The Valley Flora Beetbox

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

CSA Week 23 of 28 from Valley Flora!

  • Bunched Spinach
  • Winter Crisp Lettuce
  • Apples - Liberty and Topaz
  • Jalapeno & Serrano Hot Peppers
  • Winter Carrots - big, fat, crunchy and sweet!
  • Dill
  • Red Onions
  • Red Potatoes
  • Spaghetti Squash
  • A tomato

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower, Purple and White
  • Romanesco

Remember that first single tomato that landed in your tote a couple months back, and the story about the request effigy? Well, many weeks and many, many tomatoes later (request effigies wildly successful!) we are full circle back to "A Tomato." What a run! We made it all the way into November, and who knows, Bets might eek out one or two more from her greenhouse before she calls her tomato season a wrap. A homegrown tomato feels extra special on a "suddenly it's winter" kind of day like today.

While you've been luxuriating in abundant tomatoes, it's been a sorry year for orchard fruit - barely any apples, pears, plums or Asian pears this year. Chock it up to a cold wet, spring: in weather like that the bees can't fly and the blossoms take a beating from the wind, rain and hail. The Valley Flora orchard is extremely diverse, with 85 different varieties planted, including quince, italian plums, asian plums, apples, european pears, Asian pears, pie cherries, and peaches. Over a third of those varieties are different kinds of apples, which are a longtime passion of Abby's. Fortunately amidst all that diversity a few of the apple varieties scored a successful pollination window and were able to set a small crop of fruit. The Liberty and Topaz you're receiving this week are from some of those lucky trees. They're great fresh-eating apples: crisp, tangy-sweet, and juicy.

And everyone's favorite: spaghetti squash!!! I actually heard my stomach doing some hungry growling while I was flipping through this gallery of spaghetti squash recipes. Spaghetti squash burrito boats, spaghetti squash lasagna boats, Greek style spaghetti squash with shrimp, daaaaang! Guess I need to bring me home some spaghetti squash this week!

Finally, cauliflower! In spite of our best planning efforts, the purple and white cauliflower and our late season romanesco all decided to head up during the same two weeks, dern! So much for a nice staggered harvest over the course of October and early November (something that Allen's heroic back muscles would have appreciated, after hauling hundreds of pounds of cauli out of the field on Monday). If you haven't gotten a purple cauliflower yet this season, you'll get a bonus romanesco instead. The slugs have been fierce in our fall Brassica field, thanks to a cool summer and the epic quantity of organic matter left behind by our spring cover crop. All that straw and residue is fantastic for soil health, but it's also a wonderland of slug habitat. They did significant damage to the purple cauli crop in particular, which worked out well for the Common Good foodbank this week but left us short for the CSA. Fortunately the romanesco has withstood the slug pressure a little better and will fill in the gap. Not a bad trade.

But yeah, the slugs. Spring was no cakewalk, we lost our summer carrots to them, and are currently fighting tooth and nail to save our winter carrots. I'm pretty sure the Chinese zodiac got it all wrong about 2022 and the tiger: 2022 has most definitely been the Year of the Slug. 

Newsletter: 

Week 22 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Winter Kohlrabi
  • Pie-Pita Pumpkin 
  • Treviso Radicchio - the first in our fall line-up of radicchio varieties
  • Savoy Cabbage
  • Yellow Onions
  • Bunched Spinach
  • Tomatoes
  • Sweet Peppers

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower
  • Romanesco

The CSA share is taking a decided turn towards Fall food this week, with the return of cabbage, the first harvest of our impossibly large winter kohlrabis, Treviso radicchio kicking off chicory season, and a quintessentially seasonal pumpkin. Autumn boasts the highest concentration of the "weird" vegetables in the CSA, so I'd better take a minute to walk you through some of this new fare:

  • Winter Kohlrabi: this is our most ginormous, and ginormously delicious, kohlrabi of the year. In the case of kohlrabi, it turns out bigger is better because there is more crunchy, juicy, sweetness and less fiber. Some of these guys weigh in upwards of 5 pounds each - eek - so you might want to triple this recipe for Kohlrabi Slaw and take it to a big potluck. The top leaves of your kohlrabi are as edible as kale or collards, so don't let them go to waste, and after you cut the leaves off your kohlrabi it will store for MONTHS in the fridge - so feel free to save it for a big holiday meal.
  • Pie-Pita Pumpkin - This is a pie pumpkin with superpowers: it has sweet flesh for baking, but it is also filled with hull-less seeds that you can roast into delicious pepitas. Every other pumpkin variety in the world only does one or the other: pie or seeds. Either way, you end up tossing the seeds out or you toss the meat out. We hate waste on the farm, so when I learned that this variety does both, and does them both well, I was sold. To roast your seeds, scoop them out, rinse them off, pat them semi-dry, toss them with a little salt (and olive oil if you want, but not necessary), and roast at 300 in the oven until lightly browned, stirring now and then. And you could be baking your pumpkin at the same time for that homemade pie. Maybe all this after October 31st, so that it can augment your Halloween decor in the meantime...
  • Treviso Radicchio: I'm always sad to see the lettuce go, but my consolation is the radicchio. I got to harvest our first variety yesterday, a dense, upright, wine-colored treviso type. Over the past five years I've fallen in love with chicories (escarole, radicchio, etc), more and more each year. From a production standpoint, I love how hardy they are, thriving through the difficult weather of late fall and winter. From an aesthetic standpoint, I love the beauty of them all: so many deep, vibrant colors in myriad shapes and forms. And from a culinary perspective, I love eating them. Here's a recipe that's hard not to love: Tasty Radicchio Salad. I get that they can be a challenge for the uninitiated, due to their bitterness. But that can be overcome by cooking, or by cutting them up raw and soaking in cold water for 10 minutes. The treviso type you're getting this week lends itself well to braising, grilling, or other applications of heat, but you can just as easily use it raw in salad. Thanks to Epicurious for curating this amazing list of radicchio recipes, at least ONE of which should get you curious enough to dive into the world of radicchio starting this week. You'll see a few other radicchio varieties before the season is over, so use this first opportunity to get on good terms with it, and maybe like me, learn to love it...

 

Newsletter: 

Week 21 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Italian Parsley
  • Carrots
  • Eggplant - the last of it for the season!
  • Fennel
  • Garlic
  • Head Lettuce
  • Red Onions
  • Hakurei Turnips - back for Fall!
  • Winter Squash: Starry Night (the speckled one) and Honey Bear Acorn
  • Beets

On Rotation:

  • Romanesco Cauliflower

Shifting into Fall

This month-long streak of sunny, dry weather - plus the omnipresence of late-season tomatoes - has created some cognitive dissonance with the actual calendar. Blindfolded, I'd guess it was late September. Eyes open to my wall calendar and lo and behold! We're two weeks away from November. Bets, the tomato/pepper farmer at Valley Flora, is away for a few days, which means the fruits of her labor are absent from the CSA share this week. Instead, filling in (and helping to remedy my acute case of calendar-date-denial), some of our quintessential fall favorites: the first of our 10+ different winter squash varieties, hakurei turnips, and for some of you this week - romanesco cauliflower! 

Tomatoes might well be back next week for another round or two, but not the eggplant. We had our last harvest yesterday and promptly tilled the plants in to make way for winter cover crops. I know that makes some of you sad, but not all of you. See below, Exhibit A: Unloved Valley Flora Eggplant Kicked to Curb in Bandon. (By the way, that photo was taken by a friend of Valley Flora in early September, when the eggplant was still scarce and on rotation for each town, NOT in mid-October after getting 5 straight weeks of quasi-abundant eggplant in your share). It turns out that even during our worst eggplant season on record, it's still too much eggplant for some folks. :)

 

Winter Squash!

So long unloved Solanum melongena, howdy doody Cucurbita pepo! There are two different acorn squashes in your share this week to kick off our winter squash season, which lasts through December and into the new year. All of our winter squash varieties have been curing in our warm greenhouse for the past week or two, after being clipped from the vine and hauled out of the field. Over the course of the next 8 weeks you'll see Delicata, Butternut, Spaghetti, Kabocha, Pie Pumpkins, and a few specialty varieties, including this week's "Starry Night" acorn. We trialed Starry Night last year and it got rave reviews from our farmstand customers, who loved the sweet, nutty flavor. In hopes that you'll do your own little side-by-side taste test, we're giving you a regular green acorn (Honey Bear) as well as a Starry Night. Send us your feedback! Acorns are most commonly cut in half, baked face down (put a little water in the sheet pan to help steam-bake the squash), and then eaten with maple syrup and butter floating inside the squash boat. Sounds like a great plan for a rainy weekend.

A quick, obligatory note about winter squash safety: they've got tough hides and they roll around, so don't cut your hand off with a kitchen knife! Some CSA members swear by microwaving them whole for a few minutes to soften the skin slightly, which makes it easier to pierce and cleave them with a knife. Others opt to bake them whole for awhile, then cut them up. Me, I like to live on the edge so I always go after them without any pre-softening, but without fail I use our sharp-tipped, heavy-bladed chefs knife to do the deed. I stabilize the squash, get the tip inserted into the skin, and then work the blade around the circumference of the squash until it's cut in two. I still have ten fingers, so far. Other varieties, like Delicata and Butternut, are easier to work with without lopping off a limb. Acorns are one of the toughest - pretty much the black diamond of squash hacking - so be careful!

If you want to go hog wild on winter squash, or squirrel extra away for winter, we've got most of our varieties available at the farmstand now, in abundance. We're open every Wednesday and Saturday, 11:30 to 2:30 through Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving it'll be Wednesdays-only until December 14th.

 

Looking forward to the rain so very much, for the soil, the pastures, the cover crops, the creek, the fire-faded sky. Time to make soup.

Newsletter: 

Week 20 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Carrots
  • Eggplant
  • Head Lettuce
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Yellow Potatoes
  • Purple Mini-Daikon Radishes
  • Tomatoes
  • Leeks
  • Broccoli

Mini-Daikons, Beautiful Inside and Out

 

These past couple weeks we've started harvesting our mini-daikon radishes, a neon trifecta of three varieties that come in purple, hot pink and red. Harvest Baskets are getting the purple variety this week - probably my favorite of the three. These daikons are an eagerly-anticipated part of our fall crop plan, in part because their vibrant colors add an eye-catching splash to the fall produce lineup, but also because they are so incredibly versatile in the kitchen. You can eat these daikons just as you would a regular radish - chopped up fresh in a salad, or as a topper on tacos or burrito bowls. But they also lend themselves to some awesome traditional Asian recipes, like Japanese pickled daikon, Korean pickled radish, and daikon radish salad with sesame fried tofu. Our mini-daikons are fairly mild, but if there's any spice you're going to find it in the skin. They're easy to peel if you want to mellow out their flavor and just enjoy the juicy, crispy goodness within. You can eat the tops as well: toss them into soup, sautee them, or steam them like other greens. The radish roots themseves will store for weeks in a plastic bag in your fridge after you cut the tops off.

Newsletter: 

Week 19 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Broccoli
  • Carrots
  • Eggplant
  • Head Lettuce
  • Yellow Onions
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Tomatoes
  • Bunched Spinach
  • Zucchini
  • Jalapeno and Serrano Peppers

On Rotation:

  • Cilantro
  • Chard
  • Collards

Abby's Greens Salad Shares are Done for the Season

For salad share CSA members, last week marked the final distribution of Abby's Greens for the season. If you're not sure how you will live without them, rest assured you can still find Abby's salad at our farmstand, the Port Orford Community Co-op, Coos Head Food Co-op, McKay's in Bandon, and at various restaurants in the area. Depending on the weather this fall, Abby hopes to be harvesting salad greens through October, and with any luck a little bit longer :). 

Fall Colors

We may not be able to brag about a showy display of autumn leaves here on the Oregon coast, but with October comes some of the most intense farm-food hues of the year. Purple napa cabbage, neon pink daikons, ember-orange beets, shiny lipstick peppers, purple-black eggplants, and, soon-to-appear in your share: carnival-striped winter squash. Even after all these years, the wash table still stops me in my tracks on a day like this when Roberto has the produce piled high into a root crop rainbow:

I'm guessing the fall shares are going to feel abundant as we enjoy the overlap of late-ripening summer crops alongside the right-on-time arrival of fall roots, broccoli, romanesco, and greens. I hope your fridge - and your stomach - are big enough.

:)

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 18 CSA from Valley Flora!

  • Bunched Spinach
  • Carrots
  • Eggplant
  • Head Lettuce
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Sweet Peppers
  • Tomatoes
  • Painted Purple Potatotes
  • Zucchini

On Rotation:

  • Cilantro
  • Zucchini
  • Heirloom Tomatoes

The tug-o-war between summer and fall is palpable. There are moments in a day when I want to make a dash for the swimming hole; a half hour later I'm reaching for another layer and a warm hat. Fingers of refrigerator chill have been slinking up the valley from the coastal fog bank that looms out to the west. Last night rain, this morning sun. A sudden greening of our summer-parched yard. 

It means that our week is choreographed once again to the weather forecast: always the inevitable scurry before the next rain, and lots of time cleaning onions in the greenhouse when it's wet. We cross our fingers for enough dry days to get the winter squash and potato harvest in, and enough rainy days to water in newly-seeded cover crops and to soften up ground that needs to be worked. There is an urgency to all of it, knowing that the dry days might be numbered and our window to get so many things done is shrinking. It's our final big crescendo before the lovely mellowing that November always brings to our farming rhythm. This year, we're feeling the squeeze more than usual because our storage crops - namely onions and winter squash - are coming out of the field about 3 weeks later than usual. That gives us precious little time to shift that ground into cover crop before it's too wet. Fall is always a dance, but thankfully we have a great cast working together to make it all happen.

 

Newsletter: 

Week 17 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Newsletter: 

Week 16 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation:

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

Weather Whiplash

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

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

 

Newsletter: 

Week 15 CSA from Valley Flora!

Hi everyone!

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

This week's share will likely include:

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

On Rotation:

  • Sweet corn
  • Eggplant
  • Dill
  • Cilantro

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

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

Happy Labor Day!

Newsletter: 

Week 14 CSA from Valley Flora

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

On Rotation:

  • Eggplant

Field Notes, Food Notes

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Week 13 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation

  • Eggplant
  • Sweet Peppers

One Single Tomato: A Request Effigy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It worked for John.

 

Newsletter: 

Week 12 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation:

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

Pop Quiz:

Tiny strawberry or giant beet?

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 11 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Newsletter: 

Week 10 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

Basil is Still Cranking!

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

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

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

Land Use, Affordable Housing and the Farm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read comments submitted by concerned citizens here: 

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

https://100friendsofportorford.org/
 

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 9 CSA from Valley Flora

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

Bulk Basil Available by Special Order!

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

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

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

Yum!

Carrots and Climate Change

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

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Week 8 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

Eating Summer, Planting for Winter

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

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

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

Have a good week, eat your beets!

 

Newsletter: 

Week 7 CSA from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation:

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

Fennel!!!

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Week 6 from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation:

  • Basil
  • Cilantro

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week!

Newsletter: 

Week 5 of the Valley Flora CSA

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

On Rotation:

  • Cilantro
  • Basil
  • Cucumbers
  • Zucchini

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Newsletter: 

Week 4 of the Valley Flora CSA!

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

On Rotation:

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

Strawberry U-Pick Opens Today! 

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

Fields of Green (and Red)

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

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

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

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

Have a great first week of SUMMER!

Newsletter: 

Week 3 of the Valley Flora CSA!

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

On Rotation:

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

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

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Week 2 of the Valley Flora CSA!

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

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

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

Strawberry Fever

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

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

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Valley Flora Summer CSA Kicks Off Today!

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

Welcome to the 2022 Valley Flora CSA Season! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers, Zoë and the VF Team

Newsletter: 

The Last Week of Winter CSA!

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 9 from Valley Flora!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Mayday Farm Tour at Valley Flora this Sunday!

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

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

Here are some of the many reasons you should come:

Hope to see you on Sunday!!!

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 8 from Valley Flora!

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

Good Week for Grundens! 

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 7 from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower

Upcoming Farm Tours and Events!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 6 from Valley Flora!

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

On Rotation:

  • Cauliflower

Happy Spring!

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

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

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

Cheers,

Zoë

Newsletter: 

Winter Week 5 from Valley Flora!

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

The Tease of Spring

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

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

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

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

 

 

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