Week 1 ~ June 3-June 9, 2013 CSA Newsletter

This Weeks Share: Radish bunch, Green Garlic Head, Head Lettuce, Bag of Mixed Lettuce, Bag of Endive Greens, Carrots or Beets bunch with greens, and a Pint of Strawberries.

Welcome to week 1 of healthy, happy eating at Love Farm Organics! This first week has caught me a little unprepared as the kids and I were in Newport over the weekend. However, absence never stops the food from coming on, plants from needing attention and all other miscellaneous tasks on a farm. In fact quite the opposite! Alas, I will play catch-up these first few days. The Newsletter will get faster and easier and the flow of this amazing routine will return. I am so glad to be back! We feel the year is starting off pretty good so hopefully all you Members will agree. I have to give a safety plug about washing your foods. We rinse the field heat off of just about everything we harvest, and many things we actually clean fairly well, like dirt covered roots. The extra effort at the farm is in no way a substitute for best sanitary practices, so please wash your foods before eating.

Radish: We have French Breakfast and Ostergruss for the radish this week. The latter looks much like a purple to red carrot. It’s long and slender, but the flavor is peppery and all radish. The former is an oblong shaped, light in heat radish which is enjoyable crisp and fresh. Some folks like to eat radish greens as well, however I find them a bit hairy and not as desirable as the flea beetles find them. Radish greens are great for compost or your bunny rabbits.

Green Garlic: We are harvesting heads of tasty Spring garlic for everyone this week. Green garlic is uncured and therefore lacking the intense heat of seasoned, cured garlic. This soft-neck adolescent Allium is fabulous chopped up and added to a dish nearing the end of cooking time. The round part of the stalk is great too, and can be used like a green onion, or added raw to a dish as garnish with pizzazz.

Head Lettuce: Each half-share will take home a head of our sweet Spring lettuce. We will have many different heads for you to choose from like Romaine-type crosses and extra-frills curly head reds.

Bag of Mixed Lettuce: Spring is the season of greens and lettuce is one we have boiling over this week. Great on sandwiches, wraps or more salad these mixed greens are versatile. They also come in quite handy.

Bag of Endive Greens: This green unlike lettuce tastes a tad bitter, in a good way. If the flavor is too much for you raw, all is not lost. Here is one of our basic go to sauteed greens recipe.

Easy Braised Greens with Garlic and Oil  by Love Farm Organics

• 1 bag full of endive/escarole (about 1 1/2 pounds)
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled
• Salt
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed hot red pepper, or to taste

1. Wash the escarole in plenty of cold water, swishing the leaves gently to remove all grit; then drain in a colander before chopping into 2″ pieces.
2. Heat the olive oil in a wide, heavy skillet over medium heat. Whack the garlic cloves with the side of a knife, skin cloves (green garlic won’t really need skinned), chop coarsely and toss into the pan. Cook, shaking the pan, until garlic turns  golden, about 2 minutes.
3. Carefully stir in as many of the endive/escarole leaves (with the water that clings to them) as will fit comfortably into the pan. Cook, stirring, until the leaves begin to wilt. Continue adding more greens, a handful at a time, until all the greens are in the pan. Season lightly with salt and 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper.
4. Lower the heat to medium-low, cover the skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until the endive/escarole is tender, about 8 minutes. If all the liquid in the pan evaporates and the greens begin to stick to the pan, sprinkle a tablespoon or two of water over them. Check the seasoning, add red pepper and salt if necessary and serve immediately.

Carrot bunch or Beet bunch (with greens): You have a choice between carrots or beets this week for our half-share. The full-share gets one bunch of each. Our first Spring carrots are sweet and delicious in flavor, but the beets have the bonus nutrient rich food with greens as well as sweet orbs. Beet greens are much like Chard and can be cooked as such. Or try the tender leaves raw discarding most of the fibrous stem.

Pint of Strawberries: Every half-share receives 1 full pint of our scrumptious strawberries this week. We have some Hoods and some Tillamook’s and are picking both. Either way one will be lucky to make it home! These girls love them so much they are thoughtfully savoring the flavors of early Summer…..

BERRY-SHARE: Since Strawberries are here and on you get them, so we have officially started the Berry-share. It is a very odd year, and I don’t think they have ever been so early for us. This year berry-share will likely be another exception to the rule as was last year, where we have to take a break of a week (or two) between strawberries ending and other berries ripening. Each year we are faced with new unique situations and this year will certainly be no different.

We’re truly looking forward to seeing all of you Members this week and meeting some new Members for the first time. Thanks for coming along with us this season. To those of you familiar with us and how all this works, a special salute of huge thanks, big hugs and many ‘here we go a gains’. Until then….. Your loving farmers!

Bye-bye Winter….Here comes Spring 2013

After an inspiring day down in Corvallis for the Small Farms Conference at OSU, the thoughts and anticipations of the season ahead are now forming actual flavors in the mouth of the mind. It’s so close we can taste it. We out pour our thanks to so many of you wonderful members that have taken the time to sign back up with us and send payments in. We are just as quickly putting funds right back out with spending on seeds and inputs, the actual life-blood of our farm. Things are flowing, taking shape, changing and growing.

I deliberately have been  waiting for the perfect sunny day to take pictures of what’s happening out here, but without fail those particular two days have been completely loaded with a million other things to do. Alas pictures of Spring will not be up tonight. I look forward to sharing with you more of what is new and alive, warm and blossoming soon. Our January King cabbage that is not.

This years Small Farm conference was attended by two of us from our farm rather than just one, so some fresh ideas can truly resonate on the same page. This particular continuing education event is one of the best. For those of you unfamiliar with some of the extra winter tasks of farmers, convention attendance, seminars and the like are quite typical. You can learn a great deal from other farmers, like minded folks, and in the off-season we have that time to share collectively. More anyway. Information from better integrated pest management on particular crops to new and hidden heirloom seed varieties was gained. We also gathered tools for finer tuning our cropping system and our newly authorized, yet uninitiated SNAP program for our season ahead. These last days of February, first days of March always seem to truly light the proverbial fire in our hearts and minds, as well as under our asses. The forecast looks and feels pretty favorable. It’s time to get things done.

Love Farm Organics will be accepting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for our CSA this upcoming season. We look forward to helping provide what little opportunity we can for the best food to get to those who are most in need. The amount of social justice that comes with aiding and understanding all people deserve access to healthy, fresh, organically grown fruits and vegetables is huge. Sound regional agriculture is a vital component of a healthy local community and CSA’s are about local food community. We are putting the pieces together logistically and on our web-site to help get the word out that we can now accept this program for our CSA. We are attempting to make it as easy as possible. Please help us spread the word. People wanting to use this program for purchasing our CSA share’s this year are asked to contact us directly. Much thanks.

The view above is one we don’t hope to see again this year even though we know well it is still possible. No. We are moving ahead, pushing forward, getting a fresh start on the Spring we hope to see in the near future. The  actual vernal equinox, the time of year when both length of day and length of night are approximately 12 hours long, or the start of Spring is literally weeks away, so yes, for now we are simply going to be the change we want to see in our world. I intend to have some new pictures of our lovely little piece of the world for you in the soon to be days ahead. I also expect that soon we will be nailing down a date for a spring work/meet & greet which will be announced. Between the said pictures and/or a farm visit, I will feel confident that most of you new to this will feel more confident with us and what we do out here. We can’t wait to be feeding you and smiling at you again soon! Thanks for visiting. Please check back!

Happy Holiday’s

Hello Friends and Family of Love Farm~

I’m hoping this finds you warm and cozy, nestled in with loved ones enjoying your holiday season and looking forward to the new year ahead. We decided that this winter season was going to be our travelling one (so we won’t need to travel for the next 5 years!). We commenced visiting relatives and friends here and there in mid November, and will be finished after the first of the year. Needless to say, it is tiring, but our little ones have been quite the troopers and everything has been and is going well. Kip and I have had much time to dream up new innovations, tools and methods for the new season. We are anxious to get settled back in to the farm, start sowing seeds and getting the plans in order. We are looking ahead to making 2013 the best season we have had yet.

I have started the process for our eligibility to accept the SNAP program for the new season. I am mostly finished, but need to have a quick class on some of the details and will hopefully schedule that in early January. If all goes well, I will announce in the weeks to come, our compatibility and acceptance of the state assistance program with our farm and the hope of increasing the number of families who can put healthy food on the table. Exciting!

Also, the very much overdue posting of our 2012 Harvest Party photos are below. I am still working on getting them out to you individually, but in-the-meantime you should be able to copy your own favorites from the gallery. A very special Thank-You to our good friend and professional photographer Tim Gunther for these. Also another huge thanks to all of you who made it out for the party in the pouring rain! We couldn’t do this without you, and hope you all know just how important to us you truly are.

Also, we are ready for membership sign-up for the 2013 Season. Well logistically…mostly. Please use the form on our web-site and reserve your share’s now, or as soon as you can. For returning member’s paid in full by February 1st, we offer a 5% discount to you. We appreciate your financial help early, so that we may use funds for our seed purchases and inputs, more than you can know. Thank-you for supporting our farm! We have given our costs a slight increase to reflect the times, and hope you can still consider us your Farmer’s for the year ahead. As usual, I am always open to working with you on payment plans or some barter. We want to continue to feed you at any costs! Your understanding of how we have chosen to make a modest living is completely appreciated. We LOVE our MEMBER’S! I’ll be in touch with more news after the first of the year, but until then Happy, Healthy Holidays!

It is May after all….

Here we are in the busy month of May. At the end of this month we finally begin the member’s long-awaited for distribution of delicious farm fresh foods. To top that off beautifully we even have sunshine! It looks like the tides have turned and the wet and cold of our long winter-spring may be behind us. As usual, we aren’t exactly counting on it. Farming is still a roller-coaster ride, especially this season, however we are feeling much better about our own understanding of it and the crops we grow and how that works on the land we have. This is officially our 7th season of doing our membership CSA and have a few years in now delivering to chefs. We feel blessed beyond belief at the loyal community of supporters gathered with and around us offering their financial and moral support as we continue on this journey. Feeding people is what we love to do, so the hard exhausting work is worth it. Now it is less exhausting than before. We have moved past the catastrophe and anxiety associated with carving out our place and getting established. With some firm roots we move forward. People are more than ready for fresh and local. People want food that tastes great, is produced in an ecological, minimal impact, non-factory way. Some want it with fair labor even and some actually want to know those farmers! Well 4 weeks from now starts the 24 week bag-o-goodness and we look forward to seeing you then. Thanks for supporting your farmer’s and local foods!

February Sunshine!

It’s an astonishing 53°F as I write this and already I feel guilty that I’m not back out in the sunshine as the girls are napping away. We were all out earlier enjoying it, spreading compost and manure and pulling weeds…and planting. Actually we have been outside and busy at the farm everyday last week and of late in what already feels like our regular Spring routine. Almost.

The only way to keep chickens out of flower beds.

The sun has prompted me to update the blog and rattle on a bit about what we’ve been up to out here. Hopefully your holidays and snow days were wonderful times full of love and giggles like ours were. Alas, now that is far behind us, but before I get to far ahead, let’s all remember our last frost date on the farm is May 15th. And it would be just like these goofy, mild winters we’ve had to dump snow on us again in late April! Suffice it to say we have been seeding and prepping pretty much like we usually do in February and won’t be planting any corn anytime soon. Many flowers and herbs as well as onions and cabbage seedlings are underway on some heat in our greenhouse. It’s exciting to see life in there again. The winter work of tidying and field up-keep brought about the consuming task of major overhaul to some of our fields. Rotating crops in various fields has it’s regular set of unique challenges, however we made the big decision to turn a couple of our older fields into orchards. The first planting of new fruit trees on our farm took place in 2008. They are just starting to produce more fruits for us, yet not quite enough for all. The new fields we just finished planting are mainly apples, pears and plums. We went an interesting route choosing some lesser known varieties. It truly will be fascinating for us to have a nice supply of these fruits 4-5 years down the road.

We are excited to add to the big field one, or quite possibly two, high tunnels this Spring. These will be very nice in helping crops transition from winter to spring and from fall into winter. The goal is that the high tunnels will extend our season by having more desirable crops (besides just greens) in early spring and hopefully peppers, eggplant, melons and tomatoes until we end in November. Our little mico-climate out here has proven to be quite finicky when it comes to frosts and more than a couple times we have been nipped severely by it. So these will help that by providing more heat units.

We are aiming to have a Spring Work-Party this year. In years past we have only managed to have one in the Fall. But we can always use some early help and this way new member’s can get oriented and see their farm. Each year we farm we learn so much more and figure out better ways to succeed at it. This year will be our 7th CSA season! We hope it shows and we are looking forward to seeing your smiles again. It will be here before we know it!

Springs sprung

Some images of the new season.

Almost Spring…

The new season of ‘eggs and seeds’ is upon us. Both eggs and seeds represent a promise of life….Spring will manifest. Today is the eve of St. Patrick’s Day. We are four days away from the official Spring Equinox of 2011. This time of year day and night are equal and balanced, but about to tip over on the side of light. We can really feel that now with daylight savings spring forward behind us. In many traditions, this is the start of the new year. Today on the farm we saw blue sky with warm, bright sunshine followed by black, thunderous clouds of torrential downpours. So, the weather seems right on track….Our daffodils are blooming nicely and the tulips are close to showing buds. Many of the deciduous shrubs are slowly leafing out tiny bits of green. Who does not  love this time of year and to watch sleepy plants come back to life!

Welcoming the new season…

Sometimes this time of year sneaks up on me by surprise and sometimes I ride it out like a long gentle slope of fresh powdery snow. This year it’s both. Here we are already to the end of February. A full trip around the sun we have come since a dear friend and auntie left this world and our first born is soon to turn 3. I see Aunt Jen’s light in Ava’s young eyes. A new and wondrous season is upon us, but we are first faced with a very cold and chilling end to winter. The next several days promise frozen puddles and inches of snow while today the crocus flowers smile into the sunshine. We are truly praying that this years spring will be different than last and that summer will come on schedule rather than last year, the year that summer never came. Our climate is the border edge of the puzzle and we do our best to match the pieces together and farm with some coherent picture in mind. It’s our movie….our picture. While this is challenging and difficult at times it is also what attracts my husband and I to farming. When it all comes together what a joy it can be! We continue to be extremely grateful for the oppurtunity to be involved in living systems and to be custodians of life. That is the little and the big of it, the micro and macrocosms. Each winter into spring we are building and starting a new community of plant life and life in our soils. We will nurture it and tend to it with care until it brings us life in turn by building a community of farm friends and neighbors who wish to partake in the bounty. The sunshine sparkling prisms on the tall rain drenched grasses, the pair of Anna hummingbirds that wintered with us buzzing by and the deep resonance of my bass chimes in the beguiling winds all cause me to pause and sigh…and smile. Yep. This is what we do.

We have started some native ‘insectory’ plantings, working in conjunction with the NRCS or National Resources Conservation Service, a branch of the USDA. The aim is to create zones of year-round blooms or fruit on native plants which, will in turn attract various beneficial insects and animal communities. This is right up our alley and actually something we maintain as integral on the farm already. Organic farming works best when buffer zones of  trees, shrubbery and wildlife are left alone to thrive and increase diversity of living things. The insectories will serve as refueling stations for the insects in various stages of life and in turn hopefully increase the numbers of beneficial ones coming into our fields. It’s a win-win for us, our crops and also the research which aims to decrease if not discontinue pesticide use altogether. We are almost done with the bare-root plantings and look forward to watching over them with care and vigilance over the next few years. We have been busy in the greenhouse as well. Most all of the first runs of seeds have been sown. Certainly all of the spring and extended season crops are up and even some of the warm weather summer crops. We will grow them on in our greenhouse over the next couple months. They’re cozy inside until we can work some ground or it’s safe enough temperature wise to plant them out. We have some new crops we are trying for the first time this year like artichokes and some cool cabbages. We finally have enough space to plant out artichokes, and we aim to have enough for everyone in the CSA. We are anxiously watching the buds of our young fruit trees and shrubs, hoping they won’t be in such a hurry to break dormancy and then risk getting nipped by an arctic freeze. I for one am greatly looking forward to their coming of age gracefully.

I have also been busy making soap. Pleased to finally have a list of bars (recipes) that I am confident enough with now I am stocking them up, regularly making small batches. I really enjoy the calming meditative process of stirring the soap and the thrill with anticipation that comes from not knowing exactly how each different batch will turn out. It’s a side hobby, but I’d love to sell you folks some. My values and principles in soap making are the same as they are in our farming. I use the best oils and butters I have found and make bar soap the hand-made, old fashioned, ‘cold-process’ way. I have a nice inventory of oils, many organic, and an extensive collection of herbs, essential oils and fragrances. I don’t use any chemical additives, colorings or preservatives. Anytime I include milk or cream it is raw milk from my aunts’ goats, and the raw honey I use is that of the Gales Creek family Wessels. I like to use as little as possible to get a good bar of soap. Oh and the soap works. Bonus! It lasts like nice hand-made soap, cleans the dirt off and doesn’t leave your skin dry and itchy. I’ll have more info on Love Farm Soap up on our website soon.

I think I’ve rattled on long enough now. I’m not quick to blog write or program on our website, but am getting there. I am welcoming in the new season with body, mind and spirit. We are truly looking forward to a wonderful year of the freshest, hearty and nutritious, delicious foods we can grow and bring to you. Until the next time, we hope you’re eating well. Enjoy the snow.

Hello to December~

Well here we are. While we are refreshingly taking a breath after ending our 2010 season, we have had many folks anxious to get enrolled in our 2011 season! This is indeed fabulous news! It seems our formative farming days of slower early winters are over. My father has always told me that there are tons of farm things to do in the winter, but we are now finally understanding the scope of this. The true realization is that even though you don’t tend to the harvest much physically in the winter, so much of the actual farming foundation work is cared for when the soil can’t be. So with that we order seed and plan our plantings. I intend to have our ‘Join Us’ form updated and running by the end of this week when I will send out a group email hopefully inspiring your interests for the farm bounty once again. Best wishes for farm, fresh, organic foods over these frosty months. Hope you are having fun preparing for, or relishing in your holidays.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What a wonderful November day to remember to count all our blessings ~ The sun was peaking through a cloudy sky and we had snow on the ground! Every day is a great day to appreciate and be grateful for something, however today is the one day most people in our part of the world make a conscious effort to. Every day I am grateful for my life…. as a farmer, a daughter, a wife and a mother… but I cherish my blessings so joyfully today. The little ones cheeks are rosy and today their faces glow with smiles ~ their eyes see fun love and wonder. My heart is happy. I’m hoping everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and can feel this peace, the peace of a life loved.