The Valley Flora Beetbox

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

Week 17 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Napa Cabbage
  • Carrots
  • Eggplant 
  • Fennel
  • Red Onions
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Zucchini
  • Jalapeño Pepper
  • Serrano Peppers
  • Tomatoes

If that picture doesn't look like a batch of ratatouille waiting to happen, then I don't know what does. Usually ratatouille doesn't include fennel bulb, but I stumbled upon this recipe from a UK magazine (they eat a lot more fennel in Europe than we do here in the States) and it looked worthy of sharing: Ratatouille with Fennel. The only bit of produce not in your share this week is the dill, but some of you might have a bit leftover from last week...?

Or, if like me, all you want to eat at this time of year is raw chopped salad, then this is the recipe for you: Yotam Ottolenghi's Spiced Chickpea Chopped Salad. Yotam Ottolenghi has a cookbook called "Jerusalem" - probably the most dog-eared compendium of recipes in my entire kitchen, and it's the book I reach for every week from August through October. You'd think I'd have the recipe memorized by now, but no, I seem to like to pull that book down like an old friend and open it up to the page with the hot pink post-it note that's spattered with olive oil stains. I cheat and use canned garbanzo beans instead of soaking dry chickpeas in order to make it a fast weeknight dinner. I've also been known to add homemade croutons, feta, broiled eggplant - anything you want to bulk it up and make it even more of a meal. You could even shred some of that napa cabbage and add it to the mix. Anything goes. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

I do have a little vegetable deficit to make up for on the heels of a glorious horsepacking trip into the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness last week. Not to say that my friend, Laura, and I went hungry (I dehydrated all kinds of farm veggies and added them to our homemade backpacking dinners each night....plus we're guilty of making the horses carry in 8 carrots, 5 apples, 3 cucumbers, a bag of Jimmy Nardello peppers, 3 peaches and 4 avocadoes for our 5 day drip. But still! I've got some catching up to do this week in the roughage department. Chopped salad, watch out.

Here's a glimpse of what Jack and Lily were "up" to last week. Lots of elevation gain, innumerable high alpine lakes, wild blueberries, a thunderstorm or two, and beautiful meadows. Upon hearing some stories from our Mt. Jefferson trip, my mom referred to them as "renaissance horses." I can't think of a better descriptor: from digging potatoes on Monday to climbing mountain peaks on Friday. 

A big thanks to my crew - and my horses - for helping make our pack trip possible this season! I'm always grateful to be able to sneak away for a long weekend during peak season, and also just as happy to come back to this beautiful reality called home.

 

Newsletter: 

Week 16 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Eggplant
  • Beets
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes

On Rotation:

  • Dill
  • Cilantro
  • Chard
  • Head Lettuce
  • Sweet Corn

Weather Whiplash

Wellllllll, I didn't go horsepacking last week after all....we had to cancel due to extreme fire danger, smoke and heat in the mountains (99 degrees at the farm last Friday while we were harvesting, oof!). BUT, we are making a second attempt this week, leaving in a few hours. The only thing is, the weather has done a flip-flop and as of this morning I found myself stuffing my saddlebags with extra long underwear, down booties, mittens - and jettisoning the bathing suit and shorts. The forecast has taken a 50 degree swing in the direction of polar, and for the first time since last spring the NOAA forecast is making mention of snow level in the Cascades (6100' to be exact, which might make for a nippy horse trippy). The only conundrum, should I bring the bathing suit after all, in case we want to do this.....?

Meanwhile here at sea level, all of you will be enjoying an absolute rainbow plethora of September havest abundance! It's one of those weeks when the CSA totes buckle under all that heft if we stack them too high. Live it up, eat like kings and queens, and I'll catch up with ya'll next week! Hi-yo, Silver, away!

 

Newsletter: 

Week 15 CSA from Valley Flora!

Hi everyone!

The CSA newsletter is going out a couple days early this week because I'm sneaking off the farm for a horsepacking trip in the Jefferson Wilderness. I'll be gone Wednesday 9/7 through next Monday 9/12, but never fear - you are in fabulous farming hands! The food will be delivered as usual thanks to the all-star crew that keeps this place humming.

This week's share will likely include:

  • Bunch Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Lettuce
  • Leeks - our first harvest of the season!
  • Hot Peppers
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Strawberries
  • Tomatoes
  • Zucchini

On Rotation:

  • Sweet corn
  • Eggplant
  • Dill
  • Cilantro

Many of our returning CSA members will remember that I took my draft horses, Jack and Lily, on a maiden ultralight horsepacking voyage last summer with my dear friend, Laura (who also uses draft horses to grow food for lots of CSA members in the Willamette Valley). We did an epic trip in the Trinity Alps last July and had so much fun that we finagled a second trip in September 2021, exploring Indian Heaven Wilderness near Mt. Adams. It's a mandatory tradition now, so this week we're heading up to Mt. Jefferson to ride into some new terrain astride the big ponies. The wild blueberries are likely to be ripe, the mosquitoes should be gone, and the forecast is for clear skies. With any luck it'll be as magical as last year's adventures...

The farm crew will be checking email in my absence if you need to communicate, and hopefully when you get the next newsletter on Wednesday, September 14th, it'll be full of new pics from Mt. Jefferson.

Happy Labor Day!

Newsletter: 

Week 14 CSA from Valley Flora

  • Bunch Carrots - hooray, they're back!
  • Cucumbers
  • Curly Parsley
  • Head Lettuce
  • Red Onion
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini
  • Tomatoes (yes, plural - it appears our request effigies are working!)
  • Sweet Corn 

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant

Field Notes, Food Notes

The sweet corn is starting to come in heavy as we shift into our main plantings of "Allure," a big-eared bicolor that reliably sets two fat ears per plant. We use a special vinyl harvest backpack for picking corn: imagine a giant, semi-rigid, square bag with backpack straps, me snapping ripe ears of corn from the rows right and left, then tossing them over my shoulder into the open maw of the backpack. I can fit about 60 ears of Allure into the bag before gravity threatens to pin me and my 80 pound cargo to the ground, at which point I trek the load out of the field to the flatbed, count twenty ears into each bin, and dive back into the cornfield for the next load. Ladybugs are omnipresent during this process, feasting happily on the aphids that like to congregate on the outer husks of the corn. I try to shake the mariquitas off and leave them in the field where they can continue their good work as beneficial predators, but some always find their way into the totes. If that's the case with your corn this week, release your ladybugs into some outdoor greenery so they can find their next meal.

The return of our orange Nantes carrots brightened up the CSA share this week, and it also made the day for Juno, Millie, Peach and Gracie. This is testament to the power of a dog's nose: all of them were up at the house, a couple hundred yards away and out of sight from the barn. Roberto started washing carrots - the first big batch of sweet orange Nantes he's washed since June - and within five minutes all of the farm dogs were lurking about the wash table, begging. They spent the rest of their afternoon at the barn eating culls. Turns out the canines missed them as much as we have.

Enjoy your orange candy carrots this week and the rainbow eating of late summer! Happy Labor Day!

Newsletter: 

Week 13 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Sweet Corn
  • Red Dragon Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini
  • A Tomato
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Head Lettuce

On Rotation

  • Eggplant
  • Sweet Peppers

One Single Tomato: A Request Effigy

When I was a kid my step-dad had a dog named Marlene. She was part Basset Hound, part Electrolux: a big spotted tube of a dog with 3" legs, the most velvety-soft Basset ears, and beautiful black eyeliner around her doleful eyes. She loved to lie behind the woodstove, stretched out like a queen on her tuffet, until her speckled coat was too hot to touch. She also considered herself a lap dog, even though she weighed close to 70 pounds with a body as big and dense as a huge Lab. But despite all her domestic habits - some of them stupendously manipulative - she had a penchant for roaming. John, my step-dad, spent a large percentage of his years with Marlene searching for her, waiting for her, hoping for her return from her various forays. He was a runner in those days and would take Marlene out to Floras Lake to put in miles on the trails towards Blacklock. Inevitably her long snout would get onto a game trail and, despite her stubby legs, she'd disappear in a flash - usually for hours. The routine that followed went like this: John would finish his run, get back to the car, and then sit there in the day-use parking lot waiting for her until she returned, often around dark. He's a patient guy.

One winter day, though, she didn't return. It got dark, he waited awhile longer and still no dog. A storm was blowing in and John was reluctant to leave her at large, but he also knew she'd survived multi-day hound dog benders before and had started her life as a street dog. She was savvy and resilient. He finally gave up and made his retreat, windshield wipers sloshing furiously. This was before the new footbridge was built spanning the outlet to Floras Lake and overnight it rained so hard that the lake flooded and the makeshift crossing to the beach and trails washed out. John went back at daybreak and spent another day waiting for her in the parking lot, unable to cross the torrent - to no avail. The rain kept coming and the waters kept rising. He came home despondent, at which point my very proactive, type A mother - feeling exasperated about his passivity - asked him: "Aren't you going to DO something to find your dog?!" Then she went back to adding a new wing onto the house, or somesuch incredibly productive endeavor. (Uh, do you sense an interesting dynamic here?).

Meanwhile, John shuffled around the house and rounded up a bunch of old toilet paper rolls. When my mom came back into the house hours later John was playing guitar and there was a papier mache effigy of Marlene sitting on the tuffet behind the wood stove.

She considered it a moment, then said, "Ya und?"

"It's a request effigy," said John. "I want her to come back so I made that." 

At which point my mom couldn't hold it back: she burst out laughing. And she also got on the phone (this is the days before the internet, before Facebook, before everyone knows your dog is lost before you do). She called around locally and picked up a few leads, which eventually led them to a trailer in Port Orford a few days later. John knocked on the front door and when it opened, low and behold there was Marlene. She glanced at him, then went right back to gnawing on the pork chop that her new family had cooked for her. Ever the operator.

This week's one, single tomato is a request effigy: put it on your counter so it can finish ripening, while saying out loud: "I want more of these." 

It worked for John.

 

Newsletter: 

Week 12 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Cucumbers
  • Basil
  • Head Lettuce (good luck fitting some of those heads into a normal plastic bag - you might have to find a garbage bag instead....:)
  • Walla Walla Sweets
  • Fingerling Potatoes - dense, nutty, excellent roasted. Fingerlings are starchier than other potato varieties, so they are well suited to high heat in the oven, rather than steaming or boiling.
  • Strawberries 
  • Zucchini
  • Rainbow Chard

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant
  • Sweet Corn - with any luck, it's looking like we'll have our first harvest on Friday for our Saturday members! Wednesday members will see it next week!

Pop Quiz:

Tiny strawberry or giant beet?

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 11 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Kale - Red Ursa or Green Curly
  • Cucumbers
  • Lettuce
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions!
  • Serrano Hot Pepper
  • Zucchini
  • Red Beets
  • Fennel

On Rotation

  • Broccoli - winding down for the summer, more to come in the fall
  • Eggplant - winding up for the season, very slowly

At Last! Flower U-Pick is Open and Summer Solanums are on the Horizon...Someday!

I've decided we need a theme song for this season, so no better pick than Jesse Lawrence's "Better Late then Never." If, like me, you dig soul. 

Across the board, our crops are lagging about three weeks behind normal, including our flowers. We were finally able to open up the flower patch to u-pick last Saturday now that the zinnias, sunflowers, rudbeckia, yarrow, strawflowers and nigella are in full bloom. We lost some of our dahlias to rot this very wet spring (wah!), and many of the plants are delayed, but little by little they are rebounding and we're starting to see more color in the beloved dahlia bed. We also have some trial dianthus in the ground this year - old-timey, divinely-scented riffs on carnations in beautiful shades of peach, cream, burgundy, and pink. It's been fun to watch the first blooms slowly crack open their tight, grey-green buds and fill the air with their unbelievable, heady perfume. I anticipate they'll be in peak bloom the next couple of weeks. If you come to pick flowers on a Wednesday or Saturday, swing in at the strawberry u-pick shack to get a pair of clippers and a PVC tube. We sell flowers by the tube: a small tube is $3.50, a large tube is $9. It's always a good idea to bring a bucket to carry your flowers home in so they don't wilt in transit. Also, please be mindful in the flower patch and don't push through the plants to cross to a different row; it snaps the branches off, tips the plants over, breaks stems, and does damage to the flowers. Take it slow and go around, or look for a gap to cross through. Also please don't cross the white rope fence; we have variety trials underway on the far side of our sunflowers and don't want folks trampling through them. Thanks!

We finally saw our first eggplant harvest this week - a shy offering, given that we would normally be putting eggplant in all the CSA totes by now (along with tomatoes and early peppers). Ironically, in this day and age of scorching heat domes, our coastal weather tends to shift in the opposite direction: greyer, cooler, more days socked in under the marine layer. That, combined with the slow, cold start to the season has put off our heat-loving Solanaceous crops like eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers. The peppers and tomatoes look fantastic and are loaded with unripe fruit, so it might be one of those years where it's all about tomatoes in September instead of August and the avalanche of peppers in October instead of September. Hopefully! Sweet corn, also late, is tasseling so I think we'll have our first pick within the next two weeks. We plant five successions of corn so that we can keep it coming from August through September. Make sure you stock up on butter, cuz the corn rolling is about to begin!

And because all we really do on the farm is horse around, another shot from my favorite perch on the stradderow cultivator: Jack and Lily cultivating the new fall Brassica field, with the intrepid crew in the background tackling our weekly transplanting (look at that form!! - hinged at the hips, strong straight backs, wide-legged power stance, we're talking ATHLETES, not just farmers, people!). Lots of fall and winter cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and romanesco going into the ground right now - setting the stage for late season bounty!

 

Newsletter: 

Week 10 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Broccoli
  • Cucumbers
  • Collard Greens
  • Basil
  • Head Lettuce
  • New Potatoes
  • Zucchini
  • Sunflower Shoots
  • Purplette Onions

Basil is Still Cranking!

If you haven't stocked your freezer with pesto for wintertime, there's still time! CSA members are invited to place a special order for delivery to your pickup site. To Order:

Email your name, phone number, CSA site and desired quantity to: betsharrison@gmail.com

Available in 1 pound bags, no limit. $22/lb

Land Use, Affordable Housing and the Farm

One of the things that makes Oregon so special is our land-use planning system, which celebrates its 50th birthday next year. It's arguably the most forward-thinking land use system in the country, with strict laws designed to protect farm and forest lands, to prevent sprawl by establishing urban growth boundaries, and to create a process for smart, controlled growth. It was born into law in 1973 through Senate Bill 100, out of concern that Oregon was quickly heading in the direction of our neighbor to the south, California, which was undergoing rapid transformation as urban and suburban sprawl wiped out farmland and changed the landscape forever. Senate Bill 100 is why to this day Oregon still looks different. 

I took it for granted during my childhood, but when I fledged and began living in other places - Massachusetts, Minneapolis, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Salinas Valley - and traveling to lots of U.S. states (Illinois, Florida, Colorado, Arizona, Tennessee, Montana, Alaska, North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, and more!), I began to notice how heartbreakingly different those landscapes were compared to Oregon. Cities and towns spilled outward onto farmland in the form of messy, ugly sprawl. Tracts of beautiful ranchland were chopped up into 5 acre hobby farms (Montana's stunning Flathead Valley being one of the more painful landscapes for me to spend time in). Outside of Chicago, some of the world's richest soil was buried under miles of subdivisions, never to be farmed again. Each time I came home to Oregon it became more and more clear to me how unique our state was, how beautiful it was, and how grateful I was for good land use planning. Sidenote: If you want to learn more about the history and evolution of Oregon's pioneering land use approach, OPB is doing a series leading up to the 50th annivesary of Senate Bill 100. The first two installments are available to listen to, or read: 

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/07/15/oregon-land-use-laws-willamette-valley-farms-urban-development-commercial-farmers-crops/

https://www.ijpr.org/politics-government/2022-07-23/inside-the-fight-between-oregon-leaders-to-create-a-revolutionary-growth-management-system

Protecting working landscapes is not just about aesthetics, though. Keeping farmland intact and contiguous helps keep farming viable. If you break it up, the long term effect is the slow erosion of entire farming communities: as farms disappear, so do the businesses that farmers rely on like mechanics, feed stores, tractor supply stores, and more. Our zoning helps keep our greater farming ecosystem alive and well.

But as Oregon continues to grow, our land use laws face increasing pressure. The more people that move here - and LOTS of people are moving here (retirees, climate refugees, work-from-home Wi-Fiers) - the more housing we need. I've never seen so much new construction here in all of my four+ decades. But even with all those nail guns rat-a-tat-tatting, framing up new walls, putting on new roofs, there's a big shortage of affordable housing in Curry County. Rents and home prices continue to climb, outstripping what working class families can afford. It's become the biggest challenge for the farm: how to recruit new hires when they won't be able to afford to live here. Such a problem, in fact, that we are losing an employee because of it, and were turned down by numerous qualified candidates last winter when we were recruiting. It's a problem that plagues a lot of the other backbone businesses in the area as well - restaurants, grocery stores, service jobs of all kinds. 

In July the Curry County Planning Commission voted unanimously to make some significant changes to county zoning, ostensibly to address the lack of affordable housing in our area. The changes would allow for ADUs and higher density use in certain areas. Although I generally tend to think that thoughtful urban infill is a good development approach (far better than breaking up farmland and working landscapes with 5 acre ranchettes), there hasn't been much community input in this process and there are problems with the changes. One of the biggest issues is that these new zoning laws would allow any new additional housing to be used for short term/vacation rentals. That most definitely does NOT solve our housing crisis in Curry County. For this community to thrive in a meaningful way - supported solidly by the people who change your oil, bag your groceries, make your sandwich, pump your gas, and - I daresay - grow your food, we need affordable housing for the folks who are trying to live and work here, not just more AirBnb's.

The Curry County Commissioners will vote on these new zoning changes at their August 17th meeting. If you want to learn more, you can review the proposed changes by reviewing the docket from the July 21st Planning Commission meeting here: https://www.co.curry.or.us/government/planning_commision/index.php#revize_document_center_rz2436

You can read comments submitted by concerned citizens here: 

https://cms6.revize.com/revize/currycountyor/document_center/planning%20commision/2022%20Meetings/July%2021,%202022/ZOA-2022.1%20Comments%20-%20July%2021-2022%20PC%20Meeting.pdf
 
And you can also check out the 100 Friends of Port Orford blog for more background info: 

https://100friendsofportorford.org/
 

And you can always write a good old-fashioned letter to our county commissioners to voice your concerns!

Zoning is the most fundamental thing that affects the character and livability of this place we love so much. Over the past 50 years, Oregon's land use system has only survived because people have continued to fight for it. After all - no good thing ever came easy.

 

 

 

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 9 CSA from Valley Flora

  • Broccoli
  • Red Cabbage
  • Cucumbers
  • Dill
  • Head Lettuce
  • Purplette Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Zucchini

Bulk Basil Available by Special Order!

Pesto Lovers! The Basil is abundant and you are invited to place a special order for delivery to your CSA pickup site! To Order:

Email your name, phone number, CSA site and desired quantity to: betsharrison@gmail.com

Available in 1 pound bags, no limit. $22/lb

Yum!

Carrots and Climate Change

It pains me to announce that starting this week VF carrots will be on pause for the next month. Normally those sweet, crunchy delights are a weekly staple in our CSA, from mid-June until the bitter end in December. But this spring we lost four consecutive carrot seedings to heavy rains and voracious slugs throughout April, May and early June. It was a major blow, since carrots are one of our most important and iconic crops on the farm. We've rationed our only bed for CSA and farmstand this past month and disappointed our wholesale customers mightily. But as of this week, we officially harvested the last of that planting and our next beds probably won't be ready until late August.

Fortunately our carrot beds have been germinating spectacularly since mid-June as conditions have become more hospitable to those tiny, slow-growing seeds (less mud, fewer slugs), but it takes about 60-80 days to get a carrot from seed to harvest. Hence, for the next few weeks carrots will be notably absent in your tote (nothing like having to buy a bag of old supermarket carrots to boost your appreciation of the fresh-dug, homegrown ones!).

In all the years I've been growing food, I've never experienced a carrot crop failure like this one. The weather this past spring was unlike anything I've farmed through over the past 20 years and posed some extreme challenges for us and for farmers around the state. When all was said and done, we had a lot to be grateful for on Floras Creek compared to many farmers in the Willamette Valley. We were able to find little windows of opportunity to get plants and seeds into the ground, but conditions were far from perfect. Meanwhile, a good friend of mine who runs a CSA near Salem was unable to plant ANYTHING until June, putting her 2 months behind and forcing her to cancel a few weeks of her CSA in June. As the weather gets more extreme - scary dry last year starting in April, crazy wet this year starting in April - she's wondering if it's time to throw in the towel and be done with the stressful rollercoaster. Farming has never been easy, but climate change is making it all the more tenuous and unpredictable.

Our carrots are the climate change casualty du jour at Valley Flora. It's disappointing at the kitchen table level, but indicative of something much, much more serious and heartbreaking at the global level. Is it possible that those carrots - or the absence of them - might be one of many sparks to help us tip towards solving our climate crisis?

Newsletter: 

Week 8 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Beets - red or chioggia, depending on location. Don't forget that beet greens are 100% edible and tasty, too. Like chard!
  • Carrots
  • Head Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Broccoli
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini
  • Basil

Eating Summer, Planting for Winter

While the summer food begins to ramp up in your Harvest Basket (cukes! zukes! basil! beets!), our field activities - apart from harvest - are actually primarily focused on fall and winter crops right now. For the past month+ we've been doing weekly greenhouse seedings of all kinds of cool-weather varieties: Brassicas like broccoli, romanesco, cauliflower, purple sprouting broccoli, winter cabbage, kale, and kohlrabi, plus chicories, overwintering onions and more. Two weeks ago we began transplanting out the first wave of starts into our "Fall Brassica" field, and we have another month ahead of us of sizable weekly plantings. Our big planting push is usually done by mid-August, with some smaller plantings peppered into the schedule until October. This sets the stage for all of our fall and winter production, the food that will see us through until next spring in combination with storage crops like potatoes, onions and squash. 

And speaking of storage crops, they're looking good! The potato field is verdant and almost done flowering, with the first new potatoes sizing up underground. You should see the first potatoes in your share sometime in early August. After a slow start through chilly June, our squash field has finally taken off - a tangle of vines and flowers that are underseeded with red clover this year. We're experimenting with early establishhment of a red clover cover crop in the understory so that our fall cover crop is already in place, ready to grow wild once the squash vines die back in September. And while we don't expect it to be a bumper onion year like last year, the beds are looking fine and you should see your first bunch of Purplette onions in your share next week, followed by Italian torpedo onions and Walla Walla Sweets! 

Because of the weather, our outdoor crops are at least a couple weeks behind this season, from dahlias to peas to onions to zucchini. I suppose the upshot of late-blooming is that we get to feel that eager anticipation of so many good things still to come for an extra couple weeks. In my intuitive body - the one that judges season by the temperature of the creek and the color of the hills and the amount of water still trickling through that one culvert on the curves a mile up Floras Creek Road -  it feels more like late June than the third week of July, and our current crop mix confirms that. Maybe I'll just throw my calendar out for good, cuz what really marks time more than that day you eat your first homegrown tomato of the summer? (For me, a single sungold cherry tomato savored on July 14th, a lovely birthday present.)

Have a good week, eat your beets!

 

Newsletter: 

Week 7 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Carrots
  • Fennel
  • Head Lettuce
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Strawberries
  • Cilantro

On Rotation:

  • Broccoli
  • Broccolini
  • Red Ursa Kale
  • Rainbow Chard
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini

Fennel!!!

One of my favorite vegetables is finally here this week! Like many things on the farm this season, this first harvest is a few weeks later than usual due to our chilly spring weather. For those of you who have never eaten fennel, here's a little context: in all these years of running the CSA, fennel seems to be one of those black and white vegetables, where people either love it or decide to hate it. I like to say "decide to hate it" because there is a study they did with kids that shows it can take 20 tries for someone to learn to like a new food. We saw that happen with our 11-year old, who hated mushrooms. I'm not one to cater to picky eating habits in the kitchen, so after enough bowls of mushroom-studded risotto and sauteed chanterelles, one day she suddenly realized she loved mushrooms. Which could happen to you if you're in the anti-fennel camp!

Here's a mouth-watering collection of recipes to lend some inspiration. It's pretty meat-heavy, so if you're not a carnivore this set of vegetarian recipe ideas might be more up your alley.

I hope loving fennel is easy for you. We grow successions of it, so you'll see it again a few times this season - hopefully enough that you can learn to love it if you don't already.

Newsletter: 

Week 6 from Valley Flora!

  • Cone Cabbage - the sweetest, most tender variety we grow
  • Broccoli
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Purple and Orange Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Head Lettuce - some of them VERY large (don't be frightened, Coos Bay members!)
  • Strawberries

On Rotation:

  • Basil
  • Cilantro

Early July is, and always has been, one of my favorite fleeting moments on the farm. In a wet year like this, it's the straddle point between spring and summer - when all the world is still lush and green and growing, but also blooming and starting to set fruit. We're still in that moment of pregnant anticipation: tying up tomato plants (which double in height every week), thinning orchard fruit, and hilling potatoes in full bloom (it's more flower field than spud patch right now!). It's like the week before your birthday, which is so much more fun than the day after your birthday. Right now the entire farm is scented by an insane profusion of kiwi blossoms, the songbirds are talking non-stop from dawn to dusk (who needs podcasts at this time of year!?), and you can sense the imminent avalanche of zucchini presaged by countless neon blossoms in the summer squash patch. 

Spring-sown cover crops are head high - so tall and tangled that I can only advance the tractor at a creep as I flail mow, returning all that biomass back to the soil. The oats, flowering vetch, and red clover that I seeded in this field a few months ago are now served up as a feast for all the soil microorganisms below ground, which are the tiny, microscopic engines of our enterprise.

They are to thank for the rich soil organic matter that is underwriting the historic strawberry crop we're experiencing this year. Yesterday while we picked for CSA and our other accounts, we were pulling upwards of 9 flats from every row (3 to 4 is considered a good yield)! The plants are so loaded they look more like broody hens sitting on clutches of shiny, red eggs. If you want to special order strawberries by the flat, I am starting to put names on my list. I can't promise when we'll have them for you, but will contact folks as they become available. Email us your name, pickup location, phone number (ideally a number I can text), and the quantity of flats you'd like. Flats are comprised of 12 dry pints and are $50 each, delivered to your CSA pickup site. In the meantime, you can order them through our farmstand by the pint or full flat.

The cover crops we sow also provide important habitat for all kinds of other creatures on the farm, this one being my all-time favorite...

We've seen an amazing number of baby tree frogs all over the farm this year, spread out across cover-cropped fields as well as fields sown to cash crops. Every time I encounter one it's sheer delight and I stop everything t0 move them out of harm's way. And I'll admit, I talk to them. I like to tell them how glad I am that they're here. They tend to burrow into the head lettuce, which is my realm on Tuesday and Friday harvest mornings, so there's been a lot of me out in the field talking to the romaine this past month. There's a slim chance that one could hide deep in a head of lettuce, get crated and trucked to the barn, run through the wash tub, packed into a CSA tote, and end up in your kitchen - in which case please treat it well or return it to us! Frogs are extremely sensitive to their environment and many species have been driven to the brink of extinction by human impact: toxic chemicals in their waterways, habitat destruction, pollution from all sides. The fact that the farm seems to be serving as a little safe haven for them makes me deeply happy.

And speaking of lettuce, some of the varieties are truly enormous this week. I harvested the largest heads of greenleaf ever to come out of the field yesterday. This has been ideal lettuce growing weather the past couple weeks, so hopefully you can make it an ideal salad-eating week in your home.

Have a great week!

Newsletter: 

Week 5 of the Valley Flora CSA

  • Arugula
  • Broccoli
  • Carrots
  • Portuguese Kale
  • Lettuce
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Strawberries

On Rotation:

  • Cilantro
  • Basil
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini

Those Aren't Collards! It's Portuguese Kale!

The GIANT elephant-ear sized bunch of greens in your share this week is a new-to-us kale variety. It goes by many names: Portuguese kale, Tronchuda Beira, Bragganza Cabbage, or sea kale. I've been curious about this unusual variety for awhile and thought it might be a good late-summer substitute for collard greens, which always fizzle out for us after their initial flush. It's the basis of the unofficial national dish of Portugal, Caldo Verde, a simple soup that is served all over the country. It can also be prepared any way you would use kale or collards, plus the thick white stem can be peeled and eaten raw - similar to broccoli stalks. This variety has been around for a long time but isn't something you'd ever find in a grocery store nowadays. 

The growth on these huge plants has been incredible this spring, outpacing any of our other kale varieties in the field. As they've matured they've started to resemble loose heads of cabbage, which - according to our friend Maurice Fuld of 1918 gardening fame (above) - is another way you can harvest them (log the whole plant instead of bunching leaves). But contrary to what Maurice says, ours are not going to be a valuable winter crop because we noticed yesterday that they are already starting to bolt. It's possible that the long days of solstice have triggered the plants, which would argue for sowing it with our late season kales instead (planted in mid-July for fall/winter production instead of late March for spring/summer production). The problem with that is that the seed catalogues don't describe it as very winter hardy, so alas, this might be a once-and-never-again variety that graces the fields of Valley Flora. We opt for kale varieties that will produce for a full season - and into the winter - in order to maximize the production we get from a single bed. Suffice to say, you should make the most of this one-night-stand with handsome Tronchuda and whip up some Caldo Verde this week.

Even if Portuguese Kale ends up in the "failed" column, experiments and variety trials like this are the spice of life on the farm. We're ever-curious about vegetable varieties and are passionte about trying new things. Many of these experiments end like this one, but every now and then we stumble upon a new variety that becomes a beloved mainstay of our crop plan. "Glow" peppers, "Traviata" eggplant, ALL of the lettuce varieties we grow, our sweet corn, every individual component in Abby's Greens, Bets's tomatoes, our winter squash line-up, our potato varieties, all the different onions we grow - each and every one of these crops is being grown on the farm because it was a winner in one of our on-farm trials over the past 14 years. We are selecting for many different important attributes: we want varieties that grow vigorously and are relatively trouble-free (resistant to pests and diseases) in our temperate marine climate; that have excellent flavor; that are beautiful; that yield well; that ripen in time in our cooler growing season; that are efficient to harvest; that add diversity to our existing produce line-up; and in the case of potatoes, winter squash and onions, that store well into winter.

The energy that we have put into trials on the farm means that we have fine-tuned our crop plan to be highly specific to our location on earth: our microclimate, our soil, our growing season. That's an invaluable thing when you're trying to make the most of all the effort that goes into farming.

Enjoy this once-ever flirtation with Portuguese kale this week, and savor those "Mokum" carrots and "Seascape" strawberries, which we promise to keep growing until we're dead. :)

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 4 of the Valley Flora CSA!

  • Broccolini
  • Head Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Kohlrabi (Green for Wednesday pickups, Purple for Saturday)
  • Hakurei Turnips

On Rotation:

  • Braising Mix
  • Baby Arugula
  • Chard
  • Kale
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini

Strawberry U-Pick Opens Today! 

It's opening day in the u-pick! We've never seen it quite like this before: loads of red fruit, happy vigorous plants, and the picking is easy. Over half of the strawberry patch is set aside for the public this morning - far more beds than we usually start the season with. All to say, come get some berries! We'll be open from 11:30 to 2:30, or until the patch gets picked out - whichever comes first - every Wednesday and Saturday through September. Be sure to bring boxes/bowls to take your berries home in. We have buckets to pick into, or you can pick directly into your own containers - just be sure to stop at the strawberry shack on your way out to get a tare weight on your containers or to grab buckets from Sarah and Mitchell, our u-pick managers. For more info about the upick, go to our website. Have fun!

Fields of Green (and Red)

It seems that summer truly arrived with the solstice! The kids swam in the creek yesterday, and the rest of us actually broke a sweat in the field! We finally started irrigating this week - almost three months later than last year (which was a dreadful, scary year for water) - and I'm pretty sure if any of us stood still for long enough (never going to happen) we'd see the plants doubling in size before our eyes. The days are long, the soil moisture is perfect, and the sun is shining. It's a good feeling after a cold, wet spring and a halting start to the season.

The potato patch is definitely on an exponential growth curve right now and it's all that the horses and I can do to keep up with the cultivating and hilling.

Abby is swimming in a rainbow sea of salad greens, milking every last ounce out of these long days (and even borrowing a few hours at night) to get those beautiful bagged baby greens into your Harvest Basket each week, plus all the Salad Shares. Some folks will see arugula in their share this week; others a lively braising mix of mustards and baby kales.

And just about every crop is bouncing ahead right now, at last: our first sugar snap peas came off the vine on Monday, the onion field is looking juicy, and the broccolini is yielding like never before. We've been carefully nursing our more sensitive crops along through this cool, wet weather - cucumbers, melons, winter squash - and it's a relief to know they're getting the heat and sun they need now. 

Have a great first week of SUMMER!

Newsletter: 

Week 3 of the Valley Flora CSA!

  • Collard Greens - a wonderful, toothsome green famous in Southern cuisine. Great steamed or sauteed (no need to cook for hours, like a lot of traditional recipes call for - a light steam is all it takes!)
  • Purple Kohlrabi - peel, cut into sticks and enjoy with your favorite dip!
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Head Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Cilantro

On Rotation:

  • Arugula
  • Mizuna
  • Radishes
  • Hakurei Turnips
  • Broccoli
  • Broccolini

A few new signature spring crops are making their way into the Harvest Basket this week: kohlrabi, bunch carrots, and broccoli/broccolini! Our field of spring Brassicas (kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli, etc) has loved this cool, wet spring - hence the collard greens the size of elephant ears! We were thrilled to get our first harvest of true heading broccoli this week, which marks the beginning of our summer broccoli season. Broccoli is one of the crops that we grow successionally, meaning we plant a new bed every week for the first couple months of spring to ensure a steady supply for the first half of summer. We grow many other crops successionally, namely head lettuce (which we plant every week from late March until October), cilantro, carrots, beets, sweet corn and fennel. This is in contrast to storage crops that we plant all at once for a single mass harvest, like onions, winter squash and potatoes.

Unlike the Brassica field, the strawberry patch did not love the two inches of rain that fell over the weekend. We would have had a record-breaking harvest of huge berries yesterday were it not for all the rotten fruit that ended up in the compost. We did our very best to toss out any "seconds" while we picked and sorted flats yesterday, but the warm, wet weekend caused a lot of insidious rot. If you encounter a hidden rot spot under the green cap, please forgive! The strawberry sorting was arduous yesterday and some might have snuck past us. We're looking forward to more sun and happier strawberries!

With less rain in the forecast, we plan to open our Strawberry U-Pick next Wednesday, June 22nd! The u-pick will open at 11:30 am and will be open until 2:30, or until the patch is picked out, whichever happens first. Our experience in years' past is that the patch gets picked out quickly during the first part of our season (some days in under an hour, depending on the crowd). That means if you are traveling a distance to get to us, you want to arrive when we open. Our apologies that we can't guarantee a specific range of open hours. The crowds mellow out by August, if you're looking for a more leisurely experience and want to pick a large quantity of berries. All of the details about the u-pick are here.

Enjoy the new rainbow of colors in your Harvest Basket this week!

Newsletter: 

Week 2 of the Valley Flora CSA!

  • Baby Arugula
  • Head Lettuce
  • Radish Microgreens
  • Bunched Mustard Greens - the colorful, frilly bunch of red, green and variegated mustards - great steamed, sauteed, or chopped into salad for some extra spice!
  • Pac Choi - the dark green plant with spoon-shaped leaves and white ribs. Stir fry time!

On Rotation (this means that some pickup locations will receive it this week, others in a future week):

  • Broccolini - our sweetest and most tender baby broccoli of the year, a special June treat! (Once during pickup at the farm, a 9 year old kiddo of a CSA member was overheard saying,"Valley Flora broccolini is better than steak!" That makes a farmer feel pretty good.)
  • Zucchini
  • Purple Radishes (Saturday totes)
  • Hakurei Turnips (Wednesday totes) -  smooth, round, tender, white Japanese salad turnips with buttery-sweet flavor. Hakurei turnip are the gold standard for fresh-eating salad turnips, asked for by name by chefs. I like them best raw, sliced into salads or eaten whole like mini apples. You can also find plenty of recipes online for cooking/glazing them, but I rarely turn on the heat. Raw is hard to beat.
  • Strawberries

Strawberry Fever

The picture above doesn't lie: there is indeed a pint of strawberries in the Wednesday Harvest Baskets this week (fingers crossed we have enough fruit to put into our Saturday Harvest Baskets as well, which is why they are listed as "on rotation"). Our strawberry season has been off to a halting start because of all the rain. The storm that blew through over the weekend took a toll on the berry patch, but luckily we were still able to eek out enough flats to get some berries into our Wednesday CSA totes (we also had to toss a lot of damaged fruit into the compost pile). Strawberries like sun - the soft, fragile fruit doesn't hold up well in the rain - so every June squall equals another delay to our u-pick season. That said, the  strawberry patch is poised to explode with an abundance of huge, red, ripe fruit - there are tons of blossoms on the plants and lots of developing green berries. We have more rain coming this weekend so it might be another week or two before we hit full stride, but that moment is near. We are tentatively hoping to open the u-pick on Saturday, June 18th, but no promises! I hesitate to even say that out loud, knowing full well that there could be people lined up at the farm gate that Saturday, whether we're open or not. SO: Keep an eye on our website for u-pick updates and we will certainly let you know as soon as the berry patch is ready!

That said, here's some useful information that should help quell any subconscious anxiety you're feeling about getting enough strawberries in your belly and freezer this season:

We grow a strawberry called "Seascape." It's a day neutral variety, which means it's triggered by temperature to make fruit (in contrast to June-bearing varieties, which are triggered by day length). The plants will set fruit so long as the temps are between 40 and 90 degrees, no matter what month it is, which means they tend to produce reliably for us from June through September. All to say, we have strawberries ALL SUMMER not just in June (and in fact June tends to be the most volatile month given the higher chance for rain). We try to put a pint of berries in the Harvest Basket every week once the patch is up to full production, at least until September. And our u-pick, once it opens, will be open every Wednesday and Saturday through September. Given that strawberry fever tends to rage hottest in June and July, we always suggest that folks wait until August to come do their big freezer-filling, jam-making pick. Competition for ripe berries can be intense at the start of the season, and often the patch gets picked out within an hour of opening. But the fruit actually gets sweeter as the summer goes on, which means August berries are where it's at for jam, smoothies, fresh-eating, anything.

That said, there's no denying the thrill of picking the first big, red berries of the season and making a deep dish of strawberry rhubarb crisp (we enjoyed one of those last weekend, thanks to all the rain-damaged seconds we've been hauling out of the field). Just know that the Valley Flora strawberry season is long and abundant and there is enough for everyone so long as you spread your u-picking out over the whole summer. Abundance, not scarcity. It's so much better to live in that paradigm.

Enjoy your produce this week. We're happy to see more crops coming on in the field, even in spite of the cool weather.

Newsletter: 

Valley Flora Summer CSA Kicks Off Today!

  • SunOrange Cherry Tomato Plant (plant this, don't eat this!). I sent out an email earlier this morning to all 2022 CSA members with planting and care info. Be sure to grab one plant per Harvest Basket from the yellow bins at your pickup site this week.
  • Artichokes - a Valley Flora family heirloom that's been in cultivation in our family gardens and farm fields for 50+ years
  • Spring Onions - planted last October and overwintered for early June harvest
  • Zucchini - harvested out of a brave little bed in one of our field tunnels that was planted in early March
  • Pea Shoots - a nice hefty bag of shoots, grown in our greenhouse 
  • Kale - Wednesday locations are getting Red Ursa (a tender, pretty heirloom that I've been loyal to for 20+ years); Saturday locations, variety TBD
  • Lettuce - varieties vary by location each week. We do our best to rotate through the five or six different varieties we plant so that you can experience a diversity of lettuce types throughout the season (leaf, butter, romaine, oak, summer crisp, little gem).
  • Cilantro - a petite little bunch this week, a miracle that it grew through the cold April/May weather we had!

Welcome to the 2022 Valley Flora CSA Season! 

 It's official, the Valley Flora van is on the road as of this morning to bring you the first CSA delivery of the year! Today will be the first pickup for Coos Bay members and Farm members, and Bandon and Port Orford folks will get their first delivery this Saturday. As of this week we have made some important updates to our pick-up protocol and changed some details specific to each pickup location. PLEASE visit our website and read up (even if you are a returning member): https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/valley-flora-pick-locations. This webpage has a lot of important info about WHEN to pick up, WHERE to pick up, HOW to pick up, and what do do if you MISS your pick up. 

Also, please share the link with anyone who might be picking up on your behalf this season so they know the drill! 

There will be a CSA check-off sheet at each pickup site, which lists everyone who's getting a Harvest Basket as well as everyone who is getting a Salad Share (and which size Salad Share, half or full pound). Please check yourself off on this list each week. For this first week the list is a paper print-out, but within a couple weeks it will be laminated so we can wipe it clean and reuse it all season.

If you are getting a Harvest Basket, you can help us out greatly by keeping your pickup site tidy. Here's an example of how empty bins and lids should be stacked:

Throughout the season things will go smoothly if everyone takes the time to read labels and signage, and be diligent about taking the correct items. Thanks so much for helping our self-serve CSA system work!

Our season is off to a slightly slower start due to the cold, wet spring we've had. We're grateful that the world around us is green and the creek is running strong, and even if some crops are delayed everything in the field is looking vital. Rest assured the food will be ample and you can expect to see more and more produce in your tote as summer advances.

We've been working double time to get caught up on transplanting and yesterday put a third of an acre of winter squash in the ground after we packed CSA totes. I think the crew broke our winter squash speed record, bravo! We're rapid-fire planting lots of other outdoor crops that need warmer weather to thrive: peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes. We call this the "pop-up" farm week, when a lot of acreage goes from bare ground to planted in the blink of an eye. Finally, our propagation greenhouse empties out and the field fills up and our focus shifts predominantly to outdoor fieldwork. We don't have a mechanical transplanter on the farm, so every single transplant goes in the ground with a trowel, by hand. This week  that equals 2,085 winter squash plants, 150 pickling cucumbers, 660 brussels sprouts, 880 sweet corn, 216 fennel starts, 1000 pepper plants, 450 lettuce starts, plus a few other things. There's a week in April when we plant 19,280 onion, leek and shallot starts in a week (you feel that in your hamstrings the next day). All to say, we have a pretty intimate relationship with every single plant on the farm, from seed to harvest. We're excited to share all that with you in the coming months.

Thanks to all of our 2022 CSA members for being part of the next 28 weeks, when you'll experience the full arc of local, seasonal eating. We're glad to have you with us!

Cheers, Zoë and the VF Team

Newsletter: 

The Last Week of Winter CSA!

  • Artichokes
  • Rainbow Chard
  • Sunflower/Pea Shoot Medley
  • Radishes
  • Spinach/Lettuce Mix
  • Zucchini
  • Head Lettuce
  • Thyme
  • Favas - Ugly, but tender and delicious! These were seeded last October - an experiment to see if we could get early favas. It was a sorta-success. The plants took a beating in some of the extra-cold winter weather we had, so yields were much lower than our summer-harvested favas. They also developed an ugly rust on the outer pod, but inside you'll find pristine beans, ready for peeling!
  • Tetsu Winter Squash - (had to give you something "wintry" for this final week of the winter CSA, and man, do those squash know how to store well!)

Wahoo! We pulled off another winter season! It always feels a little bit like there's a magic hat in the winter - some proverbial shiny black top-hat that we keep reaching into to fill all those CSA totes and farmstand orders and wholesale requests. It feels like magic because most weeks I can't imagine how we're going to muster all the produce we need, and yet somehow it materializes each time. Thanks to all of our customers for supporting us through the "winter" months of the calendar. It's a fun challenge to figure out how to make our winter offerings more diverse and bountiful each year.

We're now gearing up for the official launch of our "summer" season, which begins the week of May 30th. That will be the first week of our main season CSA, and the point when we shift to twice/week CSA deliveries, farmstand, and wholesale sales. The opening of our Saturday farmstand is still TBD, depending on when the strawberries kick into high gear for u-pick. The plants look more vigorous than ever and are covered in blossoms and green fruit, so hopefully the sunny forecast turns that into a sweet harvest soon! No matter what, count on weekly Wednesday farmstands starting June 1st. Saturday farmstand should start soon after. We'll keep you posted!

In anticipation of our looming, all-consuming summer season, most of our production crew took a trip over to the Rogue River last weekend for a team retreat, and to spend a little time together on the river in the sunshine. We camped out, did 25 miles of whitewater paddling on Saturday and Sunday, saw two bald eagles, osprey, a bazillion herons, fuzzy baby ducks and geese, and a few stoic turtles. It was a great escape for all of us, to be unplugged and on the river, and oh! the feeling of sun on our skin!!! 

Meanwhile, back at home, my old draft horse, Maude, was colicking. I was completely out of cell range and had no idea that a crisis was unfolding on the farm. Lucky for all of us our dear friends and CSA members, Mike Simpson and Sondra Aguirre (of Aguirre Farms, our egg lady!), saved the day. They managed to get my old mare up after hours of trying to heave her 1-ton frame to standing, gave her a big dose of Banamine, and got her walking. Mike checked up on her every few hours through the night and by Sunday morning he was as sleep-deprived as they come but Maude had pulled through. I can't tell you the wave of gratitude that washed over me when I got the full story on Sunday evening, having lost two horses to colic in my lifetime. It was profoundly apparent in that moment that our "team" includes so many people beyond our core crew, and how it really takes a village to feed a community. Mike and Sondra, thank you!

Many thanks again to all of you who have supported us through the winter, and here's hoping for a great 2022 summer season (feeling grateful for the sunny forecast! We could use a little drying out in the field, fo sho!).

 

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 9 from Valley Flora!

  • Cauliflower
  • Cabbage
  • Head Lettuce
  • Pea Shoots
  • Yellow Onions
  • Purple Moon Potatoes
  • Radishes
  • Spring Onions
  • Curly Parsley
  • Yukina Savoy Pac Choi
  • Zucchini
  • Spring Raab

It always feels silly to be referring to it as the "Winter CSA" at this point in the season, when the world is bursting with flowers and dripping with springtime. Nevertheless, this tote pays homage to the last of winter (as well as spring: radishes! pea shoots! pac choi! head lettuce! AND also the first of summer: zucchini and fresh onions!).

But back to winter. This is the last of our storage potatoes and it shows: they are far from picture-perfect, but still a victory to have them in May. It's also the last of the yellow storage onions, which have blown our minds this year with how well they have kept in our dry room. We trialed a new variety called "Talon" last year, which we are assuming is the big onion you're receiving this week - but it's hard to know for sure because our yellow storage varieties got mixed up during harvest (hah! the story of our lives whenever we try to do some scientific experimentation on the farm). Whatever it's called, it's a winner (and yes, we are repeating our trail again this season in hopes that we can keep 'em all straight this time when we harvest come August)! Also in the share: the last of the overwintered cauliflower - some of them VERY LARGE - and spring raab from our overwintering cabbage patch.

Thank you, Winter, for all the ever-surprising abundance, but I also just gotta say how fun it is to be putting zucchini in your totes right now. Ask me in a couple months what I think about zucchini and I'll tell you something very different, but right now they are magnetic - perhaps because they are the first "fruit" we've harvested in many months of handling roots and cabbages and leafy things. They're coming out of one of our unheated field tunnels, which has been growing greens and spinach for you all winter. As soon as one of those beds frees up in early March, we plug zucchini transplants in, tuck them in with row cover to keep their world a little warmer, and by mid-April we start to see fruit (miraculous in my opinion, given how cold it's been). 

A big thank you to the 85+ folks who showed up on Sunday for our Mayday farm tour! What an amazing collection of fantastic people, curious about the farm and excited to see where their food comes from. It was a delight to show you all around.

If you were at the tour and lost a ring, please contact us! We would love to return it to its owner.

Happy May to everyone! Signing off now and heading for the field - we've got a big, busy day ahead of us as we scurry like crazy before the next three inches of rain arrives. Yikes!

Newsletter: 

Mayday Farm Tour at Valley Flora this Sunday!

Come one, come all, to a tour of the farm this Sunday at 2pm!

  • This will be a walking tour inspired by the many requests we have gotten from our CSA members and customers, but everyone is welcome. Bring your kids, leave your pets at home :). Bring a water bottle and proper raingear or sungear. The forecast is looking hopeful for some sun!
  • Meet at 2 pm at the summer farmstand parking area at Valley Flora, just after crossing the Floras Creek Bridge (directions here).
  • The tour will last a couple/few hours and take folks through each aspect of the farm, from propagation to field production to packout to soil management to draft horses and more!
  • The tour will coincide with a pop-up Langlois Artisan Market, which is happening on Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1st from 10-3 at the Langlois Cheese Factory. Come check out the great vendors at the market and then come up to the farm for a Sunday afternoon tour! The tour will start slightly after 2 pm.

Here are some of the many reasons you should come:

Hope to see you on Sunday!!!

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 8 from Valley Flora!

  • Pink Radishes
  • Bunched Spinach
  • Spring Lettuce Mix
  • Shallots
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli
  • Beets
  • Sunflower & Pea Shoot Mix
  • Redleaf Lettuce
  • Spring Raab
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Cebollitas

Good Week for Grundens! 

Anyone else loving this weather!? My native Oregonian synapses are firing in delight as all this precip falls from the sky and bulks up the Cascade snowpack. It also allows me to pretend - temporarily - that May madness is not right around the corner, looming large with the promise of our inevitable return to a frenetic, frenzied farm pace. As much as I relish all the rain, we were grateful for the shelter of our field tunnels this week, where we spent lots of hours harvesting bunch carrots, spinach, head lettuce, and a trial bed of cut lettuce (the bagged mix in your share this week, "lettuce" know what you think!). Grateful, too, for the head-to-toe raingear that gives us impermeable superpowers when we do have to slosh through the downpour. 

Even though I could try to convince myself it's still winter, the artichokes don't lie. I cut our first small harvest yesterday, which bodes well for seeing them in your CSA share the week of May 2nd. And somehow, despite the hail and the wind and the pouring rain and the cold nights, our newly-planted seedlings are putting on good growth and looking vital. Plants are amazing. (I can't tell you how many times a week I say that out loud. Respect, yo, to the plant kingdom!)

And to you, amazing people: I hope those vital plants are helping you feel like a vital human. We homo sapiens sure wouldn't be here on this planet without them. Thanks chlorophyll!

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 7 from Valley Flora!

  • Frozen Strawberries - be sure to grab one bag per CSA share from the blue coolers at your pickup site today!
  • Rainbow Chard
  • Bunched Spinach
  • Nicola Potatoes
  • Yellow Onions
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli
  • Spring Raab
  • Micro Mix
  • Cebollitas - chive-like baby onion tops

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower

Upcoming Farm Tours and Events!!!

Mark your calendars, we have TWO free spring farm tours planned AND a super-fun Improv Workshop coming to Langlois!

Monday, April 11th, 10 am - Valley Flora Farm Tour in partnership with Coquille Valley Seed Community and Coos Head Food Co-Op

  • This will be a walking tour for members of the Coquille Valley Seed Community and the general public. Everyone is welcome, adults and children alike, but please leave your pets at home.
  • Meet at 10 am at the summer farmstand parking area at Valley Flora, just after crossing the Floras Creek Bridge (directions here).
  • Bring raingear/umbrellas and rubber boots/waterproof hiking shoes (chance of rain!).
  • The tour will last a couple hours and take folks through each aspect of the farm, from propagation to field production to packout to soil management to draft horses and more!

Sunday, May 1st, 2 pm - Valley Flora Farm Tour for CSA Members, Customers, and the General Public

  • This will be a walking tour inspired by the many requests we have gotten from our CSA members and customers, but everyone is welcome. Kid friendly, but please leave your pets at home. Bring a water bottle and proper raingear or sungear :)
  • Meet at 2 pm at the summer farmstand parking area at Valley Flora, just after crossing the Floras Creek Bridge (directions here).
  • The tour will last a couple hours and take folks through each aspect of the farm, from propagation to field production to packout to soil management to draft horses and more!
  • The tour will coincide with a pop-up Langlois Artisan Market, which is happening on Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1st from 10-3 at the Langlois Cheese Factory. Come check out the great vendors at the market and then come up to the farm for a Sunday afternoon tour!

April 23 & 24 - Improv Weekend Retreat at the Langlois Cheese Factory for anyone and everyone!

  • We are so lucky to have David Koff, a brilliant improviser and improv teacher/facilitator, coming to Langlois to offer a weekend workshop to our community! 
  • What's this have to do with the farm? Well, during COVID yours truly has been taking virtual improv classes with David and have found it to be a) FUN! b) a fantastic tool for becoming a better parent/partner/boss/human being, and c) a way to bring more playfulness into every aspect of life. For me, taking improv classes is not about the stage or performance, it's about deepening my listening skills and becoming hyper-present with the people and moments in my life. And usually there's a fair bit of humor mixed in....never a bad thing. 
  • This workshop is for anyone - no prior improv experience required. If you're someone who interacts with other human beings you will get something valuable and possibly life-changing from this workshop, I promise.
  • Read more about the workshop and sign up HERE! Space is limited.

Hope to see some of you at the farm tours and/or the workshop!

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 6 from Valley Flora!

  • Red Beets
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli
  • Green Cabbage
  • Spinach!
  • Micro Mix Medley - mesclun, radish, peas, sunflower shoots
  • Carrots
  • Spring Raab
  • Kale Medley
  • Shallots

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower

Happy Spring!

This is always that awkward moment in the Winter CSA season when I feel like I need to change the name and start calling it the "Spring CSA." Because spring it is! Yesterday was a Richard Scary storybok "Day on the Farm." It started with morning harvest and CSA packout, but then we launched full steam into fieldwork with the sun shining warmly and everyone stripped to shirtsleeves. Mowers were mowing, weedeaters were weedeating, kids were frolicking (spring break!), frogs were hopping, bees were buzzing, horses were grazing, seeds were germinating, plants were growing, plum trees were blooming, soil was warming - all in one big, loud, life-affirming hallelujah! 

Next week is our first big outdoor planting, and the kickoff to weekly field planting from now until October. The greenhouse is full of perky little transplants, bravely hardening off for their big transition to the great outdoors next week. The weather is cooperating, with enough dry weather this week to get ten tons of calcium and micronutrients spread across the farm, and then work up the beds before the weekend rain. That will leave us trowel-ready for our marathon transplanting next week, rain or shine. I love it when it works out. Of course, superstitiously, I'd better not count my chickens before they hatch. Any number of things could break on the tractor, or shift in the forecast between now and Sunday. :)

Enjoy that spinach! Such a treat to have spinach salad for dinner last night!

Cheers,

Zoë

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 5 from Valley Flora!

  • Purple Cabbage
  • Baby Bunch Carrots - our first harvest from the winter greenhouses!
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli/Spring Raab Mix
  • Cauliflower
  • Bunched Winter Greens - a mix of mizuna, mustards and tatsoi
  • Mini Daikon Radish
  • Shallots
  • Purple Moon Potatoes
  • Russian Kale
  • Micro Mix: The 24 degree temps two weeks ago burned our baby pea shoots in the greenhouse, so yields were half as much as planned. Fortunately we had spare radish and mesclun micro so were able to pack pea shoots for Farm members and radish/mesclun for our Bandon members.

The Tease of Spring

As we head towards the vernal equinox, the roar of the peepers in the wetland behind the horse barn is cacophonous. I wonder: how do my big ponies get a wink of shut-eye amidst that deafening chorus? It's such a marker of the season, and I love it, despite the need for earplugs when I'm doing the evening chores. Other signs, too: daffodils; blossoms on the wild plum trees; lambs and calves bouncing up on the hill; the sweet, heady smell of favas in bloom and the perfume of winter daphne by my mom's front door. But what a tease: I was stripped to a t-shirt and sweating on Monday while harvesting in the greenhouse, but on Tuesday morning my feet were numb in my Xtratufs, the chill penetrating and insistent.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture seasonal forecast is calling for a colder and wetter-than-normal March-April, and a hotter and drier May. That may spell some spring challenges for us if we can't get into the field and hit our usual planting dates in the next two months. The weather always dictates our movements on the farm to some degree, but never quite so much as this time of year. I am yoked to climate models like a tick on a dog for the next three months, pretty much unable to make plans beyond the 10-day forecast. If I leave town and miss that critical week of dry weather when I could have worked up ground and gotten things planted, so much for early broccoli or a steady supply of lettuce. In all these years of farming we've certainly had all kinds of Springs - and all kinds of Spring setbacks - but somehow it always seems to work out, so long as I stay near the homestead and am ready to jump when an opportunity presents itself. So here I be.

As for today, the drizzle is perfect: there's a mountain on my desk that I need to get through and this is just the kind of day for it (all to say, if you sent your CSA payment last week and haven't gotten an email confirmation from us yet, it's because it's been too sunny!). :)

Enjoy the dynamism of early spring and keep an eye out for rainbows!

 

 

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 4 from Valley Flora!

  • Red Beets - our sweetest storage beet
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli - starting to send up shoots in the field, more to come!
  • Green Savoy-ish Cabbage - an overwintering variety that straddles the line between crinkly savoy and smooth green
  • Winter Greens Mix - a full pound of mixed greens from our greenhouse
  • Micro Mix - heavy on the radish micro, combined with our micro mesclun mix (micro mizuna, broccoli, arugula, kale)
  • Yellow Onions
  • Spring Raab
  • Tetsukabotu Winter Squash - our best-keeping winter squash, a Hubbard type
  • Collard Greens - tender new growth from our overwintered planting

Brrrrrrr!

Twenty-four degrees here this morning! I guess winter isn't over after all (and I'm outspokenly glad for that: bring on the howling wind and rain and give us a solid mountain snowpack to help see our state through this next summer)! We did our best to hedge against frozen pipes and frost-nuked plants yesterday, so fingers crossed all is well as things slowly thaw out today. 

This week marks the official kick-off of our weekly spring greenhouse seedings for outdoor plantings, which start in earnest in late March for us. Weather permitting, we always gamble on some earlier plantings (for instance, I seeded snap peas, carrots, beets and spinach outside two weeks ago during that spooky dry spell, knowing full well that they might perish in inclement weather...but always worth a try!). This week, however, the greenhouse starts to swell with trays of lettuce, kale, chard, fennel, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi and lots of other early crops that we transplant outside starting in late March. From that point on, we're transplanting into the field every single week of the season through October. 

That's not to say the greenhouse has been empty up to this point. Two weeks ago we seeded all our Allia - onions, shallots, leeks - which is the largest seeding of the year for us. They are slowly, bravely, germinating. We've got trays of lettuce ready for transplanting into our field greenhouses and early zucchini seedlings that are tucked carefully under row cover staying warm on the heat table until this cold snap passes. And every week we're seeding trays of peas, radish, and mesclun for micro and shoot production. Our propagation greenhouse is the epicenter of life in early spring, and one of my favorite places on the farm.

We made a major, long-desired change this year by switching from using bagged potting mix to buying bulk totes of a custom mix made specifically for us by a soil company in Canby. Due to supply chain issues, I couldn't source my usual brand through B&B in Langlois, and the few bags that were available were 3 times more expensive than usual. I was scrambling to figure out an alternative with our spring seeding season fast approaching when some friends who own a large wholesale nursery suggested Philips Soil Company. I worked with the soil guru at Philips to develop a recipe that would hopefully meet our needs and nervously placed an order for 10 cubic yards. Why nervous? I've had bad - even catastrophic - results when I've experimented with other potting soils in the past and was concerned we might see similar problems with the new mix. But without any obvious alternatives - and lured by the fact that I could buy it in bulk totes, and the fact that Philips has a good reputation with lots of growers - I took a leap of faith. The next hurdle was how the heck to unload four 1500-pound pallets off the back of the freight truck with no forklift. With the help of a lift gate, a pallet jack, some sheets of plywood, and a lot of strategizing, the freight driver and I managed to channel our inner oxen and get them off the truck and under cover - just barely. Then there was a breathless, anxious couple of weeks while we waited to see how our newly-sowed seeds would perform in the new growth medium. So far I am cautiously optimistic and our seedlings seem to be popping like they should. Fingers crossed that this is a new long-term solution t0 my plastic potting soil bag guilt (we used to buy 3 pallets of bagged potting soil which equalled 120 plastic bags into the landfill each year. It burned a hole in my soul.).

Stay warm these next few days and enjoy your veggies!

Newsletter: 

Valley Flora is Hiring!

Field and Harvest Crew Position Available at Valley Flora

Valley Flora Farm is seeking one to two hard-working, motivated individuals to join our team for the 2022 farm season from April to mid-October, with potential for a longer-term position at the farm. We are a highly-diversified fresh market farm located in Langlois, Oregon that has been selling vegetables, berries, flowers and orchard fruit to local markets on the southern Oregon coast since 1998. We are a multi-generational, women-owned business and we farm using organic practices exclusively. You can learn more about the farm at www.valleyflorafarm.com.

Job Description:

New members of our team will be an integral part of our farm operation and will be key players in the following:

  • Weekly harvests for our 125-member CSA, farmstand, and our restaurant and store (direct sale) accounts;
  • Wash, processing and packout of produce for CSA, farmstand and direct sale orders;
  • Weekly fieldwork, including, but not limited to: transplanting, trellising, mowing, weed control, pest management, irrigation and plant care.
  • Delivery of produce to our various direct sale customers and CSA pickup sites.
  • Responsibilities might also include: assisting with propagation and greenhouse work; assisting with our u-pick and/or farmstand.

Our farm operates with a very lean, efficient crew so a successful applicant will:

  • Have a keen awareness of efficiency in their work, i.e. know how to hustle & be good at working under time pressure.
  • Have a positive attitude, even when the going gets tough. Maintain a good outlook under occasionally uncomfortable working conditions and long hours, and enjoy working outside in heat, cold, rain, mud, and dust. A sense of humor helps!
  • Be constantly striving to achieve quality, consistency and speed in their work.
  • Have a history of doing physical work/manual labor, ideally with experience on a farm. Be in strong physical condition and able to repeatedly squat, bend, lift and carry 40-50 pounds.
  • Avoid drama in the workplace and resolve conflict using effective, nonviolent communication in a mature manner.
  • Openly receive constructive criticism and feedback on the job and make changes to work habits accordingly.
  • Listen well to instructions and carry out tasks as directed.
  • Show creative problem solving skills
  • Be organized, reliable, honest and conscientious.

Hours: Average 30-40 hours/week, 4-5 days/week, depending on seasonal work flow.

Compensation: Starting wage $12.50/hr to $14/hr, DOE, with opportunities for performance-based raises. All employees receive a weekly share of farm produce throughout the season.

To Apply: Send a cover letter explaining your interest in working for Valley Flora, describing any prior relevant work experience you have and the skill set you would bring to this job. Include a current resume and 3 work-related references. Please email your application to valleyflora@valleyflorafarm.com by February 20th, 2022. We look forward to hearing from you!

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 3 from Valley Flora!

  • Goldrush Apples - our favorite winter apple! Sweet, tart, crunchy and a great keeper in the fridge!
  • Mixed Winter Greens 
  • Bunched Asian Greens
  • Pea Shoots
  • Cauliflower - the earliest maturing variety in our overwintered cauliflower line-up
  • Yellow Potatoes
  • Leeks
  • Kale Raab - the first harvest of the spring raab from our lacinato varieties
  • Daikon Radish
  • Celery Hearts
  • Autumn Frost Winter Squash

Lots of leafy things this week: Adolescent greens in a bag, grown-up greens in a bunch, leafy raab from our lacinato kale, the last of the overwintered celery, and a generous pile of pea shoots from the greenhouse! We often hear from our winter members that greens are the thing they crave most this time of year, and we know the feeling! Can't get enough of 'em! We were also delighted to harvest the first of our winter cauliflower this week, a remarkable variety called Medaillion that makes lovely heads at a time when you least expect it. Many thanks to Osborne Seed for carrying this variety, and many of the other varieties that we rely on through the winter months (radicchio, purple sprouting broccoli, cabbages, and more).

Have a great week, and Happy Valentine's day to all (how 'bout slicing up those pretty daikons, cutting them into little hearts, and serving them atop a bed of baby pea shoots with some homemade dressing?!). Fancy!

 

Newsletter: 

Week 2 of Winter CSA!

  • Mixed kale
  • Carrots (they are juice grade again; this is our final harvest)
  • Savoy cabbage
  • Rossa di Milano Onions
  • Beets
  • Mini Daikon Mix
  • Radish Microgreens
  • Bunched "Wild" Arugula
  • Bunched Mustard Greens
  • Spaghetti Squash
  • Celeriac

Winter Foraging on the Farm, and an Italian Reverie...

One of the things I like about the Winter CSA is that it affords us the opportunity to make the most of a plant's life cycle. Kale for instance: all season long we harvest kale for its leafy greens, but as the days stretch longer some varieties will start to bolt, sending up delicious tender shoots of spring raab (unopened flower buds). Some might call it bolting, but to the Winter CSA it's good eating. Same thing this week with the mustard greens: these were harvested from Abby's 2021 salad greens beds, the late-planted ones that get left to overwinter because there isn't time to get a cover crop seeded in their wake. Normally one of Abby's salad beds is only harvested for baby greens and is in the ground for a short month before getting turned under and reseeded. But a dozen or so winter beds get to grow to full maturity and then bolt, creating essential early nectar for the bees -  and this week, beautiful mustard bunches for the CSA. I feel like an excited dumpster diver when I'm out there bunching Abby's leftover mustards: one farmer's trash becoming another farmer's winter treasure. I get a thrill from the intrinsic efficiency of maximizing the potential of one seed for mulitple uses and meals. 

It was when I was foraging for those mustards in the sublime sunshine of Monday afternoon that I wandered west and came across the arugula: about 50 feet of it planted at the end of each bed, all of it gangly and tall and budding up. I nibbled a finely-lobed leaf and my taste buds lit up. Now THAT tastes like arugula! All at once it was 1989, August, I am nine years old, in Italy with my family for a month. A friend of my mom's did an international house trade and swapped her place in Marin for a villa in Sasso Marconi, a little village outside of Bologna named after the inventor of the radio. It was a sprawling place in semi-disrepair with grapes growing wild and a spooky ruin of a mini-castle built into a limestone cliff out back. With the house came Maria, the old woman who lived nearby who checked in on us daily and brought us things from her garden. In my mind she is missing her top teeth (possibly untrue), she is wearing a sack-like house dress with an apron, and she is sporting thick-soled, brown old lady loafers. She doesn't speak a word of English (our collective Italian isn't much better) and she is utterly delightful.

Except every day she brings us fistfuls of this weedy green and earnestly, urgently, thrusts it at us shouting "Rucola! Rucola!"

And we smile and nod and accept the armload of weeds, faking our way through it over and over every single day. The first morning it was genuine, until we tasted the stuff: Horrible! Bitter! It dawned on us that this was the same plant that the Italians insisted on putting on their pizza, and that we would diligently pick off every time we got a pie, which was often because we were in Italy. What was their obsession with this gross ditch weed?!

After Maria left each morning there would be a new, hushed confab about how in the hell we were going to get ride of this latest batch of rucola: we couldn't put it in the compost, she might see it! We couldn't flush it, the pipes might clog. We couldn't burn it, it was too green. So we took to burying it, or tearing it into pieces small enough to longer be incriminating and then tossed it into the bushes in the backyard. But then a new day would dawn and Maria would be back, proudly foisting rucola into our arms with the loud, insistent "Rucola! Rucola!" As if saying to us, this plant is a part of me, of my people, of my culture, of my country. The most important part. And then we would promptly bury/stomp/dismember it as soon as she left.

That was a great trip, albeit hot and sticky, with an un-ending radio soundtrack of accordian polkas, daily gelato, and shops that sold only pasta (a mind-blowing array of it, including 50 lb bags of dry pasta for dogs, and a super-long, corkscrew spaghetti with a hole down the center that you could suck wine through like a 5' straw). 

We returned home to life on the creek, where it took quite a few years before rucola found us again. When it did it was called "rocket" or "arugula" and it was all the craze in the foodie scene. Everyone had to be seen eating it.

Fast forward a couple more decades, and arugula is very much the foundation of Abby's Greens. Baby arugula. It wasn't until this week though, when I nibbled that mature leaf, that Maria came flooding back into my memory in such vivid detail. I'm not wearing a house dress, I still have my top teeth, and I don't yet own a pair of squishy granny shoes (though they might be a great idea for those long days standing on concrete in the barn), but here I am thrusting a bunch of wire-stemmed arugula at you, imploring earnestly, "Rucola! Rucola!" 

Thank you, Maria. 

(p.s. I suggest dismembering your arugula and then EATING IT: pluck the arugula leaves from the stems for the most refined eating experience. The stems are edible as well, but will be woodier lower down. And I will know, intuitively, if you bury, flush, burn, or stomp your rucola. I will feel it as as deep pain in my soul.)

 

Newsletter: 

Week 1 of Winter CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Parsley
  • Rainbow chard
  • Celery
  • Leeks
  • Chioggia Radicchio
  • Delicata Squash
  • Purple Moon Potatoes
  • Leeks
  • Mixed Mini Daikon Radish
  • Carrots

Happy 2022! We're off to a colorful start with the first harvest of the year (I LOVE those vibrant mini-daikons!). The change in weather was well-timed this week - we were able to whiz through harvest on Monday and Tuesday without our hands turning into useless numb claws. The problem was more to do with overheating than losing feeling in our extremities! A couple of quick notes on your first winter share (aka, the "why some of your food is not as pretty as we wish" disclaimer):

  1. Carrots: you'll notice that most of your carrots have the tips cut off. It's been such a wet fall and winter thus far that our candy carrots are rotting at the tip in the field. Tragic, because they are the best tasting carrots of the year. Rather than withholding carrots from the CSA altogether, we bit the bullet and decided to give you imperfect, juice grade carrots this week. They are still great eating, but don't meet our usual cosmetic standard. We hope you understand and enjoy them nonetheless!
  2. Purple Moon Potatoes: this is our best storage potato, holding well into the spring in the cooler without sprouting. It's also usually very pretty with dark purple outer skin and a yellow interior. Unfortunately, this variety came out of the field with more skin blemishes than usual this season (we're not sure why, given that our yellow storage variety was nearly flawless this year). You'll probably want to peel the roughest of your spuds, unless you don't mind the bumps.
  3. Celery & Chard & Radicchio: bonus! Somehow our celery and chard made it through the vicious winter lashing of the past month. We've never been able to harvest these two crops in January before, so it was fun to be able to include them in this first winter share. We were also delighted to discover that our ongoing trials with diferent radicchio varieties paid off for this harvest. Rubro, the variety in your share this week, performed amazingly well through this late season winter slot and allowed us to put a beautiful little head in your tote this week. I don't know about you, but I've been eating the Insalata Nostrana at least three times a week since November and will be crushed when we pick the last radicchio from the field. Our household has burned through a half case of anchovies and a few fat wedges of pecorino making that addictive dressing! In case you lost that recipe, here it is again (I vow to make radicchio lovers out of all of you....that and fennel, my two most potent life goals as a farmer :)......):

Happy winter eating, and mark your calendars for your next CSA delivery on January 26th!

Newsletter: 

Week 28 from Valley Flora - Our Final CSA Delivery of 2021!

  • Red and Gold Beets
  • Red Cabbage
  • Shallots
  • Autumn Frost Winter Squash - a wonderful specialty butternut with excellent flavor and incredible storage potential (until April/May for us last year)
  • Celery
  • Celeriac
  • Parsnips: my crew has been raving about this parsnip loaf recipe, from Six Seasons cookbook, which I gave to my team last year as an end-of-season gift. Make it!
  • Winter Crisp Lettuce (we made it all the way to the end with head lettuce this year! No hard frosts yet, so we're still harvesting outdoors from the field!)
  • Costarossa Radicchio - a "Verona" type, often used in cooking. I made a riff on this risotto this week using a head of Costarossa and Delicata squash. Of course I made six times the amount so we'd have leftovers, and I did it in the instant pot cuz it only takes 6 minutes. The pressure cooker risotto formula I use is from "Cooking Under Pressure" (the perfect title for a cookbook in my kitchen, where making dinner often doesn't even get started until 8 pm or later for much of the year....). It's basically 1.5 cups of arborio rice to 3.5 cups of stock. If you know that ratio, you can make any kind of risotto any time of the year in about 10 minutes. I tend to throw in whatever's on hand and in season: I usually start by sauteeing leeks, onions or shallots in a combo of butter and olive oil; add the rice and stir it around in the fat; throw in whatever veggies I'm adding (in this case, winter squash and radicchio, but sometimes it's olives and sundried tomatoes and frozen artichoke hearts, or celeriac and rosemary, or wild mushrooms - anything! If it's something I don't want to overcook, like greens or broccoli or cauliflower, I add those after I've released the pressure at the end of cooking.) Add your stock (I used mushroom stock this time) and white wine. Lock the lid in place, cook at high pressure for 6 minutes, do a rapid release of pressure, then stir in your parmesan/pecorino and any tender ingredients (greens, broccolini, etc) and cook a few minutes longer while stirring. It's our version of fast food around here. Plus, at the end of the night all you have to clean up is a single cutting board, a knife and one pot. I always feel pretty pleased with myself when that's the sum total of the evening's kitchen destruction.

Thank you All for your CSA Support this Season!!!

Here we are in Week 28 - your final CSA tote for the season! Looking back, it's been a great season overall: no major catastrophes, an all-star seasoned crew, good-to-great yields in most crops, and a not-too-hot summer (even if it was scary dry here and apocalyptically hot elsewhere). All told, when we take into account every item we put into a Harvest Basket this year, the total value of a share added up to $1006.86 - about 15% more value than the $865 we charged for, or a bonus month's worth of produce. That's often one of the perks of being a CSA member - quite a bit of free food! :)

Every year - for the past 13 years of doing the CSA - I've strived to fine tune and improve the CSA share to make it as diverse, colorful and abundant as possible for our members. It's a great challenge, and it's fun to look back at photos of the CSA shares we've put out over the past decade and see how things have changed and evolved. We are definitely farming better than we were in 2008 and the farm is more diverse than it's ever been. The main focus of my crop planning this year is Brassica reduction: trying to cut back wherever we can on the number of beds of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, radishes, romanesco, kohlrabi, kale, etc. that we grow. It's a tricky task, because these are the crops that thrive in the cooler weather of winter, spring and fall, and carry us through the shoulder seasons. We need them in the mix, without a doubt.

But I've also started to consider a theory, based on some fascinating things I've learned about soil biology this year, that Brassicas are connected to our relatively new problem with symphylans (those little soil-dwelling arthropods that feed on root hairs and stunt seedlings, usually causing partial or complete crop failure). Most plants on planet earth have a mutualistic association with mycorrhizal fungi: plants provide food (sugars and carbohydrates) to the soil fungus, and in exchange the fungus gathers water, minerals and nutrients for the plant using its network of threadlike hyphae. Research is slowly helping us understand that most plants could not survive without this symbiotic relationship with beneficial soil fungi.

One of the few exceptions in the plant world is Brassicas. They do not have a symbiotic association with mycorrhizal fungi, and in fact Brassicas produce certain chemicals that can be toxic to soil fungi.  

So what's all this have to do with symphylans? Well, it turns out that symphylans like to eat soil fungi. It's their primary food source. But in the absence of fungi, they will munch on root hairs instead. Therefore, if we're growing too many Brassicas we might be inhibiting the population of soil fungi and inadvertently driving the symphylans to eat the roots of our crops instead. That could be why we experienced an almost complete crop failure in our early spring Brassicas at the start of 2020, and why we are seeing symphylans pressure in various parts of our field. We have been "treating" the problem by growing potatotes in the afflicted areas. Potatoes mysteriously "clean up" the symphylans problem for a few years, proof of which we saw in our fall Brassicas this year. Where we had the 2020 spring Brassica crop failure, we planted potatoes last year. Then this season, we crossed our fingers and planted our entire fall and winter Brassica field there (a scary gamble, given how important those crops are to our fall production and our winter CSA). It ended up being the most vibrant, beautiful field of Brassicas we've grown in years, suggesting that the potatoes worked their magic, at least temporarily. 

Even if we have the potato trick up our sleeve, I'm still interested in bringing the farm into better balance below ground, which is why some of our Brassica beds are getting the axe. I doubt you will notice a huge difference in the CSA next year, but we might not have as much extra to sell into our other market channels, like the farmstand or wholesale.

This is what my desk looks like right now, and will continue to look for the next month or so as I work through our massive crop planning spreadsheet - some crops getting deleted from the mix, and other new ones being added. It's that time of year when I'm farming a little more with my brain and a little less with my brawn.

I hope you'll join us next season (sign-ups for the 2022 season will likely begin sometime in late January or early February)! And if you're a winter CSA member this year, we'll see you in January!

Thanks again for your support this season, and happy solstice and holidays to all!

Zoë

 

 

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