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!

• 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.)

• 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

• Brussels Sprouts
• Carrots
• Celery
• Rosemary
• Shallots
• Parsnips
• Potatoes
• Winter Crisp Lettuce
• Kabocha Winter Squash

REMINDER: All Harvest Baskets are being delivered TODAY! There is no CSA delivery this Saturday.

• Bandon Pick-up hours today: 10:30 to 5 pm
• Port Orford Pick-up hours today: 8:30 to 5 pm (please try to pick up before 11 am or after 3 pm to avoid congestion on the loading dock at POCC)

I love this holiday above all others: a day that boils down to the simple basics of food, family, love, gratitude. This year I am especially excited because we are reuniting (after a round of nose-swabbing COVID tests today) with my Dad's side of the family, most of whom have traveled from Chicago, Boston and the Bay Area to spend the week in Bandon. It's been 7 years since I've been seated around a Thanksgiving table with all of them - enough years ago that they have never met Uma, my 6 year old (she was a taut 8-month basketball in my belly the last time we were in Chicago together), nor have they met Jules, Abby's 5 year old. Blame it on a too-big country, spreading ourselves amongst multiple families during the holidays, juggling the baby and toddler years, and then COVID.

But aside from not knowing our kids, perhaps the worse travesty of so many years apart is all the missed meals together. My aunts and uncles and cousins love cooking and they love eating and they love food. Better put, LOVE (all caps, underline, bold, italics). We've had an elaborate family email thread going for the past three weeks in anticipation of this reunion and the entire thing has been about the menu - not just for Thanksgiving day, but for the whole week. Thanksgiving will be quasi-traditional tomorrow, but all the meals before and after are what really make me hungry: Catalan fish stew, seafood thai curry, goat cheese Delicata enchiladas, lots of salad (radicchio!!! Abby's Greens! Slaw!), and much more.

That epic family email thread was transformed into an equally epic excel spreadsheet listing all the ingredients we needed for every single meal, which was then further distilled into a produce order that we harvested and packed this week on the farm. I am immensely proud to say that my family stood toe to toe with our largest wholesale buyers this week, ordering as much produce as Coos Head or the Port Orford Co-op. That's what I mean about loving food. We have our work cut out for us the next five days: lots of chopping, lots of chewing.

I hope you have the opportunity to celebrate food and family and friends this week, too, and are reminded of all there is to be thankful for. I felt a wave of gratitude for so many things while I was bent over harvesting those petite little heads of winter crisp lettuce for you on Monday morning. The first sensation was: thank you for this sunshine! It's been a beautiful, easy week of farming - no hellacious Thanksgiving storms like those that have challenged us in year's past. Sure, it's those years of driving rain and gale force winds that make for the best storytelling now, but I was just fine with sunny skies this time around.  

As I continued cutting and counting lettuce heads with the sun warming my back, the next thing I thought of was all of you - the reason we bother planting and harvesting all this lettuce. Thank you dear CSA members for your commitment to the farm, for riding out the whole season with us, and for rising to the challenge that a weekly Harvest Basket can present.

Then, a wave of gratitude for my crew - Allen, Jen and Roberto - who were simultaneously bent over other crops in the field that morning. There are times when I don't know why they come to work day after day when they could certainly earn more money and benefits doing something else. But they do: they show up early and they stay late, and they throw themselves into it with a dedication that leaves me humbled and thankful. They also make me laugh and feel bouyed by the strength of a team. I could not do this alone, and would not want to.

For Sarah and Donna and Maggie for their smiling faces at the farmstand, and so much more. For Evan for shuttling empty CSA totes back to the farm each week in trade for strawberries and onions :). For Charlie for all his greenhouse and irrigation expertise and volunteerism. Sondra who raises such beautiful eggs and shows us so much love and generosity; for Farmstead Bread who bakes such beautiful bread for us; for our CSA hosts - the Port Orford Co-op, Coos Head Food Co-Op, and Well Within Acupuncture - for welcoming us and our CSA circus to their space each year. For all of our customers - u-pick, farmstand, and wholesale alike - who keep this place humming.

Gratitude for my mom and my sister who have built this farm up from its earliest inception and are so part of my life they are like external organs or limbs. For my loyal dog, Juno, sitting zen-like while sniffing the morning air. For my big shaggy ponies grazing across the road and all they do for the farm - all the hours of labor they save us by virtue of their quiet willingness to work in harness all season. For the creek that waters this farm, flowing fast and filling with salmon right now. For the soil itself and the 7 billion microbes teeming in each teaspoonful. Mycelium, wow! For the other farmers who grow my seeds, for the ladies at B&B feed store and the guys at Western Growers Supply and the crew at Coos Curry Supply who keep us supplied with so many essentials. For all the people who support the farm in various capacities (scientists! the Small Farms team at Oregon State University!). My step-dad, who saves the day by making quesadillas for my hungry kids all the time and gives them music lessons and makes a mean margarita on Friday night. My husband, who keeps loving his wife in spite of the extreme hours she puts in at the farm all season.

Sometimes when you turn the gratitude spigot on, it barely drips at first. But if you leave it on, eventually the drip becomes a trickle, becomes a gush. And it's one of those things where less is not more. More the better. I felt so good, so full, but the time I got to 250 heads of lettuce on Monday morning that I was practically floating. Cup runneth over.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

(And remember, this is not the end of the season! There are two more weeks of CSA deliveries post-Thanksgiving: the week of Nov 29th and the week of Dec 6th.)

• Brussels sprouts
• Savoy Cabbage
• Carrots
• Head Lettuce
• Leeks
• Delicata
• Mini Daikon Radishes: I had a Daikon pickle party with a couple friends this weekend and I highly encourage you to try this recipe for Do Chua (Vietnamese Pickled Carrot and Daikon). It's delicious on just about anything, but is a classic garnish for banh mi sandwiches. There are lots of recipes out there for Do Chua, and you can play with the recipes to taste - for instance, change the ratio of radishes and carrots (you're getting 2 lb daikon and 1 pound carrot this week, which would make a nice balanced pickle). A lot of the recipes call for equal parts carrot and daikon, which will make it sweeter. In Vietnam it's often made with 100% daikon instead because carrots are more expensive than radish there (the opposite is true here in the States). You can also use less sugar and more vinegar or vice versa, depending on your preference. We shredded our radish and carrot in a cuisinart (using the shredder blade, not the chopping blade) instead of using a mandolin slicer, but we were processing about 30 lbs of daikon not 2 lbs :). Have fun with it!

On Rotation

• Parsley

Thanksgiving CSA Schedule - Mark Your Calendars!

Thanksgiving is two weeks away - time to alert you to our Thanksgiving delivery schedule! 

The week of Thanksgiving we will deliver ALL Harvest Baskets to ALL pickup locations on Wednesday, November 24th. We do this for two reasons:

1. To ensure that everyone has their Thanksgiving veggies before Thanksgiving, and
2. To give everyone on the farm a Thanksgiving holiday break.

That means that if you are a Port Orford or Bandon member, your pickup will be on WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24th instead of Saturday, November 27th. There will be no pickup on Saturday, November 27th. Pickup hours will be the same as usual.

For Farm and Coos Bay members, there is no change to the pickup schedule: Wednesday as usual, same time, same place.

Mark your calendars now to avoid any confusion!

For menu-planning purposes, you can expect to see the following in your Thanksgiving share: Brussels sprouts, Carrots, Celery, Rosemary, Shallots, Parsnips, Potatoes, and Kabocha Squash.

Have a great week!

• Carrots
• Celery
• Head Lettuce
• Red Onion
• Hakurei Turnips
• Butternut Winter Squash
• Purple Cauliflower
• Broccoli

We finally got brave and decided to try to harvest some of our celery this week. I mentioned a few weeks ago that we've been avoiding it and giving it the stink-eye cuz it's been a dud year: the stalks have been spongy and stringy and the hearts had tip burn all summer. The hope was that the shift into fall weather - cool and wet - would help it bounce back and get juicy before a hard frost knocks it down for good. The wishful thinking played out, enough so that you're getting a small juicy heart this week - juicy enough that you might even consider it a vegetable instead of a cooking herb :). Celery has always been tricky for us. It requires crazy amounts of water - at least twice as much as anything else on the farm - and we always struggle to grow that picture-perfect store-bought head of blanched, mild, crunchy, juicy, California-esque celery. The one thing ours does have going for it is FLAVOR, so I always encourage our members to cook with it: soup base, stock, etc.

Also this week, I'm thrilled about the purple cauliflower. Our spring cauliflower got knocked out by cabbage root maggot, so it was deeply satisfying to fill up dozens of bins with big, neon purple heads of fall cauliflower from the field yesterday. This variety holds most of it's color when cooked, but it will be brightest and most vibrant if you eat it raw.

Butternut squash! Soup it up! I made this recipe last week and it tasted like I had roasted the squash next to a chicken and mixed all the drippings in, ala Thanksgiving. I think the rosemary and sage were key for that savory effect, and I skipped the ginger - so good! https://www.loveandlemons.com/butternut-squash-soup/

And our beloved Hakurei turnips are back for fall! The mildest, juiciest, tenderest turnip on earth. They played a central role in the wooing of my husband 16 years ago, so don't underestimate their magic.

Have a great week with your fall veggies!

• Carrots
• Eggplant - winding down for the season. This might be the last of it, unless we get one more bonus harvest next week. I made a yummy Korean-inspired recipe this week that I recommend: Eggplant Bulgogi. I found it to be on the almost-too-salty side, so you might omit the salt in the marinade.
• Yellow Onions
• Crimson Potatoes - pink inside! This variety is on the starchier side of the spectrum, which makes it great for potato salad or fries. I made a potato salad a few weeks ago with our crimson and yellow potatoes and then added in all the veggies I had on hand: carrots, peppers, celery and fresh herbs, plus olives, capers and hard-boiled eggs. I'd never seen such colorful potato salad - the full rainbow!
• Scarlet Queen Turnips
• Scarlet Kabocha Winter Squash - a wonderful squash that will do it all: peel (or not), cube/slice, and roast; steam and mash; pie! It has sweet, semi-tropical flavor. It's not the best keeper in our squash line-up, so better to eat it sooner than later.
• Thyme

On Rotation:

• Broccoli
• Lettuce
• Romanesco

THIS IS THE FINAL WEEK OF ABBY'S GREENS SALAD SHARES!

If you are a Salad Share member, this week will be your final delivery of Abby's Greens for the season. Salad Shares operate on a 20 week season, whereas the Harvest Basket season goes for 28 weeks. Hats off to Abby for another year of beautiful salad! As long as the weather allows, Abby's Greens will continue to be available at the Wednesday and Saturday farmstand by pre-order (if you haven't ordered farmstand produce but would like to, here's all the info: https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/shopthefarmstand). They will also be available at the Langlois Market, Port Orford Co-Op, Mothers, Coos Head Food Co-Op, and McKay's, as well as at a number of restaurants (Barnacle Bistro, Redfish, The Nest Cafe, Lord Bennett's, Edgewaters, and sometimes 7 Devils Brewery). 

Remember, if you are a Harvest Basket member, there are still 8 MORE WEEKS to go, so don't forget to pick up your tote of veggies each week, through the week of December 6th! There's still lots of fun fall bounty to come!

• Eggplant
• Yellow Onion
• Sweet Peppers
• Hot Peppers
• Potatoes - These are our yellow storage potatoes, a great variety called "Nicola." We're giving them out right on the heels of last week's new potatoes because we've had mind-boggling high yields on this variety this year. A "good" potato year would be about 500 pounds per bed, but we've been pulling upwards of 800 pounds of Nicola per bed. It means we're currently buried in potatoes. Our walk-in cooler is stacked floor to ceiling with spuds, which makes packout days a black diamond Tetris challenge. We still have two more beds in the field to dig, so we need to offload some spuds and make room for the final harvest. All to say, we thank you for helping draw down our potato stores a little this week! They are an excellent keeper, so if you still have plenty of new potatoes from last year, just bag up your Nicola and keep them in the fridge. They'll hold for months. 
• Tomatoes
• Chojuro Asian Pear - This is my favorite Asian pear. It's the one with the deep bronze skin. Dense, deeply-flavorful, with big hints of butterscotch when they're fully ripe. We have four different Asian pear varieties in our orchard, all of them distinct. If you were to compare them all to beer, Chojuro is the porter.
• Nijiseiki Asian Pear - This is Uma's favorite. It's the yellow-skinned variety, super juicy, mild, light, bright. Think, Pacifico or Corona. 

On Rotation

• Kale
• Napa Cabbage
• Italian Parsley
• Curly Parsley
• Lettuce

The horses and I put ourselves to the task of seeding the first wave of fall cover crops on Saturday in hopes of taking advantage of all the free irrigation that fell from the sky Sunday and Monday. September and October bear a lot of resemblance to spring on the farm: a big time of transition that requires hawkish attention to the weather forecast and a constant dance with sun and rain. It's the time of year when we hope for rain every week, but not too much. The perfect week gives us an inch or two on one side of the week or the other, and then 4 or 5 sunny days to get back into the field, seed more cover crops, get caught up on fieldwork, and then revel in the next rain. 

In the spring we're making the shift from overwintered cover crops to our seasonal cash crops. In the fall, it's the reverse: cash crops come out to be replaced by cover crops. So what's a cover crop? It's a mix of species - typically grains and legumes - that we grow to nourish and replenish our soil, to add organic matter to the field, to provide erosion protection during the winter, and to provide habitat for beneficial organisms that are part of our farm ecosystem. Cover crops are the backbone of our soil health, and also happen to be my favorite thing to plant and grow. We use different mixes of cover crop species depending on what cash crop is rotating into that space the next year: early crops get cover crops that either winter-kill (die back in a frost) or are easy to incorporate in the cool, wet conditions of early spring - things like Sudan grass, field peas, clover. Late-season cash crops are preceded by cover crops that we can mow and re-grow to generate maximum biomass into early summer, and/or by species like crimson clover that don't bloom until May but are gorgeous and provide ample food for the bees when they do. There are all kinds of considerations that go into the cover crop planning and it's always a fun puzzle to solve as we map out the cash crop rotation and subsequent cover crop plan at this time of year.

The mix I seeded on Saturday was our standby combo of Saia oats, red clover and common vetch. The oats grow taller than me by spring and provide a fanastic amount of organic matter to the soil. The vetch provides nitrogen to the field. The clover hangs out in the understory until we mow the oats, at which point the clover either gets turned in with the oats and vetch or is to left to become the dominant species in the mix. Red clover will persist as a perennial and can be mowed and grow back over and over to provide ample nitrogen and organic matter. It makes for super-yummy soil, especially when it can work its magic over the course of 9 months to a year, or longer.

I love cover cropping because it's the moment we give back to the soil, after a summer of taking. And I love it because it involves working my horses on these beautiful fall days, quiet and steady.

• Carrots
• Sweet Corn
• Eggplant
• Chard
• Leeks
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Fennel
• Zucchini

On Rotation:

• Cucumbers

Real Rain!

We've been peering around the corner of every 7-day forecast for the past couple of weeks, wondering when that first rain would show up. Finally here it comes: one to two wonderful inches over the weekend. I'm thrilled we're going to get some much-needed precip and am relishing the idea of a cozy Saturday in my kitchen, canning tomatoes and savoring the downpour. Maybe a pot of soup will even get made...

The imminent rain puts the squeeze on our to-do list this week: our focus is almost 100% on getting all our winter squash harvested and under cover. It's looking like a bumper squash year. Since Monday we've been hauling in some of the biggest squash specimens we've ever grown at VF. It bodes well for a happy winter of butternut soup, roasted delicatas, and acorn squash big enough to double as soup tureens. Also on the pre-rain list: bringing in the dry beans; getting the rest of our onions cleaned and safely stored; and maybe with a lot of luck, digging the last few beds of potatoes. It's all about the storage crops right now.

Some of our summer mainstays might take a little beating this weekend, namely the outdoor tomatoes and the strawberries. The strawberry u-pick will be closed this Saturday, September 18th, due to the weather. We hope the berries will rebound after the weekend rain so that we can re-open it for the last couple weeks of September. We'll be tearing out the berry patch in early October to make way for winter cover crop, so get your berries while you still can! 

The farmstand will be open as usual on Saturday, but we recommend bringing an umbrella in case you find yourself waiting in the queue for your produce.

Have a great week!

• Carrots
• Cucumers
• Eggplant
• Curly Parsley
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Red Slicing Tomatoes
• Heirloom Tomatoes
• Sweet Peppers

On Rotation:

• Green Beans
• Sweet Corn
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions
• Red Long of Tropea Onions
• Cantaloupe
• Head Lettuce

Happy September everyone! Late summer - this moment right now - is pretty much the most abuandant, diverse and colorful moment of the season, when it's nearly impossible for us NOT to stuff the whole rainbow into your Harvest Basket each week. There is a lot getting picked on the farm these days, and all of it - save for those lofty bunches of parsley - is heavy. We had actually intended to put potatoes in your share this week, but when suddenly the melons were ripe and the first sweet peppers turned color and the eggplant harvest broke all records and the totes started buckling under all that weight, well then we decided to hold off on the spuds until next week. 

It IS eggplant season - typically the time of year when one or two of our new CSA members decide they won't be signing up again next year. Alas, it's true: I think we have lost more CSA members over the years because of too much eggplant in September than any other reason for attrition. We've been trying to manage this problem for years using various strategies.

Strategy numero uno has been to provide encouragement, recipes and eggplant inspiration to help you love eggplant and embrace the myriad ways you can use it for this fleeting, very abundant moment while it's in season (broiled! grilled! in pasta sauce! eggplant parmesan! thai curry! plus any number of asian-inspired recipes!). Or preserve it for later (fill your freezer with baba ganoush or ratatouille, or prep and freeze slabs of breaded eggplant for a winter eggplant parmesan, or make eggplant chips). We're your number one eggplant cheerleading squad when it comes to making the most of eggplant season (which - if you're counting the days until it's over - lasts through September).

Strategy numero dos for keeping the eggplant situation under control has been repeatedly scaling back our planting, which we did yet again this year. But alas, the eggplants are really, really happy where we planted them. We have big, tall, bushy robust plants that are making a LOT of babies. We could have easily put 5 eggplants in your share instead of 3 this week, but we decided to donate 100 lbs to the Common Good Foodbank in Port Orford instead, in hopes that everyone would be happier for it - you and the foodbank alike. That's the goal after all: to do whatever we can to boost Gross National Happiness a little bit, one (or three) eggplant at a time.

Have a great first week of September.

• Beets - Red and Chioggia
• Eggplant
• Cilantro
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Tomatoes
• Heirlooms

On Rotation

• Sweet Corn

For anyone who read last week's newsletter and tried to u-pick on Saturday, I hope you had a good laugh when you discovered we were closed. After all the expounding I did in last week's newsletter about how much I don't know when it comes to farming, with the huge ALL CAPS EXCEPTION that there's one thing I DO KNOW, which is that AUGUST IS THE BEST MONTH FOR U-PICK, well, then we had to call it off this past weekend because the berries didn't ripen due to all the smoke/haze last week. I am truly sorry if anyone drove all the way out to the farm only to find the gate closed (we did put out a post on social media, but I wholeheartedly understand and applaud you if you don't pay attention to that realm). I personally found it perfectly ironic and like all things farming, ever-humbling. Further proof that there's no point in pretending to know, especially in this day and age of climate-in-crisis.

Honestly, in the grand scheme of catastrophic headlines, having to shut the u-pick down for a day probably shouldn't even make the back page of the Capital Press, but it is a sobering/terrifying/devastating reminder of what's afoot just over those hills to our east. All of us who live here - hugging the edge of the giant Pacific, waking up to fog, bundling up against the howling north wind - are largely spared the smoke. The heat. The anxiety of living in a crispy-dry tinderbox ready to explode at even the suggestion of a spark. But it is mere miles away from us, and directly affecting more and more people I know. Dear friends in the Applegate Valley who have grown organic seed crops for 23 years on their land just emailed me to say they've come to the heartwrenching conclusion that they cannot continue to farm there. There's no longer enough water. The heat and the smoke are oppressive and getting worse. Do I know of any pieces of ground on the coast with water rights where they could relocate? Wherever they go they'll be leaving the place that they've homesteaded and farmed for a lifetime, saying goodbye to the hand-built house where their babies were born. Another organic seed farm in Talent - Chickadee Farm - had their irrigation ditch turned off completely this season and without water they had to throw in the towel. They're currently scraping by on GoFundMe donations while they look for new land to the north in the Willamette Valley. My friends, my fellow farmers, are becoming climate refugees. Not in 2050, but now. 

My seed rep at High Mowing Organics told me on the phone the other day that all of this is going to affect seed supply this year and in years to come. There will be shortages and plenty of "out of stock" varieties. It means that even if the sky is blue today - almost blue enough that you could turn your back and pretend it's all fine - the affects of climate change will trickle down all the way to my home office this winter, where crop planning and ordering seeds has become a semi-panic stricken ordeal the past few years as I try to source the many different vegetable varieties that fill your Harvest Basket throughout the season. 

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their latest report this week, calling it "code red for humanity." Maybe you don't believe in science. Maybe you think it's all alarmist politics. But I bet you like strawberries on a Saturday in August. I bet you like blue sky. I bet you like the idea of your grandkids thriving on a livable planet. I do, too. I still believe the little things count: If you can bike to your CSA pickup instead of driving today, please do! If you can hang your clothes on the line outside instead of using the dryer, take advantage of that north wind! If you can eat more vegetables and less meat, it will make a difference. And the big things count extra: Governments and companies signing on to binding commitments, investing in renewables, incentivizing the shift away from fossil fuels. We only get this one planet. Maybe, quite possibly, the human presence on Earth will be short-lived. The dinosaurs didn't last forever, either. But I love this place so much I'm not willing to go down without doing what tiny little bit I can. And if everyone did that, tiny + tiny + tiny  x  a few billion = real change.

• Cucumbers
• Basil
• Tomatoes! Red slicers and an heirloom. Heads up that some of you are receiving a pink heirloom, which looks sorta like an under-ripe red tomato, but less uniform in shape. Yum!
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Eggplant!
• Red Long of Tropea torpedo onions
• Strawberries

August!

This might be the most dramatic switcheroo of harvest basket produce I've ever witnessed from one week to the next. We've been crusing along filling totes up with all kinds of green stuff: peas, broccoli, lettuce, bunch greens, zucchini, parsley, etc. and then wham! August arrives and it's suddenly all about tomatoes and eggplant. With horses you're supposed to gradually transition their feed when you make a change to their diet, but fortunately the human gut is a little more forgiving, which is good news for all of you who are suddenly confronted with a pile of Solanums in your tote this week. So begins our journey into late summer, perhaps the best time of year for eating seasonally. Few people can argue against the idea of a vine-ripe homegrown tomato, fresh-picked sweet corn, and juicy sweet peppers (both of those last two things coming soon!). And a lot of you longtime CSA members have learned to love eggplant, even when it shows up in your tote in catastrophically abundant quantities, like a summer monsoon. Can you really have too much baba ganoush in your freezer, giving you that awesome superpower of whipping out a mediterranean mezze plate in January and outsmarting winter?

Please Mask Up!

Given the recent surge in COVID cases in Coos and Curry counties, we are reinstating our mask policy on the farm and at CSA pickups. PLEASE mask up at your CSA pickup location and at our farmstand and u-pick, whether you are vaccinated or not. We want to be part of the public health solution in our small community and masks and vaccines can help stop the spread!

And to Close, a Little Levity...

Last spring I was approached by the Port Orford Library kids program to participate in their Local Heroes and Helpers project. They collected profiles and headshots of various people in the community and then young artists painted portraits of each person for a public art exhibit in town. The display just went up in the front window of Uptown Frames in Port Orford and can be viewed on the Port Orford Library Facebook page. I'm always out of the social media loop and haven't been to town in weeks, so a friend forwarded me some of the images yesterday. They are fabulous. Here's a sampling, which includes some of our very own CSA members, neighbors, and fellow sustainable food system movers and shakers:

And then, there's yours truly:

P.S. if you haven't met me in person yet, I DO have a face-splitting grin that stretches earlobe to earlobe, but my eyes are brown not blue. 

What's in the Harvest Basket for the Week of July 19th:

• Rainbow chard: the chard is at its ultimate apogee on the farm right now - luxuriously abundant, glossy, colorful and succulent. We love this variety, "Bright Lights," because of the infinite diversity of sunset colors that streak the stems.
• Carrots
• Head Lettuce
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Dill
• Beets

On Rotation:

• Broccoli
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions
• Red Long of Tropea torpedo onions

If you're looking for cooking inspiration to help you use your veggies each week, I stumbled upon this online site and app when I googled "chard and dill recipes:" https://www.supercook.com/search/dill-and-chard/?page=1. Supercook.com trawls the internet for word matches and finds relevant recipes. I can't vouch that they'd all be awesome, but it's not a bad place to start when you're staring into your fridge trying to figure out how to use up your harvest basket.

An Adventure 35 Years in the Making

Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved horses. She played with toy horses, she dreamt of horses, she hung on gates and gazed at other people's horses. She longed for her own real, live horse but her mom was allergic and her sister was afraid. So she continued to arrange and rearrange the plastic figurines on the shelf in her bedroom and fantasized about horses and unicorns and pegasi. But when she turned 9, a real horse came into her life - a rescue with lots of neurotic tics - but a horse nonetheless. She threw herself into loving that horse, waking up at 5:30 every school day to muck the barn and feed the mare, sprinting back at 4 each day as soon as the schoolbus dropped her at the bottom of the driveway. She rode all over her little valley, exploring old logging roads and finding hidden meadows up in the hills. She longed to explore farther afield, but with no truck and trailer she would clip-clop the five miles down the county road to the beach and ride wild and free by the ocean until sundown. She would coax her mare into the lake, nudging her forward until the bottom dropped away and then they would be swimming together. Her friend, who's family was all cowboy, took a horsepacking trip to Montana one summer. She envied them. Someday, she thought.

The little girl eventually grew up and moved away. When her old mare was dying, she drove back home and laid with her out in the pasture under a brilliant star-studded winter sky. When the mare sighed her final exhale, a quiet moment passed and then a huge shooting star streaked across the valley from one ridgetop to the other. She lived out in the world without horses for a decade, a small hole in the corner of her soul. But finally her compass needle turned her back towards the little valley so she could farm with her family. She had learned how to drive workhorses in Montana by then and she brought a team of big Belgian drafts home with her. She knew farming would be all-consuming, so best to figure out a way to feather horses into her workday. 

All-consuming it was, along with having two daughters and an old house to fix up. When her gelding died of colic, the excavator dug a massive hole in the westernmost reach of the pasture. Eventually she started farming in that spot and to this day that field still grows the biggest heads of broccoli. Once again it was just her and an old mare, who she worked single in the fields with her babies on her back. Eventually two more horses arrived on the farm, a team of Belgian/Morgan crossbreds who were broke to harness and the saddle. The girl was longing to ride again, to feel that freedom, to not always have it be about work. And so she found a saddle big enough, and she saved money for a horse trailer, and little by little her old dream came back into focus: to ride into the wilderness astride a beloved horse and disappear into the mountains for a week. Or two.

This week the girl's dream comes true: she's leaving in an hour for a five day horsepacking trip in the Trinity Alps with her friend, Laura (another organic vegetable horse farmer who, similarly, has been burning the candle at both ends the past week gearing up to leave her farm in late July). The Belgian/Morgan team is geared up for the mountains with saddlebags and sturdy shoes. The girl is full of gratitude for the entire farm team that's keeping the farm running for the rest of the week; for her husband, who spent half his day getting her truck fixed yesterday when it decided to break down in the 11th hour before her trip; and for her mom, who got her that first horse in spite of being allergic so that a dream could come true. Little tears are spattering the girl's keyboard right now.

P.S. if you need to reach the girl this week, she will be completely out of cell and email range through Monday 7/26. Her mom will be checking the farm email, but the girl's phone will be turned off. Remember, good things are always worth waiting for, even if it takes 35 years.

• Purplette mini onions
• Fava Beans (more on the favas below)
• Zucchini
• Basil
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Snap Peas - a big ol' heap of em!
• Strawberries

On Rotation:

• Cucumbers - the cukes that have been on rotation the past two weeks are a trial variety we planted in our field tunnels in early April - an early Persian type. They are delicious and the cucumber beetles agree! Our first month of production was hobbled by the cuke beetles, who were voracioulsy sampling every single cuke on the vine, leaving them scarred, contorted, and unsaleable (i.e. we ate a lot of ugly cucumbers in June :)....).The plants seem to be finally growing through it and we're getting some nice smooth cukes now, but some of them still show minor signs of scarring. They're unaffected inside so just peel them to reveal the sweet, nearly seedless cucumber within. Persian types are sought after by chefs for their sweet flavor, firm texture, few seeds, and lack of watery-ness. I'd say this greenhouse experiement has indeed yielded the tastiest, ugliest little cukes I've ever had!

Fava Beans

Chances are, if you haven't been a CSA member before you've likely never eaten (or prepared) fresh fava beans. You're in for a real treat, but a quick word of wisdom from one busy working parent to another: you might want to make this a weekend project. Even better if you can invite some friends over for a fava fest because many hands will help. Your favas are showing up in the pod, but unlike the sugar snap peas in your share, you don't want to eat the pod. The beans are nestled in a downy mattress inside, but wait! The beans themselves have an outer skin that, while edible, is a litlte tough and dingy and diminishes the culinary exquisitness of a bright green, peeled, fresh fava bean. SO, here's how you get to fava nirvana:

1. Shuck the beans out of the pod and discard the pods
2. Drop beans into boiling water and blanch for 1 minute
3. Drain the beans and shock them in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process
4. Squeeze the beans out of their skin, using your fingernail to open a slit in the skin. Just like making blanched almonds. Kids love the squeezing part, especially if you don't mind fava beans shooting all over your kitchen.

Here's an illustrated how-to: https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/how-to-prepare-fava-beans-gallery

They say that one pound of beans in the pod will yield about one cup of shelled favas. You're getting 3 pounds in the pod this week, so it should give you an ample amount to do something fun with. Epicurious has a mouth-watering gallery of recipes worthy of a glance: https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/fava-bean-recipes-gallery. I want to eat every single one of them. 

But if, like me, you might not have time to shell favas to make a gorgeous recipe - even on a weekend - you could consider this excellent alternative: grill your favas in the pod. This is my favorite utilitarian way to eat them, especially at a backyard BBQ with friends. You put the whole pod on the grill and cook them until they're charred. Then you open up the steaming pod - careful, HOT! - and your beans will be perfectly cooked within. You can nip the skin of the bean with your teeth and then squeeze them straight into your mouth. It turns favas into a fun community feast instead of a dinner party chore and they are deeeeeelish! Have a salt shaker on hand if you love NaCl as much as I do :)

Bulk Green Beans by Special Order

Were on a leguminous riff this week: snap peas! favas! green beans!

We have a limited planting of early green beans happening right now and can fill a few speical orders for CSA members who want to double down on canning dilly-beans or putting some in the freezer. It'll be a brief season - a few weeks max - so email us if you'd like to order for delivery to your CSA site. Five pound bulk bags are $25. We need your name, pickup location, a daytime or cell number, and the quantity of green beans you'd like in 5 pound increments. We can't guarantee we'll be able to fill all orders, but we'll try!

• Sugar Snap Peas
• Carrots
• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Arugula
• Fennel
• Green Cabbage

On Rotation:

• Broccoli
• Broccolini
• Collards
• Tatsoi
• Zucchini

Strawberry U-Pick Opens This Week!

As of today, the berry patch is open for u-pick - every Wednesday and Saturday from 11:30 to 2:30 during our regular farmstand hours! There are lots of big, red, ripe berries out there today, and lots more to come all summer. When you arrive to u-pick, please check in at the farmstand before heading out to the berry patch. Line up on the left side at our farmstand gate for u-pick (the line on the right side is for folks picking up produce). Our u-pick manager, Sarah, will set you up with harvest buckets and give you the lay of the land. After picking you'll return to the farmstand to weigh your fruit and pay. Please bring your own containers to carry your berries home in. We grow a strawberry variety called Seascape that produces ALL SUMMER LONG, into September! The fruit only gets sweeter and more abundant as the summer goes on, so there is ample time to get your fill.

A few important ground rules when you come to u-pick:

• No pets
• Do not cross the white rope fence in the strawberry patch; please stay on the north side of the patch.
• Do not touch or feed the horses that are pastured nearby.
• Stay in the paths; please don't walk on top of the strawberry beds.
• If you're coming with kids, please keep a close eye on them so everyone stays safe.
• U-Pick is at your own risk. Heat, sun, stinging insects, valve boxes and uneven ground are all part of the farm experience, so know your own limits and stay within your comfort zone.

CSA Member Exclusive: Strawberry Flats Available by Special Order!

If you are a Harvest Basket or Salad Share member at any of our four pickup locations, strawberry flats are now available by special order. Flats contain 12 dry pints of ripe Grade A strawberries and are $45 apiece. We will fill requests in the order received as surplus berries become available throughout the summer. To order, email us your name, pickup location, daytime/cell phone number (ideally a number we can text to), and the quantity of flats you would like to order. Please note we may not be able to fill your order immediately, depending on how many orders we have ahead of you.

If you are not a CSA member but would like to order strawberry flats, you can do so through our online farmstand ordering system. If you have never place a farmstand order, go to https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/node/19576 to learn how to set up an account. It's quick and easy and will give you full access to all of our fruit and produce for the season.

Fennel, How I Love Thee....

For some of you, fennel might be your challenge vegetable this week. I'm head over heels for fennel, so it's always hard for me to understand what's not to love. But if you haven't found your groove with it yet, here are some ideas:

1. Slice it thinly and put it in salad. Simple. Quick. Delicious.
2. Take a gander at our collection of fennel recipes: https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/recipe_search/results/fennel. Cooking fennel reduces the anise flavor, if that's something you're averse to. This is one of my all-time favorites: https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/caramelized-fennel-honey-lemon-z.... Almost dessert, really.
3. Check out Bon Apetit's recipe collection. Impressive. 

I'll leave you with this lovely image from our first pea harvest on Monday: