the recipe exchange. And if you’re at a total loss, here are a few clues: add it to your salad...use it as a bed of greens under a nice hunk of fish...throw it into stir-fry...eat it plain...dress it up with your favorite dressing...feed it to your guinea pig.
• One thing’s for sure, you want to keep it in the fridge in its plastic bag.

 
Chives

• Great garnish, you know what to do.
• Keep in the fridge in a plastic bag, or upright in a glass of water.

 
Artichokes

What's In Your Basket?

Buttercup Winter Squash
Savoy Cabbage
Purple Kohlrabi
Hakurei Turnips
Copra Onions
Head Lettuce
Rainbow Chard
Carrots

Produce Tips - How to Eat It, Cook It and Keep It!

Buttercup Winter Squash
Buttercup squash are in the Kabocha family, similar to the Sunshine squash we sent out a few weeks ago. It has a corky stem, leathery skin, and dry sweet flesh. They are notorious for the grey “button” on the bottom of the squash – some barely show a trace of it, but others have a large button that bulges out as much as three inches.

On Monday night I peeled and chopped a Buttercup and used it as the main ingredient in an improvised Thai Curry. It was a quick, easy dinner and the meatiness of the Buttercup was the perfect base for the curry.

Store your Buttercup on the counter, not in the fridge. It will keep for months if conditions are cool (about 50 degrees) and dry.

 
Savoy Cabbage
Savoy cabbage is like a cross between Napa cabbage and a regular cabbage: it has the round shape of a normal cabbage, but the frill and flair of a Napa. I tend to love savoy cabbage above all other varieties. It’s crisp, sweet, tender, and like its other cabbage cousins it stores well for a long time in the fridge.

A couple of recipes to help you enjoy your savoy, cooked or raw:
Buttered Cabbage
Carrot Cabbage Cumin Slaw

Purple Kohlrabi
If I could dress myself the color of these kohlrabis everyday, I would! Deep plum skins reveal a white heart – and if you remember kohlrabi from that spring Harvest Basket many moons ago, you’ll know that this is a vegetable that achieves that unusual balance of sweet, crunchy, tender, bizarre and beautiful.

Try it this time roasted with Butternut Squash, or sautéed with kale or chard.

Stores well – for weeks even – in the fridge in a plastic bag.

On the Farm…
This week is the lull before the storm. Next week, Week 25, is the last week of regular Harvest Basket deliveries. “But wait,” you’re saying, “I thought we were supposed to get 26 weeks of produce from Valley Flora….?”

It’s true, you are, which is why next week you’ll be getting a double share. Two baskets in one. In other words, a mother lode of food. We’re ending the season with a bang for a couple of reasons:

1. Lots of people are out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday and we don’t want them to miss out on the last week of produce.
2.  We want you to have your Thanksgiving share in advance of Thanksgiving so that you can plan your menu accordingly – and hopefully enjoy the most local, seasonal Thanksgiving feast you’ve ever had!
3. We’re excited to take the week of Thanksgiving OFF! Wahoo!

What this means is that next week’s share is going to be big, so bring extra bags/boxes to haul your goodies home in. There’s also a very good chance that all the food won’t fit in a single tote, so there may be a few items that get sent to your pick-up site in bulk, like winter squash. We will label the bulk stuff clearly with the share quantity you are to take. For instance, “4 Delicata per Harvest Basket,” or “1 Pumpkin per Harvest Basket.” Please be sure to read the signs carefully so that everyone gets their fair share.

We’ll also do our best to post a bunch of Thanksgiving-inspired recipes on the website, but you can help us by sharing some of your own favorites. Do you make a killer gravy or a have a seasonal stuffing recipe that calls for parsnips and celeriac? Post it on the Recipe Exchange!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because there is no other day of the year that is so unabashedly about eating. It’s a great time to celebrate good food, to be grateful for the abundance, and to share it with others. Thanks to a couple of our Harvest Basket members – Jo Rieber and Bill McArdle – we are sharing the farm’s abundance with a lot of families in need on the Southcoast, via the local food bank network. Jo and Bill helped connect the farm with food pantries in Port Orford and Langlois this Fall and now every week we donate a few hundred pounds of fresh food from the farm. Lettuce, cabbage, onions, potatoes, broccoli, carrots, beets, parsnips, and even Romanesco cauliflower have been finding their way to the food banks.

Once again, you and all our Harvest Basket members are to thank. Because of your commitment to the farm we’ve been able to extend our growing season later into the Fall and you’ve given us a reason to plant a lot of storage crops. Those crops are now not only ending up in your kitchen, but they are feeding other local families in need as well.

In so many ways, it takes a village. Thanks for being part of this one.