What's In Your Basket?

Butternut Winter Squash
Diablo Brussels Sprouts
Celeriac
Parsnips
Hakurei Turnips
Fennel
Leeks
Carrots
Head Lettuce
Broccoli or Romanesco

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

Butternut Winter Squash
Butternuts are the quintessential soup squash: thin-skinned, easy to peel, incredibly meaty, golden-hued, and sweet. If you’re in the mood for some winter comfort food that you can eat with a spoon, this is your squash. Not that Butternuts can’t play a main role in lots of other dishes as well: curries, root roasts, braised or glazed. They are easy to handle, delicious to eat, and impressive to behold. FYI, most of the squashes that we sent out this week were about 3 pounds apiece (unless you got two small ones, in which case they are about 1.5 pounds each). That could be useful information if you find a recipe that calls for pounds instead of cups.

A few Butternut recipes to tempt you:
Butternut Squash Soup
Winter Squash Curry

And if you want to do something simple, try roasting your Butternut: Heat the oven to 400. Peel your butternut and slice into ¼ inch rounds. Douse a roasting pan with some olive oil or melted butter. Arrange the rounds on the pan, sprinkle with salt, pepper and/or herbs like sage, thyme or rosemary, and drizzle with a little more oil/butter. Roast for about 20-30 minutes without turning until the squash is tender.

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

 
Brussels Sprouts
What are those wacky, whimsical, Dr. Seuss stalks in your tote this week? Brussels Sprouts, still on the vine! Snapping sprouts off the stalk is an incredibly slow, laborious task – and with so many mouths to feed, we opt for the more succinct harvest method: log the whole damn thing! Lopping the stalks is probably the most macho harvest on the farm, all year. It goes something like this:

• We don full rain gear, even if the sun is shining (because the plants catch huge puddles of water and hold it in the cup of their leaves like living bird baths...).
• Then we karate-chop off all the leaves, down the entire 3 foot length of the plant.
• Next, we take a machete and swing with all our might at the base of the stalk, which is hard like wood. It often takes a few well-aimed swings.
• Finally, once the stalk is cut, we whack it in half so that it will fit in a Rubbermaid tote.

Could make for a good scene in a veggie horror flick…

As for eating Brussels Sprouts, I know, I know – I promised we wouldn’t harvest them until we got a frost. But the mercury hasn’t dipped lower than 40 yet, and the weeks are running out to share them with you. We DID do a taste test and can vouch that they do not taste like old gym socks. In fact, they taste great.

You can cook them up in a number of ways. One of the best things you can do, especially if you are eyeing them dubiously and reliving “eat your vegetables” childhood nightmares, is to roast them. I know it sounds odd, but something happens to Brussels sprouts when you cut them in half, toss them with some olive oil and salt, and put them in the oven at 400 until they are tender and a little crispy-browned. They get sweeter, saltier, greasier, swoonier. So good that you might just like them. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll love them.

Another of my favorite recipes, which calls for Brussels sprouts and romanesco, broccoli or cauliflower:  Brussels Sprouts and Fall Brassicas with Mustard-Caper Butter

For ease of storage, you'll want to snap your sprouts off the stalk and close them up in a plastic bag. They’ll keep for at least a couple weeks that way. Take note that some of your sprouts might need to be cleaned before you cook them. Simply take a paring knife and cut the bottom of the sprout off. Like a tiny cabbage, the outer leaves will peel off revealing a light green perfect sprout beneath.

Celeriac
Also known as “celery root,” this is by far the most alien vegetable we grow. It is closely related to celery (the above-ground part of the plant looks like a dark green, leggier version of celery and the flavor is distinctly reminiscent), but celeriac is far more mysterious. Over the course of the whole season (we planted these puppies way back in May, and seeded them in the greenhouse in March!), celeriac slowly puts on girth below ground, swelling towards November until they are finally fat enough to yank from the ground. And I mean YANK.

What’s in your tote this week is a trimmed up, cleaned up, tidied up version of the uncensored celeriac. Straight out of the ground this veggie is about as unkempt as they come: huge hairy roots covered in mud; a wily top-hat of greenery; and the white orb itself sprouting what would be the human equivalent of nose hairs and chin hairs and ear hairs in wild disarray. It takes some deft work with the harvest knife to make them presentable, but I feel strongly that celeriac is well worth the effort. I’m guessing that most of you have never eaten it, and I am hoping hoping hoping that the amorous feelings I have towards this vegetable become your own.

What's In Your Basket?

Acorn Winter Squash
Baby Pam Pie Pumpkin
Romanesco Cauliflower
D’avignon Radishes
Pac Choi
Copra Onions
Nelson Carrots
Hot Peppers
Red Beets
Head Lettuce

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

Acorn Winter Squash
These acorn squash go by the name “Tuffy,” and you only have to try cutting ‘em open once to understand why. Acorn squash typically have a very hard ribbed skin, which can make lopping them open a dangerous thing! To halve them, we suggest choosing a sharp, durable knife (don’t use your favorite $100 chef’s knife – we broke the blade of ours trying to hack open a winter squash!). With the squash on a cutting board, stab the tip of the knife into the valley of a rib and then work the blade down, turning the squash over to cut all the way around and through.

Or, you can just get out the machete and take a well-aimed wack at it on a chopping block.

Either way, once you get inside your acorn squash, you’ll encounter something similar to the Delicata: a hollow cavity full of seeds, surrounded by yellow flesh and sweet flavor. Unlike the Delicata, Acorn squash skins are not so palatable: kinda thick and leathery.

Acorns are great for halving and stuffing, or eating naked the way we suggested you cook your Delicatas last week. Here are a couple of recipes to inspire: Acorn Squash with Wild Mushroom Cranberry Stuffing and Beet Soup in Roasted Acorn Squash Bowls. They’re not the greatest squash for dicing up because the skin is a bear to peel: it’s a rollercoaster peeling job, over hill and dale with all those tough ribs. It does work to cut them in rounds, which are great roasted with salt and olive oil. You’ll find all kinds of inspired concoctions on www.epicurious.com.

Store your acorns on the counter, not in the fridge.
 

Baby Pam Pumpkins
We grow pumpkins every year for a couple of reasons:
1)    because pumpkin pie is to die for, and
2)    because carving jack o’ lanterns isn’t just for kids.

The pumpkins have also inspired another tradition that we look forward to every year: a riotous October visit from the Wilderland School in Langlois. The week before Halloween, about 20 pre-school and first grade kids come running through the farmgate sporting rubber boots and runny noses. We make them endure a farm tour all about plant families and praying mantis and perennials and our watershed before we turn them loose on the pumpkin patch where each kid gets to pick out a pumpkin to take home. The energy runs high and as we make our way down the farm road, the kids keep asking “when will we get to the pumpkin patch?”  “How much farther are the pumpkins?” “Are we there yet?”

Well, as it turns out there ISN’T a pumpkin patch for the kids this year, who are coming next week. We’ve already harvested all the pumpkins, stored them in the barn, turned under the squash field and planted cover crop there. But we do have something else in store for them: the first ever Valley Flora Pumpkin Treasure Hunt. There are pumpkins set aside for every kid, but they’re gonna have to put their riddle-solving powers to work to find them on the farm...

You, on the other hand, are not required to solve any riddles to enjoy your pumpkin. It’s the best variety there is for pie (and if you’ve never made a homemade pumpkin pie from scratch, now’s your chance to REALLY go for it with this extravagant recipe: Pumpkin Pecan Pie with Whiskey Butter Sauce). Don’t be limited by pie, however. Pumpkins make a great ingredient in savory recipes as well, including curries, salads, and soups. The possibilities are too numerous to post recipes for, so I’ll leave it to you to get creative with your cookbooks and the internet.

Baby Pams are also big enough to carve if you prefer to etch out a ghoulish face on yours rather than eat it. Either way, don’t forget that you can roast the seeds and make your own pepitas: scoop out the seeds, rinse them clean, toss with olive oil and salt on a roasting pan, and roast at 350 in your oven until lightly browned. Yum.

Romanesco Cauliflower, aka Broccoli Romanesco
Some of you have already emailed me asking what that psychedelic bizarre vegetable is in your basket this week. It’s called Romanesco, and it’s a mathematician’s dream veggie. Why? Because if you look closely you’ll notice that this thing is not only a showcase for the Fibonacci spiral, but also for fractals. Whu-huh? In mathematics, the Fibonacci sequence is the series of numbers starting with 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two, like this:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...

And when you plot them using a method called “Fibonacci tiling,” you get that incredible spiral that you see on this vegetable. But to top it all off, there’s not just one spiral. Look closely and you’ll see that every “minaret” is a miniature of the whole romanesco. And every minaret is made up of an even small exact replica minaret, getting infinitely smaller. That’s a fractal:

frac·tal
an irregular or fragmented geometric shape that can be repeatedly subdivided into parts, each of which is a smaller copy of the whole.

What's In Your Basket?

Pac Choi
Copra Onions
Broccoli
Carrots
Italian Parsley
Hot Peppers
Yellow Finn Potatoes
Liberty & Chehalis Apples
Cherry Tomatoes
Sauce Tomatoes

On Rotation
Corn   
Zucchini & Summer Squash

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

Pac Choi
We are boomeranging back towards some of the flavors of springtime as cool weather crops like pac choi and broccoli start to head up in the field. This choi variety is known as “Prize Choi,” an open-pollinated variety (non-hybrid) that comes from my friends Brian and Crystine at Uprising Organics in Bellingham, Washington. Along with running a commercial produce farm, raising a son, and starting the first-ever low-income, food stamp CSA program, they are also growing their own seed business. They are dedicated to being a regional seed company that offers only organic, open-pollinated seeds.

You may encounter a few holes in the leaves of your Prize choi, a telltale mark left by the flea beetles late this summer. We planted these chois in late August, when the flea beetles were still rapaciously roving the farm in search of yummy, tender brassicas to eat – like Abby’s arugula and mustard (which she carefully protects with floating row cover for the salad mix), and yes, these tasty pac chois. With all the other projects on the farm, we didn’t get around to protecting the chois with floating row cover right away. As a result, those tiny beetles had themselves a small feast nibbling on the young outer leaves of the choi, leaving the plants with buckshot holes. We did finally get around to it after a week, so most of the inner leaves went unscathed.

The good news is that the swiss cheese effect of flea beetle mandibles doesn’t keep this pac choi from being one of the juiciest, sweetest varieties I’ve ever tasted. Try this easy, simple Pac Choi and Cabbage Stir-Fry - and help winnow away at that lunker of a red cabbage from a few weeks ago while you're at it!

Store your Prize choi in a closed plastic bag in the fridge.

Broccoli
It’s back, and it’s big! This is prime-time for fall broccoli, so you’ll be seeing it in your totes for a few weeks. If you didn’t try some of the earlier broccoli recipes that were posted on the Recipe Exchange, now’s the time!

Remember, broccoli stores best in a plastic bag in the fridge.

Yellow Finn Potatoes
One of the most beloved taters ever to grow at Valley Flora: the Yellow Finn. Fortunately, they are also one of our best yielding varieties on the farm, so we are amassing quite a stockpile of Yellow Finns in the cooler as we dig more of the cured potato beds each week. Unlike new potatoes, these spuds are cured - meaning they have set their outer skin and do not necessarily need to be refrigerated (there’s no harm in keeping them in the fridge if you have the room – either way works). Great texture, great flavor and great versatility make these a blue ribbon spud.

Apples
Abby is the Queen Orchardess, the master behind all of the grafting, planning and tending of the orchards on the farm. In particular, she’s had a lifelong passion for apples (“apple” was her first word, and at one point she considered becoming a pomologist – essentially, an apple scientist). Her obsession means that there are now over a 100 different apple varieties bending under the weight of their own fruit right now, two of which are in your totes this week. Chehalis is the light green, tender-skinned apple (watch out, it bruises easily!); Liberty is the red apple mottled with green (if you rub these apples they polish up to a Snow White kind of shine). Both are fantastic eating apples.

Store them in the fridge if you’re not going to eat them soon – they’ll stay crisper.

Sauce Tomatoes
Super Marzano is their name – a roma type sauce tomato that my mom grows in the greenhouse every year. The tall, sprawling plants put on a heavy fruit set of long, large, tasty, pointy tomatoes - wonderful for making up a quick fresh tomato sauce, canning, or eating fresh. Like any sauce tomato, the Super Marzanos are meatier than they are juicy. If any of your tomatoes are not scarlet red yet, give them day or two on the counter to redden up.

Like all tomatoes, the flavor and texture of saucers is best if they go unrefrigerated.
 

On the Farm....

This week of clear skies could not have come at a better moment – because this is the week of winter squash harvest. Clipping squash off the vine is something I always look forward to because it’s such a quintessential autumn project, and because winter squash is one of those crops that bides its time, like the tortoise in a vegetable-growing marathon. It is patient in its pursuit of glory – quietly and vibrantly emerging from a drab tangle of dying squash vines when most other crops are spent. The crimson-orange Sunshines. The jade-colored Buttercups and the tawny Butternuts. Carnival-esque Delicatas with their splashes of orange and stripes of green. Somber, slate-grey Hubbards. And the almost-black, hard-as-rock Acorns. We planted six main varieties this year, plus some pie pumpkins, a few giant Cinderella pumpkins, and a smattering of weird Italian varieties that got plugged in last minute.

What's In Your Basket?

Seascape Strawberries
Cherry Tomatoes
Head Lettuce
Red Slicing Tomatoes
Heirloom Tomatoes
Green Beans
Carrots
Basil
Hot Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Copra Onions
Zucchini & Summer Squash

On Rotation
Melons   
 

Produce Tips - How to Eat It, Cook It and Keep It!
 
The produce in the baskets this week should be familiar and comfortable to most everyone - now that we’ve been in summer’s grip for quite a while. Even with all the colorful bounty coming out of the fields, though, it’s easy to get in a dinner rut from time to time. Which is why I was so excited when our neighbors opened our eyes to this wonderful Roasted Cherry Tomato Pesto recipe this week. A whole new spin on an all-too familiar crop these days!

We’ve also posted a recipe that will use most of your veggies together in one simple, easy, summery recipe: Sourdough Panzanella with Summer Vegetables. This one comes from the Mother Nature Network, an online environmental news source that profiled us this summer in an article entitled “40 farmers under 40”: http://www.mnn.com/food/farms-gardens/stories/40-farmers-under-40

If you need reminders on any of the other produce in the basket this week, scan back through the previous newsletters for storage tips and recipes.

On the Farm....

Contrary to what the hot weather would have us believe, this week marks the official beginning of Fall. On the farm, the equinox is not just a day on the calendar. It is a real threshold.

It means that more than once this week we have found ourselves harvesting by tractor headlights because the daylight was suddenly gone at 7:30 (instead of 10 pm!). It means waking up in the pitch black to head out to the fields on early harvest mornings. It means that the wash water in the barn is getting cold enough to numb our hands when we’re dunking lettuce heads. It means that the winter squash plants are dying back to reveal a winter’s worth of meaty butternuts, acorns, delicates, and pumpkins. It means that we are beginning to haul in storage crops hand over fist: onions, shallots, potatoes. It means that the autumn plantings of kale and chard are coming into their prime; that the Brussels sprouts are chest high; that the cabbages are fat and heavy; that the celeriac and parsnips are putting on girth.

I forget how much I love this time of year, in part because it is a magnificent collision of the two most abundant seasons – summer and fall – when you can eat fresh caprese salad one day and butternut squash soup the next. There are no culinary limits, other than the size of our stomachs.

But also because this is the time of year that we are quite literally reaping what we sow. All of the set-up is done – the planting and trellising and seeding and tending. Even some of the irrigation and weeding is behind us. What remains on the to-do list is mainly harvest, and it’s harvest with a capital “H.” I love walking into the barn on a big harvest day and seeing all of the food spread out and stacked up: crimson red strawberries next to sunset orange heirlooms beside heaps of rainbow carrots, atop blanched leeks and sweet fennel bulbs and hefty cabbages. The challenge is not what to put into the harvest baskets each week, but what NOT to put in them – so that we don’t overwhelm you with a tidal wave of too much produce.

The great thing is, there is still so much to look forward to: all of the fall flavors that are still to come. I’m guessing most of you have never eaten celeriac (you’re in for a treat), or romanesco cauliflower (at first glance, you’ll think you’re hallucinating), or frost-sweetened lacinato kale (my dear friend in Hawaii has almost forsaken her native island to live in a place where she can get frost-nipped lacinato kale in the winter). Hakurei turnips – those little white orbs that won so many of your hearts this spring – will be back, as will purple kohlrabi, French breakfast radishes, broccoli, escarole, and more.

There’s a good chance, too, that there will be storage crops to see us deep into winter. So for those of you who are worrying about going through Valley Flora Vegetable Withdrawals (VFVW) come December, we will probably be setting up a special order system after the Harvest Basket is over.

It might look something like this: We would send out an email each week - or every other week - listing available produce (for instance, 5 pound bags of bulk carrots, 5 pound bags of potatoes, kale by the bunch, winter squash by the pound, etc.). If you wanted to order, you would reply to the email with your order for the week. We would pack your order into a tote, label it with your name, and make up an invoice for your you. Totes would be available for pick-up at the farm on a specified day each week.

We most likely wouldn't be delivering to the usual pick-up sites in the winter, so if you live far from the farm but would like to get winter produce from us, there may be a way we could help you all get organized so that, for instance, Coos Bay people could coordinate and have one person pick up all of the Coos Bay orders. That said, if there is lots of interest it might merit us firing up Frank, the delivery van, and making the trip.

We’ll be figuring out the details as we get closer to the end of the season, but if you have any input in the meantime don’t hesitate to be in touch.

Happy eating!
 

What's In Your Basket?

Caroline Raspberries
King Richard Leeks
Slicing Tomatoes
Desiree Potatoes
Nelson Carrots
Ruby Perfection Red Cabbage
Zucchini & Summer Squash
Head Lettuce

On Rotation
Cherry Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Peppers
Melons   
 

Produce Tips - How to Eat It, Cook It and Keep It!
 
Red Cabbage
Ruby Perfection is my favorite red cabbage variety, producing good-sized tight heads with the most beautiful, vibrant purple color imaginable. When you cut into one of these orbs, you are in for a visual and tastebud treat: the tight labyrinthine folds of purple on white should be named the 8th wonder of the world, a gold medal winner for edible art.

As you probably know from the cabbage you got earlier this summer, this is a vegetable that holds up well in your fridge in a plastic bag, so don’t be overwhelmed if it seems like a lot of food in one volleyball-sized package!

Desiree Potatoes
I just read that “a diet of potatoes and milk will supply all the nutrients the human body needs.” It reminds me of an adventure I took to Bolivia where I spent time in a homestay on a remote island in Lake Titicaca (Isla Amántani). All that my host family fed me – and all they ate themselves - was potatoes, three meals a day. I had never craved salad and green veggies more than I did there – but I certainly didn’t go hungry!

This red potato variety was one of the stand-outs in last summer’s trials, so we’ve grown it again this year. Some of the potatoes are huge, weighing in at close to 2 pounds! Unfortunately, the list of plant diseases that plague potatoes is about 5 pages long – from blight to harmless scab to hollow heart – so not every one of these organic potatoes is going to be perfect. We sort the potatoes and make an effort to send the ones whose defects might only be skin deep. If you do encounter any cosmetic blemishes on your spuds, remember that most of the time it can be taken care of with a quick swipe of the paring knife.

Many people ask about the green skin you occasionally see on potatoes. Potatoes exposed to bright light develop these green patches. It’s more common in varieties that tend to push upwards out of the potato hills, instead of multiplying laterally (our fingerling potatoes do this, much to our frustration). This green skin contains a toxin called solanine, which in high doses can cause cramps, headache, diarrhea, and fever. But the solution is simple: don't eat the green skin, simply remove it. The solanine is only present in the green skin and any discoloration underneath it - the rest of the potato is completely safe to eat.

Melons
My sister, Abby, is Valley Flora’s intrepid melon grower. Most people wouldn’t attempt to grow melons where we are, a scant 5 miles from the ocean, because melons are heat-loving cucurbits (from the same family as cucumbers, winter squash, summer squash, etc.). They thrive in hot climates (think Hermiston Watermelons, California Honeydews, etc…..). But Abby has figured out how to grow them here by planting greenhouse starts on the leeward side of her corn patch (the ears from which are coming soon to a Harvest Basket near you!). There, they are tucked out of the wind where the heat can settle on the melon vines and ripen bonafide cantaloupes and honeydews. She also selects varieties that are better suited to our climate. Those two factors are adding up to September melons for you this year!

Some of the melons are petite, others fairly large – depending on the variety. They are ripening over time, so if you didn’t get yours melon collection this week, look for them in the coming weeks. There are great recipes out there for melon sorbet, melon soup, and other elaborate concoctions, but right now my favorite way to put these down is in their pure form: cut in half and eaten with a spoon, one juicy bite at a time!

If your melons come to you dead-ripe and you’re not ready to eat them, put them in the fridge. Otherwise, melons do fine on the counter where they will continue to ripen.

On the Farm....

As it turns out, I’m not on the farm at all right now; I’m writing this week’s newsletter three thousand miles distant, in Washington, D.C. I bee-lined it to the airport on Tuesday night after harvest and caught the red-eye across the country. I’m here, about five blocks from the White House, wearing my other hat as a national Food & Society Fellow (http://www.foodandsocietyfellows.org). It’s a crazy time to be away from the farm, with the harvest as heavy as it gets and the daylight shrinking, but this is a critical week in D.C. when lawmakers are back on the Hill after the August recess and getting back to work on critical issues like health care, child nutrition, and Farm Bill implementation. Even Michelle Obama is in the fray, having recently proposed the opening of a new farmer’s market in front of the White House.

There are about two dozen of us Fellows from around the country who have all converged here together this week. Each of us brings our own priorities, from farm-to-school, to food safety, to improving food access for low-income communities of color. My own fellowship work over the past two years has centered around beginning farmers – both the need to cultivate a next generation of farmers in this country (where there are now more federal prison inmates than there are farmers) and overcoming the huge obstacles beginning farmers face, including access to: affordable credit, good farmland, vibrant markets, training and education, mentorship, and mainstream cultural support.

What's In Your Basket?

Seascape Strawberries
Copra Onions
Slicing Tomatoes
Green Beans
Nelson Carrots
Hot Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Head lettuce
Fennel
Cucumbers
Basil   
Zucchini & Summer Squash

On Rotation
Sugar Snap Peas
Cherry Tomatoes   
 

Produce Tips - How to Eat It, Cook It and Keep It!
 
Copra Onions – Allium cepa
This is the first harvest of our storage onion crop. Copras are a strong-flavored, yellow onion that keeps extremely well in dry storage. That said, the onions you’re getting this week are not yet cured (meaning the tops haven’t died back yet, nor has the skin set) and they need to be stored in the fridge. As of last week we turned the water off in the onion field and they are now on the road to curing – so they’ll end up looking just like the onions you see at the store with golden, papery skins and no tops.
I am kicking myself for not also growing a red onion variety this year (what was I thinking last January!?), so the Copras are the only onion type you’ll be seeing for the remainder of the season. There will be leeks and shallots as well to round out the allium offerings, so we’ll do our best to mix it up and keep it lively in your share. NEXT year, I am dead-set on seeding some additional varieties so we have wider diversity in the onion field. I suppose it's good to not get it perfect every time, because then there's always something to look forward to...

Green Beans – Phaesolus vulgaris
Another bean medley this week, including:

• Bush filets: thin and long
• Pole filet: thin and even longer
• Romano: flat, wide, Italian

Hot Peppers – Capsicum annuum
There are a couple types of hot peppers floating around in your basket this week:

• Jalapeño: the big, plump, green one – about a 7 on a heat scale of 1 to 10.
• Serrano: the slender red or green ones – about a 8.5 on the heat-o-meter.

Most of the kick in a hot pepper is in the seeds, so if you like it hot, chop up the whole pepper, seeds and all. If you have tamer tastebuds, you can de-seed the hot peppers and use only the flesh.

There are tomatoes, onions and peppers in your basket this week, begging to be made into some homemade salsa.
Storage: you can keep your hot peppers on the counter, or in the fridge. They hold up surprisingly well at room temp…

Fennel – Foeniculum vulgare
Big, fat, luscious fennel, and lots of it this week! We loaded you up because your basket contains all of the ingredients to make our FAVORITE fennel dish: Finocchio.

Fennel stores great in the fridge in a plastic bag, so if you can’t get to it for a little while, don’t sweat it.

Cherry Tomatoes – Solanum lycopersicum
The cherry tomatoes, unlike the rest of the solanums, grow outside in the field. They are just beginning to come on in profusion and we will be sending them your way as the harvest picks up. We’re growing a few different varieties:

• Sweet Millions: a classic, sweet red cherry, on the larger side
• Sungold: my all-time favorite tomato, period. Yellow-orange with a tropical, unbelievably sweet flavor
• Red Grape: aptly named, they are a longer, oval shaped cherry tomato with a thicker wall – like a tiny cousin to a sauce tomato
• Peacevine: yet another red variety that we’re trialing, bred by Alan Kapuler of Corvallis, Oregon.

All tomatoes are best stored on the counter, not in the fridge.

On the Farm....
Musing on peppers….
We are pepper lovers here at Valley Flora, so when August begins to nod towards September, my mom becomes the most popular person on the farm. The entirety of the capsicum harvest is the fruit of her labor. She grows dozens of varieties in the greenhouses and some of the cultivars have attained seasonal family member status: seductive Carmen, the beautiful, lipstick-red bullhorn pepper; goofy Jimmy Nardello, Carmen’s skinny, wiggly, contortionist cousin; serious Joe, the long, hot cayenne; sophisticated Gourmet, the heavy-set, sweet orange bell; and happy Labrador, our favorite sunny, yellow sweet pepper. The peppers stir up a fervor of vegetable trading amongst us: I’ll give you a flat of strawberries for those Carmens. A bag of Abby’s greens for some homemade salsa… For Christmas last year, my mom gave me a whole gallon of red Serrano hot sauce – a gift of gold.

When the capsicums begin to color up is when the best summer feasting really begins: homemade salsa, ratatouille, roasted jalapeños, stuffed peppers, chile rellenos. You name it, my mom makes it. She has grown peppers for a long time in her greenhouses and over the years has zeroed in on her favorite varieties. The sweet peppers are planted in profusion in the spring, but hot peppers hold down their own special corner of the greenhouses as well. They thrive with the added heat the greenhouses provide, even with our close proximity to the coast.

What's In Your Basket?

Seascape Strawberries
Head lettuce
Rainbow Chard
Rainbow Carrots   
Cucumbers
Zucchini & Summer Squash
Broccoli
Fennel
Beets

On Rotation:

Raspberries
Little Gem lettuce
   
 
Produce Tips - How to Eat It, Cook It and Keep It!
 

Rainbow Carrots
These are not you’re run-of-the-mill bunch carrots this time! Every week that we plant a bed of sweet, crunchy Nelsons or Yayas on the farm, we also seed a line of rainbow carrots. In seed catalogues, you can buy an actual variety called “Rainbow,” but it only includes yellow, white and pale orange carrots. We spice up the Rainbow mix by adding in 6 other varieties that span the color wheel:

• White Satin: White all the way through
• Crème de Lite: Pale yellow
• Atomic Red: Red skin with orange flesh
• Purple rain: Dark purple skin with a small yellow core
• Cosmic Purple: Purple skin with an orange core
• Purple Haze: Reddish-purple skin with and orange or yellow core

Rainbow carrots are a hit with chefs at the various restaurants we sell produce to, as well as at natural food stores like Mothers and Seaweed. This year, we seeded extra for the Harvest Baskets, so you should see them a few times this season. Rainbow carrots are a bit of a delicacy for a couple of reasons:

• They are finicky and have a much lower rate of germination than your regular orange carrot. This means we have to double seed them every time we plant.
• The seed is up to twice as expensive as Nelson seed.
• The different varieties mature at different rates, and assume different shapes – so making uniform bunches is a little tricky! Fat ones, skinny ones, stubby ones, baby ones: we spend a lot of time sorting and bunching in the field.

 
Nevertheless, the unique flavors and the beauty of these carrots are inspiration enough for us to keep planting them. Use them and store them as you would any other carrot, although be forewarned that some of the purple and red varieties will lose their intense color when you cook them.
 
Rainbow Chard
We went whole hog with the rainbow theme this week. My mom always says that everything we do has to be at least 51% art. Between the carrots and the chard, packing out the baskets this week was as much a feast for the eyes as it will be for the belly. Various farm members have been clamoring for more chard, more chard! So here it is. There are some great recipes on the Recipe Exchange that call for chard, so if you haven’t tried them yet now’s your chance.
 
Fennel
At last, the fennel has fattened up! They are big, heavy, tender and succulent now – and one of my favorite crops to harvest. You’ll remember that the full fennel plant has tall ferny fronds fanning out from the bulb. When they’re big like this, we give them a quick chevron cut with the harvest knife and leave all that biomass in the field where it can compost. Fennel is a great comrade to rainbow carrots and beets to make a Rainbow Root Roast, which is part of the reason we sent out all three together this week. If you have any potatoes kicking around, add them in, too!
 
Beets
Some of you are getting bulk beets this week, with no tops. We cleared a bed in order to make way for cover crop and in the process, we topped all the beets and left the greens in the field to feed the soil. Believe it or not, the beets you’re eating this week were seeded all the way back in February during that unusual spell of balmy sunshine we had. They survived a cold spring, and then came on strong in June. We’ve been harvesting from them for the past two months, until now. Beets are one of the best storage crops around, whether in the ground or in your fridge. And, unlike some things, the bigger they get the more tender and sweet they are. Last week I pulled six golden beets out of the field that weighed in at about seven pounds EACH. They were as big as my head, and sweeter than any beet I’ve eaten this season. Nevertheless, it’s a little hard to sell beets that big without scaring someone - so instead I wrapped up a 21 pound, 3-beet bunch as a joke for my friend’s birthday. Sure enough, it scared him. As for the other three, we are sawing away at them here at home. We’ll probably still be at it come Christmas.
 
Broccoli
This is really, truly, honestly the last head of broccoli you’re going to see from us for a few months. I SWEAR! Thanks for putting up with the bumper crop of 2009! Hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Little Gem Lettuce
Little Gem is going out to some pick-up sites this week – a specialty lettuce that is one of our favorites on the farm. Little gem is a diminutive butter-romaine cross that makes for a perfect 1-2 serving lettuce. The leaves are crisp, ruffled, and sweet and hold onto a Caesar salad dressing like none other! Try this family Caesar dressing recipe: Bunny’s Creamy Caesar
Like all of the head lettuce we grow, Little Gem starts its life in a 128-cell tray in the greenhouse where it germinates and grows for 4 weeks. After “hardening off” the seedlings so they’re better acclimated to life in the outdoors, we transplant them into the field. Some lettuces, like romaine, get planted on 6” spacing. Others, like butterheads and summer crisps, get 12” spacing. The Little Gem is special: we plant it 4” apart. It makes for a long day with the trowel, but the result is well worth it. We think these compact, dense heads were aptly named.

What's In Your Basket?

•     Seascape Strawberries
•     Magenta Summer Crisp Lettuce
•     Red Ursa Kale
•     Cucumbers
•     Zucchini
•     Broccoli
•     Nelson Carrots
•     Purplette Onions
•     Basil

On Rotation:

• Raspberries

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

• At long last, the carrots! What an exercise in patience, waiting for the carrots to come on this year! Colder than average spring soil temperatures killed our first handful of plantings, which set back the first carrot harvest by a few weeks. Those that did survive the spring were spotty and stressed – not the prettiest carrots to behold. Now, the later plantings are finally maturing and digging carrots is once again yielding the abundant harvest we’re used to. We hope to send you carrots as often as we can from here on out. You’ll be eating two varieties, mainly: Nelson and Yaya, both of which are an early Nantes type with great crunch, tenderness and exceptional sweetness.
• I tend to munch my carrots raw most of the time, but they deserve an award for being one of the most versatile veggies there is, spanning the spectrum from sweet to savory. Think about it: Carrot cake. Carrot lemongrass soup. Carrot root roast. I trust you’ll find plenty of things to do with them, but if you find you can’t keep up with the carrots, not to worry: they store great in the fridge in a plastic bag for weeks. Cut the tops off to keep them from going limp, but don’t throw the tops away! As it turns out, you can even eat carrot tops and here’s one recipe to help you do it: Carrot Top Soup.

 
Red Ursa Kale

• The kale is so giant and pretty right now I’ve been tempted to include it in the flower bouquets! Those of you who aren’t big kale fans might consider putting it in a vase, but before you do, try our favorite standby salad, great for summer or winter: Molly's Famous Kaleslaw. It uses carrots, red cabbage (if you have any left), kale and some other goodies. The inspiration for this recipe came from my beloved friend and former housemate, Molly McHenry, who could whip up a kaleslaw in the blink of any eye, and then make you cry it was so good.
• Remember, your kale will last best in a bag in the fridge, sealed up to keep it from wilting.
   

 
Purplette Onions

• These "little purple" onions are wonderful because they are fast maturing and bulb up sooner than other varieties. They also have a delicate, mild flavor and you can eat the tops. That's right - don't toss the greens; use them like green onions. As for the bulbing part of the onion, it can be eaten raw or sauteed up like any regular onion. Last night we cut up a few purplettes into fat rings, dipped them in a beer batter (1 part beer to 1 part flour), and dropped them into a friend’s FryDaddy. Whooooo boy! The best onion rings I’ve ever made myself sick on!
• Purplettes store well in the fridge in a plastic bag.

Broccoli

• Just when you thought you couldn’t handle another giant head of broccoli….well, hang in there, here it comes again! Some of the heads are weighing in at 2.5 pounds right now! We're going out with a bang: broccoli season is almost over until Fall, so we hope you can relish these last couple of weeks of it.
• A Harvest Basket member sent in a wonderful recipe last week for a tantalizing Creamy Broccoli Soup with Almond Romano Pesto (from the fantastic cookbook “Rebar”), which is now posted on the recipe exchange.
• If you're feeling overwhelmed by what to do with it all, remember that you can freeze it for winter and enjoy the Valley Flora bounty during those cold, dark months on the other side of the calendar. It's easy:

          o Cut your broccoli into florets.
          o Bring a pot of water to boil.
          o Dunk the florets into the boiling water for a minute to blanch.
          o Pull the florets out of the water and dunk into ice water.
          o Put florets on cookie sheets and freeze.
          o Once frozen, put the florets into a freezer ziploc and stash away for winter!

On the Farm....
We are on the cusp of the Summer Solanum Tsunami: cherry tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, roasting peppers. Get ready, because within in a few weeks there will be a whole new plant family beginning to appear in your weekly basket, straight outta my mom’s greenhouses and the fields. Tomatoes are always a marker of “true summertime” for me, though ironically they don’t ripen here until August, once “true summertime” has been in full swing for awhile. The same is true for corn – and if we’re lucky, melons - which don’t usually come on until September for us, being as stone’s throw from the coast.

 What's In Your Basket?

• Seascape Strawberries
• Flashy Trout's Back Lettuce
• Arugula
• Cucumbers
• Broccoli
• Italian Parsley
• Red Cabbage
• Baby Fennel

On Rotation:

• Raspberries

 
Coming Soon!

• Onions
• More Carrots & Beets

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

• The variety of cabbage in your basket this week is called "Red Express" - and aptly named crucifer considering it matured about 3 weeks earlier than planned. All the better for us, now that summer slaw season can officially begin!
• We're growing a handful of different cabbage varieties on the farm this season, including reds, greends and savoy types. You'll see them occasionally from now until November.
• Cabbage is an easy keeper and while last for months in your fridge. If you only use a little at a time, put the remainder of the head in a plastic bag each time and keep in the crisper. The cut edge will oxidize and brown, but next time you go to eat some, simply shave off the thin outer layer to reveal perfect cabbage beneath.
• Of, if you want to enjoy your cabbage whole-hog, here are a few recipes that use red cabbage as well as fennel and parsely, which are also in your share this week:
  • Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage with Fennel: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Sweet-and-Sour-Red-Cabbage-...
  • Cabbage, Fresh Fennel and Carrot Salad: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cabbage-Fresh-Fennel-and-Ca...
  • Italian Coleslaw with Fennel and Capers: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Italian-Coleslaw-with-Fenne...

  
Baby Fennel

• Fennel is a little-known and little-appreciated vegetable here in the states, but is widely popular in European and Indian cuisine. Fennel is one of my top 3 favorite summer veggies, which partly explains my mission to convert as many of you into fennel fans as possible!
• The fennel in your basket this week is baby, but as the summer goes on you'll also get fat, luscious, full size bulbs. These petite ones are a special, early summer treat, and we've sent the whole plant with fronds and all so you can not only see what they look like, but enjoy both the bulb and the fronds. The fronds can be used like any fresh herb, chopped into salad, atop fish, etc....
• Fennel has a long, rich history. The Greek word for fennel is "marathon," and so the story goes, the famous Battle of Marathon was fought on a field dotted with the revered fennel plant. Pheidippides, the famous first "marathon" runner who delivered the news of the Persian invasion to Sparta, carried a fennel stalk. Greek myths also hold that knowledge was delivered to man by the gods at Olympus in a fennel stalk filled with coal. The ancient Romans chewed fennel believing it would control obesity, and the Puritans nibbled on fennel seeds as an appetite suppressant during periods of religious fasting to keep themselves from growing hungry.  In Medieal times, fennel was hung from rafters to bring good luck and stuffed into keyholes to ward off ghosts and evil spirits. It was though to cure snakebites, toothaches, earaches, colic, and to keep flies away when tied to horses' harness.
• This week you can either tie your fennel to the ceiling for good luck, OR you can savor it in some of these recipes:
  • Braised Baby Fennel with Arugula and Feta: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/braised-fennel-arugula-and-feta-c...
  • Crab and Fennel Salad: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Crab-and-Fennel-Salad-237183

 
Italian Parsley

• There are two kinds of parsley out there: curly and Italian, or flat-leaf. The Italian parsley that's in your share this week was planted this spring, but will most likely over-winter. It's a hardy little plant, and one that produces a wonderful, versatile herb!
• Parsley stores best in the fridge in a plastic bag, or put the stems in a glass of water and keep in the fridge or on the counter. It will keep up to a week that way.

 
Cucumbers

• We are growing a few different varieties of cucumbers on the farm: English (the long, skinny kind you usually see shrink-wrapped in plastic at the store), slicing (your typical cucumber), and pickling (small cukes that we grow to stock the pantry with). You'll be getting English and slicing cukes throughout the season.
• Cukes store best in the fridge, in a plastic bag. They don't stay perky forever, though, so try to eat them up within a week.

 
 
Broccoli

 What's In Your Basket?

• Tillamook and/or Seascape Strawberries
• Black Seeded Simpson Greenleaf Lettuce
• Spinach
• Cucumbers (English or Slicing)
• Broccoli
• Red, White & Blue New Potatoes (red = Red Norland, white/yellow = Carola, blue = Purple Majesty)
• Red Ursa Kale

On Rotation:

• Raspberries

 
Coming Soon!

• Carrots
• Fennel

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

• So what is a "new" potato, anyway? Basically, new potatoes are dug when the potato plant is still vibrant and flowering, before the plants have died back and the skins have cured on the tubers. By harvesting them early, the potatoes in your basket this week are especially tender and sweet, and far less starchy than your typical storage potato. They are also a little smaller than regular potatoes because we dig them early, before they are fully mature. You definitely do not need to peel this little guys!
• Given that their skin hasn't "cured" yet, new potatoes do not store the same way that regular potatoes do: you need to keep them in the fridge, ideally in a plastic bag in order to keep them from drying out.
• Enjoy your red, white and blue new potatoes on the 4th of July this weekend. Here's a great, easy recipe to enjoy your new potatoes in their purest form: New Potatoes with Basil.

  
Cucumbers

• We are growing a few different varieties of cucumbers on the farm: English (the long, skinny kind you usually see shrink-wrapped in plastic at the store), slicing (your typical cucumber), and pickling (small cukes that we grow to stock the pantry with). You'll be getting English and slicing cukes throughout the season.
• Cukes store best in the fridge, in a plastic bag. They don't stay perky forever, though, so try to eat them up within a week.

 
 
Broccoli

• The broccoli has hit its stride! We are having a ball cutting these huge, heavy heads - sweet and tender as broccoli could be!
• Stores best in the fridge in a sealed plastic bag.
  

 
Red Ursa Kale

• Great sauteed, stir-fried, or eaten raw, this hearty green keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge.

 
Raspberries

• We are just beginning to harvest the june-bearing raspberries, a variety called Cascade Dawn. We will be distributing them on rotation to each pick-up site over the next couple of weeks. We also grow an ever-bearing variety called Caroline that will be coming on later in the summer, so hopefully raspberries will make frequent appearances in your baskets this season.
• What's the difference between a june-bearing and an ever-bearing raspberry? June-bearers are what they call "floricane" varieties, meaing they fruit on second year wood. Ever-bearers are called "primocanes" and they fruit on first year wood. What this means is that the june-bearers produce new canes every year, which we carefully select and tie up onto the trellis. Those canes overwinter and the following June begin to produce masses of fruit. Their season is short, however - less than 4 weeks. The fruit you're eating this week was produced by canes that shot up last spring, in 2008. Ever-bearers on the other hand, produce fruit on this year's canes. They are growing fast right now, and will probably start producing sometime in July. The benefit of ever-bearers is that you can mow them down each fall instead of trellising them, which makes maintenance a lot easier - but you also have to wait longer to get your first raspberry! We grow both kinds in order to extend our raspberryt season to its utmost!
• Raspberries are fragile, poor-keepers. Best to eat them within a couple of days. Whipped cream is always a good comrade to raspberries.

 
On the Farm....
It feels like we are officially turning the corner into summer. The "real" food is starting to come on: heavy stuff like potatoes, carrots, fennel, beets, cucumbers.....And many of the frantic spring projects are behind us: irrigation is set-up, the farm roads are mowed, the berries are mulched, the cooler is (almost) built. Now we get to settle in to the good old routine of harvest, weeding, watering - and enjoying the abundance on the farm. The days are still long, the work is still plenty, but there's a good pace to it. At least until tomato season hits....
 
Given that all of you are participating so closely in our own little local food economy, I thought you might be interested in an Independence Day-inspired movement afoot right now called Food Independence Day: http://foodindependence.tumblr.com/
 
A good friend of mine in Maine has spearheaded this national campaign, which is calling on Americans to declare our food independence by sourcing the ingredients for our holiday meals as locally, sustainably and deliciously as possible - and to ask our elected officials to do the same. Check out the website for more details.

Happy Food Independence Day to everyone. You can eat those patriotic potatoes with pride, knowing you're playing a vital role in creating a vibrant local food system here on the Southcoast. Thanks for your support.

June 15-20
 
What's In Your Basket?

• Tillamook Strawberries
• Emerald Oakleaf Lettuce
• Hakurei Turnips
• Green Globe Artichokes
• Braising Mix
• Zucchini
• Basil

On Rotation:

• Rainbow Chard
• Broccoli
• Rapini
• Beets

 
Coming Soon!

• Kohlrabi

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

 
Hakurei Turnips

• Most people don't associate the word "turnip" with the adjectives "sweet and buttery," but Hakureis make the cut. They are our favorite turnip of all time, and lucky for all of us, they are a vigorous spring crop. These turnips are best eaten raw to savor their texture and flavor, but they also sautee up well with a little olive oil, salt and their own greens.
• Don't toss those tops! They make great stir-fry greens. Give them a wash, chop them up, and cook them!
• If you want your turnips to last longer in the fridge, cut the tops off and store the roots in a ziploc in the crisper.

Braising Mix

• This is a colorful combo of baby kale, mustard and other asian greens. If you like it spicy, you can just eat your braising mix raw like a salad. Otherwise, they are great stir-fried, sauteed or steamed. At home we often just steam them, then douse them with good olive oil, a sprinkle of sea salt, and a dash of either ume plum vinegar or cider vinegar. Yum!
• Store in the fridge in a sealed plastic bag.

 
 
Artichokes

• We are choke addicts here at Valley Flora. We usually prepare them the simple old-fashioned way in a steamer basket. It usually takes 30-45 minutes in a regular steamer basket with plenty of water, depending on size, or 8-14 minutes in a pressure cooker. The bigger the choke, the longer it takes. Check for done-ness by plucking an outside leaf. The chokes are ready when a leaf plucks off easily. Dig in and eat your - its - heart out.
• Check out our easy ailoi recipe and turn your artichokes into a great vehicle for mayo, balsamic and capers.

 
  
Zucchini

• Zukes store for about a week in a plastic bag in the fridge. Wonderful sauteed with a little butter, thyme, salt and pepper.

 
 
Broccoli

• Like the zucchini, the broccoli is just getting going so we'll be distributing it to different pick-up sites on rotation these first few weeks. The heads are small right now, but will size up as the days warm up.
• Stores best in the fridge in a sealed plastic bag.

 
 
Rapini

• Rapini is a wonderful spring and fall treat. It's essentially a flower bud from any kind of brassica plant (cabbage, kale, pac choi, etc.), cut right before it bursts into bloom. Rapini is often sweet, nutty with a little spice to it.
• Great eaten raw, sauteed or steamed.
• Stores for a long time in a plastic bag in the fridge.

 
 
Rainbow Chard

• Another trusty spring green that will be with us from now on throughout the season. We are growing a mix of rainbow chard and rhubard chard, which lends those stems their technicolor palette.
• Treat it like you would kale or any other green, but don't toss those stems! Chop them up and toss them into your meal - the make great accents and are

June 8-13, 2009

 
What's In Your Basket?

• Tillamook and/or Seascape Strawberries
• Jericho Green Romaine Lettuce
• Hakurei Turnips
• Green Globe Artichokes
• Spinach
• Red Ursa Kale

On Rotation:

• Zucchini
• Broccoli

 
Coming Soon!

• Chard
• Kohlrabi
• Beets

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

• Most people don't associate the word "turnip" with the adjectives "sweet and buttery," but Hakureis make the cut. They are our favorite turnip of all time, and lucky for all of us, they are a vigorous spring crop. This turnips are best eaten raw to savor their texture and flavor, but they also sautee up well with a little olive oil, salt and their own greens.
• Don't toss those tops! They make great stir-fry greens. Give them a wash, chop them up, and cook them!
• If you want your turnips to last longer in the fridge, cut the tops off and store the roots in a ziploc in the crisper.

 
Spinach

• Baby spinach!!! Check out the recipe exchange for some great salad ideas....

 
Kale

• Great sauteed, stir-fried, or eaten raw, this hearty green keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge.

  
Zucchini

• The zukes are starting to come on - slowly but surely. Right now, the harvest is such that we'll be divvying up the harvest amongst each of the pick-up sites on rotation - so that everyone will get the same quantity of zucchini, but you may not receive it every week.
• Zukes store for about a week in a plastic bag in the fridge. Wonderufl sauteed with a little butter, thyme, salt and pepper.

Broccoli

• Like the zucchini, the broccoli is just getting going so we'll be distributing it to different pick-up sites on rotation these first few weeks. The heads are small right now, but will size up as the days warm up.
• Stores best in the fridge in a sealed plastic bag.

On the Farm....
We planted our last succession of potatoes this week - with the help of Barney & Maude, who pulled the walking plow to open up the furrows to plant into. Abby drove the plow while I drove the horses. Our first furrow was pretty drunken, but the second and third started to look like the real thing:
almost
straight as an arrow. If we had high speed internet, I'd post some photos of it - but for now we'll leave it to your imaginations.
 
 
 
Meanwhile, the first planting of potatoes from March is starting to flower, which means that our first new potatoes are just a few weeks away.
 
 
 
We also planted out seventy new grape vines this week, including both wine and table grapes, as well as a bunch of kiwi vines. We'll be harvesting fruit from them starting next year....
 
 
 
Don't forget to visit the
Recipe Exchange
to check out the new recipes this week, and to share your own recipes with other farmsters.