Flood update & welcome!

Our son Rusty helps remove grass and debris that lodged in our orchard trees during the flood (just think -- the water was above Rusty's head in this spot!). You can see the lingering water behind him -- the last bit on our home farm, although the 31 acres is still flowing merrily along.

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Salad mix — If you’re new to the idea of winter salads, you’re in for a mind-blowing treat. Winter greens are a decidedly different entity than soft spring or crisp summer lettuces that are the mainstay of most American salads. Instead, winter salad greens have a flavor and texture all their own — and they are diverse too! This week’s salad features chicories (the family of greens related to radicchio) and Asian greens. At first, both of these greens might strike you as bitter in contrast to the expectation of lettuce. But they are so much more than just that. We recommend chopping and then dressing with a light (or slightly sweetened) vinaigrette a while before serving — the flavor and texture benefits from the wilting process. Winter salads are great with various toppings too: dried fruit, roasted nuts, cheese, bacon, apples, etc.
• Brussels sprouts
• Orange Dawn winter squash — This squash has a beautiful orange, slightly moist flesh suitable for all sorts of uses. We often bake these whole (puncture liberally first before putting in oven on a baking sheet) and then cut up and let cool. The seeds will scoop out easily and the skin will just peel off. The resulting cooked flesh is delicious whipped with cream and/or cheese and reheated in a gratin pan in the oven. Or, use it to make a variation on pumpkin bread! It’s great in soup too!
• Turnips
• Celery root — Celery root seems to perennially stump new CSA members. Perhaps it is the ugly roots that throw people off? This is really an incredibly simple vegetable to prepare. It is a root related to celery and can be used as you would any other root: in soups, roasted, etc. I love adding it when I make stocks, because it imparts that great celery flavor. Start by prepping it — this is a crude task, best accomplished with a paring knife. Just take broad chunks off the outside (carefully!), until you are left with clean greenish-white flesh. Chop and then use! See this week’s newsletter for a super simple soup recipe.
• Carrots
• All-blue potatoes — They’re blueish-purple! What fun! Use as you would any potato, but be prepared for the color difference. I once made potato chowder with blue potatoes, and I wasn’t so sure I liked eating blue soup in the end.
• Onions

This Monday morning, just a week after the crest of the flood, I’m looking out on a very different farm. The water has finally receded from our home farm, although it came up again over the weekend, filling our greenhouses again (did you see the photos in The News-Register?). Fortunately, after this more recent (and lower) crest, the water dropped quickly.

It’s not all gone yet though — there’s still a large puddle in our orchard, which will need to drain on its own time. And my parents’ lower field is still connected to the creek and quite wet. Our new 31 acres is also still flowing as part of the creek and may do so for some time, since the river is not predicted to come down much below “action stage” anytime soon.

So, it seems that we survived our first real flooding event here on the island — hoorah! We’ve been redoing many plans this week, to accommodate another such flood in the future. Hopefully, however, our new plans aren’t put to the test for many more seasons! We know another such flood (or even bigger) is inevitable, but we would be ok with it being an infrequent event.

In the meantime, it’s been wonderful to refocus our attention back onto the work at hand. Last week, that primary work was getting the CSA started up again for 2012, our seventh season! This is the first year that we’ve had both our pick-up locations (Mac and Newberg) running for the full 45-week season, which represents a big change in our farm’s weekly routine (especially for the cold months). Fortunately, the first week seemed to go smoothly.

And, now that we’re (hopefully!) past the big flood event, I want to offer a big huge belated WELCOME and hoorah to everyone! We are so glad to have our returning CSA members back with us for another delicious year, and we are happy to say hello to many new folks as well.

We think that this year is going to be a phenomenal one in many ways. We hope the veggies will be as delicious and as abundant as ever, but we are also excited about the transitions we are embarking upon in 2012 as we begin to expand our offerings and lay the groundwork for farming all that new land. We’ve already begun planting orchards and nut trees next door (more on that in a future newsletter), and we’re scheming about egg-mobiles and chickens orders.

I can’t help but think of the significance of this being our seventh growing season as a farm. There seems to be some magic in sevens and especially seven-year patterns. I’ve heard it said that we replace every cell in our body every seven years, meaning that although we are still our self, we are in some ways a new physical version of that self. Some people even think we can point to patterns in our life that fall into seven years cycles.

Now that we’re in our seventh year and poised for so much change, I can’t help but think about this with our farm, which is in many ways an extension of Casey and my persons. We started the farm in early 2006 with one set of goals and visions, and we very quickly accomplished those things and even had time to settle into the farm (life out here is never 100% easy, but we have learned how to roll with the unpredictability of it all).

And, now it is changing in significant ways — more land, new people who are deeply invested in this venture too, new projects and visions. On one hand, it feels like such a departure from our original simple goals of a diverse vegetable CSA farm … but in other ways, it just feels like the dream is growing with us and even beyond us.

Either way, 2012 is going to be interesting around here as we try new things and stretch ourselves once again. I’m sure it will be challenging at times (and we may even question everything!), but we think it will mostly just be fun. And, delicious!

Thanks for joining us for the ride! Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

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

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Winter Harvest Cookbook

Casey bought me a new cookbook for Christmas and it has quickly become one of our favorites for cold season cooking: Winter Harvest Cookbook by Lane Morgan (available for purchase at both 3rd Street Books in Mac and Chapters in Newberg!).

There are so many reasons to love this cookbook. First of all, it is vegetable heavy and contains useful cooking tips for common winter vegetables, as well as creative recipe ideas. Secondly, it is very accurate to the season and availability here in the Northwest, because the author lives in our old stomping grounds, Bellingham, Washington!

Sometimes Casey and I get stuck in a rut mid-winter, and just eat sautéed cabbage and roasted root vegetables practically every day (which is tasty, but it’s nice to mix it up too!). It’s been fun for us to try out new flavor variations with these winter staples.
Here’s a very simple sample recipe that I’ve adapted from the cookbook:

Celery root soup
Peel four medium (or two large or a mix of root vegetables) and cut into small pieces. Put in a saucepan with enough stock to cover. Simmer until soft, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat, purée (we love our stick blender for pureed soup!), and return to pan. Add salt and pepper to taste. Thin if desired with more stock or whipping cream.

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Next week’s vegetables (probably!)

People have been asking us for this literally for years — a head’s up of what is coming in the next week to help with planning and grocery shopping. We’ve resisted doing so, because we often make last minute changes once we’re out in the fields, but we realized recently that a projection (subject to minor change) is probably more useful than no list at all. So, we’re going to begin including a list in each newsletter that will give an idea of what is coming in the next week. Please keep in mind, however, that one or more items might be slightly different than planned.

• Cooking green of some kind
• Savoy cabbage
• Butternut squash
• Parsnips
• Beets
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Leeks