Easing into summer

(CSA Newsletter: Spring Week 3)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

Although the calendar’s start of summer is still weeks off, this last week we here at Oakhill Organics welcomed the official start of our summer in multiple ways. First of all, we experienced the second longest dry spell of 2007 (11 days without rain) and above average high temperatures (over 90° all week at our farm). That alone was enough to put us into full summer irrigation mode. This weekend, our primary goal was to move irrigation as fast as possible, in an attempt to keep all of our plantings well watered through the heat.

Also inspired by the warmth, we finally moved the remaining piece of our farm infrastructure from last year’s farm at Seven Spoke to the new land. Casey and one of our farmer neighbors drove a trailer over on Wednesday and—with the aid of two come-alongs, chains, and stubborn resolve—loaded on our homemade cooler. The cooler, which functions beautifully, is basically a big, well-insulated wooden box with an old air conditioner in the wall. It’s pretty low-tech but gets cold fast and helps us refrigerate our harvest before CSA and market.

Unfortunately we didn’t have it in time for last week’s CSA harvest, which occurred on one of the week’s hottest days, so we apologize if you had any browning edges in your salad mix. Fortunately, we did get it set up and running before Thursday, which was the first 2007 McMinnville Farmers Market—another sign of summer’s arrival for our farm.

Along with thinking about the CSA, we’ve been planning for market for months. This year we have a double booth space, so we had to rethink our display and the volume of product to bring. The evening before, we walked the fields and made a harvest list and then practiced setting up our new booth display. The morning of market, we started harvesting at 6:30 (both to beat the heat and be ready in time for market’s opening at 1:30). We finished by 10:30 and loaded up ‘the behemoth beast’ (our ’87 F350 diesel van) with our well cooled veggies and headed to market!

It was a fantastic day. The market was busier than ever, with more vendors and more foot traffic. We loved seeing regular customers come by and also meeting new people! We didn’t stop moving, talking, selling for the entire five hours of market—it was exhausting, exciting, and invigorating all at once to move so much produce and catch up with so many friends in one afternoon. We didn’t even have time to purchase anything for ourselves at market, which we need to do next time. The other vendors have great offerings including: fruit, berries, beef, pork, goat cheese, cow cheese, bread, butter, wine, hazelnuts, herbs, jams, sauces, eggs, and more! We’re planning to do most of our weekly shopping there this summer, and we encourage others to try the same (at least for your non-veggie needs). Either way, if you haven’t been to market yet, it’s worth checking out. Market is held on Thursdays, from 1:30 to 6:30, on Cowls Street between 2nd and 3rd downtown.

The beginning of market signals more than just summer’s start for us. It also brings more income. This winter and spring we have spent more money than we’ve made—natural for farmers in the off season, but we are both frugal folks, so seeing money go out and out and out is hard on our nerves. The CSA deposits we received in winter and early spring covered our spring start-up costs but didn’t leave much for our personal spending money. Now that our spending season is more or less over (we have only a few incidental left for 2007), the remaining CSA money and market earnings represent our income—that is, what Casey and I will live off of this year and through the winter. I can’t really over-emphasize how welcome it is to begin receiving that income and start putting money back into savings.

Since we’re barely one year into being a farm entity, money is—quite frankly—often on our minds. Many other things are often on our minds as well—often too many things all at once. Lately we’ve been discussing stress—where it comes from on our farm and how we can address it. The last year has been crazy. First we both rushed rushed rushed to finish graduate school in five quarters to be done in time for the 2007 farming season. Even then we arrived in the area fairly late into the season last spring and rushed rushed rushed to have a successful first season. Then we rushed rushed rushed to build a house this winter, meanwhile also starting our second year farming.

During all those rushing moments, stress was our constant companion. If something didn’t go right, it mattered. A lot. It could set us back days, which when you’re on a timeline matter. So we’ve both developed a keen attention to detail, a fast stride and low tolerance for small slip-ups. All of that helped us survive and succeed in our ambitious goals. However, in the last few weeks we’ve begun to grow tired of this dogged companion stress and the resulting temper tantrums we’ve both sometimes thrown. (I know, can you believe it? We seem so calm and composed at the pick-up, but we’ve both been known to throw tools—not at anything, just into the air.)

So, we’re human. Of course. And now we’re intentionally trying to be more humane towards ourselves and each other (and our tools). I mentioned on the blog a few months ago that we’re still adjusting to the new time scale owning land presents. And we’re still adjusting. Trying to quit rushing.

Hopefully summer will help us remember that we have time. We’ve been biking to the river as much as possible and reading under our walnut tree during hot afternoons. I think there is hope that we will recover soon enough. But we certainly do have to be intentional about stopping the crazy-train we boarded a year or two ago.

Fortunately that crazy-train produced some wonderful results. We love living on our land. We love our little house. And we still—even with the infrequent (but nonetheless present) temper tantrums—love farming. In fact, most days we wake up in awe that it hasn’t all just been a long wild dream. And in our goal for sanity, we’re also recommitting ourselves to keeping our focus on our current endeavors (rather than adding new farm enterprises quickly). So, although we still dream about adding hogs and fruit trees, for now we’re going to keep working on growing delicious, high quality veggies for our community. This summer and next, that’s more than enough.

So, thank you, as always, for being our cheerleaders, critics, friends, and supporters through it all. We hope that you will help us in welcoming summer by joining us for our CSA Open House this Saturday. Stop by anytime between 1 & 5pm. The gathering will be casual—a chance for you to walk the fields and visit—but hopefully fun for all!

Until then, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers,

Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics