Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Salad mix — More delicious, tender, sweet spring salad mix! We sure have been enjoying salads that feature lettuce!
- Greens mix — In addition to the salad mix (with lettuce), you might also enjoy this “greens mix.” It isn’t a braising mix or a salad mix … these greens can go either way — they are sturdy enough to be cooked but sweet enough to be chopped and eaten fresh too.
- Cabbage
- Cabbage rapini — A few years back, one of our employees was Polish in heritage and he told us about a traditional dish that featured two forms of cabbage: cooked “fresh” cabbage and sauerkraut. It became a running joke on the farm about “eating cabbage with our cabbage,” especially as in the winter we often eat sauerkraut with our cooked cabbage (it turns out to be a good combo actually). Well, this week you can eat cabbage with your cabbage with your cabbage: that is, you could eat cooked cabbage with raw cabbage rapini and sauerkraut! Cabbage fest! (Don’t worry — cabbage season will end soon enough. But for as long as winter-like conditions persist, we are grateful for this hardy vegetable!!!!)
- Parsnips
- Popcorn
- Leeks
- Garlic
We all know this has been an exceptionally cold and wet spring. On Friday morning, the radio announcer made it clear when he said: “There are no signs of rain in Western Oregon today. I repeat: there are no signs of rain in Western Oregon today!” Apparently, we farmers are not the only ones who have noticed the constant chill and drizzle (and sometimes downpours).
But, we farmers do have a different set of stakes when it comes to the weather. Perhaps to you, the chill in the air makes your morning jog less pleasurable — a consequence for sure, but perhaps less likely to affect your livelihood or to keep you awake at night with worry or calculating.
Since this is our sixth season, I’d say that Casey and I are taking the extended winter in stride. We’ve survived other cold seasons and springs (including one year when snow fell in April!), and we have a fairly balanced sense of perspective at this point. Having Rusty around helps too, since his needs, wants and concerns have a way of trumping everything else. So, we’ve only had a few nights of lying in bed thinking about the fields (and honestly it wasn’t the fields that woke us — that’s Rusty’s role).
But, in spite of our mature coping skills, the spring is having consequences for us. We have yet to work any ground this spring. In past years, we might have attempted in these conditions, but we know now that ground worked too early is damaged for the remainder of the year, so we’re being cautious.
But, as I mentioned in a past newsletter, the lack of ground prep has not stopped our crew from planting. Our two field houses are packed with crops (we did work the ground in there), and Emily and Jesse have even managed to plant into unworked bare ground in the open. There are four beds of peas growing in the fields!
Other over-wintering crops in the fields are looking beautiful and have yet to even be harvested (giving us great hope for the next few weeks/months): especially the purple sprouting broccoli, spinach, and sweet onions.
I’d say the biggest challenge for us right now with the weather is that we’re struggling to meet the current demand for vegetables. As I mentioned last week, our sales to restaurants have really taken off in the last year, and it’s been difficult balancing our commitment to the CSA with the increased demand from restaurants (including new clients whom we have asked to wait until June before we start selling).
So far, we feel like we’ve navigated the demands well — our existing restaurant clients are getting a good mix of veggies each week, and our CSA members have received full value and a diverse share each week as well.
But it is hard knowing that we are missing potential sales right now. Some of that is because we didn’t know these customers were going to call this spring and so we didn’t plant for them last summer, but more warm weather would help us start working toward increasing our production now by planting, planting, planting! Instead, we’re sowing, sowing, sowing and watching the greenhouses fill, fill, and fill!
Eventually, the warm dry weather will arrive (fingers crossed!), and then we will be busy as we cram loads of tractor work and planting into a short amount of time. It’s interesting knowing that we have so much work ahead of us but without a clear sense of when it will happen. The more it gets put off, the more we’ll have to accomplish in a contracted period. Again, this has happened to us before, but we prefer to spread our work out as much as possible so that we avoid exhaustion and can give each task more attention.
We’re very grateful right now for Jesse and Emily’s presence on the farm. They have only been here for six weeks, but they already feel like integral parts of our operation. Casey has been busy with behind the scenes work, co-parenting with me, and finishing some big household projects, and Emily and Jesse have really carried the physical load of the work over recent weeks.
It’s amazing how quickly our farm went from being something that just the two of us could (mostly) manage on our own to something that definitely requires many more capable and engaged folks to keep it running smoothly!!!! Once upon a time, Casey and I thought we preferred doing it all ourselves, but seasons and times in our life such as this current one make us realize how valuable it is to have a farm with a solid team so that different people can be focusing on different aspects of the whole entity.
The farm has become complex and will just become more so as we someday start farming the new land (still working on closing that deal, by the way). Calculating the cost of a cold spring is just one of many variables we have to think about as we go forward! It’s nice to not also have to pick every bunch of tasty rapini or cut every cabbage.
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
~ ~ ~
Some random notes:
- There is still space in both the Newberg CSA and our Mac CSA! We’ve extended the deadline for new sign-ups to the end of April. Interested folks can find info on our website: www.oakhillorganics.org.
- Have you been wanting to donate to our non-profit Protect Grand Island Farms, but just haven’t taken the time to pull out the checkbook, pen, envelope, stamp, etc.? Now you can donate easily on PayPal, via a link from our website: www.ProtectGrandIsland.com! You can also find more information there too. And, a big thanks to the CSA members who have donated!
- This week and next we’ll have tomato and pepper starts available at CSA pick-up for members who want them. These are extra plants that we didn’t need to “pot on” for later planting, so they are still relatively small and will need to be transferred to a larger container. We will provide the container and soil mix, but you will need to do the work! If it isn’t obvious how to get a plant, ask!
