In the CSA Share this Week:

• Purple Brussels Sprouts
• Carrots
• Rosemary and fresh Bay Leaves
• Shallots
• Parsnips
• Yellow Potatoes
• Rosalba Radicchio
• Butternut Squash
• Lacinato Kale

Thanksgiving Reprise

This week's share contains our standby collection of Thanksgiving vegetables, with a few new guest appearances (fresh bay leaves, pretty-in-pink Rosalba Radicchio, and Lacinato Kale). We had intended to give out a big beautiful head of Winter Crisp Lettuce but the violent hailstorm on Sunday night shredded all of our remaining head lettuce (and spinach) in the field. Fortunately our most tender and beloved of radicchios - Rosalba - survived. Many, many layers of her Barbie-pink leaves had to be peeled away - discarded into pink-petticoat-drifts in the field - but she was mostly unscathed underneath, phew. 

It's been a rowdy week, ticking most of the boxes for late fall/winter weather drama here on the southcoast: hail, high winds, heavy rain. We lost the plastic on one of our greenhouses to 70 mph gusts last night, and the film on a newly-planted strawberry bed took flight, but all in all we weathered the "cyclone bomb" alright. (The new meteorological terminology cracks me up: same old Curry County weather, brand new, headline-worthy name). If you are new to the area, welcome to "normal" on the Southcoast! 

And if you are new to CSA this year, you might not question the arrival of your Thanksgiving produce a week early (I know, all you old dogs are probably feeling out of sorts seeing those ugly Valley Flora parsnips in your tote with Thanksgiving still a week off). That's because (BIG REMINDER), there is NO CSA DELIVERY NEXT WEEK on Wednesday 11/27 or Saturday 11/30. Our kids have the whole week off from school, we have two dozen family members visiting from Saturday to Sunday, and we've finally decided after fifteen years that it's not that much fun to pack all 140 CSA shares, the farmstand orders, and the wholesale orders in 2 days instead of 5 in order to give ourselves and our crew a break on Thanksgiving day! So a Thanksgiving holiday it is for your farmers, in the fullest, most British sense of the word. I think I could get used to this.

Most of your produce this week has a long fridge life (keep your shallots and squash on the counter). Which means that if you want to hoard it for next Thursday's feast, go right ahead! Might I recommend one of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes that will utilize your parsnips (those especially ugly white roots in your share...do give them a chance, with the help of a vegetable peeler):

Roasted Winter Squash and Parsnips with Maple Syrup Glaze and Marcona Almonds

We also loaded you up with extra spuds for mashing, and a bag of aromatics (rosemary and bay) for roasting/baking/soup-making.

We're wishing all of you a Thanksgiving full of grace and good food, and sending you our deepest gratitude for your commitment to the farm and the CSA this season. We wouldn't bother growing those ugly parsnips if it wasn't for all of you (wink, wink). :)

AND, don't forget that we'll be back in your life the week after Thanksgiving for ONE LAST CSA DELIVERY the week of December 2nd! Week 28 of 28, not to be missed!

Mark your Calendars: Final CSA Pickup for the Season:

• Wednesday 12/4, Coos Bay and the Farm
• Saturday 12/7, Port Orford and Bandon

Thank you all!

In the Harvest Basket this Week:

• Brussels Sprouts, on the stalk
• Leeks
• Delicata Squash
• Carrots
• Sweet Peppers
• Bunched Spinach
• Head Lettuce
• Shinseiki Asian Pears

On Rotation:

• Cauliflower

Asian Pears!

We are certainly rounding the corner into deep Fall, with the weather trending chilly and wet and the food listing towards the dense and durable. This will likely be the final week of sweet peppers (sniff, not sure how I'll carry on without a fridge stuffed full of those sweet snackers). The sugary consolation prize is this week's Asian Pear, a variety called Shinseiki. For years I was convinced this was a dud variety - not very flavorful, kinda meh. I even considered cutting the trees down and replacing them with something else. One year I just didn't pick them - what was the point? - and then noticed that they were still clinging steadfast to the tree in November. I went out to the orchard and sampled one, only to discover a beautifully bronzed pear - sweet, juicy, and pretty dang good! The epiphany was that I had been picking this variety too soon, before they'd developed their full flavor potential. There's always some gusty storm in October that threatens to knock all the Asian pears to the ground, hence a premature scurry to harvest any fruit hanging on the trees. Well, lo and behold, Shinseiki knows how to hang on through high winds so it can ripen to its full, yummy, November goodness. It's also a reliable fruit-setter, which means we usually have a good crop (and often have to thin it in the early summer because it over-sets fruit). Not a bad problem to have when it means fresh Asian Pears in November!

Delicata!

Also new and sweet this week, Delicata Squash! This is probably our most beloved winter squash variety of all, due to its fantastic flavor and ease of prep in the kitchen. It's one of the few squash varieties with skin thin enough to eat, so if you dread peeling your squash before baking/roasting, no need with this one. That said, it's pretty easy to strip them down with a regular veggie peeler if you want a smoother eating experience (my preference). We often make "Delicata boats" the centerpiece of dinner - cut in half, scoop out the seeds, bake face down on a cookie sheet with some water in it (to create steam) at 400 degrees until soft. You can enjoy them plain, with melted butter, or fancy it up with any kind of stuffing: meat, grains, sauteed veg. Our other go-to prep is "Delicata smiles:" peel (or not), cut in half, scoop out the seeds, cut into half-moons, toss with olive oil and salt, and roast at 425 until soft and slightly browned (flip and stir with a spatula occasionally to get all sides browned).

If you want to take it to the next level, this is a fantastic recipe that knocked our socks off last year (and which we had for dinner last night, and lunch leftovers again today - hooray!). It'll use any kind of winter squash, or a mix of types, and you can sub spinach for kale if you want to make it with what's in your share this week: Winter Squash and Kale Pasta 

Brussels Sprouts!

And finally, those Dr. Seuss-inspired stalks of Brussels sprouts! If you don't have much fridge space, I recommend snapping the sprouts off the stalk and storing them in a plastic bag in your fridge. Like a tiny cabbage, they'll keep for weeks, but why wait?! I know, there are some people out there who have reasons - they think they hate Brussels sprouts - and that's most likely due to the fact that they've only ever had them boiled or steamed, and probably overly-so. Overcooked grey Brussels sprouts are indeed bleh! So instead, roast! The magic formula of high heat + fat + salt + VF veggies works wonders on Brussels. We usually cut them in half first, toss with olive oil and salt and roast at 450 on a sheet pan until they get crispy-browned. Or peruse this collection of recipes to get other inspiration: 42 Best Brussels Sprout Recipes Even Haters Will Love. There's something for everyone in that smorgasbord of recipes.

In the CSA Share this Week:

• Savoy Cabbage
• Carrots
• Winter Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Yellow Onion
• Sweet Peppers
• Sugar Pie Pumpkin
• Beets
• Hot Peppers - Serrano & Jalapeño

On Rotation:

• Eggplant
• Romanesco

Short and Sweet this Week!

We're in the final push before the rain to get ​​​​​​​

our last winter cover crops in, and to form up the new beds for the 2025 strawberry patch. Every dry hour counts right now, so this newsletter is going to be brief! Mainly, a little coaching on two of the big, hefty orbs in your share this week: Winter kohlrabi and Sugar Pie Pumpkins.

• The winter kohlrabi are colossal, as they always are, but you can carve on it for weeks if you store it in the fridge in a plastic bag. The cut edge will discolor in storage, so just shave it off each time you go to cut off a new slab. This variety is the sweetest, crunchiest, yummiest kohlrabi of the whole year, so enjoy!
• Like I mentioned last week, the Sugar Pie Pumpkin in your share this week is multi-purpose: it has hull-less seeds that will roast up into tasty little snackable pepitas, AND it has sweet meat ideal for homemade pumpkin pie. OR, of course, you can carve it for Halloween. It is a pumpkin after all...

Be it known that this is the last of the eggplant for the year (whether you are cheering or depressed at that news, it is a fact, seeing as I flail mowed the plants down to stubs on Monday in preparation for cover crop).

Next week, get ready for those delicious purple daikons, potatoes, and the first radicchio of the season! (I know I'm excited about that, and I will do my best to help you become excited, too.)

Until next week!

Zoë

In the CSA Share this Week:

• Spinach
• Lacinato Kale
• Asian Pears
• Carrots
• Eggplant
• Sweet Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Yellow Onion
• Broccoli

On Rotation:

• Romanesco
• Purple Cauliflower

Dinner, Last Minute

Dinner in our household is usually dictated by whatever new vegetable is coming out of the field on that particular day, and I often come up with (or don't come up with) a meal idea on my five minute drive home from the farm at around 7 pm. I've always wished I could be that kind of put-together person who figures out the entire week's menu on Sunday and have half of it already prepped for lightning fast weeknight meals. But alas, I've never been able to pull that off. Maybe because I've already spent all of my planning energy on the farm crop plan for the whole year, which in a way becomes the family dinner plan as the season unfolds. Or maybe because I'd rather use my Sunday to go on an adventure with the kids, or tackle a project around the homestead. The result of this extemporaneous, last-minute approach to making dinner is that it's always vegetable-dominant, the whole thing is built around what's in season, and we never eat early. I like to justify it by explaining that we're on an old world schedule, ala España, where they never eat dinner before 9 pm :). Part of what makes the 11th hour dinner plan work is that we have a deep pantry at home, plus a big chest freezer, so we're fairly well-equipped to make meals from whatever we have on hand. And good thing, because I'm rarely (er, never) home in time to pick something up at the Langlois Market before they close at 6 pm. 

Tonight I'm inspired to do something with the purple cauliflower that's just starting to come out of the field and this is exactly the kind of recipe that I gravitate to: Roasted Purple Cauliflower with Crispy Chickpeas and Lemon Herb Tahini. It's all about vegetables, but has the added protein from the garbanzos, plus a zesty sauce (gotta love a good sauce!). I'll probably make a pot of quinoa and a spinach salad studded with sweet peppers to go along with it. You can use whatever herbs you have on hand, and if you don't have the middle eastern spice blend known as za'atar, there are various subsitutions you can use instead. You'd probably consider most of what we eat "slow food" - homegrown, prepared from scratch - but canned chickpeas are one of the "fast food" staples we keep on hand in the pantry. They can transform a chopped salad of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from a side dish into a hearty main course, or add dinnertime heft to roasted sheet pan meals like this one. I think of them as a secret weapon for vegaholics like us who also need to slip some extra protein onto the plate. I especially love them "spiced" and then roasted or fried. 

Believe it or not, strawberry u-Pick is still going! Flowers, too!

Yup, it's true. This warm, dry weather is encouraging the strawberries to keep pumping out sweet red fruit, and our u-pick flowers (especially the dahlias) are the best they've been all summer. U-pick is open on Wednsdays only from 11:30 to 2:30 during our farmstand, and the crowds are minimal. This is your moment ot have the run of the patch and to fill buckets to your heart's content. If you still want to make jam, fill your freezer, or make a batch of strawberry fruit leather, come on down! We'll be tearing out the berry patch by late October in time to get our cover crop planted, so get 'em while you can!

In the CSA Share this Week!

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

On Rotation:

• Italian Parsley
• Cilantro
• Broccoli
• Romanesco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:-)

In the CSA Share this Week:

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

On Rotation:

• Zucchini
• Eggplant
  
• Tomatillos
• Lettuce
• Rainbow Chard

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

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

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

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

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

Get Your Tickets!

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

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

Good Neighbor Program

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

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

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

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

On Rotation:

• Broccoli
• Cilantro
• Eggplant

In a Landscape Coming to Valley Flora September 7th!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Harvest Basket this week:

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

On Rotation:

• Eggplant!
• Cilantro
• Dill

Bulk Basil by Special Order - Available Now!

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

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

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

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

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

Busting the Supermodel Myth One Cucumber at a Time

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

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

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

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

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

On Rotation:

• Chard
• Collards
• Sugar Snap Peas

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

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

Enjoy!

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

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

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

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

Accessibility and other FAQs

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

Good Neighbor Program

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

Eligibility at this site:

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

Buy Your Tickets Here!

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

On Rotation:

• Rainbow Chard
• Collards
• Broccoli
• Zucchini

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

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

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

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

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

On Rotation:

• Zucchini
• Broccolini
• Cilantro
• Hakurei Turnips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week!