In This Week’s Beet Box:

• Our Thanksgiving Delivery Schedule - Mark your Calendars!
• Winter Farmstand Going Strong
• The VF Crystal Ball: What to expect in your Thanksgiving Share

In your share this week:

• Leeks
• Beets
• Carrots
• Pac choi
• Lettuce
• Yellow Finn Potatoes
• Hakurei turnips
• Broccoli
• Delicata winter squash

On Rotation

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others next week or in a future week.

Nothing this week….

Our Thanksgiving Delivery Schedule - Mark your Calendars!

WE WILL DELIVER ALL HARVEST BASKETS ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27th

There will be NO DELIVERY to PORT ORFORD on Friday, November 29^th.

There will be NO DELIVERY to BANDON on Saturday, November 30^th.

We do this for two reasons:

• To ensure that everyone gets their food in time for Thanksgiving
• To give ourselves a brief holiday from harvest and delivery during Thanksgiving celebrations.

These are the specific times for pickup at each location on Wednesday, November 27th:

• Valley Flora: unchanged – 9 am to 5 pm
• Coos Bay:  unchanged – 12 pm to 3 pm
• Bandon: Wednesday, 11/27, starting at 12 noon (no end time)
• Port Orford: Wednesday, 11/27, starting at 10 am (all day)

If you will be out of town for the holiday and won’t be able to pick up your Thanksgiving tote, we are happy to hold it for you in our walk-in cooler until you return. To make special arrangements with us, please email us

• Your name
• Your pickup location
• ALL of the items you usually pick up each week (i.e. Harvest Basket, eggs, bread, etc.)
• The date you plan to pick up your Harvest Basket at the farm.

I’ll reply to your email with detailed pick up instructions from our walk-in cooler at the farm.

We need to hear from you by this Friday, November 22^nd if you need special arrangements.

Winter Farmstand Going Strong

The farmstand is still open and well-stocked with all kinds of produce (even a few late tomatoes!). So far the weather has cooperated beautifully each week on our farmstand days. Miraculous.

We will continue to be open every Wednesday through December 11^th from 10 am to 2 pm (including the Wednesday before Thanksgiving), so come stock up!

• Wednesday, November 27^th 10-2
• Wednesday, December 4^th, 10-2
• Wednesday, December 11^th, 10-2

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What will most likely be in your THANKSGIVING SHARE…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following (hopefully it will all fit!):

• Shallots – 1.5 pounds
• Brussels sprouts – 1 stalk (2 halves)
• Carrots – 1 to 2 pounds
• Celeriac – 1 to 2 heads
• Kale – 1 bunch
• Mixed herbs – thyme, rosemary, sage
• Parships – 3 pounds
• Yellow Finn Potatoes – 5 pounds
• Sunshine winter squash - 1

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Produce of the Week: Brussels sprouts, Delicata squash, Reine des Glaces lettuce
• Reminiscent of Spring: Pac choi, Hakurei turnips & mizuna
• Tamales This Week!
• Waiting on the Broccoli: Racing Persephone

In your share this week:

• Yellow onions
• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Pac choi
• Reine des Glaces lettuce
• Yellow Finn Potatoes
• Hakurei turnips
• Mizuna
• Green peppers
• Delicata winter squash

On Rotation

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others next week or in a future week.

• Romanesco cauliflower

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Brussels sprouts: So begins our fall season of the weird, the gnarly, and the Dr. Seussian: Brussels sprouts on the stalk! I imagine there will be some bartering going on at drop sites this week, for Brussels sprouts are one of those iconic love it or hate it foods, right in there with beets. I know for a fact that Valley Flora Brussels sprouts have made converts out of some staunch detesters in the past, so you might think twice before giving them away.

There are some great recipes on our website if you need to be convinced:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/recipe_search/results/brussels%20sprouts

Or do a simply roasting: clean up your sprouts, cut them in half, toss them with olive oil and salt, and roast in the oven at 400 until the edges are browned.

The reason that some Brussels sprout haters actually like our sprouts probably has to do with the fact that we don’t harvest them until late fall when they’ll have the best flavor. Cold weather, and particularly a frost, will bring up the sugars in all Brassica plants (kale, collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, etc.), reducing their bitterness (aka, the “stanky gym sock” flavor). The sugars act like cellular antifreeze to help the plants survive the winter, so as they sense cold temperatures they actually pump out more sugar and sweeten up. We usually hope for our first light frost on the farm at the beginning of November. We got it last week, right on time, so the sweetening is underway out in the field.

The vast majority of the Brussels sprouts in the U.S. are grown on the central coast of California where temperatures rarely drop to freezing. As a result, store-bought, out-of-season Brussels sprouts do in fact taste like old gym socks. I wouldn’t eat those things either!

Kitchen tip: Brussels sprouts do take a little patience. The lower sprouts usually need to be cleaned up, and they will store the best if you snap all the sprouts off the stalk and keep them in the fridge in a plastic bag. They have a great shelf life – like little cabbages – and will keep for a few weeks at least (longer if they’re cleaned and then stored).

Delicata Squash: The number one favorite winter squash, it’s here. You’ll get it two more times this season, so no need to hoard. Their flavor is exquisite, but part of the reason they are so great has to do with how easy they are to prepare: Just cut them in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake face down in a pan with a little water until soft (20-30 minutes). I like to eat them with a pat of butter melted in the middle. You can eat the skin as well.

Reine des Glaces Head Lettuce: The name aptly translates to “Queen of the Ice.” This is as close to an iceberg lettuce as we grow, but with a spiky, punk rock spin. It has all the juicy crunch of iceberg, and holds up just as well under a bleu cheese dressing. We did it up last night in wedge style, with sliced peppers and a homemade, creamy feta dressing. No need to be ashamed at how much you’ll enjoy it. I mean, hey, if 80s style is back (so soon?), why not iceberg?

Reminiscent of Spring: The return of some old friends        

Hakurei turnips, mizuna, and pac choi are all making a showing in your share this week, not seen since early summer. The cool weather of fall is ideal for these crops, so they make a second appearance as reliable bookends to the season.

Tamales This Week!

Tamale shares go out this week. Look for your labeled share in the marked blue cooler at your pickup site.

Waiting on the Broccoli: Racing Persephone

Our broccoli and Romanesco cauliflower plantings have been excruciatingly slow to mature this fall. The autumn broccoli harvest would normally be over by now, and the Romanesco should have appeared in your totes two weeks ago. But for some reason, they are only just now starting to head up to harvestable size. I wasted some of October worrying that they wouldn’t get there in time, but it’s looking hopeful now.

Why the worry? This week we’re entering what’s known as the “Persephone Period,” the winter months when there is less than 10 hours of light each day. That’s the point when plants pretty much stop growing (including the broccoli and Romanesco, so I've been hoping they'll mature before the days get too short). It lasts until the end of January, at which point the days start getting longer and there is a sudden jump in growth again. We have a great visual indicator of the Persephone Period on the farm: our kale plants. We harvest kale all year long. During the spring, summer, and early fall it grows back every week, fully replenishing itself. But from now through the end of the Harvest Basket season, we will be taking money out of the bank, so to speak. The leaves won’t re-grow and by the middle of December our kale plants will look like naked sticks with a small tuft of tiny leaves at the growing tip (you’ll notice in the coming weeks that the kale leaves in your share are smaller and smaller, and they will be packed by the pound instead of by the bunch).

The plants will stand naked through January like this, and then suddenly at the start of February they will send up new leaves, size up old leaves, and be bushy once again. We’ll emerge from the Persephone Period, kale leaves a-blazing, and start having to mow our lawn again.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share NEXT week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following:

• Shallots
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Celeriac
• Chard
• Lettuce
• Radishes
• Winter Sweet Winter Squash

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Produce of the Week: Spaghetti Squash
• Cover Crops and Strawberry Crowns
• Remember, No More Abby’s Greens Salad Shares
• Fall Farmstand Hours

In your share this week:

• Yellow Onions
• Carrots
• Braising Mix
• Parsley
• Head Lettuce
• Red Potatoes
• Radishes
• Spaghetti Squash

On Rotation

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others next week or in a future week.

• Broccoli

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Spaghetti Squash: Probably the most-maligned of all the winter squash (hippy food, sneer!), spaghetti squash deserves a chance in your kitchen. In this day and age of widespread gluten-intolerance, perhaps its day to shine has finally come. It’s different from all the other winter squash in that it does truly resemble spaghetti inside once it’s cooked. You can bake or steam it (some people like to poke it full of holes with a knife or fork and then bake it whole until soft). Once it’s cooked, you can scoop out the “spaghetti” inside and dress it up with good old fashioned tomato sauce, or cream sauce (especially good with chantarelles and herbs), or anything else to suit your taste.

Cover Crops and Strawberry Crowns

You’d think we’d be done planting by this point in the season, but there is one last flurry of seeding and transplanting going on right now. Over the past two weeks we’ve been broadcasting hundreds of pounds of cover crop seed – a mix of rye, oats, red clover, vetch, and field peas – which will grow through the winter and provide erosion control, beneficial habitat, and a lot of nutrients for our soil. Next spring, we’ll till all that biomass back into the field, providing nitrogen and rich organic matter for next year’s cash crops. Our over-wintered cover crops usually grow to 6 feet in height and provide spring forage for bees and other beneficial insects.

We’re also in the midst of our fall strawberry planting. This time every year we plant new strawberry crowns that we order from a nursery in Northern California. We get them established in the fall, which gives the plants a head start and encourages them to begin fruiting more quickly in the spring. In addition to our beloved standby, Seascape, we’re planting two new trial varieties this year that are supposed to be more disease resistant and better tasting than Seascape: Albion and Sweeet Ann. It’s hard to imagine beating the flavor of a Seascape strawberry, but we'll let you be the judge of that next year.

Remember: No More Abby’s Greens Salad Shares

Last week was the 20^th and final week of Abby’s Greens Salad Shares. There will continue to be Abby’s Greens for sale at our farmstand each Wednesday from 10 am to 2 pm. You can also find Abby’s Greens at the Langlois Market, Mother’s Natural Grocery, Coos Head Food Store, and probably at the soon-to-open Port Orford Community Co-op (grand opening November 1^st from 10 am to 5 pm).

New Fall Farmstand Hours

We have switched to our fall schedule and the farmstand is now open on Wednesdays ONLY from 10 am to 2 pm. There is still the stray tomato to be had at the stand and the last of the summer peppers, but autumn food is taking over – winter squash, parsnips, potatoes, bunched greens, radishes, broccoli, and much more.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share NEXT week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following:

• Leeks
• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Beets
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Thyme?
• Radishes?
• Butternut squash

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Produce of the Week: Escarole
• Produce Smugglers and Roadkill Tomatoes: A Delivery Escapade

In your share this week:

• Yellow Onions
• Radishes
• Carrots
• Yellow Finn Potatoes
• Escarole
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Rainbow chard

On Rotation

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week; others next week or in a future week.

• Broccoli

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Escarole: It looks like lettuce, but it’s actually a member of the chicory family (lumped in there with radicchio, endive, friseé, dandelions, and other such bitter greens). And yes, unadulterated, it is mildly bitter, which will probably please some of you more than others. But if you are suspicious of bitter foods, don’t toss your escarole out just yet. It’s a versatile green and there are lots of ways to prepare it that won’t make you pucker up. Here are some good options:

Salads: Wash your escarole well (it tends to collect dirt more than lettuce), cut it into ribbons, and then let it soak for 10 minutes in water. This tends to leach out any trace of the bitterness. You can then use it raw just like lettuce. I like to pair escarole in salads with sweet ingredients like dried cranberries, diced apple, pomegranate seeds, and candied nuts. Add some goat cheese or parmesean and you have a gourmet salad. It’s also good with avocado and citrus. I usually make up a honeyed-lemony vinaigrette of some sort to go with it.

Cooked: Escarole is more durable than lettuce and it holds up well to cooking. Check out this long list of escarole recipes on epicurious.com: http://www.epicurious.com/tools/searchresults?search=escarole&x=0&y=0

Your escarole will store for a week or so in the fridge in a plastic bag. Note that last week’s rain did some damage to the heads, causing some exterior leaf rot. I tried to clean them up as much as possible, but you might encounter a small amount of rot on some of the outer leaf margins. Just cut or tear those sections out; the majority of the head should be perfectly fine. But you might want to eat it sooner than later. Thanks for understanding!

Produce Smugglers and Roadkill Tomatoes: A Delivery Escapade

Last week I was sitting here at my desk, working away at the newsletter, when the phone range. It was Roxy, our delivery driver, and she was on the side of the road on Beaver Hill with some bad news. Frank (our white delivery van) was acting up: the oil light was on and the oil pressure gauge was bobbing wildly, in spite of the fact that I had just topped off the oil the day before. Frank was, as he always is on a Wednesday morning, packed to the gills with the Coos Bay Harvest Baskets, coolers, and boxes of produce for Coos Head. All of us on the farm had already-impossibly full days ahead of us, between office work, fieldwork and juggling our kids.

The dilemma: keep driving the van and hope it didn’t blow up (the Coos Bay CSA pickup was scheduled to start in 45 minutes), or go to Roxy’s rescue. My mechanic is currently out of town for 6 months, so we decided to err on the side of caution. I told Roxy to stay put and we mobilized. Better to sacrifice a day than have to buy a new van.

My mom and I raced north in the little green farm pickup and her old Volvo station wagon. When we reached Roxy, she told us that a cop had been there. He wanted to know what she was up to. She explained that she delivered for Valley Flora, but he insisted on searching the van. She opened the back doors for him and showed him the tower of Harvest Baskets.

“What’s in the totes?” he asked suspiciously.

“Vegetables.”

“I need you to open one up for me, ma’am.”

It dawned on Roxy at that moment that he thought she was smuggling drugs.

“Now mmmmm-mm, doesn’t that look good?” Roxy said with just the tiniest trace of sass as she popped the lid off a tote and brandished a full October Harvest Basket.

By the time we reached Roxy, we were overdue at the Coos Bay CSA site by almost an hour. We hustled all the CSA totes into the pickup, tied them down hastily, and crammed the rest of the Coos Head boxes into the Volvo. I sped off up Beaver Hill, the speedometer reading 70, and looked in the mirror just in time to see my mom pulling a U-ey in the middle of 101. I pulled the pickup over and got out. A lid had blown off one of the Harvest Baskets, but all of the produce was still there. A few minutes later my mom pulled up with the lid, we re-tied the ropes and added a bungey net in hopes of keeping everything in place. My stomach was strung tight with urgency. It was already 1 o’clock.

Off we went again at break-neck speed, but it was only moments before I saw a flash in the mirror and watched in horror as, slow motion, a red lid followed by a red tote cartwheeled through the air and crashed onto the highway, catapulting produce in every direction. Ripe tomatoes exploded, purple beets skidded, lettuce shredded, brittle carrots snapped, and a bunch of parsley bounced twice before coming to rest on the white line. I’m pretty sure I said something that looked like this: #@$%@!! And then my mom and I started laughing. Was this really happening? The very thing that I have hoped for six years would never happen?

If there was a scenario-meter to measure situations from best to worst, I quickly realized that although we were rapidly plummeting towards “worst,” we weren’t there yet. Jolene, the site host in Coos Bay, is not only an awesome human being, she is also a CSA member (those two things seem to go hand in hand) and I quickly realized that I could bring her a replacement tote the next day. So long as we didn’t lose another harvest basket off the back of the truck, we might still be able to pull this mission off. We re-tied the load yet again and set off at a mild-mannered 50mph.

Over an hour late and belching white exhaust (the green farm pickup has some issues right now, too…oi vei!), we arrived at the CSA site and off-loaded all the totes, with a promise to Jolene that we’d bring her a new one the next day. (A big thank you to all the Coos Bay members for their patience, and to Paul, the CSA site organizer, for his help!).

As for Frank, the long and short of it is that we’re pretty sure now that his problem is nothing but a faulty oil gauge. Which means that the entirety of last week’s escapade was a fire drill, no more. That, and fodder for some newsletter story-telling. Roxy and Frank made it home from Coos Bay today without a hitch, and hopefully the oil gauge will only be dancing for another week. The mechanic made room for us next Monday.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share NEXT week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following:

• Leeks
• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Savoy cabbage
• Lettuce
• Winter squash
• Fennel

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Produce: Yellow Storage Onions
• Corn Earworm, Beware!
• Bumper Red Potato Crop!
• Sweet Peppers are Peaking! Order by the Bag!

In your share this week:

• Yellow Storage Onions
• Baby Carrots
• White Sweet Corn
• Cilantro
• Head Lettuce
• Hot Peppers
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Red Potatoes

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Yellow Storage Onions: If these onions could talk, the story they would tell you. It might go something like this:

“Oh man, this has been such a great season to be a yellow storage onion. Well mostly…

We had such a nice spring in the greenhouse, growing roots and getting our first leaves in those trays. And then those farmers picked the nicest day to plant us out in the field: the soil was so warm and soft and smooth, and just damp enough. We took to it like flies to you-know-what. And we grew so fast it almost hurt. Did you know onions have growing pains, too? Yeah, really. Then, sometime in June, all of a sudden, we started to get fat and paunchy around the midriff. Just ballooned out like we’d been eating too many Ding-Dongs. I mean, we hadn’t, but jeez, we just got bigger and bigger and rounder and rounder, and everyday those farmers walked through us in the field and just marveled at how pretty we were with our golden tan skin and big bellies.

Then the sun started to pitch south a little and we got tired of keeping our green hair standing straight up (it’s a lot of work to maintain a do like that for 4 months, you know!). So, we relaxed and let our hair down, and before you know it, we were getting yanked out of the ground and put into the back of the pickup for the return trip to the greenhouse (the perfect place to finish off our summer tans and dry out our hair). We were all just chilling there for a month or so, watching the rest of the red onions and shallots get their hair cut every week and nestled into bins, when some strangers showed up. I think they were friends of our farmers or something. Anyway, they came and they gave some of us haircuts and put us into those cozy bins, except they forgot to shut the door to the greenhouse when they left in the evening.

It was OK at first, but then we heard a rustling in the middle of the night. Nobody knew what it was. Then we heard an onion scream, and a thwack as it hit the floor. Something said “Baaah.” Before we knew it, everyone was getting yanked off the table and we felt hot sheep breath on our cheeks. They had found us, and they were hungry, even for onions.

When dawn broke, we slowly opened our eyes afraid of what we would see: all of us, strewn about the floor, some maimed, some bitten in half, some stomped to death, many with their hair chewed off. It was terrible. Roberto arrived a little while later and the look on his face said it all: after such a perfect onion season, after all the hard work, to lose it all now? He chased the sheep out and then he called Zoë to tell her the bad news. Zoë's stomach turned over and stayed there, upside down, while she tried to finish up in the office. Roberto set about tenderly picking us all up, inspecting us, and sorting us. Miraculously, many of us were unharmed altogether. But a few hundred of us weren’t so lucky. Doomed for the compost.

Those of us that are in your Harvest Basket this week are the survivors. There are lots of us, each with their own story to tell. If you have a minute, bend your ear close to our remarkable girth and listen. We might just open up to you before you eat us.”

Corn Earworm, Beware!

This is the last planting of corn, and as usual, the corn earworms have found it. That’s par for the course in our later corn plantings every year. Beware that when you shuck your corn you will probably encounter one or two at the tip of the cob. Just cut off the tip, rinse the shucked ear, and enjoy!

Bumper Red Potato Crop!

This time of year is all about hauling in the storage crops, among them the potatoes. In a normal year, we are happy to get a yield of 2-3 pounds of potatoes per bed foot. This year, our red Desirees blew every previous record out of the water with a yield of 5 pounds per bed foot. Our walk-in cooler is busting at the seams! We’ll be sharing in the bounty by throwing in a few extra distributions of potatoes this fall, starting this week.

This extraordinary yield was not just due to the number of potatoes under each plant, but the size of them. Let me know if you're the Harvest Basket member who receives the single 3 pound potato in your share this week. You win a prize, on top of receiving the prize potato. And no, it doesn’t involve any Oompa-Loompas.

Sweet Peppers are Peaking! Order by the Bag!

The sweet peppers are at their peak! Order now to get ‘em in bulk for fresh eating or preserving. You can choose from either:

• Roasters: 5 pounds of sweet red roasters
• Jellybean Mix: 5 pounds of mixed bells and roasters - red, orange, yellow, purple (no green)

The cost is $20/bag. Orders will be fulfilled on a rolling basis in the order received (pepper season usually goes into October). To order, please email us:

• Your name
• Your pickup location
• Best daytime phone number to reach you
• The type and quantity of peppers you would like (in 5 pound increments).

Peppers preserve wonderfully.

• Frozen: just dice them up raw and toss them into a freezer bag.
• Roasted: blacken the outer skin over an open flame, toss them into in a lidded pot to steam, peel the skin off once they’ve cooled, lay the roasted peppers on cookie sheets to freeze individually, then transfer to a freezer bag.

Either way, they are a great addition to wintertime meals – pasta sauces, stir fries, soups, lasagna, and more!

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share NEXT week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following:

• Red Onions
• Carrots
• Beets
• Parsley
• Lettuce
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Kale?
• Winter squash?

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Produce: Napa Cabbage & Fingerling Potatoes
• September Strawberries
• Fennel Pesto
• Shifting into Fall
• Sweet Peppers by the Bag!
• Calapooia Garlic by the Bag or the Braid!

In your share this week:

• Walla Walla Sweet Onions
• Napa Cabbage
• Carrots
• Fennel
• Dill
• Head Lettuce
• Sweet Peppers
• Hot Peppers
• Fingerling Potatoes
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Tomatoes – Red & Heirloom

On Rotation:

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week, others next week – or in a future week.

• Cucumbers
• Cherry Tomatoes

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Napa Cabbage: This has to be tops on my list of favorite cabbages: tender, sweet, versatile. It’s tender enough to stand in for lettuce, or cabbage-y enough to hold it’s own in slaw. Here are a couple good recipes off our website (I make a lot of the napa-apple-nut salad at this time of year):

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/recipe_search/results/napa%20cabbage

Napa is also the cabbage of choice for making kimchi, or Korean pickles. This is a relatively quick, easy recipe if you’ve never tried it before:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/quick-spicy-kimchee-recipe/index.html

Napa stores best in a plastic bag in the fridge. It won’t last as long as a red or green hard cabbage, but you should get a week or two out of it.

Fingerling Potatoes: Whimsical and weird-looking, this is a variety called Russian Banana. Fingerling are usually described as “waxy” in texture, meaning they’re a firmer, drier potato than most. The most common preparations are to either roast them or boil/steam them for use in a salad. Store in your fridge in plastic bag.

This is about as simple and easy a dish you could make with them, using your fresh dill:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/dill-fingerling-potatoes-recipe/index.html

September Strawberries

Every strawberry harvest in September feels like a bonus to us, given the uncertain weather as we slide towards Fall. As soon as the rain and cool weather arrive with any earnestness, it will shut down the strawberries for good.

This recent blast of sun, however, has made for some good late-season picking. The berries have ramped up so much in the past week, there's enough to fill some last-minute, late season special orders. If you want to order a flat, email me your name, pickup site, daytime phone number, and the number of flats you want.

Take note that September’s sweet berries also tend to have a shorter shelf life. There’s more mold pressure from all the morning dew, and they tend to be more fragile overall. We painstakingly try to cull every berry that has any sign of rot, but even so they sometimes slip by us during the 6-hour strawberry pick on Tuesday and Friday mornings – so please forgive the occasional mold bomb that might light up your pint of berries if you let them sit for a day or two. Sooner is better when it comes to eating September strawberries! Enjoy the last few pints coming your way this season.

Fennel Pesto

I'm always looking for new ways to convert the fennel skeptics in the crowd, so I was extra-excited to try this fennel pesto recipe that my dad and stepmother discovered. They were kind enough to post it to our website. I swooned. Hope you do, too.

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/fennel-recipes

Shifting into Fall

September is a month of transition for us. We’re just wrapping up our last direct seedings and transplantings in the field, and the focus shifts markedly from putting seeds and plants in the ground to taking food out of the ground. Big harvests of storage crops like potatoes, onions, and winter squash are upon us and it seems that no bin weighs less than 30 pounds at this time of year. From now on as the food gets heavier, we do a lot of bending at the knees. Core strength! Steady now!

Sweet Peppers by the Bag!

The sweet peppers are on! Order now to get ‘em in bulk for fresh eating or preserving. You can choose from either:

• Roasters: 5 pounds of sweet red roasters
• Jellybean Mix: 5 pounds of mixed bells and roasters - red, orange, yellow, purple (no green)

The cost is $20/bag. Orders will be fulfilled on a rolling basis in the order received (pepper season usually goes into October). To order, please email us:

• Your name
• Your pickup location
• Best daytime phone number to reach you
• The type and quantity of peppers you would like (in 5 pound increments).

Peppers preserve wonderfully.

• Frozen: just dice them up raw and toss them into a freezer bag.
• Roasted: blacken the outer skin over an open flame, toss them into in a lidded pot to steam, peel the skin off once they’ve cooled, lay the roasted peppers on cookie sheets to freeze individually, then transfer to a freezer bag.

Either way, they are a great addition to wintertime meals – pasta sauces, stir fries, soups, lasagna, and more!

Garlic by the Bag or the Braid!

For some reason, we’re unable to grow garlic at the farm. Each time we’ve planted it, we lose the entire crop to white rot, rust, flooding, or other diseases. After enough disappointments we’ve stopped trying altogether.

Our long-time family friends have a small organic farm called Calapooia Crossing. They are located on the Calapooia River in the foothills of the Cascades and they excel at growing garlic. Last year they brought us part of their harvest and we sold it at the farmstand, to wide acclaim. They just delivered this year’s crop to us, so we have a couple hundred pound of beautiful garlic for the offering. It’s available at the farmstand, but for those of you who can’t make the trip, we’re happy to deliver bulk bags to your pickup site.

Here's the scoop if you want to order:

Bulk garlic is available in 3 pound bags, $25 per bag. (There are about 5 large heads of garlic per pound, so a bulk bag contains approximately 15 heads of garlic. It’s a hardneck variety, meaning the head has a central stem with a ring of large, easy-to-peel cloves around the stem.)

Garlic braids are also available, $12 apiece. Braids contain approximately 7 heads of softneck garlic called Italian Late. It’s the best keeper and makes a beautiful gift.

If you’d like to order, please email us:

• Your name
• Your pickup location
• Best daytime phone number to reach you
• The type and quantity of garlic you would like.

We’ll deliver!

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following:

• Red Onions
• Carrots
• Sweet corn?
• Kale
• Head Lettuce
• Sweet Peppers
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Tomatoes

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Produce: Cured Walla Wallas! Lacinato Kale! Hot Peppers! Sweet Peppers!
• Make your own Pico de Gallo
• Bulk Peppers By the Bag

In your share this week:

• Walla Walla Sweet Onions
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Lacinato Kale
• Cilantro
• Hot Peppers
• Sweet Peppers
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Tomatoes – Red & Heirloom

On Rotation:

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week, others next week – or in a future week.

• Cucumbers
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Green Beans

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Cured Walla Walla Sweets: The greenhouse is doing a great job of drying down all of our storage onions and shallots, and the Walla Wallas are the first to be fully cured. This means that their tops have fully dried down and they have a papery outer skin. Once onions are cured, you don’t need to store them in the fridge. You can keep them on the countertop, or in a cool dry place. Walla Wallas are not intended for long-term storage (maybe up to a month at most), so don’t delay too long in eating them!

Lacinato Kale: My favorite of all the kales, this blue-black, blistered kale is also beloved in Italy. It goes by many monikers, including Tuscan kale, Tuscan cabbage, Italian kale, Dinosaur kale, cavolo nero, black kale, flat back cabbage, palm tree kale, or black Tuscan. And yes, this kale by any other name does taste as sweet. Give us some cold nights or a light frost, and it’ll get even sweeter – so there is at least one reason to look forward to the end of summer and the start of chilly weather.

Peppers – Hot & Sweet: Let the march of the peppers begin! My mom’s greenhouses are starting to pump out the peppers, in perfect time for salsa season. The two small peppers in your share this week are jalapeños with a good kick. The bigger peppers are sweet varieties (you’ll see bells and long Italian roasting peppers throughout the next month or so).

Store in the fridge in a plastic bag.

Fresh Pico de Gallo

You have all the ingredients (minus the lime) to make fresh, homemade salsa this week: tomatoes, hot peppers, sweet peppers, cilantro, and sweet onion. There’s nothing to it: dice everything up, salt to taste, squeeze in some lime, and get yourself some (non-GMO) corn chips!

Bulk Peppers Available by the Bag

As the colored sweet peppers come on, Bets will be able to offer them in bulk to our members. The pepper fanatics in the crowd tend to eat them raw on the spot, but they also preserve wonderfully (frozen: just dice them up raw and toss them into a freezer bag; or roasted: blacken the outer skin over an open flame, toss them into in a lidded pot to steam, peel the skin, lay the roasted peppers on cookie sheets to freeze, then transfer to a freezer bag).

They will be available in 5 pound bulk bags, $20/bag. Orders will be fulfilled on a rolling basis in the order received (pepper season usually goes into October). To order, please email us:

• Your name
• Your pickup location
• Best daytime phone number to reach you
• The quantity of peppers you would like (in 5 pound increments)

We’ll deliver to your pickup site!

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following NEXT week:

• Red Onions
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Corn?
• Fennel?
• Sweet Peppers
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Tomaotes

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Produce of the Week: Shiro Plums! Torpedo Onions!
• Public Service Announcement: This Week’s Cabbages
• Tamales Shares this Week

In your share this week:

• Cabbage – red or green
• Red Long of Tropea torpedo onions
• Carrots
• Zucchini
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes – Red & Heirloom
• Broccoli
• Dill
• Shiro Plums

On Rotation:

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week, others next week – or in a future week.

• Cucumbers
• Cauliflower
• Sweet Peppers

NEW PRODUCE OF THE WEEK

Shiro Plums: You can thank that long, sunny spring we had for the nest of yellow plums in your tote this week. Never has there been such a Shiro harvest! And as much as we’d like to think it will happen again, regularly, it all depends on how much rain and hail falls from the sky in the months of March & April.

These are one of our favorite plum varieties – the drip-down-your-face kind, at once sweet and slightly tart. And they’re ripe now, so don’t delay with the dripping! I imagine it won’t be too hard to figure out what to do with them (as in, eat the whole dozen right away), but they do make a lovely yellow plum sauce if you want to cook them down with a little sugar (my mom likes to use if for barbecue sauce). Or one of my favorite desserts (usually made with pretty, purple Italian plums, but anything will do), plum clafoutis:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Brandied-Plum-Clafoutis-243386

I think the flavor and texture is best if you keep your plums on the counter at room temperature. They won’t last as long, but that’s probably a moot point altogether – given the sugar-yum-eat-me-now factor.

Red Long of Tropea Torpedo Onions: It’s a mouthful to say, and a delicious mouthful to eat. This variety harks from Mediterranean France and Italy where it’s grown for fresh harvest and specialty markets. It’s similar to the Purplette onions you got throughout July, but slightly slower to mature. Red Longs need to be kept in the fridge because they aren’t cured (no papery outer skin), and ideally eaten within in a couple of weeks.

Public Service Announcement: This Week’s Cabbages

If you have back trouble, you may want ask for assistance lifting your cabbage this week. Some of our green cabbages grew to a gargantuan size this year, due to the fact that about half of our green cabbage planting got wiped out by cabbage maggot in the spring. As a result, the surviving plants had ample room to grow and grow. And grow. Some of the cabbages we packed into totes yesterday topped the scales at 8 pounds. If you are not a cabbage fan and you open the lid to a tote that has a monster in it, you might want to look for a different tote with a smaller specimen. This is one of those times when not all things are created equal in the CSA share, so hopefully you all can sort it out at your pickup sites based on need, want, and goodwill!

Also, we came up short on green cabbages, so some people will be getting red cabbage in their share. Again, I have faith that you can work it out without any brawling over over-sized brassicas!

Tamale Shares this Week

Tamales go out to pickup sites this week. If you are a tamale member, look for your share in the marked blue cooler at your pickup site. Enjoy!

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following NEXT week:

• Head lettuce
• Cucumbers
• Potatoes
• Red Long of Tropea Torpedo Onions
• Carrots
• Parsley
• Zucchini
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes
• Broccoli
• Corn?

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Veggie of the Week: Potatoes!
• Part II: The Joy of CSA Farming
• Strawberries: Phoenix Rising?

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Purplette Onions (the last of ‘em for the year)
• Cilantro
• Carrots
• Collards
• Zucchini
• Strawberries
• Potatoes

On Rotation:

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week, others next week – or in a future week.

• Spinach
• Cauliflower

New Veggie of the Week: Potatoes

I'm trying not to count my chickens before they hatch (given last year’s disappointment when late blight wiped out half of our potato patch), but oh man - it’s looking like a good spud year so far. We dug the first couple beds of Desiree red potatoes on Monday and pulled out some impressive lunkers – a pound apiece, some of them!

This week’s potatoes are semi-new, meaning that the skin is thin and hasn’t cured fully yet (you’ll notice little scuffs and places where the skin peeled off while we were washing them). Because of this, you should store them in your fridge in a plastic bag.  It also means that these potatoes are as juicy as they come.

“Juicy?” you’re thinking? Since when are potatoes juicy? When they’re fresh. Go get a store-bought potato and do a side-by-side cut-in-half test. The Desirees in your share this week will actually weep, since they haven’t lost any of their moisture content in storage. You might not think there would be much difference in taste with something as plain and basic as a potato, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised this week when you cook up your freshly dug spuds.

If you haven’t already tried it, this would be a great week to make the recipe for Collards with Potatoes: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/collards-potatoes

Desiree potatoes are also a good candidate for potato salad. I like to make a tangy version that’s lighter on the mayo, full of veggies, and uses some of Candace’s fresh eggs, hardboiled:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/zs-potato-salad

Part II: The Joy of CSA Farming

On the heels of last week’s Beet Box about the challenges of CSA farming, my inbox was awash in wonderful emails from our members. I am sharing some of them here, anonymously, to give you a glimpse of what makes this work so gratifying at times. It’s true, farming is tough at times, but having a community of eaters like you – who are sympathetic to the setbacks and appreciative of the successes – makes it all a very, very worthwhile endeavor.

We love hearing from you. Of course we prefer to get the happy, gushing emails from our members, but we definitely want to hear from you if you have some negative/constructive feedback for us as well. I mean it.

 Thanks for all your hard work. You guys are amazing!

As a consumer I just want to say thank you for providing healthy food for us.  I know it can often feel like a thankless job full of hard work and sometimes disappointment, however what you are doing is greatly appreciated!

Please know that from my point of view, each week is a surprise and I look forward to the pick-up each week.  I have learned to cook vegetables and have felt better for it!   Who knew that I liked collards and chard!  I love it!  The only thing that I can't get to know or like are beets!    That's ok, though, since I'm sharing with my sister and she likes them.   I appreciate that when you go organic, mother nature has the final say!  I am duly spoiled.  I can't eat produce from Safeway any more. I love it!

Love your newsletter!  It’s so informative, helpful and fun.  You have a great sense of humor.  I also want to thank you for providing me, my family, and the whole south coast community with the most wonderful vegetables.  I have learned to eat so many more veggies than I used to have in my repertoire thanks to your food baskets.  For example, the first year, I just kinda looked at the kale.  I didn’t know what to do with it and was sure I wouldn’t like it.  Then I got a couple of recipes and now it is probably my very favorite “green.”  Now, I will try beets.  I am not a beet fan, but I’ll try the recipe you listed.  Oh, and I do like beet chips that my husband makes in the oven.  Who knows?  I may decide beets are the greatest thing since Seth’s bread! So keep up the good work!  We are blessed to have you and your produce in our lives!

Strawberries: Phoenix Rising?

Just when I think I know something on the farm, I usually get proven wrong. Which happily, seems to be the case with the strawberry patch right now. As of last week, the strawberries started to stage a comeback. Their bright scarlet sheen is back, the sweetness is returning, and the harvest is up. Enough so to put them in the CSA totes again, and to start fulfilling special orders once more. Who knew?

I have to give credit to Jake, who has been a steadfast optimist throughout the entire, depressing month of July. Roberto and I had both thrown in the towel on the berry patch and were consoling ourselves with the promise and possibility of a fantastic next year (that’s the great thing about farming….there’s always a fantastic next year, at least in your mind). But Jake stuck by those berries, picking the patch clean of ugly fruit each week and maybe sprinkling some magic pixie dust on them when I wasn’t looking.

Whatever the reason (compost tea? time? root regeneration? pixie dust? positive thinking?), we’re seeing a new flush of green leaves and flowers, which hopefully portends a bountiful August of berries. The u-pick is also getting better and better, so if you’ve been hesitating about coming to the farm to pick your own, August will be a good month for it. Or so I think. We know how that goes….

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following NEXT week:

• Head lettuce
• Cucumbers?
• Cabbage?
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions
• Carrots
• Fresh Herbs
• Zucchini
• Strawberries

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Veggies: Red Cabbage
• Winter Garden Kits
• The Heartbreaking Absence of Sugar in your Share

In your share this week:

• Broccoli
• Head Lettuce
• Purplette Onions
• Red Cabbage
• Carrots
• Rainbow Chard
• Zucchini

On Rotation:

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week, others next week – or in a future week.

• Arugula
• Spinach
• Basil
• Peas

New Veggies of the Week…

Red Cabbage

Now there’s some heft! Cabbage is a year-round veggie – in part because it grows from spring through fall, but also because certain varieties store through the winter. This is an early variety, bred for fresh-eating. It will still store for weeks in your fridge (ideally in a bag), so no pressure to eat the whole thing at once (like my draft horse, Maude, likes to do – as if it were a small apple). If you eat some of it and save the rest for later, the cut edge will brown a little. Next time you go to use it, simply shave off the outside layer first.

Great sliced up thinly with grated carrots for a festive summer slaw!

U-Pick Marionberries & Peas

They’re going strong! Come pick!

Winter Garden Kits

This week you’ll see some flats of veggie starts at each pickup site, labeled with names. They are for members who have signed up and pre-paid for Winter Garden Kits. Please don’t take any plants home unless you signed up for a Winter Garden Kit. Thanks!

The Heartbreaking Absence of Sugar in your Share

For the first time ever in the history of Harvest Baskets, there are no strawberries in the share this week (unheard of for mid-July!). The strawberry patch has been in a precipitous nose-dive since the beginning of July and the diagnosis is a soil-borne root fungus called Phytophthora. Phytophthora is ubiquitous on the farm (it can persist in soil for up to 17 years) – but doesn’t necessarily do damage unless it has ideal conditions to proliferate. We got those conditions during the big flood in January of 2012, and then again in November 2012 when the field went under water yet again. Phyophthora thrives in wet, cool soil and flood conditions will unleash it with a fury.

The first casualty on the farm was our raspberries. We lost our entire fall raspberry crop last year (as in, had to tear out the entire planting just as it was hitting it’s prime years), and our June-bearing raspberries were crippled by it (not killed, but almost; the only reason we had a reasonable fruit set on the June raspberries this year was because they pollinated so well this spring).

Strawberries are the other Phyophthora-prone crop we grow, and it has hit them hard this season, in spite of our best efforts to rotate them every year and give them the healthiest soil conditions we can. At this point, I’m declaring it a crop failure (although I’m ever-hopeful that we will be happily surprised by a turn-around later in the summer).

The challenge has been not to panic; strawberries are one of our signature crops and make up a significant portion of the summer income stream. Without those sweet red berries in the mix it’s a little unclear how the economics are going to play out for the farm this season. We have been trying to eek out whatever we can just to help cover the lost investment in this year’s crop (the strawberry crowns, all the labor to plant and maintain them, the fertilizer, the harvest labor, the packaging, etc.), but it will probably chalk up to a loss in the strawberry column this season.

Looking ahead, I just ordered our new plants (which we put in the ground each November for the following season) and I’m going to trial two new varieties that allegedly have much better disease resistance than Seascape (our beloved standby variety), and better flavor. Hard to imagine, but here’s hoping! We are also moving onto higher ground and the new strawberries will be in a place in the field that didn’t go under during the floods of 2012.

In the meantime, we will do whatever we can to get strawberries into your share if possible. Special orders are on hold for the time being, unless you want seconds (we have those in abundant supply but they’re ugly). I’m so sorry!

We have been able to get one or two good flats out of the field each harvest day (compared to the 20 or 30 we would normally be picking right now), and those are for sale at the farmstand (there’s not even enough to put them on rotation for the CSA, so we are just selling the few pints we have).

Thank goodness for the 99 other crops that are doing well on the farm. Roberto was asking me yesterday if there is compensation money from the government for a crop loss like this. The answer is no – unless you grow corn, or soy, or wheat, or somesuch commodity and you buy crop insurance for it. But for us fresh market organic farmers, our only insurance is diversity. So enjoy the 9 other things in your share this week and if you think of it, do a strawberry dance for good measure.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following NEXT week:

• Head lettuce
• Broccoli
• Purplette Onions
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Fresh dill
• Zucchini
• Spinach

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

In This Week’s Beet Box:

• New Veggies: Collard Greens, Carrots, Scallions, Tayberries & Thyme
• U-Pick Tayberries and Peas!
• Strawberry Woes

In your share this week:

·      Broccoli

·      Head Lettuce

·      Collard Greens

·      Strawberries

·      Carrots

·      Scallions

·      Thyme

On Rotation:

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week, others next week – or in a future week.

·      Snap peas

·      Arugula

·      Spinach

·      Tayberries

New Veggies of the Week…

Lots of new things this week, and it’s not all greens! Carrots, heavy heads of broccoli, and scallions herald the real onset of summer!

Collard Greens

Collard greens are beloved in the South. Closely related to kale, cabbage, turnips and the rest of the Brassica family, collards became a staple in the diet of African slaves who were brought to the southern colonies to work on plantations. Slaves were often given the scraps and leftover food from the plantation kitchen, including turnip tops, other greens, ham hocks and pig’s feet. The meals they were forced to create from these meager ingredients ultimately laid the foundation for what we now consider to be traditional southern cooking.

Greens were typically cooked down for a long time with a ham hock, and then served with cornbread to dip into the “pot likker” (the highly concentrated, vitamin-rich broth that results from the long boil of the greens). A “mess o’ greens” was enough to feed a family, so the size of your “mess” depended on the number of mouths you had to feed.

The “mess o’ greens” you can make from this week’s collards is probably enough for 2-4 people. I tend to shy away from boiling collards for a long time. They are plenty tender and delicious after a quick steam or sautee in the pan. I tried this recipe for the first time a few weeks ago, and loved it. You can use a mixture of collards and any other green (kale, chard, spinach), so if you have leftover greens from last week, here’s their chance to shine. You can substitute your scallions for the onion in the recipe:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/collards-potatoes

Storage: Will hold for a week or more in a plastic bag in the fridge.

Carrots

There is not much I need to say about carrots, except this: good luck getting these home. Nothing beats a freshly-harvested, homegrown carrot. Lucky for all of us, these are the earliest carrots we’ve EVER had at the farm, thanks to that warm spell of sunshine in April that enabled me to sneak in a planting 3 weeks earlier than usual. I always breathe a sigh of relief when the carrots come on – it means the beginning of summer food, more color (other than green) in the harvest baskets, and lots of good snacking in the field.

Storage: Will hold for weeks in a plastic bag in the fridge, IF you cut the green tops off. The greens tend to wilt the carrots after awhile, so if you don’t eat all your carrots in the first five minutes, store them in the fridge topless.

Scallions

Also known as green onions, scallions kick off our onion season at Valley Flora. We grow eight kind of onions, 4 varieties of leeks, and two kinds of shallots on the farm. The scallions are the earliest to mature, but our purplette spring onions are close on their heels (look for them in your tote in the next couple of weeks). You can sub scallions anywhere that onions would normally be used, or dice them up for garnish.

We’ve never had such a beautiful onion patch as we do this year – thanks in part to the fact that our onion seedlings had a great start in the greenhouse this winter, and because the spring has been so incredibly lovely and warm. We’re crossing our fingers for a record-breaking harvest of all varieties…

Storage: Will hold a week or so in the fridge in a plastic bag.

Tayberries

If you were one of the folks who received a half pint of mystery berries in your tote last week, and had no idea what they were, here’s your answer: Tayberries. They are a cross between marionberries and raspberries, and we are just barely managing to pick enough to give everyone a taste of them (it’s a slow harvest!). But they are delectable – one of my favorite berries on the farm – and worth every long hour of picking. Eat them by the handful, or whip up some cream to sprinkle them on. Sweet heaven.

After you taste them, you might be inspired to come to the farm and pick your own. We just opened up the tayberries to upick today. The season will last another week or two, but it’s fleeting - so get ‘em while you can!

They won’t store for more than a couple of days in the fridge, so I’d suggest the instant gratification approach on this one…

Thyme

Another of our perennial herbs, and quite possibly my favorite. We use thyme all the time. Summer thyme. Winter thyme. All the thyme. In marinades, in dressings, in eggs, in rice or quinoa. It’s also the easiest herb to dry and use later, so don’t be overwhelmed by the hefty little bunch you’re getting this week. Think delayed gratification on this one.

U-Pick Tayberries & Peas!

As of today, our tayberries are open for u-pick (good timing, just as the raspberries are beginning to wind down).

This Saturday, 7/6, we’ll be opening up the sugar snap pea patch for u-pick. We have 3 long rows of peas that we planted just for u-pick and they are hitting their sweet, crunchy stride. Yum.

Strawberry Woes

We’ve never had such a weird year in the strawberry patch. The u-pick berries are light right now (when they would normally be booming), and the we-pick berries that we harvest for you just aren’t what they should be at the moment. People usually tell us our strawberries are the best berries in the whole world (sorry, Driscolls, I guess we have you beat), but I know that’s not true this week.

I have a few working theories. The plants set fruit extremely early this spring, during all that good April weather. That huge fruit set (which normally would come in June) was destroyed by the Memorial Day storm. Since then, production on the upick side has been light – which I think must be the normal lull in production we typically see in late July. If the season is 3-4 weeks accelerated, it leads me to hope that the berries are about to go bananas, like they usually do in August and September. Fingers crossed for all of you who are still hoping to fill your freezers with berries! Reports from u-pickers are that it’s getting better each week.

On our side of the fence, where we pick your berries each week, there’s something else going on. Thanks to our greenhouse tunnels, we managed to save most of the fruit from the past two whopper rain storms, but at a price. When we close up the tunnels during the rain, there is limited airflow across the plants, which can lead to other problems, like botrytis (grey mold) and spider mites. These things stress the plants, which reduces fruit quality. There is also phytopthora (say that three times fast!), a soil and water-borne root fungus, that is stressing a few of the rows. Two winters of flooding in the field have not helped our phytopthora situation.

Sigh. The perils of organic farming. A conventional strawberry farmer would have all kinds of chemicals at her disposal to combat these problems: insecticides, fungicides, and worst of all, methyl bromide (a soil fumigant that conventional strawberry growers use to nuke the ground before planting; it takes care of the phytopthora, and all the earthworms as well). Instead, we are brewing compost tea, culling any diseased plants, and patiently waiting for the plants to rebound.

We’re hopeful. There’s no rain in the forecast, so we took the tunnels down for the season. The strawberry plants are wild and free again, and if nothing else, Jake (all 6’4” of him) is happy about the fact that he can see the sky while he harvests now….

Thanks for your patience while this signature crop of ours experiences this hiccup in production, and my sincere apologies that your berries are not the best in the whole world this week.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following NEXT week:

·      Head lettuce

·      Broccoli

·      Arugula or spinach

·      Basil

·      Strawberries

·      Carrots

·      Fennel

·      Purplette onions?

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

Week 3

In your share this week:

·      Broccolini

·      Braising Mix

·      Head Lettuce

·      Rainbow Chard

·      Strawberries

·      Kohlrabi

·      Radishes

·      Oregano

On Rotation:

This means that some pickup sites will receive it this week, others next week – or in a future week.

·      Snap peas

New Veggies of the Week…

A quick note, especially to our new members, about the Harvest Baskets right now. June is a month when the baskets are heavier on the greens – spinach, chard, kale, lettuce, etc. This is because these are quick-growing things that mature by early summer and are ready for harvest right now. Carrots, zucchini, potatoes, beets, tomatoes, corn and all the other well-loved veggies that you may be pining for start to show up later in the season, after they’ve had enough warm days to mature.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by all the greens in your share, remember this: if you cook them, they will shrink down to almost nothing! Really. It may look like an insurmountable amount of greenery when you open up your tote, but put them in a pan or a steamer or a blender and you won’t be so intimidated by the volume. Also, consider shifting your habits to incorporate the greens every chance you get. Scrambled eggs for breakfast? Throw some chopped chard in there, too!

And also know that as our mild, early summer weather shifts into mid-summer heat, you’ll start to see less of the greens and more of the other hearty veggies that are growing happily  in our fields right now. Just like raising kids, this phase doesn’t last forever, so try to make the most of it while it’s here!

Rainbow Chard

There's an unspoken rule around the farm, inspired by a saying of my mom's: that "Everything we do has to be at least 51% art." If ever there was a crop that abides by this mantra, it's rainbow chard. With stems aflame in hues of pink, red, orange, yellow, and white, it's as much eye candy as it is good eating. Chard grows year-round here, but it loves early summer the best; it's leaves are big, heavy and succulent right now, and it’s a joy to harvest and bunch.

Chard is a leafy parent to beets and can be used anywhere you would normally use spinach. It’s actually nutritionally superior to spinach because it doesn’t contain oxalic acid – the thing in spinach that sometimes makes your teeth feel coated and funny. Oxalic acid binds minerals and makes them unavailable during digestion, so all the vitamins (A, E, and C) and minerals (iron, calcium) in chard are more readily absorbed by your body.

When we eat chard, we use the whole leave, stem and all. The stems take a little longer to cook, so we strip the leaves from them, chop up the stems, and start them cooking a little before we add the leaves. I also throw whole chard leaves into my berry smoothie in the morning.

Here’s a menagerie of recipes off our website to help get you started if this is your first time out with chard:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/recipe_search/results/chard

Storage: in the fridge in a sealed plastic bag. Will last more than a week.

Oregano

Oregano is one of the perennial herbs we planted a year ago, with the hope of being able to provide fresh herbs to our members in the early part of the season before annual herbs like dill, cilantro, basil and parsley are ready on the farm. The plan seems to be working; our oregano patch is knee high and perhaps too well established at this point (it’s in the mint family and likes to spread….). Herbs are supposedly the most flavorful and pungent just before flowering, so we harvested it this week for you just before the flower spikes have begun to open. The flowers and leaves are both edible.

In the kitchen, it has a spicy taste with a bit of a bite – most commonly used in tomato sauces and Italian cooking. But you can also add it to salad dressing, tuck it under the skin of roasting chickens or into the cavity of baking fish. You can infuse vinegar with it by putting a sprig or two into a bottle of vinegar, or add it to Greek salad.

Or, DRY IT! Because we harvested sizeable bunches for you and it’s pretty potent stuff, you might want to dry some of it for later use. Simply hang it upside down, ideally in a dry, dark place (but somewhere in your kitchen will work fine, too) until it’s crispy-dry.  If you have a food dehydrator you can make of layer of sprigs in it and run it on a low setting until crispy. Then strip off the dry leaves over a plate or bowl, crumble them up between your fingers, and store in a jar. You can do this with many of the herbs you’ll be getting throughout the season (thyme, rosemary, sage, oregano, dill, and mint).

To store it for fresh use, you can either keep it in a plastic bag in the fridge or put it in a glass of water (like a bouquet) and keep it on the counter. Will hold for a week or so.

Braising Mix

The bag of greens in your tote this week is braising mix. It’s a semi-spicy mix of baby kale, tatsoi, mizuna and mustard greens – great for eating raw as salad-with-a-kick, or cooked (steamed, stir-fried, etc.). Use it any way that you’d eat kale, spinach, chard or other leafy greens. I like it steamed up next to a pile of beans and cornbread, with hot sauce – for a southern twist.

Stores for at least a week in the fridge.

U-pick and Farmstand are OPEN!

I think I forgot to mention this in previous newsletters:

Our farmstand and u-pick are open every Wednesday and Saturday from 9 am to 3 pm. There is produce for purchase at the farmstand, in case you want to round out your Harvest Basket with something extra. AND, the u-pick is ramping up with strawberries, RASPBERRIES, fresh herbs and flowers!

The strawberry u-pick goes all summer, until the fall rains come. The raspberry season is more fleeting and will probably only go through the early part of July.  You might want to come sooner than later, since Pippin and Cleo have figured out how to pilfer the raspberry patch efficiently this year.

After raspberries, we’ll have marionberries (July and August).

Please bring your own containers for u-pick and your own bags for farmstand produce (in the interest of keeping more plastic out of the landfill).

Spring Strawberry Victory!

Every year, we struggle through the months of May and June in the strawberry patch. It seems that just as they are really beginning ripen, we get another rainstorm that mushes up the berries and sets us back a couple of weeks. So, this year we decided to experiment with some low tunnels - like portable mini-greenhouses - of our own design. We set these things up over our new strawberry planting, in hopes of being able to keep them dry during rainy spells, but with the option of raising the plastic during warm, dry spells (to keep it from getting too hot in there, and to let the bees, wind and other pollinators in).

We watched them get blown apart during the Memorial Day storm (we clocked 40+ mph windds at the farm), so we had to make some design changes to help them withstand strong winds. It seems to be working so far. We dropped the plastic down for this week's rain, so the strawberries have stayed warm and dry through every downpour. What a relief.

The other unforeseen consequence of the tunnels is that the berries seem to be super-sized so far this season. They are much bigger than usual, and there's less damage from marauding birds and toddlers.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following NEXT week:

·      Head lettuce

·      Broccolini

·      Spinach

·      Fresh herbs

·      Strawberries

·      Carrots?

·      Peas?

·      Collards?

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington

Week 1

Welcome to the Beet Box! This is the weekly newsletter from Valley Flora that describes what’s in your Harvest Basket and what’s happening on the farm. We typically send out the Beet Box on Wednesdays, but it’s going out a day early today to help prepare you for your first week of eating from the farm! Any questions, don’t hesitate to be in touch! We’re looking forward to the next 28 weeks of sharing good food with you!

In your share this week:

·      Artichokes

·      Asparagus

·      Broccolini

·      Arugula (in the plastic bag)

·      Pac Choi

·      Mint

·      Radishes

·      Hakurei Turnips (the white round roots)

·      Cherry tomato plants

The Kickoff!

Are you read to eat some vegetables?!?

Good thing, cuz the veggies are on! We’re kicking off the CSA season this week with some unforeseen goodies, thanks to the warm early spring we’ve had: a big pile of broccolini and a bag of arugula, in particular. Ironically, a couple of the things we had anticipated putting in the Harvest Baskets are NOT in there, also because of the weather: head lettuce (because our first planting was so early it had already bolted by this week’s harvest) and strawberries (which were set back by last week’s Memorial Day tempest). Hopefully both of those items will be back in the line-up for Week 2.

This week you’ll also see artichokes and asparagus in your Baskets. Savor them because this is the only week they’ll be in there. Asparagus season starts in early April and lasts for 8-10 weeks – which means that by early June it’s winding down. The artichokes would normally go into June, but all the hot weather has accelerated the season and is bringing an abrupt end to our spring harvest. Steaming them is a simple, delicious way to eat them (dipped in butter or mayo, of course!), but asparagus are also wonderful oven-roasted or grilled. We like to make our own aioli to dip them in: a few scoops of mayo, a glug of aged balsamic vinegar, chopped fresh thyme or rosemary, some fresh-grated parmesan or pecorino, and black pepper – all mixed up together into a dipping sauce.

What else is in there? Pac choi, a lovely heading Asian green that is wonderful raw, steamed, or stir-fried. Broccolini- a variety called Happy Rich that is the sweetest, most tender thing we grow in the broccoli family. Just steam it – lightly – and enjoy the flavor. Or dip it in some of that aioli you just learned how to make. It’s also great with a simple drizzle of olive oil and salt and a little balsamic vinegar. You’ll be surprised that the stems are tender from tip to tail, not like typical big-headed broccoli. Arugula (in the plastic bag) is great as a stand-alone salad green, or under a piece of fish.

Those white, round roots are hakurei turnips – a Japanese variety that’s smooth, sweeth and buttery. Eat them like apples. And don’t overlook the tops – they can be cooked up like mustard greens. The red and pink radishes have a little kick, but all of it is in the skin. So if you like a milder flavor, peel them and just eat the white hearts.

For more ideas on how to eat these things, visit our recipe collection where you can search by ingredient (http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher), or any of the recipe storehouses listed below at the bottom of this newsletter.

Cherry Tomato Plants!

And finally, two cherry tomato plants! We grew a heap of starts this spring and are sharing the bounty with all of you – so take two home with you this week and plant them (two per harvest basket, so if you split a harvest basket with someone you can each take one home). These are tried-and-true Valley Flora varieties that we grow outdoors on the farm. We usually plant ours around now and see the first fruit sometime in August.

Here are some planting tips:

·      Plant your tomato as deeply as possible (don’t worry about burying the bottom leaves). It will grow roots out of its stem if buried (a unique trait called adventitious rooting) and create a bigger root zone.

·      Feed your tomato a balanced organic compost or fertilizer. Too much nitrogen will make a huge leafy plant with no fruit, so don't overdo it!

·      Water according to need. If your tomato is in a pot, it will need water more frequently. Try not to get the leaves wet when watering.

·      Make sure you put your tomato in a sunny, warm spot. If growing in a container, the bigger the pot the better. A small pot will require more frequent watering and fertilizing, and will produce fewer and smaller fruits.

·      Provide support to your tomato in the form of a string trellis, a bamboo stake, or a wire cage.

The Valley Flora Crystal Ball: What MIGHT be in your share next week…

No promises, but your tote might include some of the following NEXT week:

·      Head lettuce

·      Broccolini

·      Kale

·      Spinach

·      Fresh herbs

·      Rhubarb

·      Strawberries

·      Kohlrabi

Recipes Galore

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

For recipes and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

Our own collection of recipes, where you can contribute and share your favorites

http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/recipe-searcher

Our website’s recipe “search engine,” where you can hunt down recipes by ingredient

www.epicurious.com

A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients

http://info2.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php?cmd=RE

A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient

http://helsingfarmcsa.com/recipes.php

A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes

We have sold out of Harvest Baskets for 2013, but here's the good news:

We still have Egg Shares, Salad Shares, Bread Shares, Tamale Shares and Winter Garden Kits available.

Anyone is welcome to sign up for these items, until May 20th.

If you are on our waiting list and you sign up for any of these items this year, you will be included in our priority sign-up process in 2014 and guaranteed a Harvest Basket next year, should you want one. It's a great way to get your foot in the door, and enjoy local food this season!

Please follow the instructions below to sign up. Our CSA season begins the first week of June and runs through the middle of December.


VALLEY FLORA SIGN-UP INSTRUCTIONS:

WHO Can Sign Up?
Anyone, whether you are on our waiting list or not. Whether you have already signed up for something or not. Anyone is welcome.

WHAT Can I Sign Up For?

• Abby's Greens Salad Shares (20 weeks: $95 - 1/2 pound; $180 - full pound)
• Pastured, local eggs from Candace Carnahan on Floras Creek (28 weeks: $70 - half dozen; $140 - full dozen)
• Artisan sourdough bread from Seth's Brick Oven Bakery in Bandon (28 weeks: $168)
• Homemade tamales from Juana Ferrer in Coquille
• A Winter Garden Kit - a flat of tried and true Valley Flora starts so you can plant your own winter garden to feed you through NEXT winter! ($25)

WHEN Do I Sign Up?
By May 20th. The season will begin the first week of June.

HOW Do I Sign Up?
Follow this link and go directly to our online "store": http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/products

1. Choose which items you want and add them to your cart, in any combination.
2. Complete the checkout process, review your order, and click "submit order".
3. You will receive an itemized order confirmation by email once you submit your order on our website. If you don't receive one, it means you did not submit your order and are NOT in our system yet.

HOW and WHEN Do I Pay for My Food?
We accept check, cash, and SNAP benefits (Oregon Trail Cards). We must receive FULL payment for all items by May 20th. If paying with SNAP, please contact us directly to make arrangements.

Please make checks out to Valley Flora and mail by May 20th to:

Valley Flora
PO Box 91
Langlois, OR 97450

Don't hesitate to be in touch if you have questions. Email is best. We are usually out of the office during the day, so it may take a day or two to return your phone call or email.

Thanks for your interest in eating locally, and for all your patience!
Zoë

This is a reminder that our priority sign-up period ends this Thursday, February 28th!

If you were a CSA member with us last season, now is the time to sign up for 2013!

If you have already signed up, THANK YOU for sticking with us another season!

(And kindly disregard this mass email)......:)


WHO Can Sign Up?
We are currently re-enrolling last year's farm members ONLY. If you were a CSA member last season (as in, purchased any of the following: a Harvest Basket, salad share, egg share, bread share, or tamale share) now is your chance to reserve your share for 2013! This priority sign-up period will last until February 28th. We will begin sign-ups for people on the waiting list starting in March.

WHAT Can I Sign Up For This Year?

• Harvest Baskets
• Abby's Greens Salad Shares
• Pastured, local eggs from Candace Carnahan on Floras Creek
• Artisan sourdough bread from Seth's Brick Oven Bakery in Bandon
• Homemade tamales from Juana Ferrer in Coquille
• A Winter Garden Kit - a flat of starts so you can plant your own winter garden to feed you through NEXT winter!

HOW Do I Sign Up?

1. Follow this link and go directly to our online "store": http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/products
2. Choose which items you want and add them to your cart, in any combination.
3. If you are getting a Harvest Basket, you will need to enter this password when prompted: eatlocal2013  
4. Please do not share this password so that we can keep the signup process fair to everyone on our waiting list. FYI: this password is separate from and different than the personal password you would use when you are logging in to our site using your username. You DO NOT need to login to our website to sign up/purchase products from our online store. BUT, if you want to login and cannot remember your personal login password, you can reset your password at: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/user/password
5. Complete the checkout process and submit your order.
6. You will receive an itemized order confirmation by email once you submit your order on our website. If you don't receive one, it means you did not complete your order and are NOT in our system.

WHAT if I Want to Share a Harvest Basket with Someone?
If you plan to share your Harvest Basket with someone, please pick one person to be the primary share holder. Sign up for the Harvest Basket under that name and submit payment under that name. Your share partner is welcome to sign up for any additional products (salad, eggs, bread, tamales) independently, under his/her own name. Please encourage your share partner to sign up for our Beet Box newsletter so that they can stay in the loop and receive notices from us throughout the season. Share partners can subscribe to our newsletter at: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/newsletter-sign-up    

HOW and WHEN Do I Pay for My Food?
We accept check, cash, and SNAP benefits (Oregon Trail Cards). To reserve your spot, we must receive FULL payment for all items by May 1st. If you choose the Monthly Pay Plan Harvest Basket option, you will pay your deposit by May 1st and then make subsequent $100 monthly payments June through November.

Please make checks out to Valley Flora and mail before May 1st to:

Valley Flora
PO Box 91
Langlois, OR 97450

I hope you'll be joining us this season. Thanks in advance for your support, and don't hesitate to be in touch if you have questions. Email is always the best way to get me, or call 348-2180.

Please note that I will be in Japan on a speaking tour from February 28th through March 8th and will not be able to return calls during that time. If I can't answer your questions via email, I'll be in touch as soon as I return.

Cheers,

Zoë