Oats, dust, and a calf

Crummy photo quality: took this with my "not-so-smart" phone as we were loading oats into our old "goat shed" (never used for goats, now used for oats -- more details below!)

A few exciting happenings on the farm and in our life this last August week: First, our neighbor farmer arrived to combine most of this year’s oat crop (a few acres, sown in the rows of our hazelnuts, are yet to be harvested). We’d been waiting several weeks for this, and even though we will pay our neighbor his time, his help with our grain harvests is really quite the neighborly favor. His own ‘to do’ list this time of year is at least as long as ours, but somehow for three years running, he has fit our funny little fields into his combining schedule so that we can have oats available for our livestock and customers both.

We’re still figuring out details with so many parts of our expanded farm, including the storage of things like lots and lots of oats. A few years back, we stored most of our oats in one ton tote bags lined up in our pole barn. This year, that same pole barn is stacked wall-to-wall-to-rafters with hay we have made. So … where to store the oats?

Perhaps our neighbor farmer helps us out as much just to bring home goofy stories to share with his family and friends. Because we did find places to store the oats — random places, in fact, kind of all over the farm. An old compost spreader (basically a big wagon) got a new floor and was filled with oats. An old goat shed we built and never used got some new walls and was filled with oats (after Casey removed a panel from the roof). More oats went into loads and loads of our blue totes, which were then unloaded into our other pole building. We will definitely use those oats first, since we need those bins! A motley collection of storage vessels, to be sure.

And, then, within a day of finishing that task, our little family took off for one night at the beach. We didn’t actually visit the beach itself once (oh my!), since our time was filled with a family picnic at Devil’s Lake and then a hike to Drift Creek Falls (my first time! oh my!). But, oh, how wonderful it was to drive over there for a quick visit. When we arrived at the lake and departed our car, Casey and I both breathed deep with big sighs of relief. We hadn’t even realized how dusty the air is here in the valley until we visited the ocean and breathed in that cool, clean, foggy air.

Upon our return, the dust was even more striking. As we drove back into the valley, we could see a layer of brown covering the whole valley. I could write a whole newsletter about dust and its making (agriculture! annual tillage! grain and seed production!), but I will refrain for now. Seeing that dust, however, does force Casey and me to ponder our own agricultural practices in the context of the larger ecosystem. How do our choices contribute or mitigate this kind of air pollution? We were pleased to reflect on our oat harvest and appreciate how minor it was in the scope of our farm’s offerings and how very little soil disturbance was created as a result. Because the oats were standing tall, there was no need for the combine to disturb the soil. Also, we reflected on how established pastures with animals on them don’t make dust. ANYHOW. Lots to pull apart with the dust scenario; all of it quite complex and without easy answers. But I will comment that poor air quality is perhaps the one part of living the valley to which I am still not at all reconciled. I miss the clean ocean air we breathed in Bellingham. The dust challenges me.

Fortunately, our own farm (and the island as a whole) feels like a little refuge amidst all this late summer brown. Casey has been watering our pastures, and they are greening up again where they were yellow. The orchards are full of beautiful red and purple fruits, hanging on the trees like Christmas ornaments. Every where we look we see such abundance and growth and ripening: tomatoes, winter squash, apples, peppers … When I grow weary of the summer brown and heat, all these fruits of the season remind me of how very special this time of year really is. How quickly it will pass, and how all this food will continue to feed us through the year.

Francine checks on her very fresh calf (less than one hour old here).

And, today, another fun inspiring note: a calf was born! We had been waiting on one of our dairy cows, Francine, for quite a while now. Apparently she was bred in a different cycle than what we had noted in our records (with a different bull too!), so while it was clear she was pregnant, no calf appeared for many weeks as we waited. But, in the last few days, she was showing more signs of readiness. This morning Casey noted that she was having contractions, and then there was a calf! A beautiful little brown calf, yet to be named. We love it when these calves arrive without our help (a big relief), but the next few days will be full of some extra intense work as we help the new calf thrive and work Francine back into the milking routine. She is currently our most “sensitive” cow, so we will need to be very patient as we help remind her where to go and when (she’s actually been kept in this routine the whole time, but she still needs our patience as it becomes more “real” again for her!).

So, those are some notes from the farm this week. Now that most of our oats are in, fall (and its rains) are starting to feel more and more desirable. It will come. For now, we feast.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Tomatoes — All of our tomatoes in the field are really on now. This is an exciting part of the year for us, when we get to eat tomatoes at every meal and know that more will come tomorrow! This weekend, our family has set aside some time for beginning our big tomato canning process. We don’t can many foods, to be honest, but we love our tomatoes.
• Tomatillos
• Hot peppers — I may need to help you distinguish between your hot and sweet peppers. The hot peppers are the small purple/black peppers in your share. These are called Czech Black peppers, and they are very similar to Jalapenos in terms of flavor and heat. We grow them because they mature more reliably, and years ago we grew them commercially for seed and kind of fell in love (and continued saving seed).
• Jimmy Nardello sweet peppers — The sweet peppers are the long, thin green/red peppers in your share (which look quite a lot like some varieties of hot peppers). These are “Jimmy Nardellos,” a delicious sweet pepper favored by some of our restaurant clients. They are delicious and sweet, but I should warn you that every now and then, one of them is hot (and sweet too). Perhaps nibble a bite of each pepper if you are sensitive?
• Apples
• Kale — Casey is excited about this kale! Perhaps because of the heat, this year we saw a huge influx of flea beetles (and heard of this happening elsewhere too). After Casey worked in a planting of mustards (which flea beetles LOVE), the beetles jumped next door to this kale and decimated it. The leaves were totally stripped to the ribs. Then we got some cool weather, and apparently the plants remained healthy, because they miraculously regrew the most beautiful healthy leaves. These kale will take us into the fall. Plants are amazing!
• Cucumbers — A staple in our house right now at almost every lunch and dinner: peeled cucumber, sliced into discs and served with a batch of squash-a-ganouj.
• Summer squash & zucchini
• Potatoes