Eating the Rainbow!

• 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.....?

Swimming in September in the Cascades...

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!

The Rainbow is Back!

• 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.

Feasting Ladybugs

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.

Millie

Juno & Millie

Peach

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

For the Week of August 15th...

• 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?

Hmmmm....

Aha!

A faster way to fill a pint...

For the Week of August 1st...

• 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.

For the Week of July 18th...

• 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!

For the Week of July 4th...

• 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. 

Potatoes in Bloom!

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.

Head High by the Fourth of July!

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.

A Record-breaking Strawberry Year

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...

Tree Frogs Abound at VF!

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.

Allen Wrestling a Behemoth Greenleaf

Have a great week!

The First Week of Summer!

• 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

So Many Berries!!!

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.

Jack and Lily on the Hilling Discs in the Spud Patch

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.

Abby's Queendom - SaladLand!

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. 

Looking West

Have a great first week of SUMMER!

The Week of June 6th...

• 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.

The Final Week of the 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!

The 2022 Strawberry Patch, Growing Like Crazy!

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!

Launch Time

Jules, Juno, Uma and Sarah

On the Rogue!

Hellgate Canyon

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!).

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:

Barns and Greenhouses!

Draft Horses!

Artichokes!

Propagation at its Peak!

Cover Crops are Cool (and beautiful!)

The Strawberry Patch is Growing Like Crazy (we even ate a few red berries yesterday)!!!

Hope to see you on Sunday!!!

In the CSA the week of April 4th...

• 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!

In the Share the Week of March 7th....

• 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!

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!

In the Winter CSA the week of January 24th...

• 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.)

The Last Harvest Basket of the Season...

• 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. 

Vigorous Field of Fall Brassicas

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.

2022 Crop Planning in Full Swing at my Desk....

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

Winter Farming, Here We Come!