Rainy rainy rain

Rainy afternoon Oakhill selfie (3 out of 4 of us pictured in our full rain gear).

Hey! It’s March! And, it’s rainy! This is how I think of March — lots and lots of gray and lots and lots of wet. We inevitably get a few beautiful spells too, but wow can the rain come down in this month in the Willamette Valley.

As I drove around this week, I was struck by how much the landscape is transformed by the rain — hilltops obscured by mist in the trees. It reminded me a lot of the persistent winter landscape of the Puget Sound, where I grew up.

But, on this rainy evening, I’d like to take a little break from story telling and just share some farm newsy stuff. We’ve got a few things coming up that I want to make sure you know about.

CSA payment due next week! Our second CSA payment of the season is due next Thursday, March 17. You can mail us a check (to P.O. Box 1698, McMinnville OR 97128) or bring cash/check to pick-up. I emailed out statements to folks earlier this week, so you should have your balance due in your inbox. If you have any questions, please email me or ask me to clarify at pick-up tomorrow!

Last chance for pork! On May 2, we are taking six hogs to the butcher — our last for now, as we’ve decided not to continue this part of our farm into the foreseeable future (for lots of reasons, but mostly it just comes down to wanting to simplify what we’ve got going on and having to choose where we spend our energy). If folks would like to buy a whole or half hog for their freezer, this is your chance! The price is $5.50/lb for the hanging weight (which is the carcass before processing — our heritage hogs typically dress out at 50-65 lbs each). We pay for all the butchering costs except for making into bacon and sausages, which you would pay if you want that. Our butcher does a beautiful job with no-nitrate added “curing,” and we can have them make bacon, Bratwurst and/or hams for you if you like (again, you would pay for those costs). Email us ASAP to reserve your half or whole!

Farm events scheduled for 2016! And, finally, we took time to sit down with our calendar and schedule out this year’s farm events. We hope you can join us for at least one event this year. I’ll provide more details (and directions to the farm) in the newsletter before each event:

• Potato planting & potluck ~ Sunday, April 30, 3 pm ~ We’ll plant potatoes (delightfully fun work suitable for families!) from 3 – 5 pm and then gather together for a potluck at our house. Bring your favorite dishes to share!
• Ratatouille Rendezvous ~ Saturday, August 27, 5 pm ~ Join us for our favorite way to end the summer — with a big feast of ratatouille (a summer stew)! We’ll make a GIANT batch of ratatouille; you bring a bowl and a potluck side dish to share (salad, side, bread, cheese, desert, etc.).
• Pumpkin Patch Open House ~ Sunday, October 23, 2 – 4 pm ~ Come out to pick your family’s pumpkins, tour the farm, and participate in a fun variety tasting (vegetable or fruit to be decided). We may even round up some live music again this year.

We’re excited about all of these events and look forward to hosting you on the farm!

That’s all the news for now. Before I sign off, I’ll share with you a few more fun photos from a very rainy afternoon on the farm:

Here’s the fourth — ready for the rain too.

We finished our harvest in the greenhouse, where we picked armfuls of kale! Kale-o-rama!

Happy rainy evening to you!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples
• Radishes
• Salad mix — This week’s mix: tender lettuce, endive, spinach, and escarole.
• Rapini — A mix of turnip and kale rapinis to choose from.
• Cabbage
• Collard greens — I think of collards as being ideal in two opposite seasons — late winter and mid-summer. No need to tell you which of those seasons we’re in now! Our over-wintered collards plants are beginning to put up rapini, and their tender thick stalks are just covered with abundant new leaves. Picking these bunches was such fun — we just snapped off whole plants (leaves, stalk, rapini and all) and bunched them! You can prepare collards as you would kale, except that it often does require a little longer cooking time. Traditionally, people would boil their collards for an extended period in broth or salty water. We prefer cooking in a pan with butter. We do put in broth at first and cover the pan to help cook the greens (we do this with winter kale and cabbage too), then remove the cover and let the liquid boil off and the softer greens saute. I also sometimes enjoy chopping collards fine in a food processor and mixing with finely chopped carrots and other vegetables to make a chopped salad.
• Chard
• Red Russian kale — From the greenhouse! Long tender leaves.
• Sweet potatoes
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Leeks