The Valley Flora Beetbox

Valley Flora's newsletter, sharing news from the farm, seasonal updates, and more!

Week 1 (of 28!) from Valley Flora!

  • Baby arugula (bulk, in the larger of the two plastic bags)
  • Head Lettuce - varieties rotate each week
  • Yellow bunched spring onions
  • Bunched Tatsoi (bunched, dark leaves with white stems)
  • Radishes - pink or purple
  • Spinach, bunched
  • Sunflower Shoots (in the smaller plastic bag)
  • Strawberries!!!
  • A SunOrange Cherry Tomato Plant

On Rotation:

  • Zucchini
  • Artichokes

Hello 2023 CSA Members, and welcome! The Valley Flora van is on the road as we speak, delivering the first load of CSA totes to Coos Bay! Old Frank (that's the van) is also loaded down with a motherlode of head lettuce, radishes, turnips, and other VF produce for Coos Head Food Co-op, 7 Devils Brewing Co., the Langlois Market, and a handful of other stores and restaurants (insider tip: the first Abby's Greens salad was delivered to McKay's in Bandon today, in case you are not an Abby's Greens Salad Share member and are jonesing for some of those greens, stat!). All to say, the season has started with a bang. We are off and running.

The farm surprised us with a few things this week, in quantity enough to share with our beloved CSA members: namely, STRAWBERRIES! This has been perfect strawberry weather the past couple weeks and the plants are starting to yield some beautiful fruit. There isn't enough red out there to open the u-pick yet, but hopefully within a few weeks we'll be ready for the strawberry stampede. Also ramping up: our early zucchinis, which - like artichokes - are on rotation this week. That means that some pickup sites will get them this week, others will get them in the coming week or two. We are diligent about tracking who gets what every week so that we can keep it even-steven for all of our members throughout the season.

Overall, though, the name of the game right now is greens! Big salads, spinach in your smoothies, tatsoi in your stir-fry. We farmers tend to be terrible sympathizers when it comes to that common feeling of greens-overwhelm that some CSA members experience at the start of the season (that's because our household can easily put down a couple heads of lettuce and bunch of spinach/chard/kale/tatsoi every day, between morning smoothies, lunchtime leftovers, and dinner plates heaped high with salad). So my advice: eat like your farmer! The more greens the better! Also, remember that you have a superpower in the kitchen and it's called heat. If that bunch of tatsoi or spinach is staring you down in your fridge, toss it in a frying pan or the steamer and you'll diminish it to a teency but tasty little pile in a flash. Zap! Take that, tatsoi! (Definitely put on your superhero cape when you do that, and please send me the picture.)

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

A reminder that all of the info about our CSA pick-up locations is on our website, in case you need a refresher about the when, where and how of it all: https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/valley-flora-pick-locations

FARMSTAND UPDATES

As of today our farmstand is operating on Summer hours: we're open every Wednesday from 11:30 to 2:30 for order pickup and drop-in shopping. We will be adding Saturdays to the schedule within a couple weeks, once the strawberry u-pick is ready to open. You have two options for sourcing produce at the farmstand: pre-order your produce on Local Line (our online store); or, drop in to shop. You'll find the greatest diversity, abundance, and guarantee if you pre-order on Local Line, but we try hard to always have some produce on display for folks who don't want deal with the internet :). (We understand, we're half-Luddite, too. See Exhibit A, below).

Enjoy your first week of VF produce, and thank you ALL for being part of the magic!

-Zoë

P.S. Coming in next week's newsletter: an introduction to our all-star crew, aka the fantastic humans who are growing and harvesting your produce this season! Stay tuned for more!

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 16 from Valley Flora!

Please note this is NOT our farmstand availability email. This is our weekly CSA newlsetter primarily intended for our subscribed Harvest Basket members who receive a weekly box of produce from the farm from June through December. You cannot order farmstand produce from this email or directly from our website. Rather, farmstand availability emails are sent out on Thursday and Monday mornings to folks who have signed up for Wednesday or Saturday pickup, respectively. To learn more or sign up for a farmstand pickup day, click here.

  • Napa Cabbage - the foundational ingredient in kimchi, but also wonderful shredded into light slaw or salad. At this time of year when we have sweet peppers and apples, I like to make a napa/apple/pepper/carrot slaw with a rice-vinegar vinaigrette.
  • Carrots
  • Sweet Corn
  • Lettuce
  • Yellow Onion
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Tomatoes
  • Beets - Red, Gold and Chioggia
  • Strawberries - we are stunned by the strawberries right now. Abundant, beautiful, better than ever! Normally there wouldn't be strawberries in the Harvest Basket at this point in the season, but they just keep giving! U-pick is going to be FANTASTIC today (Wednesday)!
  • Cucumbers

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant

I can't believe it, but yes, still strawberries! We are a bit baffled by this late season run in the berry patch - we haven't seen anything like this in years! If we get our much-hoped-for rain later this week it might start to slow them down, but right now they are phenomenal. Come upick today, starting at 11 am! And if you want a special order flat, let me know and we'll see if the weather cooperates: name, pickup location, number of flats and phone number.

Peppers Peaking: Now's the time to order up a few bags of red Italian roasters or assorted colored bells. Peppers are available in 5 pound bags for $22. To order, email Bets your name, pickup location, type and quantity of peppers you want, and a phone number. 

Help Support Farmworkers and Immigrants Impacted by the Devastating Wildfires: The wildfires have affected us all, but many of us are lucky enough to still have a home to go to. That's not the case for many immigrant Oregonians who tend to be most impacted by the smoke, have lost everything and don't have a safety net to fall into. In recognition of the devastating effects that wildfires have had on immigrant Oregonians, the Oregon Worker Relief Fund Coalition is pivoting to raise and distribute funds to impacted individuals and families. You can donate to their effort through CAUSA, Oregon's immigrant rights organization.

Strength and safekeeping to everyone in the terrifying path of fire right now, and to all those coping with hazardous air quality. We give thanks for clear air overhead today, temporary as it might be. Come on rain!

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 15 from Valley Flora

Please note this is NOT our farmstand availability email. This is our weekly CSA newlsetter primarily intended for our subscribed Harvest Basket members who receive a weekly box of produce from the farm from June through December. You cannot order farmstand produce from this email or directly from our website. Rather, farmstand availability emails are sent out on Thursday and Monday mornings to folks who have signed up for Wednesday or Saturday pickup, respectively. To learn more or sign up for a farmstand pickup day, click here.
  • Carrots
  • Eggplant
  • Head Lettuce
  • Red Onions
  • Hot Peppers - Jalapeño & Serranos (1 red serrano & 1 green serrano)
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Tomatoes
  • Strawberries

On Rotation:

  • Collard Greens
  • Lacinato Kale
  • Sweet Corn
  • Zucchin

Bulk Sweet Peppers Available by Special Order!

It's that happy time of year when the sweet peppers are coming out of the greenhouse by the bucketload! Now's the time to order up a few bags of red Italian roasters or assorted colored bells. Peppers are available in 5 pound bags for $22. To order, email Bets your name, pickup location, type and quantity of peppers you want, and a phone number. If you can manage to not eat them all raw, you can preserve peppers in a myriad of ways, listed here from easiest to most advanced:

  • Chop and freeze. No blanching necessary. Just cut 'em up and throw 'em in a freezer bag. Adds color and great flavor to soups, stir-fries and other dishes come winter.
  • Roast, peel and freeze. A great addition to soups, quiches, pasta, pizza, sandwiches and more all winter. Here's a quick tutorial on three different ways to roast peppers: https://toriavey.com/how-to/roasted-bell-peppers/
  • Roast, peel and pickle: https://www.freshpreserving.com/blog/pickled-roasted-peppers
    • I make pickled roasted peppers every year but use a brine recipe that doesn't call for much sugar or other spices: For 3.5 pounds of peppers (roated, peeled, cored and seeded), mix 1.75 cups white wine vinegar or distilled white vinegar, 1Tbs sugar, 2 Tbs pickling salt, 1 garlic clove chopped. Simmer all together for 10 minutes before pouring over packed peppers in sterilized canning jars. Leave 1/2" headspace, close jars with hot canning lids and rings, and process jars in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

It feels awkward to be talking about fire-roasted peppers on this apocalyptic day, when I woke up to the heavy news of so many Oregon, Washington and California towns and forests burned to the ground. Never has fire threat - and climate change - felt so close to home. Temperatures reached over 100 degrees on the farm yesterday, and we were cloaked in low heavy smoke. There was a fire scare up Floras Creek yesterday morning, attended by a bunch of Coos Forest Patrol trucks zooming up the road first thing. Fortunately it was a false alarm. But numerous friends had to evacuate their homes, from the North Bank of the Coquille to the Santiam to Ashland. Our hearts are big and broken thinking about the devastation that is sweeping through our state, and for our neighbors north and south of our state borders.

Yesterday as we labored through harvest under the suffocating skies, I felt a level of disappointment in our species like never before. This is our only planet, our only home, our only chance to be human, and yet we can't quite seem to turn the ship. We watch while the "house" burns down. What does it take for something as big as climate change to finally hit home for enough people that we reach a critical mass to change behavior, shift policy and foment change, and to do it fast? When you live here on the southcoast where the temperatures are amicable, the cool, damp fog is just off-shore, the forests are green, it's easy to think climate change is something that's happening somewhere else. It's hard to imagine our corner of the world engulfed in flames. But yesterday I could imagine it, and east of Bandon some of it was. 

Food and agriculture are major drivers of climate change and I applaud all of you for making the choice to eat locally and to eat lots of veggies (that are grown mostly with solar power, thanks to the 12 kW PV system on the roof of our barn). Twenty years ago my concern about the environment and climate change was one of the motivating factors that led me into organic, regenerative farming: I wanted to do something that was positive for the planet and good for my community. It's great that something delicious can make a difference, but at this point it's going to take more than a local salad to double down on atmospheric carbon. Yes, pile your plates high with plants grown close to home and start your car as little as possible, but also elect leaders who take the climate crisis seriously. And most importantly, hold on to stubborn, purposeful optimism. Because we won't turn the ship unless we believe we can, and will.

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 14 from Valley Flora!

Please note this is NOT our farmstand availability email. This is our weekly CSA newlsetter primarily intended for our subscribed Harvest Basket members who receive a weekly box of produce from the farm from June through December. You cannot order farmstand produce from this email or directly from our website. Rather, farmstand availability emails are sent out on Thursday and Monday mornings to folks who have signed up for Wednesday or Saturday pickup, respectively. To learn more or sign up for a farmstand pickup day, click here.
  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Eggplant
  • Red Onion
  • Sweet Peppers - all the peppers in your share are sweet Italian types this week; no hot peppers....:)
  • Red Potatoes - the first dig of the season. I have a love-hate relationship with potatoes. I love growing them (it's something we do almost entirely with horses, from planting, to cultivating, to harvest, so therefore I wish we could grow 20 acres of potatoes!). But I hate all the sorting. When you grow potatoes, especially organically, there are a LOT of impefect ones - cracks, holes, scurf, funny knobs, insect damage, greening here and there. So many ugly little tubers that are pefectly fine on the inside but don't meet my produce beauty standards on the outside. I realize that I am perpetuating the supermodel myth of beauty, and that we all know it's what's on the inside that counts, but it's hard to liberate myself from my own vegetable pageant standards. It means we dump bin-fulls of the ugliest spuds, we donate a lot to the foodbank, and finally we try to skim the cream for you. That said, even some of the not-so-pretty ones get by us in the hustle of wash and pack. If that's the case with some of your potatoes this week, I am going to try to not apologize right now and instead encourage you to get out your veg peeler. If any of your spuds have a green spot, it's safe to cut or peel away that spot and still eat the potato. You wouldn't want to eat 5 lbs of greened potatoes in a sitting, but if you're cutting off a spot here and there you'll be fine (greening indicates the presence of solanine, a natural but toxic compound that develops in potatoes when exposed to the sun). You'll see potatoes in your share every few weeks now for the rest of the season. Which, by the way, is halfway over! This is week 14 of 28!
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes
  • Parsley

On Rotation:

  • Melon - We surprised our Bandon and Port Orford members last Saturday with a melon (and in fact, stumped one member who emailed me to say: "There's something in my share I don't recognize...it's round, dense, tan, and looks like a melon..."). Her hunch was right, this is "Sarah's Choice," a delicious cantaloupe-type melon that Abby grows for us. Supremely sweet and aromatic, we look forward to these all year!
  • Corn
  • Lettuce

Strawberries Still Peaking!

I can't believe I get to say this, but the strawberries are still pumping! What an amazing, quasi-miraculous late season we're having. Usually by now they're slowing down and We the Farmers are glad for it. But yesterday's harvest might just have been the best of the year. When the fruit is that beautiful and abundant it's hard to resent all the crawling on your knees ("oh please sir, can't I pick another row?). That being the case, I'm putting out the call (probably the last time) for special order flats. If you want some, give a holler via email with your name, pickup location, number of flats you want, and your phone number. Flats are $45 apiece delivered to your pickup site.

OR, come u-pick! The u-pick crowd has thinned out because no one thinks of September as strawberry season, but here at Valley Flora it's better than ever! Wednesdays and Saturdays from 11am to 2:30pm.

 

Pickling Cukes on the Horizon

Our late planting of pickling cukes has just begun to produce. I dont know what kind of yield to expect, but if you're interested in pickling, email me your name, pickup location, quantity (in 10# increments), and your phone number. If we have plenty we'll be offering 10 pound bulk bags for $30. They are a small, European-style gherkin, great for pickles or fresh eating.

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 13 from Valley Flora!

  • Rainbow Chard
  • Beets
  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Eggplant
  • Serrano & Jalapeño Peppers
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes
  • Sweet Corn

On Rotation:

  • Green Beans
  • Head Lettuce

All of this bounty at our fingertips all day long, and then there's this....

The Dirty Secrets of Organic Farmers (a new segment in your weekly CSA newsletter!)

Last week, my mom was deep into her 12th hour of a 14 hour workday, buried in tomatoes, her brain on the fritz from not eating all day, and she dug this gourmet gem of a lunch out of the freezer (left by a houseguest at least a year prior, nicely freezer-burned around the edges...). I walked into the barn at 7 pm for the final stretch of packout and had to take the picture.

Whatever you might imagine about organic farmers sitting around a big lunch table leisurely eating beautiful family-style meals bursting with seasonal produce, yeah, you can pretty much scrub that from your mental imagery. It's leftovers from the night before when you're lucky enough to have cooked plenty of extra quinoa, or it's quick quesadillas and some salad, or in this case, when things get really dark, it's freezer-burned pre-fab pizza that not even the dogs will try to steal off the table. 

We have often mused about the irony that attends this time of year, when we're buried in beautiful produce but don't have any time to cook with it (much less eat it): wouldn't it be great if some chef or inspired cook wanted to take a sabbatical, come camp out at the farm for a summer and make the crew a meal once a day with whatever was ripe in the field? Or in the very least, if we could just get a taco truck to pull up to the barn around 2 pm each day.....Meals on Wheels for farmers!

Ah well, in the meantime, we'll get by with the sweet pepper eaten at a trot in the farmroad while hustling to get the cilantro harvested before the heat of the day presses in. That, and of course, quesadillas.

Split Screen - What our CSA members are doing with their produce:

Bravo!!!!!!

 

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 12 from Valley Flora!

  • Strawberries
  • Carrots
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Red Cabbage
  • Sweet Corn!!!!! - Corn season kicks off this week! We have five successive plantings in the field, so expect to see sweet corn in your share pretty often for the next month+! I don't think you'll have too much trouble eating this much corn fresh in a week (or a day) - steamed, grilled, raw! - but if it's too much for you I suggest freezing it. You can either cut it off the cob and freeze it raw, or blanch it for a minute in boiling water and then cut if off and freeze it. I like to spread the cut corn out on cookie sheets and freeze it, then put it into freezer bags (so it's not a solid frozen block when you go to use it in the winter). 
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes
  • Cilantro

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant
  • Green Beans
  • Lettuce - Not everyone will get a head of lettuce this week. As the days shorten dramatically in August, our lettuce slows down and we usually have to hit pause for a week or two in order for our successive plantings to catch up. Once it resumes we should have weekly lettuce for you again well into November.

 

Onion Harvest!

This week we completed the harvest of our 2020 onion crop, a process that involves pulling them out of the ground, loading them into the trailer, hauling them to the greenhouse, and finally laying them out on our propagation tables to dry and cure. It was a beautiful year for onions! They got a great start this spring thanks to weekly rainfall in May and early June and ideal growing temps. Every square inch of greenhouse space that isn't dedicated to seedlings and starts is covered in onions now. Once the onion tops are crispy-dry, we'll start cleaning them: snipping off the tops and roots, sorting them by size into bins, and stowing them in our dry storage room. It's the first crop that begins to fill our fall/winter treasure chest of storage crops: onions, winter squash, potatoes. Look for some new varieties of onions in your Havest Basket soon: Cipollinis, yellow onions and red onions coming your way!

Have a great week! Thanks for eating VF produce!

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 11 from Valley Flora!

In This Week's Harvest Basket:

  • Romano Green Beans - flat and wide and tender and deeeeeeelicious! Give them a light steam or sautee for maximal enjoyment (don't overcook!).
  • Kale
  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Lettuce
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes
  • Broccoli - monster heads!!!! And probably the last of the summer harvest, so enjoy. Until fall, Señor Broccoli! (Although this week's heads are so big you might still be gnawing away at yours come September...)

On Rotation:

  • Eggpant

Pickling Cucumber Update, Plus Beans, Plus Strawberries...

I've been getting lots of inquiries about pickling cukes this summer. We had a banner year in 2019, so it goes without saying that we would have a complete crop failure this summer. There are none to offer at the moment, HOWEVER, we replanted and with slightly better luck should have an abundance starting in September. I know that's probably later than many of you usually make pickles but if you're willing to wait we should have lots in about a month. That gives you plenty of time to round up your dill seed and pickling salt and crocks and canning jars. 

Green Beans are pumping and are available by special order in 10# bags at our wholesale price of $50. 'Tis the time for dilly beans, canned beans, frozen beans, or just eating a heap of beans. To order, email us your name, pickup location, the number of 10# bags you want and a phone number.

Strawberries are so lovely and abundant right now it's hard to stop picking on Tuesday and Friday! We're almost caught up with our special order list, so if you'd like to order some by the flat we can probably take care of you this month. Flats are $45 each. Email us your name, pickup location, the number of flats you'd like and a phone number.

A reminder to everyone to check labels carefully on special orders and on salad shares before you take them home. There have been some mix-ups in the past few weeks that could have been easily prevented by taking a few seconds to double check labels. Thanks for your help!

Enjoy the August abundance!

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 10 from Valley Flora!

Week 10!

  • Onions
  • Fennel - at last! Our first planting intended for the CSA baskets in June succumbed to some weird foliar disease, so the fennel has been a long time coming this season. I'm a huge fan of fennel - which I know not to be true of every human on the planet - but it's one of my top ten favorite veggies. It has a mild anise flavor, wonderful cooked down or sliced thinly and eaten raw. The fat, juicy bulb is the main part of the plant we eat, but you can also use the ferny tops as an herb. This week you have all the farm ingredients you need to make finocchio, a wonderful summer dish built around fennel, tomatoes, onions and basil. It stands alone, or you can eat it atop pasta, fish, polenta and more. We have a pretty broad collection of fennel recipes on our website if you want to branch out further.
  • Beets
  • Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes
  • Basil

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli/Broccolini
  • Eggplant - Just starting to yield in the field! 
  • Heirloom Tomatoes
  • Green Beans

Beautiful Flowers and Handsome Roosters!

Zinnias, dahlias, statice, strawflowers, sunflowers, black-eyed susans and more! The flowers are in full bloom on the farm and open for u-pick on Wednesdays and Saturdays starting at 11 am while the strawberry u-pick is open. If you come to u-pick, you might even get to enjoy the company of our oh-so-social resident farm rooster, Robinson (aka Ricky Bobby). He's really more like a dog than a chicken: he follows at your heels, comes when called and likes to share your lunch. He showed up out of the blue at the farm in June and has stuck around, making himself comfy in our equipment shed. I hate to admit just how fond I've become of a rooster, but really, what's not to love about a chicken that likes to ride in the car, socialize over lunch, and look handsome in the moments in between...

Newsletter: 

CSA Newsletter: Week 9 from Valley Flora!

Please note to all our customers who are receiving this newsletter: this is NOT the list of available farmstand produce for the week. This weekly BeetBox newsletter is primarily aimed at our CSA Harvest Basket members who receive a weekly pre-paid tote of produce for our 28-week CSA season. There has been some confusion among folks who are trying to order farmstand produce from this email. Our weekly farmstand availability emails get sent out separately to everyone who has signed up for a farmstand drive-thru pickup day on our website. All that info - in case you want to source farmstand produce - is here. Thank you!

In the Harvest Basket this Week:

  • Broccoli
  • Chard
  • Carrots - Your carrots will likely be coming loose by the pound from now on. At a certain point in the season bunching gets slow and difficult because the carrot tops get weak. We dig fresh poundage for you every week and leave the tops in the field to feed the soil microbiota.
  • Cucumbers
  • Italian Parsley
  • Head Lettuce
  • Red Long of Tropea Torpedo Onions - a specialty onion from Italy that doesn't cure or store well, but is wonderful fresh! If you had a handful more of them you could set them up as bowling pins....:)
  • Strawberries - they're back!
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes - It's on in the tomatoes! Bets, mi madre, is the tomato farmer (she also grows your zukes, cukes, parsley, basil and peppers) and she is now officially neck deep in her busiest, heaviest season. By the way, a sidenote about my mom: she is a badass! She's in the second half of her seventh decade of life and she's still farming full bore, lugging heavy buckets of stunner produce out of the field all week. Thanks, Ma, for adding some bling to the CSA share this week!

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower
  • Heirloom Tomatoes

Strawberry Update: Best Week Yet!

It's shaping up to be our best week of strawberries so far this season, with lots more on the way in the coming weeks. We're seeing an incredible flush of flowers and new fruit, which bodes well for abundant u-pick in August. We opened up more beds on the u-pick side of the patch this week, and anticipate being able to give even more over to u-pick soon. I wholeheartedly recommend making time to fill your freezer in the next few weeks while the picking is at its peak! The patch opens at 11 am, Wednesdays and Saturdays. If you're coming a long distance with high hopes of bringing home a big haul of berries, aim to arrive when we open.

 

The horses have been throwing their weight around in the field every week, doing their part to keep our crops well-cultivated and weed-free. We worked Jack single this week to get into some tight crops that are just about to close in - Brussels sprouts pictured here, as well as asparagus, artichokes, leeks, kale, chard, and more. Jack is a Belgian/Morgan crossbred, and hands-down the best horse I've ever had. He works beautifully in harness and is also just as willing to saddle up and hit the trail. He's a handsome devil, all heart, with a sense of humor to boot.

 

Newsletter: 

Week 8 CSA Newsletter!

In the Harvest Basket this Week:

  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Dill
  • Lettuce
  • Red Onions
  • Zucchini
  • Cabbage
  • Broccoli or Broccolini

On Rotation:

  • Tomatoes
  • Cauliflower

Flower U-Pick Opens this Week!

The flowers are coming into full bloom on the farm: dahlias, sunflowers, zinnias, statice, strawflowers and more! The public is welcome to u-pick on Wednesdays and Saturdays during the same hours we're open for strawberry u-pick (11 am until 3 pm, or until the strawberry patch is picked out). We have clippers available, but encourage you to bring your own buckets to keep your flowers fresh on the trip home. Check in with Sarah at the strawberry u-pick for clippers and to get directions to the flower patch.

 

Newsletter: 

Week 7 CSA from Valley Flora!

In the Harvest Basket this Week:

  • Dazzling Blue Lacinato Kale
  • Carrots
  • Lettuce
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions - big, juicy and sweet!
  • Zucchini
  • Kohlrabi - the last of it until late fall...
  • Cilantro
  • English Cucumbers

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli
  • Broccolini
  • Cauliflower - purple or neon green

Strawberries on Pause this Week

Qué lástima (what a pity), our strawberries are having a minor hiccup right now. We're in the midst of an episode of Type III bronzing in some of our Seascapes: some of the fruit is rough, leathery and seedy, which renders it unmarketable. Type III bronzing is thought to occur after fruit exposure to environmental stress in the form of high heat (over 85 degrees), extreme solar radiation, and low humidity. We're seeing it in our youngest plants primarily, where the leafy canopy is not fully developed yet. It happens every year to some extent, but is particularly bad this week. I'm guessing the culprit was the week of hot weather we had in mid-June. It takes strawberries 4 to 6 weeks to transform from blossom to fruit, so the fruit that was just forming in mid-June is maturing into ugly seedy berries right now. Bummer. It means no strawberries in the share this week, but fingers crossed for a return to beautiful harvests in the coming weeks.

There isn't a lot of research on bronzing, and actually some controversy over whether it is caused by environmental factors or a pest called thrips. I have a call and an email in to the UC organic strawberry expert in Santa Cruz in hopes of shedding some more light on the issue. We did make an interesting observation yesterday during harvest, which was that the June-bearers, which have a huge leafy, protective canopy, show no sign of bronzing, and our most mature Seascapes have very little bronzing. However, the side of the strawberry patch that was planted latest last fall has the worst of it. It suggests that the timing of planting in the fall could make all the difference. We typically start planting our new strawberry crowns in November and finish up by mid-December. If getting them in the ground in November can prevent bronzing episodes the following summer, it argues for dedicating more labor to planting strawberries as early as possible in November. 

The good news is that the strawberry u-pick, which includes our June-bearing varieties and our most mature Seascapes, is mostly unscathed. So if you're desperate for some berries this week, venture out and experience strawberry harvest first-hand. The beds are somewhat limited right now, so plan to get there at 11 am if you have your heart set on filling a bunch of buckets.

Here's a quote I have always appreciated, as someone who has crawled countless miles picking strawberries in this lifetime:

Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones bruise at even too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten - every piece of fruit - had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone's knees, someone's aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her about this before.  -- Alison Luterman, What We Came For

 

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 6 CSA from Valley Flora!

In the CSA Harvest Basket this Week!

  • Chard
  • Carrots
  • Lettuce
  • Purplette Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini
  • Hakurei Turnips

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli
  • Broccolini
  • Mini Cucumbers

Want More Food?!

If you're getting through your Harvest Basket each week and still wanting for more, remember there are a couple ways to source more produce directly from the farm:

  1. Strawberry U-Pick! Open every Wednesday and Saturday starting at 11 am at the farm. The berries are sweet and red now that our summer weather has arrived. Keep in mind we have some new u-pick systems in place this season due to COVID-19, so be sure to read up about the u-pick before you come.
  2. The Farmstand Drive-Thru: Due to COVID, this spring we pivoted to a new pre-order, online farmstand system with drive-thru pick-up at our barn. We're using a customer-friendly online platform called Cropolis designed for small farms selling to local markets. There is no open-air, drop-in shopping this season. Instead you sign up for a farmstand drive-thru day - Wednesday and/or Saturday - on our website. Once you do that, you'll automatically start receiving our weekly farmstand availability emails and be able to place an order for drive-thru pickup. In addition to our produce, hot sauce and jam, you can also purchase Aguirre Farms local organic eggs, Farmstead Bread and Langlois Creamery sheep milk through our new system.

And, if it's too far for you to come to the farm, you can also find our produce at the Port Orford Community Co-op, the Langlois Market, Mother's Natural Grocery and Coos Head Food Co-op each week.

Thanks for eating locally!

Newsletter: 

Week 5 from Valley Flora!

In your Harvest Basket this week:

  • Carrots
  • Dill
  • Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Kohlrabi
  • Mini cukes
  • Beets - some members will get sweet red beets, others will get Chioggia beets (pink skin with a pink and white bulls-eye interior)

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli
  • Broccolini
  • Zucchini
  • Arugula
  • Mizuna - mizuna is a mild, light green, serrated Asian green - wonderful as a salad or alongside a slab of fish

A few quick notes about storing your produce and keeping it perky for as long as possible:

  1. Any leafy vegetable, like lettuce, herbs, bunch greens and baby greens, do best in the fridge in a sealed up plastic bag. They like it between 34 and 40 degrees with high humidity. Broccoli, broccolini and cauliflower are the same way. Best used in the first week.
  2. Root veggies like carrots and beets, and dense veggies like kohlrabi, store the longest if you take the tops off and store in a plastic bag in the fridge. They'll keep for months without tops, but won't taste as good 3 weeks from now as they do today. 
  3. Zucchini and cukes prefer life at around 50 degrees with some humidity, but who has their fridge set to 50?! Nobody, I hope! They'll go soft on the counter, so your best bet is to put them in the fridge in a plastic bag but use them within the week before they get slimy.
  4. Strawberries will last on your counter for a day or two, and will continue ripening as they sit there. However, you can get a lot more life out of them if you keep them in a tupperware in your fridge. Not that anyone is actually making it home with a full pint of strawberries....If you are, you probably don't have kids in the backseat :)

Farm Updates

  • NEW laminated checksheets are going out to all pickup locations this week! Please mark yourself off each week with the dry erase pen!
  • BULK BASIL by SPECIAL ORDER! Primo tops, no stem, $18/pound. Pesto-lovers rejoice! To order, email Bets your:
    • Name
    • Pickup location
    • How many pounds you want
    • Daytime phone number

Farming Improv

I have one regret about college and it's that I didn't take an improv class. At the time I had my schedule packed with other classes: fiction writing workshops, sustainable development in Latin America, ecological forest management, biology, econ, statistics...

The thing I've heard over and over from friends who did enroll in improv is that it was the most valuable class they took. My friend the labor organizer, my friend the OSU farm advisor, they swear that improv has served them in life more than any other course. Darn, I guess I really blew it in undergrad.

But good news, my Stanford alumni magazine came in the mail last month and had a whole spread about the "8 Life Lessons You Can Learn from Improv: How to apply just-go-with-it wisdom to your career, realtionships and well-being." The funny thing is, some of the guiding principles of improv have been guiding the management of the farm without me realizing they had anything to do with improv. Even better news: I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for the college credits!

  1. Pay Attention: Yup, keen observation is by far the most important skill for keeping a highly diversified farm like ours humming, and for averting occasional disaster. Everyday I'm paying attention to every detail, with eyes, ears and nose cocked to all the sensory information the farm is throwing at us - why is that row of cauliflower an imperceptibly lighter shade of green - is there fertility stress? Why is the pump cycling so often - do we have a leak somewhere in the mainline? How big are the newly budding broccoli crowns and what's the weather forecast and should we pick them today or will they hold until Friday?
  2. Don't Go it Alone: It's all about working together - one giant spontaneous choreography each day to get all the work done between dawn and dusk on the farm. We're all leaning on each other to pull off a successful season, and the energy of every single person on our crew is essential.
  3. Trust that the Scene Will Evolve: Things are in constant flux on the farm, so extremely seasonal is our model of production. It helps to remember that one setback - like symphylans in the spring Brassicas - will give way to some other success, like beautiful June carrots. We are never stuck in one failure for too long, the failures teach us how to be better farmers, and in the end the diversity of the farm carries us through. 
  4. Stay Positive: It's easy to think it's the end of the world, but it never is. The glass-half-full mindset is the place where we proactively solve problems on the farm. The pressure tank exploded? OK, I guess that means it's time to replace it, build a better pumphouse, and plumb the system smarter than we did the first time.
  5. Accept the Offer: Saying "yes" to whatever is going on at the farm lubricates the wheels of creative innovation. COVID-19 means we can't run our farmstand? OK, Coronavirus, we'll turn it into a drive-thru!
  6. The Journey is the Thing: "what makes improvisers so good at creating something out of nothing isn't as much about what they do as it is about how they do it..." We farm because we love this place, we love working together as a family, we love to eat well, and we believe in organic, regenerative agriculture and it's ability to transform communities - from the living community in our gut microbiome all the way up to how humanity interacts with this planet. Yeah, it's about growing carrots, but it's also about a whole lot more.

My advice to you this week: say yes to beets! Accept the offer (even if you are sure you don't like beets), stay positive (they really might taste good!), don't go it alone (share them with friends), trust that the scene will evolve (i.e. you won't get beets next week!), and know that the journey is the thing (you tried them and confirmed for yourself that you really still do not like beets so you decided to carve them into stamps for your kids and you made really cool vegetable art).

A+!!!

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 4 from Valley Flora!

Happy official summer! It arrived with a bang this week, with temps in the mid-eighties at the farm the past couple of days - dreamy weather for all the eggplant and squash and corn and beans and tomatoes and melons; a little less dreamy for all the sweaty farmers. Grateful to have legs that can march me down to the creek and throw me into the drink late-afternoon!

In your share this week:
  • Red Ursa Kale - at last! Our new plantings of kale and chard are hitting full stride now, which means we can finally leave the bitter taste of spring symphylans crop failure behind us. Red Ursa is an heirloom variety that I love for it's beautiful colors and tender leaves, and it's a great variety to use for kale chips. One of our farmstand customers is a kale chip fiend and she shared her recipe, below, with me. If you don't have a food dehydrator, you can also make kale chips in your oven on low heat: https://minimalistbaker.com/how-to-make-kale-chips/
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Mini Cucumbers - a little sampler of our favorite early mini-cuke. Not enough to make a dish, but enough to get you excited about cucumber season to come!
  • Abby's Spinach
  • Basil
  • Head Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Radishes
  • Hakurei Turnips
  • Fava Beans - the big, fat green pods in your tote are fresh favas. This is one of the not-so-common things we grow for you and the season is fleeting. You'll likely only see favas this week and maybe next week. They're a delightful fresh bean but they take a little effort to prepare, which is why I consider them a "weekend" food - one of those things that I'll cook when I have the luxury of a little more time. Ideally it's also one of those things you dig into with a bunch of friends - sit around and shell favas and talk story - but that might not be in the cards this COVID season. So....maybe shell favas while visiting friends on Zoom...? That's how I got 40 pounds of artichoke hearts preserved earlier this spring, in the Zoom company of college buddies around the country. If you're new to favas here's how to prepare them: https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/how-to-prepare-fava-beans-gallery

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli
  • Broccolini
  • Snap Peas

 

Cory's Kale Chips

2 bunches kale

Dressing:

  • 3/4 cup tahini 
  • 5 tablespoons olive oil
  • 5 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 2 teaspoons nutritional yeast 
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt (or 3/4 if you're a salt fiend like me)

Remove all main stalks from the kale and cut leaves into large pieces. Wash and dry the pieces in a salad spinner so they're fully dry. Make sure they're fully dry.

Whisk all dressing ingredients together.

If you don't have a mixing bowl big enough for all the kale pieces, use a stock pot to toss them with the dressing until all the pieces are evenly coated. This process takes several minutes, using both hands.

Lay out the coated leaves on the food dehydrator trays and set to 135 degrees. For really crispy kale chips, eave them in for 18-24 hours, but best to check on them after 8 hours and play it by ear from there. 

 

The 2020 Valley Flora Crew!

It's high time you met the team that's growing, packing and delivering your food this season! Pictured left to right:

Sarah Snow and Allen Williams joined us this season after 7 years farming in Idaho and Hawaii. Sarah has the hardest job on the farm: keeping track of all four of our kids during the week, along with helping with harvest and running the U-Pick. Allen is a core part of of our harvest and field crew and is in charge of Saturday deliveries. He is also regularly called upon to reach for anything stored up in the stratosphere. We feel so lucky to have these two in our midst!

Bets, Cleo, Zoë, Abby, Jules, Pippin, Uma & Roberto in a not-so-social-distanced clump in the middle. Yes, that's Cleo stuffing her face with homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie. The kids got really into baking during "homeschool" this past spring, which is paying sweet dividends on Fridays now - they've been baking Friday treat for the whole crew. In this picture, taken last Friday, we were celebrating Roberto's birthday! Roberto has been part of Valley Flora since 2010, and what beautiful decade it's been! Roberto has thrown himself into the farm heart and soul and helped make Valley Flora what it is today. 

Jen Faraci on the far right, sporting the latest Valley Flora washline fashion (you wouldn't believe how that neon orange brings out the green in her eyes!). Jen joined us this spring and wears multiple essential hats at the farm: greenhouse manager, field and harvest crew, Wednesday deliveries. She says she's wanted to work for Valley Flora for years so she could get a free VF baseball hat. Mission accomplished. Might have to get some new merch made so we can bribe her to stay forever.

Not pictured is Donna Smith, who is running the farmstand drive-thru this season. Hats off to Donna for taking on a brand new, logistically complicated system and making it run smoothly - with a smile! A round of applause!

This little farm wouldn't chug along without this team working together. And speaking of teams, there are a two more members of the crew who pull a lot of weight around here:

Enjoy the food, have a great week!

Zoë

Newsletter: 

CSA Week 3 from Valley Flora!

In your share this week!

  • Strawberries
  • Kohlrabi - a green one and a purple one. If you're new to kohlrabi, it's the bulbous thing with the up-do of leaves. Cut the tops off and then peel the bulb with a sharp knife or good veggie peeler. It's juicy and crunchy inside, a little bit like jicama. I prefer it raw, but you can also add it to stir fries and other dishes. My five year old goes nuts for it cut up into veggie sticks. Douse it with chili and lime if you like it ala Mexicana!
  • Head lettuce
  • Bunch carrots
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Hakurei Turnips - the white roots that look like big radishes. These are a Japanese salad turnip, and pretty much the only turnip I grow because they're so dang good. Munch them like apples, or slice up on your salad. Buttery and tender. If you want an even more refined flavor, peel them.
  • Zucchini
  • Yellow onion

On Rotation:

  • Red mustards greens, bunched - lacey maroon leaves, eat raw or cooked - has a little kick!
  • Tatsoi, bunched - dark green spoon-shaped leaves, eat raw or cooked.
  • Braising mix, bagged - a mix of Abby's baby kale and mustard greens
  • Spinach, bagged - Abby's succulent baby spinach

The Color of Food

Tucked up Floras Creek it's easy to feel far removed from the headlines, from COVID hotspots and urban riots. It's easy to feel like race is not a pressing topic in our quiet, rural (mostly white) community. But this week I found myself really giving that more thought. I recently got my stimulus check in the mail and wanted to donate it to an organization doing good work on racial justice, ideally somewhere close to home. But what I realized is that there aren't any organizations that I know of to give that money to right here in Curry County. Is that because race is "not an issue," or rather is it because race has been such an issue - for so long - that we haven't even gotten to the point of addressing race constructively in our little corner of Oregon? 

I learned for the first time this year about Oregon's Exclusion Law of 1844: a law that banned Black people from living in Oregon. Another black exclusion law was enacted in 1849 that made it illegal for Blacks to to enter or reside in Oregon territory. It meant that when Oregon became a state in 1859 it was the ony state in the Union with a black exclusion law on the books, which was expanded to prohibit Black people from owning property and making contracts. These laws remained in place until 1926. Even though the same racist sentiment pervaded all of the U.S., Oregon was the only place bold enough to write it down. That wasn't part of my Oregon history class in high school.

My mom has an old letter written by a Civil War veteran who moved here in 1885, Samuel T. Malehorn. He settled on Floras Creek and started a fruit farm and nursery on the land where Valley Flora now sits. In 1896 he sent a letter to a friend and fellow war vet, encouraging him to move to the area:

"It is all timber, light and heavy, rolling land, well watered, productive, all of it adaptive to good fruit. I am 4 miles from the beach, which is about right, 15 miles north of Port Orford. There are still good choices for homesteaders near me...Deeded lands can be bought from $5 to $40 per acre now. 40 acres is enough for a family to live on. You can build your houses with one cedar tree by hand. Fish and game everywhere. There is no poisonous reptiles or insects, you can lay out under a tree anywhere safely. It is blessed and glorious country, the best in the U.S."

I've always loved that letter - such an affirmation of this place where we live and farm - but this week I realized another significance of that letter. Samuel Malehorn was a white man, inviting a fellow white comrade of the 29th Regiment to come to Oregon. He could live here - and so could his white friend - because they were white. They had access to cheap homesteads - and therefore land and the means of production - where Black people didn't. Oregon's historic racist exclusion laws set us on a course that put property ownership - and power - into the hands of white folks only. 

This history is no doubt part of the reason that your farmers here at Valley Flora are white, not black - why my family "owns" this land, not a Native American family or an African American family or a Chinese family or Latino family. We are standing on and supported by the very big, broad shoulders of institutionalized, systemic racism.

That's uncomfortable. And it's high time to be uncomfortable, since most of us probably don't have a clue what it's like to be really uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable, as in not able to breathe because a cop is kneeling on your neck because your skin is not white.

It's hard to know what to proactively do with this heavy realization, especially in June when most of my bandwidth is occupied with beating back the weeds, harvesting peas, and planting seeds left and right. But this morning I did something that felt really good. At the recommendation of a friend who has worked on racial justice issues for decades, I donated my $1200 stimulus check to the Movement for Black Lives Fund, a coalition that's made up of over 150 organizations that are working to coordinate actions, messages and campaigns for the Black Lives Matter Movement nationwide, and to funnel resources to frontline organizing efforts where they're needed most: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/movement-4-black-lives-1

Martin Luther Kind, Jr. said, "Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see." It's time to see what's behind the shadow.

Newsletter: 

Week 10 of our Winter/Spring CSA - the LAST one!

  • Mixed Baby Lettuce
  • Sunflower Shoots
  • Redleaf Lettuce
  • Tatsoi
  • Red Cabbage
  • Yellow Onions
  • Red Shallots
  • Red Beets
  • Harvest Moon Potatoes

And That's a Wrap!

This is our tenth and final week for the winter/spring CSA season. To all of you who've been eating with us since January, thank you for your support through a truly wintry winter! In spite of the rain, the hail, the snow, and the ice-on-the-windshield-every-morning, the farm still managed to yield a remarkable abundance of food for all of us. Gotta love those hardy overwintering cauliflowers, those durable steadfast onions, and those brave greens that are willing to germinate in the coldest, darkest corner of the calendar. For plant diversity and resilience, we give thanks!

We hope you are signed up for our upcoming summer/fall CSA season, which should be starting the week of May 29th. We love feeding folks year-round and delight in knowing that we're all on the same seasonal eating adventure together, week after week, fueling our lives with vibrant plants.

Next week we'll be taking a break from harvest so that we can focus the entirety of our efforts on transplanting a whole slew of crops into the field: winter squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, lettuce, and our first big wave of sweet corn. We'll also be direct seeding beans and carrots and herbs; putting up a new walk-in cooler; and starting in on construction of a new equipment shed (pardon our mess at the farmstand for the next couple months!). It's a doozy of a list, but thankfully we've got a rockstar team this year and we're having a great time tackling all the projects together. Believe!

The week of May 29th will also be the kickoff to our summer farmstand schedule: every Wednesday starting May 31st, 11:30 am to 2:30 pm. As many of you know, we did a big expansion to the farmstand this spring, so there's lots more room (and lots more shade) to shop. You're welcome to drop in and shop the stand, or place a pre-order using Local Line, our online sales platform. We'll add Saturdays to the farmstand schedule by mid-June-ish, once the strawberry upick is open. (Speaking of which, the strawberry patch is looking vibrant and we've found a few red berries, so hopefully we'll start seeing a harvest in the next few weeks). Meanwhile, we get to savor all the greens that early summer provides with gusto (the best of those - Abby's Greens - are two weeks away from harvest, and counting!). 

Enjoy your final "winter" share and thanks again for being a part of Valley Flora.

Newsletter: 

Week 9 of the Winter/Spring CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Rainbow Chard
  • Bunched Spinach
  • Redleaf Lettuce
  • Radish Micro Mix
  • Kabocha Winter Squash
  • Cauliflower
  • Yellow Onions
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Cebollitas
  • Bunched Fava Greens
  • Bulk Lettuce Mix
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Leafy and Green!

It's a sign that Spring is springing when the CSA share is stuffed with so much lofty green goodness! Chard, spinach, head lettuce, cut lettuce, micro mix, and - yes - fava greens! If you are a stranger to fava greens, now's the time to remedy that. Most of the time we eat the fava beans - usually sometime in early summer. But the greens are also edible, with the same delicious, nutty flavor as the beans. They're also a lot simpler and quicker to prepare: simply pluck the tips and leaves from the stem, give them a wash, spin or pat dry, and then sautee lightly in some butter or olive oil. Finish off with a little salt. The bunch that's in your share this week will cook down to a modest little side dish, which our family enjoyed this week alongside Roasted Cauliflower Soup and one of our long-time favorites, Wilted Spinach Salad.

If you are a Winter CSA member, there is one more week of deliveries after this. You'll receive your tenth and final tote on Wednesday May 17th. If you are signed up for the upcoming 2023 CSA season with us, we hope to kick it off the week of May 29th, weather permitting. If you would like to sign up for the upcoming season, you can still do so on our website: https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/valley-flora-harvest-basket

Farmstand Re-Opens, Newly Remodeled!

Today was our grand re-opening of the farmstand and it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces queued up at the gate this morning. We've been in a remodeling sprint the past two weeks and were excited to open the gate into a whole new space for our customers. We've doubled the square footage, designed for better flow, and made more elbow room for drop-in shopping. AND, we had just a wee bit of fun putting all our old broken tools to use for decorative effect :). We hope you'll come check it out. We're on an every-other-Wednesday schedule through May (our next farmstand is May 17th), but will switch to weekly Wednesdays by June. We plan to add Saturdays to the schedule by the Summer Solstice, if not sooner. In the meantime, Wednesdays are a great chance to stock up on seasonal produce, Farmstead Bread, Wild Coast Brew Tea, Octopus Herb Garden Elderberry Syrup, Aguirre Farms Organic Eggs, and more! We're open from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm for drop-in shopping and order pickup. If you'd like to pre-order your produce for next time, hop onto our webstore when it re-opens for business next Thursday, May 11th: https://valley-flora.localline.ca/

And finally, our heartfelt thanks to all of you who have showered us with your love and condolences on the heels of the loss of my dad. Every card, every email, every hug has meant the world and bouyed us through the past couple weeks. We are so grateful to be surrounded by such an amazing community of support. Thank you. xoxox

Newsletter: 

Week 8 of Winter/Spring from Valley Flora!

  • Green cabbage
  • Cauliflower
  • Cut Lettuce Mix
  • Sunflower Shoots
  • Onions
  • Potatoes
  • Hakurei Turnips
  • Baby Carrots
  • Curly Parsley
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli
  • One LAST Leek!

Tribute

Last Wednesday, after months of cold relentless winter, the sun began to shine. The forecast up until that point had been so fickle that it was hard to trust the little sun icons on my weather app, but nevertheless, there they were: Wednesday afternoon through Saturday night, 84 hours of tenuous possibility for an increasingly desperate farmer. I started crafting a master plan for our 3.5 days of promised sun - a plan that would hopefully catch us up on two months of farming and a spring season that had thus far been jinxed completely by the weather. At that moment in time, our propagation greenhouse was busting at the seams with thousands of waiting transplants, many of which should have been planted outside a month ago, and we had yet to break ground anywhere in the field (something we usually start doing in February). 

The problem was, it had rained 3+ inches at the start of the week, so even though the clouds were finally breaking up, our fields were saturated. If it dried up enough to get into the field, it wouldn't be until the last possible moment - Saturday. And should we be lucky enough to get the conditions we needed to work up some beds with the tractor, we were going to have to pull off 4 weeks worth of transplanting in one day, with half our crew on vacation. There was an element of desperate faith laced throughout this master plan.

Leading up to Saturday would be a flurry of preparation: rolling back the occultation tarps that we had deployed back in February - insurance against exactly this kind of winter, which disallows any early ground prep (over the course of 6-8 weeks, the tarps kill the cover crops, leaving us with bare ground that dries out much more quickly once we get a sunny window). We'd also be mowing, weeding, weedeating - all things we need dry weather for - and last, but not least, spreading 15 tons of amendements on the field (a custom blend of calcium carbonate and micronutrients to help bring our soil into balance for the growing season to come). It was a to-do list to beat all to-do lists.

And then early Friday morning while rolling out the kinks on my yoga mat in anticipation of our 15-ton day, we got the news from halfway around the world that my dad had died. He was off the east coast of Africa on a trip of a lifetime, sailing around the world with my step-mom, Katy. He died of unexpected medical complications at the age of 73. His name, which many of you know from his lifetime in public service in Oregon, is Bill Bradbury: state Representative, state Senator, Senate President, Secretary of State. He was the innovator of Oregon's vote-by-mail system, a climate warrior, and a champion of watershed restoration, wild salmon, land use, renewable energy, and campaign finance transparency. He was an avid whitewater enthusiast, sailor, pilot, lover of all things wild and beautiful and free, and there was no one who appreciated food more than he did (somehow every meal he ate was the best meal he had ever eaten - which pretty much sums up how he approached life: unbridled enthusiasm about everything). He was a big, warm, redwood tree of a man at 6'4" with a huge, twinkling, goofy grin, an unmistakable laugh, and a tireless dedication to making positive change in his beloved state, and beyond. He was also the best dad on earth. Bill Bradbury was all of this, in spite of fighting a 43-year battle with Multiple Sclerosis, which eventually confined his body, but never his irrepressible spirit, to a wheelchair.

My dad died on a precious, dry, sunny Friday, and all I could think was: I wish it would rain. Rain so that I could stop everything and stay home and lay still and try to make sense of it. But instead, Abby and I suited up in a shocked stupor and spent the next twelve hours spreading our 15 tons of calcium on the field. It was her birthday, and despite the world turning upside down, it was wonderful to spend the entire day with my sister to process, remember, and feel grateful for the fact that it was our dad who stumbled upon Floras Creek almost 50 years ago and traded a short-order restaurant in Bandon for the farm. The rest is history, made manifest in your CSA tote today (if there is anyone to thank for your veggies this week, give credit to my dad for that serendipitous impulse in 1975).

Before we called it a day to go celebrate a subdued version of my sister's birthday, I had to spend another half hour on the tractor in preparation for our big Saturday plant-out. The evening light was pouring into the valley from the west, lighting up every living thing on the farm. It was heartbreakingly beautiful. Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I suddenly felt the presence of my dad in everything. In the dipping flitting swallows, the apple blossoms, the new buds on the kiwi vines, the easter-green grass, the rich brown earth, and also, I realized, in me. He loved wild, beautiful places and would always say - on a river trip, or at pretty overlook - “this is my cathedral!” (exuberantly of course, with his arms thrown wide). In that moment I felt like I was in his church and I was so grateful he was there with me.

On Saturday, the planting commenced. Roberto and I started at 8 am and were soon joined by my mom, then my husband, then my girls and my nephews. We worked together all day, past dark, and planted every last start. On Sunday morning, right on cue, the rain blew in again. And as it's poured down these past few days, the condolences have poured in - an overwhelming deluge of love and support from so many people who knew and loved my dad, and from people who never had a chance to meet him but respected and appreciated all he fought for and stood for in Oregon. To everyone who has shared their kindness with my family these past few days, whether we have met or not, thank you so much. It means the world to know that his stone has made a wide and beautiful ripple.

I am proud of our dad for the legacy he leaves Oregon, and grateful for what he helped instill in us: the instinct to create some kind of positive change on this planet (not to mention, a great love of good food). But more than anything I thank him for this family, and for this homeland. I wish more than anything he was still here with us, that enormous, joyful laugh echoing down the valley. 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 7 of the Winter/Spring CSA!

  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli
  • Cauliflower
  • Leeks
  • Micro Mix
  • Yellow Onions
  • Cebollitas
  • Purple Potatoes
  • Spring Raab
  • Spinach
  • Hakurei Turnips
  • Autumn Frost Winter Squash

Let's hear it for LEEKS! Never, ever before have we found ourselves still harvesting leeks in April. Normally by now they've all bolted, but thanks to this frigid winter and spring we've had a record-breaking six month leek streak! (Silver linings are everywhere....ahem, not that I wouldn't pay a million dollars for a week of sunshine right about now). If you are one of those people who wonders, "what do you do with a leek?!" my answer is always: "whatever you would do with an onion!" Perhaps with the exception of slicing it raw onto a burger. Besides that, leeks are as versatile as their bulbous, more common cousin, the onion, and so delicious. I like it when they get crispy-roasted on a sheet pan alongside wedges of cabbage, or cauliflower, or purple sprouting broccoli. Or sautee them in a pan as the start to pretty much any meal. Fabulous in soup. Plus they store almost forever in your fridge, so if you have a 7 week pile-up of leeks in the bottom drawer right now, no worries!

What else this week? Cebollitas! The tender little tops of all of onion and shallot seedlings that are growing big and strong in greenhouse trays right now. We start all of our Allia from seed and give them periodic haircuts to encourage them to bulk up ahead of transplanting. This is their very first haircut, which like all good mothers, we put in a plastic bag - but rather than putting it in the freezer and losing it under all the apple cider and frozen peas for 30 years - we share them with you so you can eat them like chives this week. (Wait, is that what all mothers do, or just mine? Doesn't everyone have their first whacked off blond braid somewhere in a ziploc at the bottom of their chest freezer?)

Also, spinach, and lots of it! This crop is a labor of love, and one that I question growing every single year. But you all love it so much, and I mean unanimously love it - which is a rare thing when you manage a CSA, where feelings about vegetables run hot. We spend hours crouched over this crop, picking it leaf by leaf, then washing it leaf by leaf, because we know it will make you happy. Who cares about being profitable when your CSA members are smiling!?!

And finally, Hakurei turnips. There is no turnip better than the first Hakurei turnip of the season, and here they are, tender, buttery and sweet. Please eat them raw, whole or sliced up on a heap of spinach.

Announcements!

Announcement #1: We have a few CSA shares left for the 2023 season!

I love it when we get to say this, because it means no one has missed out yet, destined to spend an impatient year sitting on our waiting list. Instead, instant CSA gratification is available to a few more folks for the 2023 season. Sign up info is on our website. Pay with SNAP and get matching funds through Double Up Food Bucks! Or take advantage of our sliding scale, which is there to make Valley Flora food as accessible to the entire community as possible. 

Announcement #2: In a Landscape at Valley Flora on September 6th!

Get your tickets for a very special evening at the farm: Hunter Noack will be pulling in with his grand piano and treating us all to a live concert on the farm. In a Landscape tickets tend to sell out, so don't delay.

Announcement #3: Please Make an Offering to the Sun Deities so that We Can Get Some Transplanting Done!!! 

Newsletter: 

Week 6 of the Winter, er...Spring, CSA!

  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli
  • Semi-savoy Cabbage
  • Bunched Mustards
  • Italian Parsley
  • Pea Shoots
  • Yellow Onions
  • Leeks
  • Potatoes
  • Kale and Cabbage Raab
  • Collard Greens

La Primavera Tardada...

We went into the harvest on Monday full of excitement about all the new spring crops we'd hoped to pick this week: spinach, hakurei turnips, baby carrots, maybe some green onions. After all, it was the first official calendar day of spring, and who can argue with that?! Well, it turns out the weather can. It argued, and it won. Like it or not, winter still has a firm grip on the farm. The rain is near-constant and cold, the grass is barely growing, and the sunshine is scant (oooooh, but when it breaks through it feels miraculous, no?). As for Spring, well, she's slow in coming this year - tardada (i.e. taking her sweet time). You will see spinach and carrots and hakureis soon, guaranteed (plus more cauliflower and no more mustard greens!), just not this week. Instead, deja vu! Leeks and cabbage and potatoes and a motherlode of lovely kale and cabbage raab (even if Spring isn't quite ready to share her bounty with us, Winter is still providing mightily, thank goodness)! If you haven't oven-roasted all of those things with some olive oil and salt, get on it this week! 

Even if winter seems to still have the upper hand, we took a gamble on Saturday and seeded the favas and sugar snap peas outside. Chances are they'll rot in the ground this week, but we had to try. Maybe Uma and Jules, our fava seeders, will prove to be the lucky charm that helps those seeds sprout while it's 39 degrees and raining this week. And if not, we'll try again. C'est la vie! 

A Handful of CSA Shares Still Available!

We are so delighted we were able to accomodate everyone on our waiting list this year, and still have a few CSA spots left for the upcoming 2023 season! If you know of anyone who would like to partake of 28 weeks of VF produce from June to December, send them to our website to sign up!

We are making a special effort to get the word out as widely as possible to folks who have SNAP food benefits. Thanks to the Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) program, SNAP participants receive a 1:1 match on the cost of a CSA share (they pay half and DUFB covers the other half). It's an awesome program that makes the CSA more affordable and accessible to all! Get the details here on our website.

In a Landscape Comes to Valley Flora on September 6th! 

Classical Music in the Wild at Valley Flora! 

We are THRILLED to announce that Hunter Noack of In a Landscape will be bringing his flatbed trailer and piano to the farm and playing for us on September 6th, 5 to 6:30 pm. I saw Hunter play for the first time last summer at Shore Acres. I love live music, and I love wild places, so it was a no-brainer that I fell in love with In a Landscape. In fact, after seeing Hunter play, I experienced my first-ever case of groupie fever: I wanted to quit the farm and follow him around the West to be immersed in his music and all the stunning landscapes he plays in. Obviously there were a few obstacles to manifesting that scheme, so instead we got him to come to us! DO NOT MISS THIS!!!

All proceeds from this concert will benefit the Wild Rivers Land Trust's "Heart of the Dark Coast" Campaign. Their goal is to double the current 1,000+ acres of protected lands along the southern Oregon coast. A number of Good Neighbor (free) tickets are available at this concert for residents of Curry County and for Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cardholders. 

Get your tickets today, this magical event will sell out!

Newsletter: 

Week 5 of the Winter CSA!

  • Winter Kale Mix
  • Bunched Mustard Greens
  • Radish Micro Mix
  • Leeks
  • Yellow Potatoes
  • Autumn Frost Winter Squash 
  • Yellow Onion
  • Shallots 
  • Beets
  • Daikon Radish
  • Cauliflower

On Rotation:

  • Spring Raab
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli

It's one of those CSA weeks when it's hard to snap the lids on the totes! So fun to have such abundance, as the sleet and snow and rain come pummeling down all around us, day after day.

The winter squash in your share this week is Autumn Frost, a specialty butternut that has wonderful flavor and great versatility. I love to make soup with these, but they're also just as good peeled, cubed and roasted or tossed into a thai curry.

You're seeing another round of our bunched winter mustards from the greenhouse this week. These are the workhorse greens that get us through the deepest corner of winter (planted in November, December and January for January, February and March harvest). Pretty soon - maybe by next harvest - we'll have tender spinach coming out of the greenhouses, and possibly even some baby carrots and hakurei turnips.

And a bit delayed by the cold weather, but finally brave enough to peek its head out at the world: overwintered cauliflower! This crops represents an enormous investment in farmer time and effort, mixed with a little bit of luck. This particular variety was seeded in early July, transplanted in early August, and has been growing slowly out in the field ever since. Over-wintered cauliflower is a sensitive, finicky crop and there are years when it fails to head up altogether. Fortunately, and in spite of the weather, we got our first harvest this week - but had to be strategic with our timing to keep the semi-open heads protected from hail and overnight freezing. I breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when, after sorting the harvest, we had just enough to fill the totes.

Enjoy that ample bag of radish micro, and do something special with your shallots!

CSA Shares are Available for the 2023 Season!!!

We are actively signing folks up for our upcoming 2023 CSA season - spread the word, we have spots available!! You can get all the details and sign up on our website, and if you have SNAP benefits you are eligible for Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB), an awesome program that provides 1:1 matching funds for CSA shares (you pay half the cost with SNAP and DUFB covers the other half)! Please help us get the word out about this fantastic program that helps low-income Oregonians access fresh produce from local farms!

 

Newsletter: 

Sign Up Today for the 2023 Valley Flora CSA Season!

Hello Friends of Valley Flora!

Although it feels like the coldest winter I can remember here on Floras Creek, calendar spring is right around the corner. Our greenhouse is filling with more and more tender starts every week, and if it ever stops raining we'll be out there planting before you know it! That means it's time to sign up for our 2023 CSA season!

We are particularly excited about a few new initiatives we've launched this year to make our CSA more accessible to everyone:

  • Our new CSA sliding scale payment system - a way to collectively make food access more equitable in our community while keeping the farm economically viable
  • Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) - a program that helps low-income Oregonians purchase more fruits and vegetables while supporting local, family farms. SNAP customers can purchase one of our CSA shares using their Oregon Trail card and DUFB will provide 1:1 matching funds (members pay half the cost of the CSA with SNAP and DUFB covers the other half). It's a win-win that strengthens our community by providing better access to fresh, healthy food while helping local farmers earn a living.

We hope you'll consider signing up for the 2023 CSA season with us, and please spread the word widely about these new programs at the farm. Here's to fresh, local veggies for all!

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 4: Epilogue

One sleep-free night.

Five hours of snow sweeping through the magical wee hours.

Two sets of very sore shoulders.

Six greenhouses still standing.

10,000 baby spinach plants not squashed.

One happy farm family (snow day = no school!).

Newsletter: 

Valley Flora Winter CSA: Week 4!

Hi everyone! Thanks for getting by without the farm newsletter this past month while I took a little winter break with my family. I'm back to it now, just in time for a dose of real winter weather! We were grateful to get the harvest in this week before the brunt of the storm hit. If you are a Winter CSA member and are unable to make it to your pickup site today, not to worry. Any unclaimed Valley Flora totes will be put in our walk-in cooler this evening (you can pick up anytime during daylight hours this week) and Bandon totes will be available until 5 pm tomorrow. Stay safe, don't drive if it's scary!

This Week's Winter Share:

  • Savoy Cabbage
  • Collard Greens
  • Bunched Winter Mustard Medley
  • Curly Parsley
  • Pea Shoots
  • Leeks
  • Yellow Potatoes
  • Tetsukabuto Winter Squash
  • Onions

On Rotation:

  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli
  • Spring Raab

A Couple Recipes for a Stormy Winter's Night:

Oven-Roasted Savoy Cabbage (not so much a recipe; more like the simplest way to make the most delicious cabbage you ever tasted, and warm your kitchen up while you're at it):

Preheat your oven to 450. Cut your cabbage into narrow wedges, leaving the core attached. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and spread onto a sheet pan. Bake until crispy-browned at the edges and soft throughout. That's it. I'm not sure there's a better way to enjoy winter cabbage. 

Lemony White Bean Soup with Lots of Greens (adapted from the New York Times Cooking)

Follow the link above to our online recipe collection for the full recipe. This has become my favorite soup this year, and is especially good with collard greens, which lend a meaty texture to the dish.

Let it Snow!(?)

I'm torn on this topic as I consider the forecast for the next 24 hours: on one hand, I would love nothing more than to wake up to a winter wonderland, pop into my nordic skis, and head out with 6" of fluff underfoot. On the other hand, I'm not so excited about camping in our delivery van next to the greenhouses tonight so that I can wake up every hour and sweep snow off the plastic. But heck, with a zero degree sleeping bag and a thermos full of hot tea, bring it on! I'd do just about anything to have ski season arrive right at my front door.

But why the need to sweep snow off the greenhouses in the middle of the night? Because a couple inches of wet, heavy snow is enough to collapse them. We live in a climate where precip usually falls from the sky in the form of rain, which allows us to use quonset-style hoop houses. They're cheaper to build but they aren't designed to shed snow very well (unlike a gable roof, which has a steep enough pitch to slough snow). So when an arctic storm like this rolls in - and that little snowflake icon shows up in the forecast - it means that we're working the night shift. Not only would it be a serious bummer to lose the greenhouses, it would be a big setback to have all the crops inside them get smooshed (right now that includes winter greens, lettuce, baby carrots, hakurei turnips, spinach, and other treats destined for the Winter CSA shares in the coming weeks). And so, I'll go digging for my winter camping gear, maybe light a little hobo fire in a burn barrel, and pack some extra mittens.

Stay warm, wish us luck tonight, and imagine happy farmers kicking and gliding across the snowy pasture tomorrow on x-country skis (sleep-deprived but delighted).

 

Newsletter: 

Week 28 CSA - the LAST ONE! - from Valley Flora!!!

  • Leeks
  • Carrots
  • Beets
  • Celeriac
  • Painted Purple Potatoes
  • Jumbo Yellow Onion
  • Chioggia Radicchio
  • Tetsukabuto Winter Squash

Oh me, oh my, Week 28! This is the last Harvest Basket of the 2022 season. Thanks for eating all those veggies!!!

One of the things I love most about farming is that no two days are ever the same. Yet somehow, when people inevitably ask me the "how'd your season go?" question, a full year of farming is always suddenly and oddly reduced to a generalized blur - with the exception of the one or two things that stand out in sharp relief. That thing that rises above the blur of the 2022 growing season for me is Spring: The. Coldest. Wettest. Most. Challenging. Spring. Ever. Yet even with unrelenting April rain, hail in June, and losing half our carrot beds to voracious slugs, somehow my answer to "how'd your season go?" is still, with a big wide grin, "pretty good!"

It's true, I tend towards the glass-half-full perspective (sidenote: I haven't actually done the books for the year yet, so maybe take my optimistic reply with a grain of salt). But it's also true that the farm is pretty resilient, thanks to the 100+ different crops we grow and the various sales channels we sell them into. Diversity is our greatest strength, and the thing that levels out the inevitable ups and downs of farming in an increasingly capricious, climate-changey world. We don't have crop insurance, but we do have biodiversity on our side.

The other thing that brings remarkable stability to the farm is our CSA members. Your 28-week commitment to the farm helps carry us through rough seas when they arise, and our promise to fill your tote with a wide array of seasonal produce creates an inarguable mandate for crop diversity. It's one good thing driving another to keep the farm humming.

I truly hope you've enjoyed traversing the seasonal arc with us, from June until now. I hope you've found inspiration in new vegetables and comfort in favorite standbys. This week's tote is full of long-keeping storage crops: potatoes, beets, leeks, celeriac, and carrots that will last for weeks in your fridge. The Tetsu winter squash will still be perfect eating in May if you decide to leave it on your counter until then, and the Talon yellow onion should keep in a cool dry place into the new year. And one more radicchio, a chioggia type, that will also keep in your fridge for weeks - unless, that is, you've learned to love radicchio over the past two months and have grand plans for it in your salad bowl this week, or better yet, TONIGHT!

If you'd like to come back for more in 2023, we'll be starting our CSA sign-up process in February (all 2022 members will get priority sign-up for the 2023 season, before we offer any spots to folks on our waiting list). Keep an eye out for our sign-up email in late January or February!

AND, if you want in on our Winter CSA (January through May), we've made a few more spots available to anyone who's interested. For more info and to sign up, click here!

Thank you, and Happy Solstice!

xoxo

Zoë and the entire VF crew!

 

Newsletter: 

Week 27 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • Carrots
  • Red Cabbage
  • Winter Kohlrabi
  • Red Onion
  • Hakurei Turnips
  • Delicata Winter Squash
  • Kale
  • Winter Crisp Lettuce or Bunched Greens

Shifting Into Winter

As lovely as it was to sail through our big Thanksgiving harvest under sunny skies last week, it feels good to hear the rain on the roof today (and, er, watch the clogged gutter spilling over at the edge of the porch....apparently I forgot to clean that one). This is our second-to-last CSA harvest of the year; next week will be your final Harvest Basket delivery before we put the farm to bed for a little winter break. But in the meantime, be sure you pick up your produce this week and next:

  • Last pickup for Coos Bay and the Farm is on Wednesday, December 7th
  • Last pickup for Port Orford and Bandon is on Saturday, December 10th

Like many farmers I know, I relish winter. After the relentless pace of a long growing season, I fall into winter like a a marathon runner collapsing over the finish line. It's my moment to slow down, delete a lot of weekly reminders off my phone, and to spend time doing other things while the fields lie dormant (goofing with my kids, seeking out the snow, hiking along our beautiful coast, stealing sunny days for horseback rides, having dinner with friends, saying yes to more spontaneity). Perhaps my favorite winter indulgence is that half hour in the evening - after the kids have gone to bed and while the woodstove is still blazing - when I curl up with a good book and give myself a half hour to read while the dog twitches out her mysterious puppy dreams on the rug. 

Winter is also essential for fixing, building, oiling, repairing, tuning-up and finding re-inspiration in the new seed catalogues that have started arriving in the mailbox everyday. We have some significant projects in the works for this winter: a farmstand remodel, a new equipment shed, and an additional walk-in cooler. In the office, crop planning for the 2023 season is already underway and will be my primary focus for the next month, with the goal of having our seed orders submitted by early January. Then, by early February the greenhouse begins to fill up with starts once again and we pop out of Persephone* into the beginning of Spring. Ah Winter, so fleeting....and in all truth, never as "slow" as I imagine it will be. But it's slowER, looser, a little less scripted, and that unto itself offers some rejuvenation. 

*Persephone is the window of time when we have less than 10 hours of daylight, during which plants are mostly dormant. At our latitude, Persephone begins around mid-November and ends in early February (12 short weeks of the year when plants aren't entirely bossing us around). The story of Persephone is one of my all-time favorite Greek myths.

 

Newsletter: 

Happy Thanksgiving from Valley Flora!

  • Purple Brussels sprouts
  • Carrots
  • Celery
  • Rosemary
  • Shallots
  • Parsnips
  • Potatoes
  • Rosalba Radicchio - pretty in pink!
  • Autumn Frost Winter Squash - a specialty butternut with fantastic flavor that will keep til spring

Remember to pick up your CSA share TODAY, Wednesday 11/23! No CSA pickup on Saturday!

  • Valley Flora Farm: 9 am to 4 pm
  • Coos Bay: 12 pm to 5 pm (turns out the co-op closes early today; if you can't get there by 5, please call the co-op ASAP and they will arrange to have someone stay until 6 pm so you can get your food! 541-756-7264
  • Port Orford: 8:30 to 5 pm (the co-op has asked us to stack the totes on the platform to the east of the loading dock, which means there is no shade! Try to get their as early as you can on this sunny day!)
  • Bandon: 10:30 to 5 pm (totes will be on the clinic porch until Sunday morning, but we don't recommend leaving your share unclaimed overnight).

The Rosalba radicchio in your share this week is perhaps the most special variety we have growing in the field. I've always likened this variety to a quinceañera dress (layers and layers of pink frufru petticoat), bravely standing tall and improbable in a winter landscape of muted tones. It's remained a pretty obscure vegetable because radicchio in general has been slow to catch on in the U.S. (compared to Italy and other European countries, where it's a more integral part of the cousine). But lo and behold, Rosalba is suddenly trending because the color "millenial pink" is now all the rage. People want to wear it, and they also want to eat it. I highly recommend using this variety raw, rather than cooking it, in order to enjoy it's startling color to the fullest. Remember, if you want to tone down the bitter flavor, cut your radicchio up and soak it in cold water for ten minutes before you spin it dry. And like all things that are bitter in their naked form - like chocolate and coffee - adding fat, sugar and salt will render it less bitter. In the case of radicchio, the fat can come in the form of meat, oils, egg, nuts, and cheese; the sugar can come in the form of fruit, honey, or a sweetened dressing. Enjoy!

A couple Rosalba Salad Recipes:

Winter Greek Salad

Pink Radicchio Salad with Red Pears

Here at the farm we are so very grateful for our fantastic farm community. To all you who support the farm, and to those of you who have bravely learned to like new vegetables - like radicchio - as we travel the arc of our growing season together, THANK YOU!

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving! 

 

Newsletter: 

Valley Flora CSA Week 25 of 28

  • Red Beets
  • Savoy Cabbage
  • Carrots
  • Celeriac
  • Parsley
  • Winter Crisp Lettuce
  • Yellow Onions
  • Mixed Mini Daikon Radish
  • Butternut Squash

The Holiday(s) Ahead: our Thanksgiving CSA Delivery Schedule and VF Gift Certificates!

We're rounding the bend into that time of year: Thanksgiving! Winter Solstice! Hannukah! Kwanzaa! Christmas! Which means it's:

A) Time to give you the spiel about our Thanksgiving CSA delivery schedule next week, see below (PAY ATTENTION SATURDAY CSA MEMBERS!!), and

B) Time to remind you that we have VALLEY FLORA GIFT CERTIFICATES! Yes, you heard right! (Here comes the shameless pitch about how Valley Flora gift certificates are the BEST present ever: local, sustainable, delicious, organic, versatile, healthy, full of love, fabulous in every way, AND they can be used at our farmstand, u-pick, and/or applied towards a CSA share!). There, that was the pitch. You can get them for any amount at our farmstand, or you can email us and we can drop one in the mail to you. Easy!

But back to thing #1: our Thanksgiving delivery schedule next week. Muy importante!

Here's the deal: next week is Thanksgiving. Because all of us here at the farm don't want to be working on Thursday, and because most of you want to be eating your VF goodies on Thursday, we do a crazy thing next week. We smoosh our entire 5 day work week into 2.5 days, Monday through Wednesday. I can't remember who's terrible idea this was many years ago (that's a lie, it was mine), but basically our team doubles down and pulls off an unimaginable feat of industrious efficiency so that we can all put our feet up for turkey day.

This means that NEXT WEEK ALL CSA SHARES GET DELIVERED ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23rd (that includes you, Port Orford and Bandon!). 

And furthermore, THERE IS NO CSA DELIVERY TO BANDON OR PORT ORFORD ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26th! Please mark your calendars with big bold flourescent Sharpie so that you don't miss out on your food next week!

  • For members who pick up at the farm and at Coos Head Food Co-op, nothing changes for you next week.
  • For Bandon Members: Pick-up is on Wednesday, November 23rd between 10:30 and 5 pm at Well Within
  • For Port Orford Members: Pick-up is on Wednesday, November 23rd between 8:30 and 5 pm at the Port Orford Co-op (please try to pick up before 11 am or after 3 pm to avoid congestion on the loading dock at POCC)

And for once, and just this once, I will tell you exactly what will be in your share next week so you can plan, scheme, flip through cookbooks and shop for other ingredients as needed at our farmstand (we're open this Saturday and next Wednesday 11:30 to 2:30 pm):

  • Purple Brussels Sprouts - 1 stalk
  • Carrots - 1 pound
  • Celery - 1 head
  • Rosemary - 3 big sprigs
  • Shallots - 1+ pound
  • Parsnips - hopefully 2-3 pounds, won't know until we dig them next week
  • Yellow Potatoes - 3 pounds
  • Rosalba Radicchio - 1 very pink head
  • Autumn Frost Winter Squash - 2 squash, great for roasting or soup-making or anything that involves squash. Also beautiful decor for the Thanksgiving table.

OK, everyone repeat after me: "I will pick up my Thanksgiving CSA share next WEDNESDAY!"

AND finally, if you are going to be out of town next week we are more than happy to hold your Thanksgiving share in our cooler for late pickup from the farm when you return. In order to do this, I need you to email me by this Sunday, November 20th with your NAME, PICKUP Location, and the DATE you plan to retrieve your tote from our cooler at the farm. 

Get ready to feast!

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Week 24 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • Brussels sprouts - perfect timing, we got a frost this week which sweetens up the Brussels sprouts for next-level yum!
  • Carrots
  • Leeks
  • Marinanta Radicchio
  • Kale
  • Violet Queen Turnips
  • Celery - alas, also popular with the slugs! It should be spelled "sl-ughs!"
  • Delicata Winter Squash

On Rotation:

  • White Cauliflower

Two different CSA members sent a thrill through my heart last week. The first professed her learned love for fennel. The second shared this spectacular radicchio recipe with me, which I promptly made, fell in love with, and decided must be a new part of our Thanksgiving menu this year: Raw and Roasted Radicchio Salad with Sweet Potato, Manchego, and Crunchy Seeds. Given that Delicata squash are at the peak of their season right now, and are sweeter than sweet potatoes, and are in your share this week, I subbed peeled, roasted Delicata for the potatoes. I didn't have manchego so we used chunks of parmesan. Home run.

Erica, our longtime CSA member who shared it, wrote: "I have never felt pulled to share a recipe with you before, but I am sending you this recipe because it is a winner for sure, and it holds up for days in the fridge - the only way I was going to get through that radicchio as the only person in the house who enjoys it." Of course I'm ever hopeful that the rest of her household WILL learn to love radicchio someday (and how could they not with a salad like this one!?), but in the meantime I'm delighted to know that Erica has found a way on her own, bravely :). This week's radicchio variety, Marinanta, is one of my faves. It is wildly expressive, sometimes presenting like a tight head of iceberg, other times as a loose curly head of juicy-ribbed leaves. I find it to be on the milder end of the bitter spectrum, which can be good for the skeptics. If you drink coffee, you can handle this radicchio. With the help of some salty manchego and super duper sweet Delicatas, you've got this people.

 

Newsletter: 

CSA Week 23 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • Bunched Spinach
  • Winter Crisp Lettuce
  • Apples - Liberty and Topaz
  • Jalapeno & Serrano Hot Peppers
  • Winter Carrots - big, fat, crunchy and sweet!
  • Dill
  • Red Onions
  • Red Potatoes
  • Spaghetti Squash
  • A tomato

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower, Purple and White
  • Romanesco

Remember that first single tomato that landed in your tote a couple months back, and the story about the request effigy? Well, many weeks and many, many tomatoes later (request effigies wildly successful!) we are full circle back to "A Tomato." What a run! We made it all the way into November, and who knows, Bets might eek out one or two more from her greenhouse before she calls her tomato season a wrap. A homegrown tomato feels extra special on a "suddenly it's winter" kind of day like today.

While you've been luxuriating in abundant tomatoes, it's been a sorry year for orchard fruit - barely any apples, pears, plums or Asian pears this year. Chock it up to a cold wet, spring: in weather like that the bees can't fly and the blossoms take a beating from the wind, rain and hail. The Valley Flora orchard is extremely diverse, with 85 different varieties planted, including quince, italian plums, asian plums, apples, european pears, Asian pears, pie cherries, and peaches. Over a third of those varieties are different kinds of apples, which are a longtime passion of Abby's. Fortunately amidst all that diversity a few of the apple varieties scored a successful pollination window and were able to set a small crop of fruit. The Liberty and Topaz you're receiving this week are from some of those lucky trees. They're great fresh-eating apples: crisp, tangy-sweet, and juicy.

And everyone's favorite: spaghetti squash!!! I actually heard my stomach doing some hungry growling while I was flipping through this gallery of spaghetti squash recipes. Spaghetti squash burrito boats, spaghetti squash lasagna boats, Greek style spaghetti squash with shrimp, daaaaang! Guess I need to bring me home some spaghetti squash this week!

Finally, cauliflower! In spite of our best planning efforts, the purple and white cauliflower and our late season romanesco all decided to head up during the same two weeks, dern! So much for a nice staggered harvest over the course of October and early November (something that Allen's heroic back muscles would have appreciated, after hauling hundreds of pounds of cauli out of the field on Monday). If you haven't gotten a purple cauliflower yet this season, you'll get a bonus romanesco instead. The slugs have been fierce in our fall Brassica field, thanks to a cool summer and the epic quantity of organic matter left behind by our spring cover crop. All that straw and residue is fantastic for soil health, but it's also a wonderland of slug habitat. They did significant damage to the purple cauli crop in particular, which worked out well for the Common Good foodbank this week but left us short for the CSA. Fortunately the romanesco has withstood the slug pressure a little better and will fill in the gap. Not a bad trade.

But yeah, the slugs. Spring was no cakewalk, we lost our summer carrots to them, and are currently fighting tooth and nail to save our winter carrots. I'm pretty sure the Chinese zodiac got it all wrong about 2022 and the tiger: 2022 has most definitely been the Year of the Slug. 

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