Week 13 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 08/21/2019 - 7:23am

Week 13 from Valley Flora! Oh-so-sweet Sweet Corn!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Heavy: Corn, Sweet Peppers, and Beautiful Annina
Pickling Cukes Still Pumping!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Red Onions
Cucumbers
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Carrots
Beets
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Zucchini
Parsely
Potatoes
Sweet Corn

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Heirloom Tomatoes
Romano Green Beans

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What might be in your share next week...

Onions
Carrots
Cucumbers
Collards?
Cilantro or Basil?
Lettuce
Strawberries
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Peppers

Heavy
I was compelled to weigh a packed Harvest Basket yesterday and it bottomed out our twenty-pound spring dial scale. I grabbed the forty pound digital scale instead and it read 25 pounds, which means about 22.7 pounds of produce is stuffed into one of those little Rubbermaids for you this week. Poor Amelia and Evan, our delivery angels! Lucky you.

Blame it on August, I guess. Some big fat ears of corn ripened up this week - a white variety called "Illusion." Super duper sweet. They also might be harboring a little surprise when you shuck them: corn earworm. I've never seen earworm so early on the farm; if we get it at all it's usually in our last planting, not our first. It's a harmless but gross grub that is simply trying to fatten up to become a nondescript brown moth (which happens to also have a voracious appetite for tomatoes and cotton). If you find any, just cut the tip off the corn and you're good to go. If you have a flock of chickens, they love a nice fat earworm snack.

Fun Farm Factoid of the Week: the nocturnal moths lay eggs on the corn silks and when they hatch the larva start feeding on the corn kernels, usually a little herd of of them pigging out together. But alas, they are aggressive and cannibalistic so in the end you usually just see one juicy earworm at the tip of your corn, with a belly full of other earworms. Kinda makes you glad to not be an earworm.

On top of the mountain of sweet corn and beets and potatoes and cukes and zucchini, Bets surprised us in the barn yesterday with the first bin of sweet peppers. It's the beginning of "jelly bean" season, she calls it, when life revolves around bins of shiny red, orange, yellow, and purple fruits, whether they be peppers or tomatoes or plums.

And then, the eggplant. Some weekend heat equaled a nice harvest on Monday, including our first haul of lovely Annina, the striped eggplant pictured above. I swooned when I spotted her in the seed catalogue last winter - and even though I am steadfastly loyal to our workhorse Traviata (the dark purple variety you are used to getting), I had to buy a (very expensive) packet of Annina seed. We planted just one bed out of five and what I've observed so far is that she's a few weeks slower than Traviata and is a vigorous, large-statured, matronly plant. There are so many baby eggplants under her canopy of leaves right now it reminds me of a mother hen sitting on a clutch of eggs. Hopefully that means we'll be eating a lot of Annina in the coming weeks, because the first broiled slab I had was amazingly creamy and sweet. Not everyone will get a glimpse of Annina this week, but soon.

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The Pickling Cukes Won't Quit!
I figured they'd have given up the ghost by now, but no, those little picklers just keep coming! I hope some of you still want to try making a couple gallons of my favorite "Bubbies" pickle recipe, because I have cukes that want a nice glass jar to call home. Email me your name, pickup site, phone number, and the quantity and size you want. Smalls (perfect for pickling whole) are $3.50/lb; medium (pickle whole or in spears) $3.00/lb; and large (ideal for for bread and butter or dill slices) $2.50/pound.

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday (rain or shine)
9 am to 2 pm

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

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Week 12 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 08/14/2019 - 1:57pm

Week 12 from Valley Flora! Sweet Corn On the Way!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Onion Harvest!
August Corn!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Cucumbers
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Carrots
Rainbow Chard
Tomatoes
Hot Peppers
Zucchini

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Eggplant
Heirloom Tomatoes
Romano Green Beans
Sweet Corn

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What might be in your share next week...

Red Onions
Green Beans, on rotation
Carrots
Cucumbers
Beets
Lettuce
Sweet Corn, on rotation
Strawberries
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Parsley
Potatoes

Onion Harvest!
These past two Wednesdays Roberto has been up to his elbows in onions. Our main crops of red and yellow storage onions, plus our shallots, started showing signs of full maturity last week: most obviously, the tops have keeled over and the bulbs have reached maximum rotundness. That's our cue to start pulling the onions so the curing process can begin. In the past we made long onion windrows on the bedtops where they could fully dry down in the field, but after one-too-many unexpected August rains we switched our strategy and started curing our onions in our propagation greenhouse. The greenhouse is mostly emptied out at this time of year leaving lots of vacant table space that's perfect for the curing process. Our new prop house is the ideal spot: it has great air circulation, retractable shade cloth that keeps the onions from getting too hot or sunburned, and is right next door to the packout and storage barn.

Once the tops are fully dried down we'll begin the process of cleaning all of the onions: trimming roots and tops and packing them into standard weight bins. It's the first thing to begin filling our fall/winter treasure chest of important storage crops. Squash and potatoes are not too far on their heels; soon the barn will be bulging at the seams and many tons heavier.

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August Corn!
The first elotes - ears of sweet corn - are making their way into some of the Harvest Baskets this week. I gotta say, that first bite of fresh corn is really hard to beat. I made an improvised meal of sauteed eggplant, zucchini, fennel, Walla Wallas, tomatoes and basil the other night, accompanied by the first ears of steamed corn and a pan of fried padron peppers. We sat around the table ruining a stick of butter with our corn, savoring and marveling and uttering our gratitude for August and all that it gives.

If you don't get corn this week, don't worry, it's coming soon. This first planting is slightly uneven and staggered, and because it's an early variety the ears are a bit smaller than they'll be in the coming weeks. It is sweeeeeet though! Enjoy!

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday (rain or shine)
9 am to 2 pm

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

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Week 11 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 08/07/2019 - 12:41pm

Week 11 from Valley Flora! Potatoes are Here!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

New Potatoes
Tamales this Week
Bee Heaven
U-Pick Strawberries at their Best!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Cucumbers
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
New Potatoes
Rainbow Carrots
Tomatoes
Kale
Zucchini

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Eggplant
Heirloom Tomatoes
Romano Green Beans

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What might be in your share next week...

Onions
Green Beans, on rotation
Carrots
Cucumbers
Chard?
Lettuce
Sweet Corn?
Strawberries
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Eggplant

New Potatoes
The first spuds are showing up in your tote this week, an early red variety that are still "new," meaning their skins haven't set yet. New potatoes are noticeably juicier and tender and should be stored in a plastic bag in your fridge. They'll keep for at least a few weeks there, but aren't meant for long-term storage.

Meanwhile, the rest of the spud patch is done flowering and all those tubers are busy fattening up for fall harvest. We'll dig the majority of our potatoes in September and October once the plants have died back and the skins have cured. You'll see potatoes in your share every few weeks from now until December, and for those of you who do the Winter CSA with us we'll have potatoes for you well into spring.

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Tamales this Week!
Tamales Shares are going out to all pick-up sites this week in marked blue coolers. If you are a tamale member, remember to check the tags on each bag and make sure you are taking home the dozen labeled just for YOU! ¡Buen aprovecho!

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Bee Heaven
Don't take this the wrong way but my highest passion is not growing food for all you humans; it's growing food for bees and our soil. :)

This summer we have almost an acre planted to Buckwheat (a quick-growing, drought-hardy, warm-weather annual with white flowers - yes the same buckwheat you make pancakes out of) and Phacelia (a lacy-leaved annual with striking spikes of purple flowers). Both of them are fantastic forage crops for bees and other beneficial insects and for the past five weeks I've been eagerly anticipating this moment when both are in full bloom. The field is a swath of lavender and white right now, but even more striking is the hum - the literal vibration - coming from that acre. The bees - and lots of other insects, too - are having a flower feast fit for a king.

It will be a short-lived party, unfortunately, because I have to transition the field into another cover crop in the next few days. But for this moment it's a sight and a sound to behold - and take lots of pictures of!

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Strawberry U-Pick at its Best!
Mama Mia, the strawberries! It's that moment in our berry season when they are abundantly abundant, deep deep red, holy smokes sweet, and the early summer crowds have thinned out! This past couple of weeks there have been ample strawberries from open to close on Wednesdays and Saturdays so you can enjoy a leisurely pick and maybe even take a nap in the clover while you're out there :)...

If you've been waiting, this is what you've been waiting for. Please remember to bring your own containers to take your berries home in. We have picking buckets but are always short on boxes.

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday (rain or shine)
9 am to 2 pm

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Week 10 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 07/31/2019 - 10:03am

Week 10 from Valley Flora! Eggplant! Hot Peppers!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

The Weekly Dance
Order Your Bulk Basil!
Pickling Cukes Are On!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Cucumbers
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Broccoli
Rainbow Carrots
Tomatoes
Basil
Zucchini
Fennel
Hot Peppers

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Eggplant
Heirloom Tomatoes

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What might be in your share next week...

Walla Walla Sweets
Broccoli?
Carrots
Cucumbers
Kale
Lettuce
New Potatoes
Strawberries
Zucchini
Tomatoes

Eggplant, Hot Peppers and Rainbow Carrots
Tuesdays and Fridays are a form of performance art on the farm. It starts early morning, each of us performing our various solos bunching greens, logging broccoli, cutting lettuce, and digging carrots to a soundtrack of birdsong. We come together as a strawberry-picking quartet mid-morning and once all the berries are harvested we migrate to the barn where - depending on what time it is - the choreography gets crazy. Stacks of produce roll in and out of the cooler, hoses blast, dunk tanks work overtime, scales are tared, boxes, bags and totes are filled brim-full, orders get labeled for stores and restaurants and the farmstand, the boom box blares. The crescendo builds as everything coalesces for CSA pack-out. Your weekly share - which until that point was something theoretical in my notebook - becomes tangible as we lay the tables with heaviest onions and broccoli at the top, and delicate tomatoes and basil at the end.

As that moment approached yesterday I began to get excited, realizing that it would be a beauty this week: the rainbow carrots, the deep dusky eggplant, the broccoli as big as dinner plates. We settled into the rhythm of pack-out, strategically layering produce into each tote (the ultimate goal always to create a soft nest for those tomatoes at the end!).

After the final tote is packed, every zucchini accounted for, the cooler organized and stacked to the ceiling, the tables put away, the floor swept - then, finally, there is a collective exhale and we exit one by one, stage left and right. Lights out until dawn when the next scene begins: farmstand set-up and deliveries.

This week you'll be eating all the colors of the rainbow, thanks to 5-hued carrots, dark purple eggplant, and more tomatoes. There are two hot peppers in the mix, a serrano (hot) and a big fat jalapeño (less hot). And you have all the ingredients to make a small batch of one of my favorite dishes: Finocchio. Happy Summer!

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Bulk Basil Available
If you'd like to order a bulk quantity to make your winter stash of pesto, email us your name, pickup location, phone number and the number of pounds you would like. It's $16/pound - all gorgeous tops with no stem.

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Bulk Pickling Cucumbers Available!
Our pickling cukes are going full throttle! Whether you love a good, tangy dill pickle or are fond of bread and butters, now's the time to put some up! We typically have three sizes available, priced as follows:

Small: 3-4" long, slender, ideal for pickling whole, $3.50/pound
Medium: 4-6" long, ideal for pickling whole or making spears, $3.00/pound
Large: 6-7" long, ideal for cutting into slices for bread and butter pickles or making large spears, $2.50/pound

To order, email me your name, pickup location, daytime phone number and quantity you'd like. We'll confirm with you before delivering to your pickup site.

For any Bubbies pickle fans out there (that's me!), I discovered this recipe a couple years ago that makes an incredible Bubbies-esque lacto-fermented pickle. I've never canned a pickle since!

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday (rain or shine)
9 am to 2 pm

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Week 9 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 07/24/2019 - 8:36am

Week 9 from Valley Flora! Yes, for reals: TOMATOES!!!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Tomatoes & Red Long Onions
Bulk Basil
Bulk Pickling Cukes

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Red Long Onions
Cucumbers
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Beets
Bunch Carrots
Tomatoes
Italian Parsley
Zucchini

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Cauliflower

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What might be in your share next week...

Walla Walla Sweets
Broccoli
Carrots
Cucumbers
Kale
Lettuce
New Potatoes
Strawberries
Zucchini
Tomatoes

Tomatoes and Red Long Onions
July has been flying by at breakneck speed, so when Bets rolled into the barn yesterday with bins full of tomatoes for the CSA shares I experienced a moment of temporal vertigo. How could we have tomatoes already!? It's because in calendar reality (not my strong suit) we're already burning through the fourth week of July. As much as I lament the insane acceleration of time that whisks us breathlessly through summer, I DO love tomato season. Especially when it overlaps with cucumber season. Which means this is the best week ever (and so is next week, and the next, and the next....). If I were you, I'd take my tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and Red Long of Tropea Torpedo Onions (yes, it's a mouthful of a name!) and make a batch of tabbouleh. If you're getting cauliflower this week - Coos Bay and Bandon members - you could make it a neon purple or neon green gluten-free tabbouleh with this riff on an ancient middle-eastern staple: Cauliflower "Rice" Tabbouleh! My other go-to dish for the next couple months is chopped salad with spiced chickpeas, in one form or another. I usually just fake it without a recipe, tossing in cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, beans, radishes - but I do follow an Ottolenghi recipe for the spiced chickpeas to get that perfect balance of spices. This is that glorious minute when it doesn't take much effort or planning to make a great dinner.

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Bulk Basil Available
It's shaping up to be a great basil year. If you'd like to order a bulk quantity to make your winter stash of pesto, email us your name, pickup location, phone number and the number of pounds you would like. It's $16/pound - all gorgeous tops with no stem.

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Bulk Pickling Cucumbers Available!
Our pickling cukes are going full throttle! Whether you love a good, tangy dill pickle or are fond of bread and butters, now's the time to put some up! We typically have three sizes available, priced as follows:

Small: 3-4" long, slender, ideal for pickling whole, $3.50/pound
Medium: 4-6" long, ideal for pickling whole or making spears, $3.00/pound
Large: 6-7" long, ideal for cutting into slices for bread and butter pickles or making large spears, $2.50/pound

The little cukes you got the past two weeks are the variety we grow for pickling, but we also love them for fresh eating. What you received in your share was representative mostly of our small and medium size.

To order, email me your name, pickup location, daytime phone number and quantity you'd like. We'll confirm with you before delivering to your pickup site.

For any Bubbies pickle fans out there (that's me!), I discovered this recipe a couple years ago that makes an incredible Bubbies-esque lacto-fermented pickle. I've never canned a pickle since!

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday (rain or shine)
9 am to 2 pm

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Week 8 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 07/17/2019 - 10:22am

Week 8 from Valley Flora! Walla Wallas! Cukes!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Walla Wallas and Cukes
Bulk Basil
Hats Off to the Crew!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Broccoli
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Rainbow Chard
Bunch Carrots
Red Cabbage
Zucchini

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Cauliflower

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What might be in your share next week...

Carrots
Red Long Torpedo Onions
Broccoli
Lettuce
Strawberries
Parsley
Zucchini
Cucumbers

Walla Wallas and Cukes!
I rolled in at 6:30 last night after a day and a half of driving from Idaho and jumped straight into CSA packout. What a wonderful treat to see bins full of big fat Walla Wallas and cocktail cucumbers and zucchini and chard and hefty red cabbages! In the week I was on the Salmon River the farm did a full pivot into the heart of summer (and the summer cover crops grew a foot, too!).

The fresh Walla Wallas in your share this week are the sweetest onion we grow - mild, juicy and big! Keep them in the fridge since they are not cured like our late season storage onions.

The small cucumbers are a variety I discovered a few years ago that doubles as both a fresh-eating and pickling cucumber. We call them cocktail cukes and they are delightfully sweet and crisp with thin skins. If you don't want to peel them, just give them a wash or a quick rub-down to remove any hairs and spines. It's smooth snacking from there.

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Bulk Basil Available
It's shaping up to be a great basil year. If you'd like to order a bulk quantity to make your winter stash of pesto, email us your name, pickup location, phone number and the number of pounds you would like. It's $16/pound - all gorgeous tops with no stem.

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Hats Off to the Crew!
Enormous thanks and kudos to the crew for keeping the farm humming while I was away this past week. I had a fantastic time on the Salmon River and got to leave all my farm worries behind during our six days of wilderness whitewater with dear old friends and family. Meanwhile, Amelia, Roberto, Shelli, Bets, Ab and Evan did a stellar job of getting the produce watered, weeded, seeded, harvested, washed, packed, invoiced, delivered and so much more. It's great to be back, renewed and grateful for all there is to come home to - not the least of which: the huge pile of salad I ate for dinner last night!

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday (rain or shine)
9 am to 2 pm

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Week 7 from Valley Flora (early!)

Sun, 07/07/2019 - 3:36pm

Week 7 from Valley Flora (early!) Purplette Onions! Zucchini!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Purplettes and Zukes!
Flowers, Lovely Flowers!
Your Farmer Flew the Coop!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Purplette Onions
Broccoli
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Fava Beans
Bunch Carrots
Collards
Zucchini

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Possibly green cauliflower...

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Carrots
Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Broccoli
Lettuce
Strawberries
Cilantro
Zucchini
Rainbow Chard
Red Cabbage

Purplettes and Zukes!
The first onions of the year are always confirmation that it's really, truly summer. These little purplette onions are a lovely teaser of what's to come for the rest of the season: pretty little purple onions give way to big, fat, sweet Walla Wallas, then torpedo-shaped Red Long of Tropea, more Walla Wallas (while the gettin' is good and onion ring season is high!), and then we'll rock steady with yellow and red storage onions and hifalutin shallots - deep into wintertime (in fact, we're still eating last year's shallots!). The purplettes are relatively mild - great eaten raw or cooked - and very pretty to boot. Store them in the fridge since they aren't a cured onion that will hold up on the counter.

Zucchini! It always starts so benignly - one or two glossy fruits proffered forth on a tame, orderly plant. And then...

But we aren't to the "and then..." part yet (the part, usually in August, when people are locking their car doors to keep neighbors from dumping overabundant zucchini-blimps into the backseat). No, we're still in that beautiful moment of anticipation - like the early days of a romance - when everything about zucchini is AMAZING! So enjoy it, any way you like it. Zucchini made my 8-year old's list of Top Five Favorite vegetables recently (especially when cooked in lots of butter). Let it be amongst your top five this week, too.

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Strawberries for all, hard-working horses, too!

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Flowers, Lovely Flowers!
Amelia's flower patch is in full bloom! The best is still to come in her flower CSA, (zinnias! dahlias! marigolds!), and she has prorated flower shares available if you'd like to join up. If you're looking for extra flowers for an event or special occasion, she's your gal. For all flower-related inquiries, reach out to her directly at clements.amelia@gmail.com or (914) 419-0413.

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Your Farmer Flew the Coop!
Who says farmers can't go on vacation in the summer? Well, I did for the past eleven years, but we're breaking free of that paradigm this season and have set things up so that everyone on my crew is going to take a week off during peak summer craziness. Yours truly is going first (to test the theory that it's possible....), and in a few hours I'm loading up my kids and hubby and driving to Idaho to float the Salmon River for a week. I used to run rivers all the time in the summer - especially Idaho rivers - but then I hitched myself to this farming dream and have been tied down on Floras Creek every summer since. Not that it's a bad place to be tied down to, but there is a little part of my soul that also dwells in the Sawtooths and the Uintahs and the Wallowas and the Wasatch and every river that flows forth from those inland mountains, and it's high time I reunited with that little vestige of my former twenty-something self. Especially since I'm turning 40 in a week. What better place to celebrate than deep in the largest wilderness area in the Lower 48, pretending I'm 20!?

Which is all to say, I'm out this week! Amelia will be checking the email, so if you need to communicate that's the best way to get a message through while I'm gone (or call the farm at 541-348-2229). I'll be back in the saddle on Wednesday, July 17th. You're in great hands; I've made a million lists that the crew probably doesn't even need and there's great summer food starting to pop in the fields (zucchinis for all this week!). So eat well, be good, have fun, and I'll be back with a newsletter on July 17th full of tales about black bears and huge wave trains and yellow jackets and sunburns. And I'm sure I'll be hungry for some veg after a week of rice and beans.

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

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Week 6 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 07/03/2019 - 8:36am

Week 6 from Valley Flora! Fava Beans! Beets! Dill!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Favas - Beets - Dill
Tamales this Week!
Delivery Van Woes

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Cylindra Beets
Broccoli
Sugar Snap Peas
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Dill
Fava Beans
Bunch Carrots
Red Ursa Kale

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Broccolini
Possibly green cauliflower...

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Carrots
Purplette Onions?
Broccoli
Lettuce
Strawberries
Basil?
Fava Beans
Zucchini
Collards?
Cucumbers?
Cauliflower?

Favas - Beets - Dill
Those of you who are familiar with fava beans probably know them more as a cover crop you plant in your garden in the fall, but you also know that after those those tall, grey-green plants bloom their ambrosial, bee-attracting bloom, they make big fat pods. And inside the cottony cushion of those pods (see above), are big fat beans wrapped in a light green skin. And if you peel away that light green skin (you can learn how to do this most efficiently here), you come to a bright green bean that is tender and delicious. Kind of a process, yes, but worth it. I'd approach the pile of favas in your tote as a weekend adventure, when you have a little more time to play in the kitchen (and ideally have friends and family over to help you de-pod and de-skin them).

Once you get your beans prepped, the sky's the limit. Here's a gallery of recipes to stoke your creative juices: 19 Fava Bean Recipes from Epicurious.

The totes are getting a little less green and fluffy and a little more dense and coloful thanks to the root crops that are starting to size up on the farm. Beets for all this week! One thing I've learned after a decade of doing the CSA is that there are controversial vegetables and beets are one of them. Some of you will no doubt thrilled to see them this week and some of you will be downright disgusted. Studies show that in the case of kids, who always have strong opinions about food, it takes 20 tries before they will learn to like something that they are dead-set against eating. You might put yourself up to the 20-Try Challenge if you're wrinkling your nose at beets this week. And as a little aside, our raw beets are one of kids' favorite things when school groups come to the farm for fieldtrips each spring and fall and get to taste things in the field. If the second graders can do it (and love it), so can you! And of course, if all else fails, there's always chocolate beet cake (and it's even gluten free).

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Tamales this Week!
We'll be delivering tamale shares in marked blue coolers this week. Please only take tamales if you have signed up for them. Thanks!

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Delivery Van Woes
Some of you may have noticed the absence of the Valley Flora delivery van on the road these past few weeks. The timing chain went out three weeks ago and our mechanic has been beset by problems getting the parts to fix it. We've been cobbling it together with rented U-hauls and vans (a big thank you to Joe Pestana of Costpro Direct for letting us use his van on Saturdays, and to Amelia for her good-natured ability to take it as it comes on her Wednesday delivery route, which has been thoroughly upended the past three weeks!). If anyone has a spare van or box truck lying around that they want to rent to us until we resolve this problem, email me!

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Week 5 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 06/26/2019 - 11:33am

Week 5 from Valley Flora! Broccoli! Cauliflower! Cabbage!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Broccoli at last!
New Produce: Cabbage, Bunch Carrots, Cauliflower
Flower Shares!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Baby Arugula
Green Cone Cabbage
Sugar Snap Peas
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Cilantro
Broccoli
Bunch Carrots
Purple Cauliflower

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Nothing this week...

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Carrots
Beets?
Broccoli
Dill
Lettuce
Strawberries
Snap Peas
Fava Beans
Red Ursa Kale

Broccoli, at last!
It's a few weeks late, but the broccoli is finally here! Our early plantings were set back by spring slug damage - an issue I've never seen before in any of the hundreds of broccoli plantings we've set out into the field over the years. I experienced a few worried weeks back in early May when I wondered if our first plantings were ever going to bounce back from their slug-razing, but a little warmth and long sunny days finally did the trick. Now, of course, we are headed into a broccoli pile-up of epic proportions since our early plantings are maturing in sync with our mid-season plantings. Which is all to say, it's time to bust out your favorite broccoli recipes. Broccoli Caesar anyone (sub your green cabbage for the Napa cabbage)? Or peruse this diverse collection of broccoli recipes from Epicurious.

Our spring broccoli season tends to run through July, so it'll be a staple in your share for at least the next month. Enjoy!

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New Produce
Bunch Carrots: Our first spring seeding of carrots also suffered a setback when we got six inches of cold rain over a few days in April. Some of the seed simply rotted in the ground, and some germinated and then got mowed down by - yes, you guessed it - slugs. We re-seeded as soon as we could but ultimately fell a few weeks shy of my goal to have freshly-dug carrots year-round on the farm. We're back in 'em now and if all goes according to plan, you should see carrots every single week for the rest of the season - even some rainbow carrots here and there!

Green Cone Cabbage: I love this whimsical cabbage variety for lots of reasons. As a farmer, I love how early it matures and how sure-heading and consistent it is. As an eater, I love how tender and sweet it is, and how easy it is to cut up in the kitchen. You'll see six or seven different types of cabbage from now until December, but only this one will make you want to get on You Tube and pull up some old Saturday Night Live Conehead skits.

Purple Cauliflower: This one snuck up on us! A week ago they were but lavender buttons wrapped in the cozy embrace of big-framed cauliflower leaves. Then, BAM!, on Tuesday we were filling bins with neon cauliflower (a lot can happen in a few long days around the summer solstice!). I love this variety because it stays purple when you cook it.

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Flower Shares!
Flower shares are officially on! If you are signed up for flowers, look for a separate weekly email from Amelia. Remember to take your bouquet home each week, and please only take flowers if you have signed up for them.

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Week 4 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 06/19/2019 - 10:56am

Week 4 from Valley Flora! Happy Solstice!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

The Solstice Salad Extravaganza!
New Produce: Peas, Basil, Chard
First Flower Shares Starting on Saturday!
Strawberries by the Flat and Great U-Pick!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Baby Spinach
Rainbow Chard
Sugar Snap Peas
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Basil

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Broccolini
Asparagus
Lacinato Kale
Tokyo Bekana Pac Choi
Cilantro

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Arugula
Cabbage
Broccoli
Baby Carrots?
Lettuce
Strawberries
Snap Peas
Cauliflower?

Solstice Salad Extravaganza
When you're eating direct from a farm like ours every crop has its peak moment during the year, which largely dictates what we all put in our bellies for the week. Instead of going to the grocery store with your list, you get to take your cue from the food that's coming out of Valley Flora soil right now. So might I suggest that this week you put a lot of salad in your belly. And maybe that of your friends as well. Always around the summer solstice we find ourselves cutting head lettuce the size of beach balls, bunching luxurious leaves of chard, and harvesting tender baby spinach and arugula galore. This is their moment. Which means its your moment to have a Solstice Salad Party and revel in the abundance of it all with friends and family.

A little tip: there's nothing like switching up your salad dressing to make you feel like you're eating a whole new thing. I was inspired by this recipe for Wedge Salad with Tahini Ranch, maybe made with the butterhead you're all getting this week instead of the little gem (or if you're really into excess, you could come to the farmstand and buy some little gem this week :)...). Also, with the help of few hearty toppings like nuts, avocado, and cheese, salad becomes the main course, and a filling one at that - no cooking required!

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Amelia Clements, Valley Flora Pea Queen

New Produce
You're getting a few of my favorite things this week: the first sugar snap peas, basil, and rainbow chard. Amelia, our pea-picking queen, is to thank for the Sugar Snaps: she single-handedly hauled in 120 pounds of peas on Monday in a record-breaking feat of pea-picking persistence. Remember that Sugar Snaps are not a shelling pea: you eat the whole sweet thing, pod and all, and they're especially fat and juicy this year.

Other than tomato plants, I can't think of anything that smells more like summer than basil, so how apropros that we're kicking off summer this week with your first installment. Add it to one of your bodacious salads this week!

And rainbow chard, so pretty it's worthy of a vase! I love a couple chard leaves in my morning smoothie, and a big heap of it steamed at dinner. It also makes a great lasagna filling in lieu of, or in addition to, spinach.

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Flower Shares Start on Saturday!
Amelia's flowers are beginning to bloom! She's going to kick off the Flower Share season this Saturday so Bandon and Port Orford flower members will receive their first bouquets. You have some lovely-smelling sweet peas to look forward to your first week!

If you are signed up for flowers, look for a separate email from Amelia later this week. Please only take flowers if you have signed up for them for the season!

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Strawberries by the Flat, and Great U-Pick!
Strawberry production is ramping up enough that I hope to be able to offer special order flats to our CSA members, delivered to your pickup site. If you would like to order, please email us your name, pickup site, daytime phone number (ideally a number I can text), and the quantity of flats you would like. We'll fill requests in the order received as the berries are available (we can't guarantee a specific delivery date but will contact you the day before your pickup to confirm once we have your berries).

The u-pick is also great right now, but is typically getting picked out before noon. Strawberry fever is running high - as always in June! We should have at least three to four good months of berries, so come pick whenever it's best for you!

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Solar-Powered Produce!!!

Wed, 06/12/2019 - 9:33am

Solar-Powered Produce!!! Solar at last on the farm!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Solar Power at Valley Flora!
Meet your VF Farm Crew
New Produce this Week
Strawberry U-pick is open!

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Stir-fry Mix
Kohlrabi
Sunflower shoots
Head Lettuce
Strawberries
Hakurei Turnips
Fennel

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Broccolini
Asparagus
Lacinato Kale
Tokyo Bekana Pac Choi
Cilantro

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Spinach
Chard
Pac Choi
Cilantro
Lettuce
Strawberries
Snap Peas?
Broccolini or Asparagus

Solar-Power at the Farm!
As of this week, we are officially running on solar power at Valley Flora! It's been a long-awaited project - a decade-long dream - and yesterday we not only started making our own power to run the walk-in cooler, the freezers, the lights, the greenhouse fans, and the irrigation pump (all of our core infrastructure), but we were actually sending power back to the grid as well! What a feeling to harness all that hot sun that's usually beating down on the barn roof making us sweaty on a packout day and to turn it into electricity instead: the hum of our walk-in, the whir of the greenhouse fans, the cycling of the pump, all thanks to the generosity of the sun.

It took ten years to get here, but this past 18 months the dream started to become a reality thanks to a combination of factors. Solar technology has gotten twice as affordable and twice as efficient in the past decade. In winter of 2018 a farmer friend and tireless renewable energy advocate put us in touch with a Spark Northwest, a non-profit in Seattle that provides grant-writing assistance to small businesses for renewable energy projects. With their help we applied for a federal and a state grant and were fortunate to receive both. We also received a Wild Rivers Coast Alliance small grant and a number of generous individual donations from CSA members and friends of the farm. All together these funds got us close enough to the project budget that we were able to give Sol Coast the green light to do the installation this past month and flip the switch on the inverters this week!

I want to express my deepest thanks to everyone who chipped in to make this happen at the farm, and to all of you who have cheered and voted for the project along the way. As farmers we are feeling the unnerving effects of climate change directly (more extreme weather events, hotter and drier summers) and we want to be a pro-active part of the solution. Solar feels like a huge step in the right direction and we couldn't have done it without the support of Oregon Department of Energy, USDA, Wild Rivers Coast Alliance, Sol Coast, Kyle Electric, Coos Curry Electric Co-op and so many of you! Thank you for being part of positive change!

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And this is how your VF farm crew feels about our new solar panels!

Meet your Farm Crew!
Pictured left to right:

Zoë, that's me, always the biggest spaz in the photo.
Shelli Thompson, seasoned farmer who we are so lucky to have join us this season from Washington to round out our harvest crew and run the farmstand!
Amelia Clements, Flower Farmer extraordinaire logging her third year at Valley Flora!
Bets Harrison, matriarch of it all, the reason Abby and I exist, and tomato-pepper-cuke-zuke-basil-hot sauce-jam lady! Thanks, Ma, for moving here 40+ years ago and bringing us into this world on Floras Creek.
Roberto Sierra, 9-year Valley Flora veteran who works so hard he makes the rest of us look lazy, and who is amazingly good-natured about putting up with all us ladies, day in and day out.
Abby Bradbury, Salad Queen of 22 years, growing you the best salad mix this side of the Milky Way! #EatMoreSalad!

Not pictured is Evan Kramer, our dedicated Saturday delivery driver who is on vacation celebrating his birthday this week! Happy Birthday Evan!

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New Produce
Fennel: Bulbing fennel is one of my personal favorites. It has texture like celery and a mild anise flavor. Slice it up thinly and eat it raw in salads or you can cook with it. Great on pizza, in pasta sauce, sauteed with butter, in soup.

Strawberries: Most of the time the strawberries don't even make it home from the CSA pickup, but if they do, and if you are a delayed gratification type and want to make them last, they will keep for a number of days in the fridge in an airtight container. If you leave your berries on the counter they will continue ripening (and getting even sweeter) but will also have a shorter shelf life.

Sunflower Shoots: Another staple in our micro-mix line-up, these are the shoots of sprouted organic black oil sunflower seeds. Nutty flavor, great texture, awesome in salads, on sandwiches and by the handful! We packed them into cello bags this week after one member reported that her pea shoots were limp in the Bio-Bag last week. Please let me know if you had the same problem so we know whether we should continue to use the Bio-Bags or not. The last thing I want if for anyone to get sad-looking produce!

Stir-Fry Mix: The bagged greens are a mix of baby kale and mustards that make a great addition to stir-fries. You can also steam them or add them to your salad. The mustards have a little kick to spice things up.

Note: Saturday members might receive cilantro and Tokyo Bekana pac choi, a lime-green, frilly-leaved type of pac choi that is wonderfully tender and mild. Both were slated for next week but with this heat it might try to bolt on us so we might start harvesting it for the end of the week. Just FYI in case you get a bunch of cilantro and a big lofty light green, white-ribbed head of pac choi on Saturday!

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Strawberry U-Pick is Open!
We've opened the gate to the strawberry patch and you're in for a treat. The berries you're getting in your Harvest Basket this week are a little sample of the big, bodacious, crimson red, startlingly sweet berries that await you in the u-pick field. Production is still ramping up so we only have 5-6 beds open for u-pick right now but that will increase as the berries hit their full stride in the coming weeks. If you're coming a long distance to pick in these first few weeks, we strongly suggest coming in the morning because the beds will get picked out before noon. Also keep in mind that our strawberry season goes for 4+ months and they become more abundant as the summer rolls on. I always tell folks that if you want to pick to fill your freezer, plan on coming a little later in the summer when there's more fruit and the June strawberry fervor has died down a little. We do have buckets you can pick into and boxes you can take fruit home in, but we still suggest bringing your own u-pick containers if you can.

We picked yesterday to fill orders and CSA totes and it was pure delight. We were all a little giddy, which is saying something when you're stooped for three hours straight...

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

Week 2 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 06/05/2019 - 10:41am

Week 2 from Valley Flora!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

A Historic First Week!
What's in the Box?!
Beauty, Always...
Tamales This Week!
Update on Strawberry U-pick

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Scallions
Baby Spinach
Kohlrabi
Head Lettuce
Radishes
Hakurei Turnips
Collards
Pea Shoots

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Broccolini
Asparagus

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Asparagus or Broccolini
Braising Mix
Chard or Kale
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Strawberries?!
Cilantro?
Sunflower Shoots
Hakurei turnips?
Strawberries? (Come on sun!)

A Historic First Week!
You did it, you set a new CSA record at Valley Flora: no mix-ups in the first week!!! I didn't get a single call or email reporting that someone's salad had gone missing, or that there was an extra tote at the end of pick-up hours. Thank you all so much for smooth sailing in the first week!

The only issue we saw at pick-up locations was that a handful of folks didn't take their salad shares home. We hate for you to miss out if you're signed up for Abby's Greens, so be sure to grab your salad this week if you ordered it. Remember, all salad share members are listed on the cooler lid and anyone who is signed up for a full pound share has a bag labeled with their name on it inside the red salad cooler.

Thanks again for a great first week!

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What's in the Box!?
A few notes on new items this week:

Pea Shoots: In the last couple of years we've gotten into micro mix and shoot production in our greenhouse. I started for selfish reasons: I wanted to have tasty sunflower and pea shoots and micro mix in my own salad bowl year-round, and it gave me an excuse to plant seeds every month of the year (I guess you could say we have an addiction to growing things around here). The shoots and micro mix turned out to be a great product popular with both chefs and our farmstand customers alike, so they've become a staple offering. This week you're getting a bag of pea shoots. I love mixing them into my salads, but you can also use them as pretty garnish or quick-saute them. We've bagged them into compostable Bio-bags. I like that these bags are not plastic (they're made out of non-GMO corn), but they do have a weird feel to them (especially when wet) and I've noticed that things wilt in them in your fridge (doh!). I suggest you double bag your pea shoots or transfer them into an airtight container to keep them perky.

Baby Spinach: Lovely little tender spinach leaves bagged into the clear ziploc

Kohlrabi: Plum-purple and a little alien looking! Peel the pretty skin with a veg peeler or knife and enjoy raw as veggie sticks (great with a little chili, salt and lime like Mexican-style jicama, or dredge through your favorite dip). You can also cook kohlrabi, but I find it loses some it's crispy, juicy appeal in a stir-fry.

Collard Greens: The flat-leaved bunch of greens in your share is a Southern staple. That doesn't mean, however, that you have to cook a mess 0' collard greens all day with ham hocks and black-eyed peas. I don't really know why collards are traditionally boiled for hours since they are wonderful lightly steamed, just like kale or chard. You can also roll them up, slice them thinly, and make a raw salad with an assertive dressing. Or steam whole leaves lightly and use them for wraps or sushi rolls (move over tortillas and seaweed).

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Beauty, Always...
Many years back, my mom, Bets, put words to a principle that has always guided life at Valley Flora, since before it was Valley Flora: Everything we do has to be at least 51% art. That is to say, this is a working farm where function is important, but form and beauty are also essential and non-negotiable. If you were to boil it down, our deepest motivation for doing what we do here on this land is our desire to spend our lives amidst the natural beauty of this valley, and perhaps to paint a bit of our own beauty on the canvas it provides us.

A friend of ours works for an organization called And Beauty for All, which is dedicated to "Bringing Americans together and healing our wounds by embracing natural beauty and human design in ways that revitalize our communities and renew our environment." She asked me to write something inspired by the farm for their blog, which you can read here. It is moments like those with my draft horses, in the fold of these hills along the creek, that I feel so lucky to have drawn this card.

My 8 year old daughter Cleo wants to be an artist when she grows up, and more specifically, an artist who lives on a farm. I hope she does with all my heart. May the love of beauty live on (and may she find someone to live on that farm with who wants to do all the hard work, hah!).

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Tamales THIS Week!
Tamale members, your first dozen are coming this week! Tamales will be frozen, packed into marked blue coolers and labeled individually with names. Double check the label on your bag before you take your dozen home! Enjoy!

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Strawberry U-Pick Update
Me-oh-my is the world excited for strawberry u-pick to open! We have been patiently waiting for the berries to ripen up so that we have enough to satisfy everyone (CSA shares, farmstand customers, restaurants, stores, and u-pick...). Opening day is coming soon - possibly even this Saturday if they ripen enough - but PLEASE CHECK OUR WEBSITE before you come! I am updating about the u-pick status there, as well as on Facebook. It's agonizing when a mini-van pulls up to the farmstand and a whole load of kids pile out with their buckets ready to pick and we have to break their hearts. One upbeat boy - upon learning that he couldn't pick strawberries - said, "Don't worry, Mom, we can get some kale instead!" He then proceeded to pick a bunch of kale from one of our farmstand coolers and ate it on the spot like an ice cream cone. If only the adults could handle the let-down so well! :)

Keep an eye on our website and know that once u-pick starts it's looking like it will be a great year in the berries.

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.

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And a Cherry Tomato Plant, Too!

Tue, 05/28/2019 - 10:31pm

96 And a Cherry Tomato Plant, Too! One more thing in your Harvest Basket this week!

I forget to mention...

All Harvest Basket members get to take home a cherry tomato plant this week as part of your weekly share! Look for a yellow bin of tomato plants at your pick-up site. Please take one per Harvest Basket. The variety is SunOrange (an improved Sungold), our all-time favorite cherry tomato: sweet & tangy tropical flavor, great texture, high yielding and crack resistant! If you want more than one plant, we have extras for sale at the farmstand!

How to Care for Your Tomato Plant:

Choose a sunny, protected location for it. You can plant it in the ground or in a large pot or 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled in the bottom.
Plant your start as deeply as possible in soil amended with compost or a balanced organic fertilizer. Tomatoes are adventitious rooters, meaning they will sprout roots from the stem wherever it is in contact with soil, so the deeper you plant it the greater the root system it will develop. You can bury your plant up to the top-most set of leaves (just don't bury the growing tip).
Water your plant regularly to get it established, but as it matures you can taper the water. It will let you know if it's thirsty (keen observation is the cornerstone of good farming). Once your plant is yielding, less water = sweeter, more flavorful fruit.
This variety is indeterminate, meaning it will continue growing vigorously upward all season. It will need support of some kind (a wire cage, a string trellis, etc). Don't be afraid to prune it aggressively. Removing excess leaves and suckers will help maintain good airflow and light penetration, which helps prevent disease and promotes fruit ripening.

By late July or August you should start to see your first trusses of ripe fruit and your plant should yield well into the fall.

Enjoy!

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Summer CSA Kickoff!

Mon, 05/27/2019 - 11:08am

Summer CSA Kickoff! Get ready for your first delivery of produce this week!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' at the Farm...

Summer CSA Starts this Week: Top 5 Things you Need to Know!
What's in the First Box?!
Tamales Next Week!
The Farmstand is open for Summer!
Recipe Links

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What's In Your Share This Week:*

Scallions
Baby Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Red Ursa Kale
Asparagus
Artichokes
Hakurei Turnips
Head Lettuce
Arugula
Pac Choi

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Nothing this week...

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Scallions
Walla Wallas
Broccolini?
Spinach
Chard
Pac Choi
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Radishes
Strawberries? (Come on sun!)

CSA Season Begins! Top 5 Things you Need to Know...
Hurrah, it's veggie time! We're celebrating our tenth CSA season this year, and many of you have been with us since the beginning (wow, that makes me misty-eyed, and it also explains the greater abundance of crow's feet fanning out at my temples...OK, yeah, and the handful of silver hairs, too...)! Thanks for being with us in this milestone year.

I've been in touch with all of you in the last couple days with specifics about your particular pick-up site: days, hours, locations, important details. If you didn't get that email, please let me know so I can re-send it to you. My goal is to equip you all with the info you need this week so that CSA pick-up runs smoothly. Maybe together we can set a 10-year record and have NO MIX-UPS in the FIRST WEEK!

Here is the list of the TOP 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW as a CSA member:

READ: It makes all the difference! Every CSA member is signed up for a different combo of things. Except for Harvest Baskets, we label most things with names, so check the label or the list on the coolers before you take a salad share or tamale share home. Ninety-nine percent of the mix-ups happen because someone didn't read carefully! It's also a great idea to read this newsletter each week (those who do find out about special CSA perks like flats of strawberries and bags of peppers available by special order...).
SENDING A SUB: If you send someone to pick up your CSA on your behalf, PLEASE make sure they know what items to take and what not to take! Salad, tamales and flowers tend to cause the most confusion for untrained proxies, so give them a list of exactly what to pick up for you.
28 LOVELY WEEKS! The CSA season is 28 weeks long. We'll delivery Harvest Baskets through the first week of December. Salad Shares go for 20 weeks until mid-October. Flower Shares go for 12 weeks starting in late June or early July. Tamales are delivered monthly, usually in the first full week of the month, seven deliveries total.
HOW TO REACH ZOË: I'm hard to get ahold of throughout the week because I'm mostly in the field for long days and we have poor cell service at the farm. I will always try to get back to you within two days, if not sooner. The two best ways to reach me are:
- Email: valleyflora@valleyflorafarm.com
- Text: 541-551-0314
YOU MATTER! Many of you have heard it before, but it's true: our CSA members are the backbone of the farm in so many ways and we want you to love your CSA experience. We'll do our best to accommodate you if you need something out of the ordinary. (Sorry, we can't oblige special requests to sub more strawberries for your kohlrabi every week, but we can do things like hold your tote in our walk-in cooler instead of delivering it to your pick-up site if you are going to be out of town and want to pick up later at the farm). All we ask is that you give us plenty of heads up if you need something out of the ordinary - at least 3 days - so we can adjust accordingly.

And finally, in case you need a quick reminder about the where and when of your pick-up site, all of that info is always one click away on our website. Please share the link with anyone who might be picking up on your behalf this season.

All right team, let's do this!

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What's in the First Box?!
Introducing your first week of VERY GREEN PRODUCE!!!!

Summer was off to a rip-roaring, scary-early start a few weeks ago (30 mile an hour north winds and 95 degree days at the farm). The strawberries loved it and got the earliest start ever in Valley Flora history, but then the weather regained its sanity and it feels more like Oregon-in-May again (grey, lush, calm, the trees dripping-green and heavy with nubile leaves and birdsong). Which means no strawberries this week, but lots of very happy leafy green things: kale, pac choi, arugula, lettuce! All of them can be eaten raw, but typically kale and pac choi are used more as cooking greens and arugula and lettuce for salads. If ever you feel overwhelmed by the green leafy things in your weekly share, remember that cooking kale, chard, collards, spinach, and pac choi reduces them to a small little pile that you could eat singlehandedly. Or throw them in to your smoothie.

This spring has been an epic slug fest like never before, so don't be alarmed if you encounter a gastropod hiding in an outer leaf of head lettuce or pac choi (they don't always come off in the dunk tank!).

Also this week: asparagus and baby artichokes - two of our favorite spring crops. The artichokes are a family heirloom that have been growing on the farm for over 40 years, since before it was Valley Flora. The baby chokes are practically choke-less, meaning you can eat them whole, bottom-up, heart first (after steaming and dredging them in your favorite fat of choice). With this particular variety you won't run into hairy or tough leaves until you reach the top of the choke.

The white round roots are Hakurei turnips - tender, buttery, and sweet. I love them raw in salads, or munching them like apples.

The scallions and baby Walla Walla sweet onions are an early treat. We planted the Walla Wallas last October and they overwintered beautifully until a few weeks ago when we noticed they were all starting to send up flower spikes. Overwintered onions are notoriously finicky and unfortunately this batch must have experienced some temperature stress that induced bolting. We decided to harvest them early this week while they're still tender. Our other planting of April-planted Walla Wallas will most likely yield big, fat onions come July, so not to worry if you were looking forward to making giant onion rings this season.

A lot of you are accomplished in the kitchen and passionate about food, so over the past few years I've included fewer and fewer recipes in the newsletter each week. Keyword searches on the internet seem to bring up every possible preparation for arugula these days, so I trust you'll find recipes that match your own tastes and preferences without much difficulty. Some weeks there will be a combination of produce in your tote that begs to be made into something special, at which times I might share a favorite recipe with you. Keep in mind that your fellow CSA members often have great tips for what to do with the produce, so get to know each other and share your ideas (and even your produce: I know one member in particular who will gladly swap her fennel for your eggplant come September).

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Tamales Next Week
For Tamale Share members, your first delivery of Tamales will come the week of June 3rd (not this week). Tamales will be frozen, packed into marked blue coolers and labeled individually with names. Double check the label on your bag before you take your dozen home!

Please mark your calendars with these tamale delivery weeks for the 2019 season:

June 3
July 1
August 5
September 2
October 7
November 4
December 2

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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!

Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Strawberry U-Pick and Farmstand Open this Saturday!

Mon, 05/20/2019 - 9:47am

96 Strawberry U-Pick and Farmstand Open this Saturday! May 25th kicks off our Summer Farmstand & U-Pick Season!

The Valley Flora Farmstand Opens for Summer Hours this Saturday, May 25th!

Produce & U-Pick Strawberries!

9 am to 2 pm

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Summer hours are Wednesdays & Saturdays from 9 am to 2 pm starting this Saturday, May 25th!
(at our usual location by the bridge)

It's shaping up to be an early and abundant strawberry season, so bring your buckets and your sunhats! It's good picking out there already!

Remember, the farmstand accepts cash and checks only; no credit cards. Thanks!

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Visit our website for directions and more information about u-pick and the farmstand:
www.valleyflorafarm.com

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Sign Up for our 2019 CSA Season

Tue, 03/12/2019 - 1:48pm

Sign Up for our 2019 CSA Season Treat yourself to 28 weeks of farm-fresh feasting!

This could be your dinner in 10 weeks....

View this email in your browser

Are you craving a real tomato?
Only four months to go until they're ripe at Valley Flora, but now's the time to stake your claim on your share of the harvest!
Sign up today for the 2019 CSA Season!

Harvest Baskets - Salad Shares - Flower Shares - Tamale Shares

Grown with love by your crew at Valley Flora.

Remember to VOTE for SOLAR at VALLEY FLORA!!!

Sun, 01/13/2019 - 10:58pm

96 Remember to VOTE for SOLAR at VALLEY FLORA!!! Vote daily and spread the word!

View this email in your browser

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Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

Remember to VOTE for SOLAR at Valley Flora every day this month!!!

You can check out our project and vote by typing “Valley Flora” into the search bar at:

https://cultivatingchange.org/vote-2019/

This month we are in a popular vote race against 100+ other farms around the country to win the final grant funds for our 12 kW solar installation. The top five highest vote-getters will receive grant funds ranging from $10K (first place) to $2K (5th place). We are running at about 13th place right now and the voting ends January 31st. We have wonderful, loyal supporters voting for us every day right now - you're amazing! Thank you!

Spread the word, vote daily, and help us make the top five before January 31st!

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Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

Fri, 01/04/2019 - 4:40pm

96 Vote for Solar at Valley Flora! Cast your vote and help us win grant funds for our solar project!

View this email in your browser

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Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

Happy New Year!

As some of you know, we are aiming to put a 12 kW array of solar panels on the roof of our barn this spring to power our farm infrastructure: walk-in cooler, irrigation pump, climate-controlled storage rooms and our propagation greenhouse. We've come a long way in our fundraising this year, thanks to a USDA grant, an Oregon Department of Energy grant, a local Wild Rivers Coast Alliance Grant, and a handful of generous individual donations.

In hopes of raising the remaining balance of funds for our solar project, I threw our hat into the ring for this sustainable farm grant-making program based in California: Cultivating Change. Grants are awarded in February on a popular vote basis, so from now until the end of the month you can vote for our project at Valley Flora - "Solar-Powered Produce” - ONCE PER DAY (I know, kinda annoying and not exactly democratic, but maybe if you’re willing you could set yourself a reminder and click “vote” every morning for the next 27 days :).

To vote for us, follow this link:

https://cultivatingchange.org/vote-2019/

Type “Valley Flora” into their search bar and our profile will pop up and then you can cast your vote. You will have to confirm your email address the first time in a link they send you, which might filter into spam, so look for an email from Greener Fields Together/Cultivating Change in your junk folder if it doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Also, the more people we have voting for us each day, the better our chances of bringing home the solar bacon, so please share this link widely amongst your networks if you’re comfortable doing so. Thank you so much!

Hoping for a bright, renewable-energy-filled 2019 here on Floras Creek and everywhere!
Zoë

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The FINAL Week!

Wed, 12/05/2018 - 3:32pm

The FINAL Week! Tetsukubotu Squash!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' on the Farm...

The Grand Finale for 2018!
Share your Feedback with Us!
2019 CSA Sign-ups
Tamales this Week!

A huge Thank You from the Valley Flora crew! Not pictured: Cleo (age 7), Evan (Saturday deliveries), and Cora, Maggie and Beth (farmstand). What a team!

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What's Probably In Your Share This Week:*

Carrots
Onions
Beets
Celery
Green Cabbage
Tetsukubotu Squash
Bunched Asian Greens
Parsnips
Potatoes
Radishes or Turnips

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Nothing this week...

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next June...

Lettuce
Strawberries
Kale
Mint
Broccolini
Asparagus
Arugula
Radishes
Cherry tomato plant

The Grand Finale!
I have this problem anytime I leave town, where I pack ridiculous quantities of vegetables into a cooler or snack bag to take with me. Then, far from a fridge, I find myself under the inevitable pressure of perishability and there I am again trying to eat a whole pound of sunflower shoots in the car before they go bad, or crossing my fingers that my veggie stash will make it past TSA at the airport. It's a food security disorder, probably diagnosable, stemming from some semi-irrational/semi-well-founded fear that there is nothing real to eat once I leave the sphere of the farm. So I take my veggies with me. Everywhere I go.

The last week of the CSA season is kinda the same for me, but it's your food security that I am fretting over, not my own. I want to pack you every last stick of long-keeping produce I can fit into a Rubbermaid tote in hopes of staving off your first trip to the grocery store for as long as I can. Giant green cabbages? Stuff 'em in there! More parsnips? YES! Potatoes, carrots, radishes, turnips, beets (it'll all store well in your fridge)! Onions: great for weeks if not months in a cool, dry spot. And that Tetsu winter squash? Well, we were still eating them last June after nine months of storage, so no pressure there!

For those of you who are coming along for the Winter CSA ride, starting January 9th there will be plenty more produce coming your way to see you through until next June. For anyone who isn't signed up for the winter season but who might want to stock up here and there, our farmstand will be open starting January 9th, every other week in conjunction with our Winter CSA pick-up in our barn (we'll post a farmstand schedule in the new year).

I hope this last tote feeds you well into December, and I hope that every time you tuck into that giant cabbage you'll think of us and know how grateful we are to you for being one of the essential bricks that make up our farm's foundation. Our CSA members are the bedrock of our farm in so many ways: financially for sure, but you also buoy our spirits, motivate us to innovate, and inspire us to get better at what we love to do each year. That's an enormous gift. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

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Share your Feedback!
We'd love to hear any feedback you have about the season. There's no formal survey to fill out, but if you're inspired send us an email and let us know what you loved, what you didn't, what you want more of, or what you never want to see in your CSA tote ever again (raise your hand if you already miss eggplant?!).

I crunched the numbers and this year the value of the produce in your 28-week share added up to $980, based on our farmstand prices. You paid $800 for that produce, which means you got to enjoy a 22.5% discount on all the food you took home as a CSA member this season. I'm pretty sure that's the largest seasonal discount we've ever seen in the past ten years, thanks to some great yields in certain crops and expanded crop diversity throughout the season!

The Harvest Basket mostly hovered above $30 in value all season, with a few spikes upwards of $45 in August and September. Good job eating your vegetables, everyone!

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2019 CSA Sign-Ups
It'll be June before we know it with summer's bounty upon us again, but whaddya say we take a few weeks to rest and digest the 2018 season before we think about that? I promise to send out a sign-up email for the 2019 Summer/Fall CSA Season in January. Anyone who was a member this year will automatically get priority for next season, so there's no need to put yourself on our waiting list. Many of you have been with us since 2009 when the CSA first began, a whole decade ago. Amazing! We are so lucky to have committed supporters like you, who bravely do kitchen combat with giant kohlrabis and bumpy-skinned squash. They should make an action film about you guys!

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Tamales this Week!
It's your last tamale delivery of the year. A big thank you to Juana for the 2,100 tamales she made for everyone this season!

Remember to grab your labeled dozen from the marked cooler at your pick-up site this week!

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The Farmstand is Open for Winter Hours!

Every Wednesday 10 am to 2 pm, rain or shine!
(No more Saturdays until next June)

Fresh Produce
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Please note our hours are slightly changed from year's past, closing at 2 pm instead of 3 pm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Week 27 of 28 from Valley Flora!

Wed, 11/28/2018 - 1:44pm

Week 27 of 28 from Valley Flora! Sugarloaf Radicchio! Fuji Apples!

Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!

View this email in your browser

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What's Cookin' on the Farm...

The Last Two Weeks!
Radicchio Caesar Salad

Brain coral or....celeriac!?

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What's Probably In Your Share This Week:*

Carrots
Leeks
Celeriac
Sugarloaf Radicchio
Delicata Squash
Fuji Apples
Hakurei Turnips
Kohlrabi

On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)

Nothing this week...

*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...

Onions
Carrots
Celery
Beets
Mustard Greens
Kabocha Squash
Green Cabbage
Parsnips
Potatoes
Radishes?

The Last Two Weeks!
We're in the home stretch of the 2018 season! Next week will be our last week of CSA deliveries until our Winter/Spring season begins on January 9th. If it feels like the fall/winter produce is piling up on you, worry not! Most of it - with the exception of leafy greens - has a long storage life. Kohlrabi, celeriac, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, cabbage, apples, leeks and even turnips (if you cut the tops off) will keep for weeks if not months in your fridge. Winter squash and onions will hold for most of the winter in a cool, dry place as well. Our hope in these last couple CSA weeks is to fill your crisper and countertop with crops that will continue to feed you and your family and friends into December, and maybe even beyond.

I've been especially inspired in the kitchen this week (getting home by 5:30 really helps - man, I love winter!) and I've made a few dinners that made me want to invite all of you over, especially those of you who have winter squash piling up as centerpiece decor. I love this recipe from Six Seasons: Roasted Squash with Yogurt, Walnuts and Spiced Green Sauce. I had to buy some cilantro to make the green sauce, but it makes enough that you'll have leftover to re-purpose for chimichurri-esque fish or lamb or steak (that's tonight's dinner plan!). There are some other awesome recipes in Six Seasons : A New Way with Vegetables that make inspired use of hardy fall and winter veg (also spring and summer produce!), so if you don't own the cookbook yet you might drop a hint with Santa.

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Radicchio Caesar
All the nation is in a tizzy over romaine lettuce right now, again (oh, our industrial food system (big sigh)). If you are going through Caesar salad withdrawals, we have a Valley Flora-local-seasonal solution for you this week: radicchio Caesar. The sugarloaf radicchio in your tote is among the mildest of all the chicories we grow, and you can make it even milder if you slice the head into ribbons and soak it in cold water for 10 minutes to leach out any trace of bitterness. You might actually fool your dinner guests into thinking it's romaine, for better or for worse.

I grabbed a recipe off the internet and made up a homemade Caesar dressing last night (I opted for one without raw eggs, cuz who needs salmonella and E. coli in the same week?), grated some parmesan, toasted some croutons, and tossed it all together. I actually used a much more bitter variety of radicchio that I had on hand and our 7 year old chowed it down (yup, the miracle of salad dressing). And you know, even if romaine wasn't on the recall list, I think I'd prefer the radicchio version anyway: hearty, fresh, flavorful, traceable, and comforting in more ways than one. Thanks for being part of our local farm-direct food system.

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The Farmstand is Open for Winter Hours!

Every Wednesday 10 am to 2 pm, rain or shine!
(No more Saturdays until next June)

Fresh Produce
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers!

Please note our hours are slightly changed from year's past, closing at 2 pm instead of 3 pm

For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:

Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.

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

Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.

Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.

Beet Box

Week 13 from Valley Flora!

Week 12 from Valley Flora!

Week 11 from Valley Flora!

Week 10 from Valley Flora!

Week 9 from Valley Flora!

Week 8 from Valley Flora!

Week 7 from Valley Flora (early!)

Week 6 from Valley Flora!

Week 5 from Valley Flora!

Week 4 from Valley Flora!

Solar-Powered Produce!!!

Week 2 from Valley Flora!

And a Cherry Tomato Plant, Too!

I forget to mention...

Summer CSA Kickoff!

Strawberry U-Pick and Farmstand Open this Saturday!

Produce & U-Pick Strawberries!

Sign Up for our 2019 CSA Season

Are you craving a real tomato?
Only four months to go until they're ripe at Valley Flora, but now's the time to stake your claim on your share of the harvest!
Sign up today for the 2019 CSA Season!

Harvest Baskets - Salad Shares - Flower Shares - Tamale Shares

Remember to VOTE for SOLAR at VALLEY FLORA!!!

Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

The FINAL Week!

Week 27 of 28 from Valley Flora!

Pages

Customer Login

Latest Beetbox

Valley Flora

The Valley Flora Beetbox

I forget to mention...

Produce & U-Pick Strawberries!

Are you craving a real tomato? Only four months to go until they're ripe at Valley Flora, but now's the time to stake your claim on your share of the harvest! Sign up today for the 2019 CSA Season!

Harvest Baskets - Salad Shares - Flower Shares - Tamale Shares

Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

Vote for Solar at Valley Flora!

Pages

Customer Login

Latest Beetbox

Valley Flora

The Valley Flora Beetbox

Are you craving a real tomato?
Only four months to go until they're ripe at Valley Flora, but now's the time to stake your claim on your share of the harvest!
Sign up today for the 2019 CSA Season!