In the CSA Share this Week!

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

On Rotation:

• Italian Parsley
• Cilantro
• Broccoli
• Romanesco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:-)

In the CSA Share this Week:

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

On Rotation:

• Zucchini
• Eggplant
  
• Tomatillos
• Lettuce
• Rainbow Chard

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

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

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

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

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

Get Your Tickets!

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

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

Good Neighbor Program

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

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

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

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

On Rotation:

• Broccoli
• Cilantro
• Eggplant

In a Landscape Coming to Valley Flora September 7th!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Harvest Basket this week:

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

On Rotation:

• Eggplant!
• Cilantro
• Dill

Bulk Basil by Special Order - Available Now!

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

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

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

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

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

Busting the Supermodel Myth One Cucumber at a Time

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

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

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

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

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

On Rotation:

• Chard
• Collards
• Sugar Snap Peas

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

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

Enjoy!

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

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

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

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

Accessibility and other FAQs

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

Good Neighbor Program

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

Eligibility at this site:

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

Buy Your Tickets Here!

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

On Rotation:

• Rainbow Chard
• Collards
• Broccoli
• Zucchini

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

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

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

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

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

On Rotation:

• Zucchini
• Broccolini
• Cilantro
• Hakurei Turnips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week!

In your first share this week:

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

On Rotation:*

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

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

Hello CSA Members and Welcome to our 2024 Season!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Redleaf Lettuce
• Baby Pac Choi
• Bunched Bellezia Arugula
• Bunched Fava Greens
• Rainbow Chard
• Pea Shoots
• Red Cabbage
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli (final harvest!)
• Yellow Onions
• Purple Potatoes
• Purple Radishes
• Tetsu Winter Squash

On Rotation:

• Artichokes

Happy Mayday!

Your "winter" CSA share is listing hard towards "spring" this week, with the arrival of head lettuce from our field tunnels, pac choi, fava greens, young radishes, and a wild-type arugula that is aptly named "Bellezia." As Allen put it as he and Roberto packed the totes yesterday, "we couldn't have fit a single leaf more in there." It's not all fluff, though. Some dense winter goods are still anchoring the bottom of the bin, with purple potatoes, the last of the jumbo yellow onions, a Guiness-book sized Tetsu squash, and purple cabbage. We've been genuinely impressed with this cabbage variety, which got planted last August, was harvested in late March, is storing like a champ, and is still winning cabbage beauty pageants. 

And if you are groaning at the sight of that big kabocha squash, here's some inspiration from a fellow CSA member in Port Orford who was moved to email me last time we put Tetsu in your share:

The oven was on today, so I went ahead and baked the Tetsu whole before I decided for sure what to do with it. Seems that’s a moot point because it is SO DANG GOOD that I keep eating it right out of my refrig container with a spoon! Yumm!! Thanks for the introduction!

Alternatively, you can procrastinate and leave that Tetsu on your counter for another month or two. We've had CSA members eat them a whole year after they were harvested - that's how crazy-long they can store. 

If you want a yummy way to disappear your arugula this week, along with that stash of red beets that I know are piled up in the back of your fridge, I highly recommend some version of this salad from Ottolenghi: Beetroot and Walnut Salad. Danny made it for dinner last night. We didnt' have half the ingredients - cilantro, leeks, tamarind water, pomegranate seeds, walnut oil - but it didn't matter. Skip all the things you don't have and use olive oil instead of the other oils. The main point is that roasting those beets in tin foil, then peeling them, gives them a wonderful, deep flavor. We crumbled some feta on top and doused the arugula (known as "rocket" in the U.K.) with a little more olive oil and reduced balsamic. Wowza.

Also, before I go, you probably need some pointers for those fava greens. Right. Favas are mostly known for their beans (which will be part of the CSA share come early July). But the tender young leaves are a lesser-known delicacy with a wonderfully nutty flavor. I think they shine the most when you lightly sautee them in butter or olive oil with a little salt, but you can also eat them raw as a salad ingredient. Snip the leaves and tender tips from the plant, removing any tough or woody stem. Wash well to remove any field dirt and spin dry. From there, the world is full of fav-ulous possibilities. Here's a creative spin on basil pesto, using fava leaves instead: Fava Greens Pesto. This is a once--a-year-only harvest for us, when we thin our fava bed to make room for the bean-producing plants. So give 'em a try - it'll be your only chance in 2024!

• Purple Sprouting Broccoli 
• Cauliflower 
• Ruby Streaks Mustard Greens
• Pea Shoots
• Yellow Onions
• Painted Purple Potatoes
• Spring Raab
• Bulk Spinach
• Tetsukabuto Winter Squash
• Cebollitas 

Week 7 Produce Notes:

It was a fun week of harvest abundance at the farm: the purple sprouting broccoli at max production, spinach leaves the size of baby elephant ears, and our first harvest of "cebollitas." Cebollitas (little onions) are the green tops of our onion seedlings, which are currently sizing up in trays in our propagation greenhouse. We start all of our own onions from seed in early February and as they germinate and size up we have to give the seedlings periodic "haircuts" to encourage the plants to girth up ahead of transplanting. We've learned to save the green tops and put them to culinary use since they make a great substitute for chives or green onions. 

This week's motherlode of purple sprouting broccoli (aka "PSB" in farmer parlance) is worthy of center-of-the-plate attention. You can cook PSB the same way you would regular broccoli or broccolini. It will lose its vibrant purple color in the process, but the flavor is unbeatable. It's also mild and sweet enough to munch raw if you don't want to lose that vibrant purple hue (the stem in particular is oh-so-tender and sweet). Check out this diverse collection of purple sprouting broccoli recipes for inspiration.

Cauliflower: I got home late from the farm on Monday with no idea what I was making for dinner. I had a couple big heads of cauliflower that needed to be eaten so I did what I often do when I'm at a loss for a dinner idea but have produce staring me down in the fridge: I got online and searched "cauliflower recipes." I landed on this one: Kung Pao Cauliflower, and it was a hit. Quick, easy, tons of flavor, one single sheet pan to wash at the end of the night, perfect alongside a pot of rice. I didn't have any green onions on hand so I subbed thin-sliced leeks and roasted them with the cauliflower to crispy them up. Made for great leftovers the next day, too. I highly recommend, especially if you've got a cauliflower backlog.

Tetsukabuto Winter Squash: One of our favorite and longest-keeping squash, "Tetsu" is a cross between a butternut and a kabocha. They can be intimidating for some folks because of their tough-as-nails bumpy skin, but they are worth the effort ("tetsukabuto" translates to "steel helmet" in Japanese). The OSU winter vegetable project has created a great collection of videos on how to cook with lesser-known winter vegetables, including Tetsu: https://www.eatwintervegetables.com/videos

You can also find some delish recipes and videos for purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, celeriac, radicchio and more on their site. Eat it up!

Mustard Greens: The variety that most of you are getting this week is a mild, lacy-leafed variety called "Ruby Streaks." If this is the vegetable that predictably ends up yellow and half-rotten in a slimy bag at the back of your fridge, I'd suggest cooking it up tonight alongside that Kung Pao cauliflower. In fact, the sauce for the cauliflower would work perfectly splashed over a pile of sauteed mustards (and I promise you, it will be a very small pile once it cooks down). You could also try this teriyaki-inspired recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/218501/asian-inspired-mustard-greens/

Let the Planting Begin!

In spite of the near-relentless rain the past many months, the skies have afforded us enough of a window that we'll be starting our outdoor planting season on time this week. This first week of transplanting is a bit like boot-camp for farmers, with thousands and thousands of transplants staged in the greenhouse right now, ready to hit the soil. The way they get there, from greenhouse tray to fertile field, is human hands. We hand-transplant every last seedling on the farm, flat-backed, bent at the hips, leaning into our glutes. Even with our baseline fitness, we'll all be sore by this weekend, guaranteed. We'll be transplanting kale, collards, chard, head lettuce, kohlrabi, cabbage, broccolini, broccoli and pac choi. And by light of headlamp last night, I was able to get carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, arugula and spinach direct-seeded before the rain started. Spring is manic like this: rainy lulls followed by sunny weather sprints.

Good thing there are 12 hours and 50 minutes of daylight now, because there are times when we need every last second of it (and then some, courtesy of Petzl headlamps and an arsenal of rechargable triple A batteries :)...

CSA Shares Almost Sold Out, Sign Up Today!

We have a few spots left for the upcoming CSA season. Sign-ups are now open to the general public so spread the word! Remember, anyone with SNAP food benefits is eligible for Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) when they sign up for our CSA. That means they only pay half the cost of the CSA with SNAP and DUFB covers the other half. It's a great way to get a season of fresh produce from Valley Flora at a 50% discount.

Sign up on our website at https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/valley-flora-harvest-basket!

• Autumn Frost Winter Squash - wonderfully flavorful specialty butternut, great roasted or turned into soup
• Celeriac - aka "celery root," also a great soup ingredient, or mash it with potatoes, or grate into hashbrowns, or roast with other root veggies
• Yellow Onions (not pictured)
• Micro Mix - a blend of pea shoots, radish and mesclun (not pictured)
• Bunched Mustard Greens  - semi-spicy cooking greens....here's a collection of 8 eclectic recipes to help you use them: https://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/greens/10-ways-use-mustard-greens
• Baby Leeks
• Red Potatoes
• Purple Mini Daikon Radish - beautiful sliced and added to salads or snacked on raw...peel the outer skin for milder, more tender munching.
• Winter Salad Mix - a blend of 8 lettuce varieties and asian greens from our greenhouses
• Bunched Spinach - as loved by slugs as it is by humans, pardon the holey leaves!
• Savoy Cabbage

On Rotation:

• Cauliflower
• Spring Raab
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Happy March, and happy few days of much-needed sunshine! This past week of frigid, relentless rain/hail/sleet wasn't a problem for any of our hardy overwintering field crops, but ironically it put a major damper on the growth of our pea shoots in the greenhouse. The cold and the grey slowed them down significantly, such that our usual Monday harvest was postponed. All day Tuesday I was popping in and out of the propagation house to see if they had put on enough top growth. Finally at 6 pm, with all the CSA shares already packed and in the cooler and the crew gone, I took the electric knife to them and harvested all 30+ trays by headlamp. Because we were short on poundage (due to the diminuitive stature of those preemie peas), I mixed in all our radish and mesclun to create a lovely little fancy-pants blend. It'll make a nice garnish on that winter salad mix this week.

It was fun to finally dive into some of our much-anticipated greenhouse crops this week: spinach, cut lettuce, baby greens. All of it was seeded/planted as early as last Thanksgiving and is only now ready for harvest. It's a myth that plants don't grow during our winter; they do, just very, very slowly. We transplanted a new bed of cut lettuce into a greenhouse yesterday and it will likely be ready for harvest in a month or so (instead of the three months it takes when it grows through winter). We have a steady succession of spinach on the horizon (hopefully the slugs won't ravage it all, apologies for those holey leaves!), and even have a bed of baby carrots up and growing indoors.

With any luck, we might be able to get some outdoor peas, favas, carrots, beets, radishes and turnips seeded this week before the next deluge. And while we wait for it to dry out, we'll be pruning in the orchard like madwomen, transplanting artichokes, and mowing mowing mowing! 

All to say, office tasks are on hold until it starts raining again!

CSA Sign-Ups are Now Open for our Waiting List!

If you are on our CSA waiting list, you should see an email from us this week with an invitation to sign up! If you were a member last year and didn't sign up during our priority window - but want to - grab a spot before it's too late! To sign up, visit our website: https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/catalog/7

• Rainbow Chard
• Bulk Winter Kale Mix
• Radish/Mesclun Micro Mix
• Beets - Red, Gold & Chioggia
• Purple Mini Daikon Radish
• Leeks
• Cipollini Onions
• Yellow Potatoes
• Savoy Cabbage
• Candystick Delicata Squash
• Pie Pumpkin

A Few of My Favorite Winter Meals...

I generally assume that if you're signed up for our Winter CSA, you're pretty adept at the seasonal-eating thing. I'm routinely impressed by the inspired concoctions our CSA members come up with in the kitchen using VF produce. In our household we eat well and we eat farm-forward (we've been teased many a time about our over-sized salad bowl), but meals typically err on the side of simple and straightforward in order to juggle busy schedules, kids, and all the rest. If you have the time to get gourmet with this week's share, do it! But if you don't, here's how I'd go about eating through that hefty tote of produce without much fuss:

• Candystick Delicata: Cut in half, scoop out the seeds, bake it face-down on a sheet pan with some water in the pan @ 375-400 until soft. Put a pat of butter in each boat and eat with spoon, for any meal. This is a special variety of Delicata bred by Oregon's own Carol Deppe, selected for longer storage life (we don't normally still have Delicata at the end of January!) and exceptionally sweet date-like flavor. It's nicknamed the "dessert delicata." We've noticed some variability in flavor depending on size, so would love it if you'd do a side by side taste test of your larger and smaller squash and let us know what you find out.
• Kale & Chard: Most likely we'd steam the greens and eat a big pile of them drizzled with olive oil and ume plum vinegar (tangy and salty) or reduced balsamic vinegar with a sprinkle of salt. But I also love this quick soup: Lemony White Bean Soup with Greens. I usually omit the ground turky and use kale instead of collards.
• Micro Mix: I'd be putting this all over a radicchio salad, or cabbage slaw, or the beet recipe below - unless it got pilfered for smoothies first.
• Beets: Roast, roast, roast! That's usually our go-to. There's also a great winter salad courtesy of Joshua McFadden (Six Seasons cookbook): Beet Slaw with Pistachios and Raisins that I love. It takes a little more time, but is 100% worth it.
• Daikon: I love these diced up on burrito bowls, or sliced thinly in any kind of salad, or cut up for snackable veg. I usually peel them.
• Leeks: Also great roasted sheet-pan style alongside beets, spuds, squash. They get crispy and caramelized in a 400 degree oven, with a little help from some olive oil. Also obviously a go-to ingredient for potato leek soup, or any soup. We just had them in a frittata last night - excelente!
• Cipollini Onions: Use them anywhere, but be sure you caramelize them down first to bring out their wow factor. Perhaps the best pizza topping there is.
• Potatoes: They were in said frittata last night. We made roasted potatoes last week. And we're having mashed spuds tonight.
• Cabbage: This is a January King type cabbage, mostly savoy in its expression. Certainly great for fresh slaw, but I have to say the most unctuous cabbage is the one that is cut into wedges, tossed with olive and salt, and yes - you guessed it! - ROASTED at 400 (the magic oven temp) until soft and crispy and browned. Really good with leeks in the mix on the same sheet pan.
• Pie Pumpkin: I egregiously forgot to mention when all of our CSA members got one of these last fall that this variety is called "Pie Pita" and is mulit-purpose: it has hull-less seeds that can be roasted into pepitas, and tasty meat that can become dinner or dessert (dinner: Thai Pumpkin Curry; dessert: Pie!). My sister, Abby, loves to bake and is the pumpkin pie queen of the family. I like being on the receiving end of all her experimentation and efforts.

So that's the farmer quick and dirty on how to grub down this tote. I guess the main takeaways are: stock up on olive oil and make sure your oven runs at 400 :). If so, you're golden.