Dry days

Casey trims the seed head off the first harvested sorghum stalks -- this experiment yielded half a gallon of syrup, and there is so much more in the fields!

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Concord grapes — These are from my parents’ yard — absolutely delicious (and ancient), unsprayed concord grapes! These have seeds, which I usually just spit out, but friends of ours in the wine industry insist on crunching the seeds and eating them too.
• Delicata winter squash — A great single serving squash. Just slice in half lengthwise and roast cut side down. We like to fill the cavity with cooked greens (or other treats) to make this a main dish.
• Tomatoes
• “Jimmy Nordello” sweet peppers
• Chard OR collard greens
• Cucumbers OR summer squash
• Green peppers
• Beets
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Cipollini onions

Well, it’s official — Portland is experiencing the longest, driest stretch of weather in recorded history.

I remember earlier this summer receiving a farming journal in the mail that contained an article about the crazy weather of the year — specifically the nation-wide droughts. It included a map of the country, with colors marking areas that were experiencing lower rainfall than normal in yellows and reds and areas with higher rainfall in greens and blues.

The vast majority of the country was yellow and red, with the exception of our little corner here in the northwest, which was green and blue. Makes sense, given that we had an extra long, extra wet spring and early summer.

But now we’re having our own extended dry period, and you can see signs of it everywhere — trees everywhere are showing drought stress, leaves turning brown and crispy. A neighbor of ours down the road has a cherry orchard that is dropping leaves like crazy, and it’s not from the turning of the seasons.

Closer to home, my mom is considering butchering some of her fall sheep earlier because her pastures are parched and dry, requiring her to feed her animals from expensive purchased alfalfa hay she’d intended for later use.

And, here in our own fields, we’re continuing to irrigate almost daily. There’s a temptation to slow down as the days cool (slightly!) and shorten, but we have so many winter greens that are still quite young and tender. We’re planning another round of watering on our new orchard, something we hadn’t expected to need, but there are no mentions of upcoming rain in the forecast. We also are stymied about how to work up spent fields and sow cover crops for the fall — the ground is too dry to work with any success (unless we just want to make lots of erosive dust). We’re considering irrigating just so we can work the ground!

To be clear, this weather pattern is interesting, a little bit annoying for some of us, and actually beneficial for many categories of farms in the valley (notably the wine grape growers). Our drought has very little of the doom and destruction of the one that hit the rest of the country this year, in large part because seasonal droughts are part of our “normal” climate here in the northwest. Native vegetation is adapted to very little rain for the summer months, and farmers have also had to adapt — either by growing drought-tolerant crops or by installing irrigation systems as an integral part of their operations.

As veggie growers, we’re in the latter category. One couldn’t even begin to consider growing fresh vegetables in the northwest without irrigation of some kind. Even folks who claim to “dry farm” potatoes and tomatoes usually supplement their crops with water at some point, even if they don’t use a full-on irrigation system (a favorite supplement method is a five gallon bucket with a small hole drilled in the side for some basic irrigation).

So, for us, not having rain means more work (and money for pump electricity). And, it does mean that some of our crops will suffer, because in these conditions, it can be almost impossible to keep things as wet as we’d like. In our case, it’s the perennials that haven’t been watered quite enough, because quite honestly, we kept expecting some rain through September. As I said earlier though, we’re going to water our trees again, so the trees will certainly survive — they just weren’t able to grow quite as much as they would have in a wetter year or with more irrigation.

But, the dry weather has provided some convenient opportunities too. We have a large window in which to continue our slow, awkward, first-time of harvesting and experimenting with many different kinds of grain crops. We have millet and flax that have cured, been cut, and are ready to be combined, and we’re just waiting for our neighbor farmer to have time. The grains, corn and some beans that are still in the fields can take advantage of this Indian summer to continue maturing and curing too.

This weekend, Casey experimented with a related crop — cane sorghum, a Southern staple related to corn but grown for the sugar content of its stalk. It is traditionally rolled to produce “juice” that is evaporated for syrup (“sorghum syrup”). We weren’t sure whether we’d be able to produce cane sorghum here in the valley, since we definitely don’t have the heat of the south. But it did grow indeed, producing lush beautiful tall green stalks.

On Saturday, Casey and Rusty cut down some of the stalks and tried making some syrup. We don’t have the right tools yet (no reason to invest in a special roller mill and evaporator if we don’t know whether we can grow the crop!), so Casey ran the canes through our hammer mill (which chops rather than presses) and then pressed the resulting pulp in a cider press we borrowed. It certainly wasn’t as effective or efficient as the real deal, but it gave us some (green!) juice. Casey boiled it in pots on the stove until it thickened, and — voila! — we made our first sorghum syrup!

We produced about half a gallon from about twelve row feet of stalks. We have many more than that growing in the field, so theoretically (if we could magically scale up our production method right now), we could produce many, many, many gallons of syrup for eating over the next year. We’re not there yet, but we are looking into the possibilities. For now though, we’re pretty excited that the sorghum grew — we just produced sweetener here on our farm!

While we had the cider press in our possession, Casey and Rusty also pressed two bins of Asian pears from my parents’ trees. They produced delicious mildly sweet cider that we think would be great mixed with soda water.

Making such different kinds of farm products was an exciting and hopeful experience — there will be many kinks to work through in the coming years, but clearly our farm is capable of producing a wide range of flavors and foods! The weather certainly helped us rejoice — the continued dry weather was coupled with perfect temperatures (72°), a slightly breeze, and a gentle sun. Such lovely weather for any kind of outdoor activity.

Even though there are no signs of rain in the immediate forecast, we are all too aware that this dry weather will end, so we are trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible — even when not actively farming. We want to soak up as much of this dry weather before the drenchers inevitably return.

Of course, beyond the farming valleys, the drought has had less positive consequences as wild fires have continued to burn and damage property, grazing lands and wilderness. Any extreme weather event comes with trials for someone. Again, this too shall pass. The rain will return.

In the meantime, we’re going to visit the river to throw rocks, ride bikes and walk down the road, and get the most out of our sandals before they get retired to the closet for half the year.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Are you planning to join next year’s CSA?

Remember to sign up soon! You can find the forms on our website or at pick-up.

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Pumpkin Patch Open House coming up!

Mark the date on your calendar — on Sunday, October 28, we’ll be hosting our annual pumpkin patch open house here at the farm! The pumpkins look amazing already. I’m not sure what other activities we’ll have in store — our minds have been occupied elsewhere lately, but we’ll pull together some fun stuff and yummy things to taste!

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And, a note for the future … (Thanksgiving week details!)

Newberg folks, you pick up on Thursdays, but our second to last pick-up will be on Thanksgiving Day. I wanted to let you know as early as possible that we will still be harvesting veggies for you that week, but we are going to consolidate the two pick-ups on Tuesday (Nov 20). So, rather than picking up in Newberg on Thanksgiving Day, you’ll pick up in McMinnville the Tuesday before. I’ll remind you many times and provide more details, but I wanted you to have that temporary shift in your mind as we go into fall.

Rusty enjoyed the cane sorghum harvest too!