Abundance is here! (Week 8)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, the last few shares have been abundant: quantity, colors, flavors—this is the season of plenty. We are overjoyed to be sharing the fullness of the fields with your right now, especially after a few shares in the ‘shoulder’ season between spring and summer that were a bit smaller. Even though we try to give out a consistent amount of food each week (typically $19-20 at market values—which is a good return on your $17 per week), in August it is hard to keep the price of each share down because the fields are just so productive and beautiful. This week’s value is well over $20. Making our ‘pick-sheet’ for this week’s harvest was exciting—it just kept going and going!

Other good things happening right now on the farm:

Wet ground, finally!

We are finally catching up on our water situation. We are growing this year with a finite water source, which is just ‘enough’ under ‘normal’ summer circumstances. However, as we know, this is a ‘hot’ summer—not exceptionally so, but definitely hot. During the 105° days, we definitely learned which vegetables need more moisture than we originally anticipated. But now that the weather has cooled off a bit, we’re getting caught back up, and we can see an immediate difference in the yields from things like our green beans.

Cabbages, broccoli, kohlrabi—oh my!

Also, we’ve begun planting the fall garden. We mentioned a few weeks ago that we had begun sowing long-season cabbages and the like. Well, this weekend we started transplanting some of those winter-hardy veggies into the fields. Just as it was odd to sow cold weather plants on hot July days, it was also odd to be planting them and even row covering them (protecting them with a thin layer of white cloth—in this case, to keep bugs out, but in the spring to prevent frost damage). Even though we’re still in the thick of summer, the fields are looking more like they did in the spring: small plants everywhere covered with white bumpy tunnels.

A new home?

And the super duper extraordinarily exciting good news: it isn’t final yet, but it is looking very much like Oakhill Organics may have found a permanent home here in Yamhill County. Yes, we’re buying a piece of farmland. Since we don’t want to jinx the deal by assuming too much before closing, we’re going to withhold any more details here. But suffice to say that it is beautiful and has room for us to ‘grow’ the farm bigger next year and into the future! Keep your fingers crossed!

The only problem, however, with the new land is that there are no oaks or hills there. Hmmmm … so, we might have to change our name to fit our long-term location. We’ll keep you posted on that and other developments.

As always, enjoy the vegetables! And thank you for choosing to eat locally, sustainably, and seasonally!

Your farmers,

Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics