Home sweet home

Golden hour on the farm — always a beautiful moment at end of the day.

Golden hour on the farm — always a beautiful moment at end of the day.

For the past three years, our family has taken a weekend off from the farm in July to head to the beach and enjoy a temporary break from summer in the valley. By this point in the season, we’ve finished planting and weeding the main plantings of the year, but we’re not yet in the thick of the fall work. Even though summer feels like it’s moving along at full speed (which it is), mid-July is a surprisingly good moment to step away for a breather. So we do.

If you don’t know, Casey grew up in Lincoln City within walking distance of the beach. Beach is home to him in every sense, and it has often felt like home to me too. I hear this from so many people here in Oregon — that when we go to the beach, something stirs inside us as we watch the waves and feel the cool, clean air on our face and the wet sand beneath our feet. Many people feel pulled to that, coming again and again to drink deep of the ocean’s well of peace and beauty. And many people probably also share our reluctance at times to return to our real current home, here in the valley. Especially in summer, when the valley can be such an exhausting, hot and dusty place at times!

Joy is a child running full-tilt on the beach. So much fun.

Joy is a child running on the beach. So much fun.

Our final morning at Otter Rock was especially gorgeous — blue skies and warm sunshine (actually somewhat rare at the Oregon coast in summer!). Yet, we came home, feeling the temperature rise as we drove down out of Grande Ronde, watching the green turn to brown alongside the road. Yes, the valley is very dry. Oh my! But, then we pulled onto the island and to our little oasis of a farm, and returned to the little house that we built with our own hands. And we ate a farm lunch of fresh things from the fields. And listened to the Swainson’s Thrush singing here just as readily as at the beach. And sighed to be home, here, in this place.

(Upon arriving home, I also happened upon the recent New Yorker article about earthquakes in our region, which offered a sobering — if perhaps sensationalized — perspective on life at the beach!)

Casey I have always lived in the northwest, and always in truly beautiful places. As an adult who has lived near the sea, in the mountains, and in river valleys, I can sometimes feel as though my heart is split in every direction. In fact, right now Casey and I are making plans to revisit some of those old beloved places soon — notably a return to Holden Village hopefully this winter for a few weeks(!). That’s the retreat center in the North Cascades that we worked at oh so long ago.

How lucky are we in the northwest to have such relative easy access to these breathtakingly beautiful and distinct places. I really cannot imagine living anywhere else and feel as though we are raising our children in the richest of places. Just within two hours of our home on the farm, we can be at the beach exploring tidepools to our west or in the mountains hunting for mushrooms to the east. Or, we can stay home at pick carrots or collect agates at the river! Most often we choose the last option, relishing the richness of experience we can have just here, outside our door. Joys like golden hour over our home farm field (see photo above!). Or, watching a Cedar Waxwing build a nest in our walnut tree and then watching the fledgelings learn to fly (which we did upon arriving home yesterday). I am always amazed at how the same place can be different every day, thanks to the passage of time and seasons. Always growing.

May you too savor all that summer has to offer in this glorious place we call home. May you savor the bits close to your home (your yard!) and those parts we can visit on vacation (which I know many of your doing right now!). We are a lucky lot (earthquake predictions and all). Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. Re: that big quake article? A farmer friend of ours shared a link to this site with more precise and less sensational information intended to help us Northwesterners actually prepare in useful ways (and perhaps be a little less freaked). I’m going to spend some quality time reading through this link.

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Summer pork sale! 35% off for half/whole hogs! We have a lot of hogs that are ready to slaughter, so we’re doing a mid-summer sale on pork. We have four hogs that will be slaughtered tomorrow, and we are going to sell them by the half or whole for $3.90/lb hanging weight, including processing costs. This is 35% off of our normal price for half/whole hogs (and an even bigger discount off retail sales of cuts at the storefront). The hanging weight of a whole hog averages 88 lbs, and a half hog averages 44 lbs. (Hanging weight is the weight of the carcass before cutting, so it’s usually slightly higher than the actual take-home cuts.) If you don’t have the funds to pay for all of yours now, we can make you an invoice and take payments over the next two months. Stock up now!!!! Interested? You can email us or ask more questions tomorrow at CSA pick-up!

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

  • Head lettuce — Lettuce! Yay! As a “head’s up” about these heads, they are in limited supply this week (just based on which planting is ready right now), so we will limit the number available per share.
  • Broccoli — Broccoli! This picking of broccoli will also be limited to a certain amount per share.
  • Tomatoes — The first tomatoes! Hoorah! Because they are the first, these too will be limited for a certain amount per share.
  • Plums — In contrast, we have so many plums. One item will be six pints per share. As we did last week, we’ll ask you to transfer these to a bag so we can keep reusing the containers.
  • Cucumbers — Peeled and sliced cucumbers are our favorite veggie for dipping in “squash-a-ganjou” (see recipe below!).
  • Basil
  • Cabbage
  • Green & yellow beans
  • Carrots
  • Beets
  • Potatoes
  • Zucchini & Summer squash — Looking for a new way to eat these summer staples? We suggest you try making “squash-a-nouj.” What’s that? Casey made it up last year. We have always loved the flavor combination of baba ganouj: roasted eggplant + tahini + garlic = yes, please! But our eggplant season is often fairly brief (depends on the year, but compared to other staple crops, it is always much shorter!), so we would have to wait until late summer to get our baba ganouj fix. But then, Casey tried making baba ganouj with zucchini instead of the eggplant. He roasted it and then prepared everything else using (more-or-less) basic baba ganouj proportions. In other words, he stuck some roasted zucchini in a food processor with tahini, olive oil/butter, lots of garlic, and salt … if we’d had some lemon that would have been awesome too, but we didn’t, so Casey added some red wine vinegar, and it was still awesome. We’ve been totally hooked ever since. The texture and flavor is super close to the eggplant version (perhaps a bit milder? But not much!). Highly recommended!!!!

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

  • Eggs — $6/dozen ~When Casey or I have an occasion when we are out and about and can’t quite get in a decent satisfying dinner, we always have a reliable back-up plan for when arrive at home. We fry one or two eggs in butter and eat them. It’s amazing how such simple food can fill that missing hole in our day’s meals just perfectly. Eggs are amazing!
  • Walnuts — $5/lb
  • Bratwursts!!! — Brats are back! Last time, we sold out of these the first week we put them in the freezer. They were sooooo good. So we had more made. Our favorite way to eat Bratwurst is to cook it in a skillet (add a bit of water at first and put on the lid for a few minutes, then let the water boil off and brown the Brat in the pan), then we slice it thin on the bias and serve it beside a big green salad.
  • Pork — Cuts and prices vary! Let’s look in the freezer together!
  • Lamb — Ditto!
  • Goat — Ditto again!
  • Ground beef —  For dinner tonight, I made a simple and satisfying meal. I browned some ground beef in a skillet, then added chopped zucchini (lots of it!), some butter, and basil leaves (and a bit of salt) and sauteed on high heat until the zucchini were cooked through and starting to brown. $7 for 1/lb packages
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