Best conference EVER!

Casey captured this beautiful photo of some tender mustard rapini over the weekend. Most likely, this sprout has since been picked and will go home with one of you lucky folks this week! Yummy!

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Dino kale rapini — Rapini season has arrived! From now until sometime in mid- to late spring, we will be enjoying these tender buds from all our various over-wintered green crops. Since many crops we grow in the winter are “biennials,” they begin their reproductive cycle sometime in the spring by throwing up these buds, which if we left in place would flower and eventually set seed. The flavor and texture varies from crop to crop — many of them are slightly spicy when raw but completely mellow once cooked. You can prepare them as you would any cooked green, but they are also delicious spread in a pan with oil and salt and roasted until the leaves are crisp and the stalk is tender.
• Mustard rapini
• Salad mix
• Winter squash — Your choice between Orange Dawn or Butternut squash.
• Parsnips — Emily has treated us a few times to parsnip spice cake, which is a treat indeed (think carrot cake but a million times more interesting). I thought I’d share a link to a similar recipe (maybe not the exact same one, but I think it is in the right spirit and looks yummy to me!). Bakers, have fun!!!!
• Rutabaga — Peel off the outer skin, and these roots have beautiful smooth interior flesh, suitable for grating for a slaw or roasting or adding to soups.
• Carrots
• Yellow Finn potatoes
• Onions

Last Saturday, Casey, Emily and I all headed south to Corvallis for OSU’s annual small farms conference. For Casey and me, this was the Best Conference Ever — or, at least, the best conference in recent memory. We came home completely jazzed and brimming with ideas and excitement for this upcoming season and beyond. There are a few main reasons for the awesomeness of this day:

First of all, my parents watched Rusty all day so Casey and I could go alone. Up until now, Rusty has come with us almost everywhere — he is over two years old, so it has been a long time since Casey and I have had an extended period of time away from him! This hasn’t been because of any self-sacrificial ideas about parenting — we really haven’t had occasion to want to be away from him, and he has often enjoyed the outings as well.

But, this year at our Breitenbush retreat, Casey and I both finally realized that we need some uninterrupted farm-talk-conference time. And, so we got it. Date day! And, in addition to being able to have undivided participation in the conference, we also got to have uninterrupted conversations on the hour drive to and fro!

Secondly, the conference was awesome because of the amazing energy in the event. There was a record-breaking attendance — over 850 people were there! And, when they did head counts before the keynote speaker in the morning, most of those people indicated that they were farmers! And, about half of the attendees were under 35 years old! So exciting, hopeful, and promising!

In contrast, the first year Casey and I attended this conference was 2006, and there were maybe 100 or so people, and we were some of the only folks who looked to be under 35. Clearly, we were at the forefront of a wave of young people entering agriculture. Wow!

But, the most exciting aspect of the conference for us was seeing Kristin Kimball, the author of The Dirty Life, speak. You may remember that this book was the inspiration for our “full diet CSA” dream.

Last summer, we were expanding our acreage and thinking about how to diversify our offerings — we knew we wanted to grow more fruit, add grains, and possibly some animals, but we weren’t sure how to “package” it all. Should we offer a complicated system of “add-ons” to the CSA? Should we return to the farmer’s market? We had a lot of ideas that didn’t feel quite “right.”

Then, we read Kimball’s book, which is the endlessly entertaining story of her experience meeting her farmer husband and then their first year of starting their farm, Essex Farm — the country’s first full diet CSA. The book is written with great passion and Casey and I both saw much of ourselves in Kristin and her husband Mark — we share their desire to eat good food, grow community, and have fun every day on the farm.

So, last year things started clicking when we read their story and realized just how far we might be able to go with diversifying. What if we too could offer a full diet CSA? And, as you know, we’ve been moving in that direction ever since.

But, we still had loads of question about logistics, pricing, and so many other details (fat? sugar?). So, when we saw that Kimball would be the keynote speaker at the conference, it felt like magical timing. What a delight then to find out that she would actually be speaking and sharing several times during the day!

So, for Casey and me, it was a full diet day. We went to three sessions led by Kimball and asked as many questions as we had (others were full of questions too). She was very open and engaging in her answers and provided us great insight into how Essex Farm manages it all. We were also excited to hear more of that kindred spirit in her talks. She and Mark are continuing to tackle big idealistic goals, including going fossil fuel independent by 2016 (their question: “How do we capture the most sun and keep it?”).

Kimball described their farm as being “endlessly fascinating” and said they like to create the kinds of problems they like to solve. She also said that ultimately they were driven by wanting to grow the foods they wanted to eat. Amen to all of that!

Our drive home was filled with non-stop talk as Casey and I tried to share all the reactions and thoughts and ideas we had during the day. As a wonderful side benefit of the whole thing, we even managed to come up with our first satisfactory buildings/infrastructure plan for the new land! (This had remained a quandary ever since the flood reminded us that traditional buildings probably won’t work over there.)

And, now on Monday, the sun is shining again, which is always a wonderful spirit booster at this point in the winter. And, Casey and I are in a good place for starting the busier part of the season. We’re trying to figure out our employment plans for the year — Jesse is coming back next month, but do we need an additional person to help us tackle all of these goals? Especially as we start adding animals in a big way later this spring? And then start developing infrastructure next door? Questions questions questions.

One thing we’ve learned over the years is that when we don’t immediately come up with answers to our current set of problems, it might mean that the timing just isn’t quite right yet for the solution. If we chew on it while opening ourselves to the universe, answers arrive in unexpected ways — often at just the right time. Reading an inspirational book as we pondered how to proceed with our expanded acreage … attending a conference when we need more questions answered … who knows what the universe has in store next?

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
… and the whole farm crew!

~ ~ ~

Next week’s vegetables (probably!):

Rapini • Cabbage • Butternut squash • Sunchokes • Beets • Celery root • Carrots • Potatoes • Leeks