Earlier this month I traveled with a great group of Oregon Farmers to Mt. Vernon, Washington to give a workshop on Season Extension at the Northwest Agriculture Business Center. The other presenters at the workshop were…

Tanya Murray from Sauvie Island Organics, Portland
Josh Volk from Slow Hand Farm, Portland
John Eveland from Gathering Together Farm, Philomath

We had a great time – I learned quite a bit from my farmer friends and from the audience as well. Tanya spoke about the different greenhouses and crops that they have tried over the years at Sauvie Island. She presented some interesting info on winter enterprise budgets. Josh took us on a photo tour of his own farm and the many others he has visited across the country. I spoke about the very specific varieties we grow during the winter which can survive and even thrive outside or with minimal protection. John has the most experience with season extension and talked about the many different types of high tunnels and greenhouses they’ve tried over the years. You can read about the spanish style tunnels they’re putting up now on his blog.

Thanks for Jeff Voltz for inviting us up to do the workshop!

We have SUMMER SHARES for sale!! You can sign up & get more info HERE.

We’ve been busy in the greenhouse the last few weeks. It is full almost to bursting with baby broccoli, lettuce, onions and lots of other spring things. If you want to read more about the greenhouse, the crew, and our new germination chamber in Farm Manager, Ian Wilson’s most recent blog post.

You can download your Recipe Packet  here.  These are written by my friend Katherine Deumling at Cook With What You Have. This week she has some great ideas for root parsley and a recipe for Sauteed Greens & Eggs that I LOVE because it is so simple, fast & yum!

This week your share may include…

• Beets: A few weeks ago I was in Mt Vernon, WA to present at a workshop on winter farming. I made sure to tell everyone about these Winterkeeper beets!! They are easy to grow and maintain their quality through the winter better than any other variety we’ve ever grown.
• Collards: The leaves are smaller this time of year as they start to grow again in the spring sunshine but they’re still sweet, tender and tasty.
• Kale Raab: This Winterbor kale is one of the first to begin flowering and it makes for tasty little broccolini like buds. The leaves of this variety also make great Kale Chips.  
• Leeks: These King Richard leeks make a wonderful potato leek soup or just saute the tender stems with some greens – winter comfort food!
• Onions: The Copra’s are a good solid yellow onion that keep extraordinarily well through the winter.
• Root Parsley: These look alot like parsnips, but I find the flavor to be much more parsley-like. There are lots of good ideas for using these in your recipe packet.
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli: This has been coming on strong!! We are still just picking Rudolf, our earliest variety. We are also growing “Early” Purple Sprouting, but no heads on that variety yet.  In addition to the little head of broccoli all the leaves and stems on the plant are sweet and tasty so enjoy those too.  
• Popcorn: We love this Early Pink variety and I heard very enthusiastic reviews from some shareholders when I saw them this weekend! If you have a microwave you can put the whole cob in a brown paper bag and microwave it 1 min at a time for up to 3min. Most of the kernals will be popped off at that point so pour it in a bowl with some butter and salt & yum! BE CAREFUL – more than 4 consecutive minutes in the microwave  can cause the cobs to catch on fire!! Otherwise, take the kernals off the cob and make perfect popcorn the old fashioned way. 1 cob makes about 2 cups when it is popped.
• Potatoes: These Yellow Finn are some of my favorite potatoes. It is a very popular gourmet potato in Europe and can be cooked almost any way you can imagine – mashed, boiled, fried or baked. One of my favorite things to make with this variety in the winter is Katherine’s Easy Scalloped Potatoes.

Coming soon… Many variations on the rapini & brocolini theme!

For many years now I have been learning to herd sheep with my border collies. Last Saturday, Eric came and took some great photos of Fischer & Albert in action. Thanks as always to Kathy Brunetto for teaching these great workshops!

Fischer Flanking Away To Me

Albert Flanking Come Bye

Albert on the GO!

Fischer Fetching the Sheep

******Reminder*******

We are now accepting registration for the summer CSA share!  Whether you are new to the farm or a long time member, now is the time to secure your share of this year’s harvest.  You can print the brochure here.  If you know someone else who you think would enjoy sharing the bounty, please pass this invitation along!

and now onto another introduction…

Tayne is our propagation proprietess, the plant mama, the germination sensation.  When she’s not ushering forth and nurturing along our beloved young plants, she can be found picking the banjo, knee deep in sauerkraut, or breaking the sound barrier on her bicycle, though rarely all at the same time.  Now this may sound like a tall tale, and I’ve told a few in my day, but this one is not.  Tayne is certifiably related to Johnny Appleseed, or John Chapman as the records would indicate.  Go figure…

Tayne, layin' down that seed

Tayne is very intuitive and organized and will be directing traffic in and out of the greenhouse in the year to come.  This is a huge job as the greenhouse is one of our most important resources and in the early season it is usually packed to the gills with plants.  It is also the place where the food we grow is most fragile and needy as seeds emerge and grow until they are strong enough to make a go of it out in the fields where all sorts of other adversity awaits.

The greenhouse highway ...and now we cross our fingers

Tayne has quietly gone about re-vamping our whole greenhouse area and making some great improvements for the year to come.  She has increased our space within the structure and re-organized for a more efficient flow of the activities we carry out.  The biggest new feature of our greenhouse this year is a “germination chamber” that Tayne designed and built on site.  She brought this idea from her experience working in greenhouses in Colorado.  Behold…

In all it's glory

The “germ chamber” is essentially a micro-climate that achieves conditions that are most ideal for seeds to germinate.  This primarily means high humidity, and warm consistent temperatures.  It is a simple design, using industrial shelving wrapped in greenhouse plastic.  A bucket heater sits in the bottom and heats water to maintain temperature and humidity.  A thermostat allows us to control the temperature depending on what the seeds want. It can fit 60 trays which also increases our greenhouse space substantially!

The greenhouse is filling up fast with all the promises of the season to come.  We have already had several successful trials that show the germ chamber is doing its job!  We will keep you updated on how things progress in there.  I hope everyone enjoyed that incredible weather last week.  We will see you next week for another share!  and stay tuned for part III of Winter Projects…

- Ian

We have SUMMER SHARES for sale!! You can sign up or get more info HERE.

It’s been everything from snowing to 60 degrees and sunny this week. That’s spring in Oregon – nothing if not unpredictable. Luckily Eric was at Grand Island with me on Sunday when the sun was shining and he took some great photos of our beautiful winter crops that you can see below.

You can download your Recipe Packet here.  These are written by my friend Katherine Deumling at Cook With What You Have. She’s going to continue to provide them through the rest of the winter share so let me know what you think?

This week your share may include…

• Carrots: The carrots are very sweet, but at this point the carrot rust fly has done quite a bit of damage to them. We store the carrots in the ground because we think that the flavor and freshness are superior to those stored in the cooler. However, the longer they are in the ground, the more damage the carrot rust fly can do. That said, even though they don’t look very good they still taste great!
• Dried Fava Beans: This is the first time we’ve grown favas all the way to maturity. They’re quite common across the mediterranean region and into the Middle East. Thanks Katherine for contributing some great recipes.
• Kale Raab: This Winterbor kale is one of the first to begin flowering and it makes for tasty little broccolini like buds. Definitely cook the intensely ruffled leaves and sweet stalk in the Brazilian soup from your recipe packet – as good or better than collards! The leaves of this variety also make great Kale Chips.  
• Leeks: These King Richard leeks make a wonderful potato leek soup or just saute the tender stems with some greens – winter comfort food!
• Parsnips: Lovely in the Winter Couscous.
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli: It is SO exciting to have this in the share!! We are picking Rudolf, an early variety, which the catalog says should be ready by Christmas. Can’t believe everything you read I guess, but it definitely does mature earlier than the regular purple sprouting and we appreciate that. In addition to the little head of broccoli all the leaves and stems on the plant are sweet and tasty so enjoy those too.  
• Popcorn: We love this Early Pink variety. If you have a microwave you can put the whole cob in a brown paper bag and microwave it 1 min at a time for up to 3min. Most of the kernals will be popped off at that point so pour it in a bowl with some butter and salt & yum! BE CAREFUL – more than 4 consecutive minutes in the microwave  can cause the cobs to catch on fire!! Otherwise, take the kernals off the cob and make perfect popcorn the old fashioned way. 1 cob makes about 2 cups when it is popped. And if you have a sweet tooth there is a Caramel Corn recipe in your packet : )
• Potatoes: Nice red potatoes this week.

Coming soon… Many variations on the rapini & brocolini theme!

Hello friends of the farm,

Even though we are full time winter farmers here at 47th Ave, the winter months still offer something in the way of a time to reflect on the season behind us and the season ahead and to attend to all of those things that keep getting pushed to the back of our endless summer to-do lists.  It is also a time to think critically about our systems and to imagine ways to make our farm better!  Our crew this year is pretty amazing, Im not gonna lie, and the innovations and ideas that have come forward have been very exciting.  We have taken on some serious infrastructural improvements over the last couple months and we wanted to let everyone in on what we have been up to.  Keep checking the website for more installments of our winter project series…

Steve models his handy dandy skills with a nail gun

Steve is our wash station Guru, master of the spigot, the hydro captain, “flow-jo” as we call him, and is our head quality control as our veggies move from our field to your tables.  He has been pushing for some wash station innovation for some time and we put our heads together and totally revamped the wash station area.  We had some old cast iron bathtubs collecting dust in the barn and Steve and Brice put together plans to give them new life.

Steve builds the frame over the inverted tub

They built some very sturdy frames that would fit the tubs perfectly and then we hauled the beasts on out to the wash station and nestled them down into their new homes.  The first one was a huge success so we built two more!

A completed tub station

The result is a very elegant (i think) and functional new system with much increased washing area, and easy cleanability.  The tubs can work as dunking stations for more delicate things like lettuce and arugula.  Throw our homemade lightweight screens on top and you have a great root washing setup!

Tub with removeable washing screen

The whole fleet!

Future innovations may include hose fixtures for hands free washing and robots to wash vegetables for us!  Just kidding about the robots.  Hope everyone has enjoyed last week’s share.  Those Yellowfinn potatoes are the best of the best!!  See you all next week for more of the winter bounty.

-  Ian

Flo-Jo

The seeds are rolling in! We looked over data from last year, read the member surveys, talked to the chefs, and finally the 2012 Farm Plan is nearing completion. Every year we get very excited about new varieties, but we’re also growing increasingly concerned about how many of our great old stalwart varieties are disappearing. There are a variety of reasons that a good variety goes out of production, but at least part of it is due to the consolidation of the seed industry. We applaud the great work that the  Organic Seed Alliance and indefatigable farmers like Frank & Karen Morton of Wild Garden Seeds do to improve and maintain great varieties for small farms. If you’re buying seeds this spring, I’d encourage you to buy organic ones from local NW companies. It is by buying, growing and eating these varieties that we create the demand that sustains them.

You can download your Recipe Packet here.  These are written by my friend Katherine Deumling at Cook With What You Have. She’s going to continue to provide them through the rest of the winter share so let me know what you think?

This week your share may include…

• Beets: We’re happy to see these delicious red beets back in the share. There are quite a few recipes in the packet this week. You can also check out my Beets 101 post for a few more ideas including my tried and true (and easy too!) Raw Beet and Apple Salad.
• Carrots: The carrots are very sweet, but at this point the carrot rust fly has done quite a bit of damage to them. We store the carrots in the ground because we think that the flavor and freshness are superior to those stored in the cooler. However, the longer they are in the ground, the more damage the carrot rust fly can do. That said, even though they don’t look very good they still taste great!
• Collards: They are looking beautiful with purple and red highlights on the leaves. This is another veggie that sweetens up considerably in the winter. I highly recommend the shredded collard in your recipe packet!
• Onions, Yellow: These Copra onions have great eating quality and they are our longest lasting onion in storage.
• Parsnips: Some great ideas for these in your recipe packet.
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli: It is SO exciting to have this in the share!! We are picking Rudolf, an early variety, which the catalog says should be ready by Christmas. Can’t believe everything you read I guess, but it definitely does mature earlier than the regular purple sprouting and we appreciate that. In addition to the little head of broccoli all the leaves and stems on the plant are sweet and tasty so enjoy those too.
• Popcorn: We love this Early Pink variety. If you have a microwave you can put the whole cob in a brown paper bag and microwave it 1 min at a time for up to 3min. Most of the kernals will be popped off at that point so pour it in a bowl with some butter and salt & yum! BE CAREFUL – more than 4 consecutive minutes in the microwave  can cause the cobs to catch on fire!! Otherwise, take the kernals off the cob and make perfect popcorn the old fashioned way. 1 cob makes about 2 cups when it is popped.
• Potatoes: Nice Yukon Gold potatoes this week.

Coming soon… Leeks!