Oakhill Organics

The kids gathered rapini in the fields this weekend.

As I was putting Rusty to sleep tonight, I asked him what I should write about in this week’s newsletter. He was half asleep already, but he said, “um … rapini.”

What is rapini you ask? It’s the delicious edible “bolts” (i.e. flower buds/stalks) that over-wintered brassicas and cole crops produce as spring approaches. Plants like turnips, cabbage, and kale are all “biennial,” which mean that they produce flowers and seeds after going through winter. In climates where winter kills everything green, that’s the end of the story. But here in the Willamette Valley, our winters are mild enough that many of these plants will live through the cold months and then begin their reproductive cycle as the days lengthen. The technical term for this plant process is “vernalize,” which essentially means the action of spring.

Rapini comes in many shapes and sizes, varying as much as the crops that produce it. Purple cabbage produce purple rapini; turnip produces bright green shoots and yellow flowers; dinosaur kale produces a deep green flower bud that closely resembles broccolini.

You can eat all parts of the rapini — the stalk, leaves, and flower buds. We harvest it with our fingers so that we can feel for the tender point where the stalk snaps, letting us know that everything above that point is tasty. You can eat rapini raw chopped into salad or cook it in the ways you might prepare kale or broccoli. It’s delicious roasted in a single layer in a pan, or you can chop it and sauté it with butter and garlic.

The kids, however, prefer to eat rapini in its native habitat. They are quick to spot the first yellow blossoms of the year and run out with delight to graze in the field. Rusty’s not much of a greens eater in the house at mealtime, but he loves eating raw rapini of all kinds plucked straight off the plant.

This week’s share has the first of the year’s rapini as a separate item (it’s been in the salad mix all year): cabbage rapini, which will be more firm than the turnip type pictured with the kids. In the coming weeks, you’ll get to try rapini of all kinds. If this is a new food to you, we encourage you to experiment with the variation in flavors and texture with different preparation techniques.

Another sign of spring’s [eventual] arrival: we have the first of the arugula this week! Because it’s just the first, we’re going to limit it this week to one bag per household. Thanks for your understand when we limit things; we want to make sure everyone who wants a taste gets it!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s farmers:

• Spicy cabbage sauerkraut
• Apples
• Cabbage rapini!
• Arugula
• Cabbage
• Kale
• Marina di Chioggia
• Butternut
• Spaghetti squash
• Pie pumpkins
• Sunchokes
• Carrots
• Beets

Look who was in the paper!

There were two note-worthy items in the newspaper the last two days, both related to us but in different ways …

First, perhaps people saw the news in the News-Register that Casey has filed to run for Yamhill County Commissioner. Big news, eh? We’re not planning to make this website a campaign stop, since we won’t assume people who like eating our vegetables will inherently want to vote for Casey for Commissioner! But if folks are interested in learning more about Casey’s campaign, I’ll direct you to the official website: Vote Casey Kulla for Yamhill County Commissioner. He’s also on Instagram and Facebook.

But, I imagine people are wondering why he’s running, and I think that story is an appropriate one for our blog since we tell our personal stories here as well as farm stories. (But after this, you’ll have to get other news from the other sources!) Over the last 12+ years, Casey and I have both grown keenly aware of exactly how the daily lives of individuals are affected by political decisions. As rural residents of Yamhill County, we’ve paid close attention to the land-use process that determines some Big Things about life out here: who are neighbors are, what they do, who gets access to what opportunities. But we’ve also paid attention to how elected officials set the tone for how communities interact — is there a model of integrity and respect for everyone to follow?

I have to admit that about eight years ago, we felt fairly jaded about much of the political process. At the time, it felt like these Big Things were so out of our hands. We could submit testimony at the capitol or the planning department, and we could vote, but it didn’t feel like those things added up to much. But more recently, we’ve realized that if we feel passionately about the community we live in — the place and the people who inhabit it — then, we have to persist with our efforts. We have to keep caring and keep communicating about the values we want to see in place.

Even more recently, we’ve realized that our country as a whole is at the beginning of what will be a profound generational shift as so-called Baby Boomers retire from the workplace and civic life over the next 5-20 years. If there is to be any kind of smooth continuity, we realized that we cannot wait to be more directly involved in the political process — it is time now for younger generations to start stepping up, to work with the older generations for the next two decades. The older generations have hugely shaped our country and its agenda; they have experience in how the processes work or don’t work. Meanwhile, the younger generations have different perspectives to bring into the political process. So called Gen-Xers and Millennials came of age in a different world and will be living in this world for many decades to come. They are raising children in our community and are searching for solutions that will carry their children into a truly unknowable future. It seems like bringing these older and younger generations together now is critical to finding our way. Which will require Gen-Xers and Millennials to step up in a major way.

Which they are. Casey is part of a wave of people running for office this year from those younger generations (including the other two challengers for Yamhill County Commissioner positions). It is exciting to feel like we are a part of a bigger movement to bring that fresh energy into the leadership of our country and our local community. Not all of the Gen-Xers and Millennials (and record number of women) who run for office this year will be elected; but some will. And, based on what I am reading and hearing, they are bringing with them a strong desire for integrity, for positivity, for fairness. It will be an interesting year for elections around the country and here at home!

(What would Casey’s election mean for the farm? Oh goodness, friends, we have ideas about this, but really feel like this one is best described by the old say, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Even though Casey feels like he has the experience, skills and positive connections to be elected, Yamhill County is still a big, diverse place. I think that any person running for elected office for the first time feels like they’re stretching toward Very Big Goals, and Casey is no exception.)

And, turning back toward the farm, another very interesting bit of news! I read in the The New York Times this morning about a fascinating new weight loss study (the article is here). They put study participants in two groups: low-carb and low-fat diets. But both groups were counseled to avoid refined sugars and grains, regardless of their carb or fat content (so no “fat free” brownies!). Instead, they were to seek out high quality, “nutrient-dense” foods (vegetables, pastured meats, etc.), cook and eat at home, and avoid junk food. Neither group was told to restrict calories at all, instead they were counseled to, again, pay attention to the quality of their food and eat to a comfortable feeling of fullness.

The results? Both groups lost weight! At about the same rate overall, although the results varied between individuals of course. The researchers were actually a bit disappointed about this, because they were hoping to finally answer the question of whether a low-carb or low-fat diet might be more effective, or at least more effective for certain categories of people (such as people who are insulin resistant). But, the results also demonstrated very clearly that the quality of food plays a significant role in weight loss. Here’s a great quote from the article:

“The bottom line: Diet quality is important for both weight control and long-term well-being,” he [Dr. Walter Willette] said.

Dr. Gardner said it is not that calories don’t matter. After all, both groups ultimately ended up consuming fewer calories on average by the end of the study, even though they were not conscious of it. The point is that they did this by focusing on nutritious whole foods that satisfied their hunger.

This feels like a big win for the local, whole foods movement! Clearly, for folks who make the lifestyle choice to eat quality whole foods, the “proof is in the pudding.” I don’t think many of us need to be convinced by a research study that our bodies feel better when we eat this way. But it’s always great to have scientific evidence to back up personal experience. And, I’m so excited to see the emphasis shifting away from counting calories or avoiding fat or carbs. One thing that study participants commented is that the experience transformed their relationships with food. To be told to eat dinner at home with their families (rather than to restrict calories) was a prescription that fundamentally improved their lives in infinite intangible ways beyond the weight loss.

The researchers remarked that most people regain the weight they lose from a “diet,” so the verdict is still out on whether participants will keep losing weight, maintain the weight loss, or gain it back. But it seems to me that the researchers have given the participants a very desirable, pleasurable option for eating — one that is sustainable in the long-run since it is focused on pleasure, quality, and satisfaction rather than restriction, avoidance, and hunger. I’m hopeful for those folks!

And, with that happy bit of science in mind, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Sauerkraut — Plain old cabbage sauerkraut this week … yum!
• Apples
• Seasonal salad mix
• Cabbage
• Kale
• Chard
• Spaghetti squash
• Marina di Chioggia squash
• Pie pumpkins
• Butternut squash — We’ve eaten a lot of roasted butternut this week. It’s unbelievably delicious — sweet, crispy outside, soft inside …
• Beets
• Carrots
• Sunchokes

Plum buds getting ready to bloom in the orchard. A green cover crop.

Many years ago, before we starting our farming venture, I helped operate the kitchen at a remote mountain retreat center called Holden Village. In the kitchen, we had a motto that guided our days: “It’s not about the food …” was posted visibly in our office, near our shelves full of cooking books (whose presence seemed to imply that maybe our jobs were about the food after all).

Obviously, food was our primary work. We cooked three meals a day for a community that ranged in size from 70 in the winter to 500+ in the summer! We would regularly chop ten gallons of onions for one meal. I know, because we’d do all the veggie prep the day before and measure and store them in five gallon buckets in our walk-in cooler. That’s a lot of onions. We even kept a pair of goggles around for the onion chopper to wear during his or her task.

But, even though our work was obviously to prepare food, we actively recognized that food isn’t about the food. Food is so much more than just some material stuff on a plate that we put into our bodies as fuel. Food is about pleasure. Aesthetics. Adventure. Politics. Culture. Family. And, perhaps most importantly to us, food is about connection. At that retreat center, we sat down together to pray and then eat three meals a day. One or two of those meals, every day, was served “family style,” with the dishes of food served in the middle of each table set for eight people. Each individual diner would take a portion and pass the contained, keeping in mind the importance of making sure everyone received a share, all the while making happy conversation about their day. That act of breaking bread together was a physical manifestation of the retreat center’s larger mission of connection, community, and faith. And, it was important as a kitchen staff for us to remember that our work was just as sacred as the pastor and worship team’s work — that by literally setting places at the table for our guests, we welcomed them into an experience with infinite layers of meaning. It was profound work to be doing, even if some days it felt like we were just chopping onions and laying spoons on tables and slicing bread.

In our work as farmers, I think we’ve carried over this philosophy. Certainly, our work is about the food — the CSA wouldn’t exist without the kale and carrots that Casey diligently harvests each week. And yet, our work is about so much more as well …

This afternoon we arrived back from two nights at Breitenbush Hot Springs, a different mountain retreat center that we visit every February for an annual gathering of farmers. We soak in the hot springs together, eat food over lively conversation, and sit on the floor to share all about the challenges and joys of the work we do — sometimes we discuss nitty gritty detail about fertilizer application and sometimes we ponder the bigger picture of why we do this work to begin with. Often we talk about our love for the work and for what it brings into our life. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us farmers to take stock, connect, and remember what brought us to these choices years ago.

What kept coming up in my mind when I thought about our work is all of you and the interactions we get to enjoy at our CSA pick-up. Can I just say that we love how we operate our CSA, with its self-serve pick-up style that allows people to meet and mingle with each other and us??? Obviously, we chose it intentionally all those years ago, deeply inspired by our experiences at Holden Village and its focus on community building. Never ever did we think we would enjoy packing up boxes to ship off to faceless customers. We wanted the farm to be a nexus for interactions. We wanted to meet the people who would eat our food! The relationships that have flowed from that choice have exceeded our dreams, especially as they continue to grow in depth year-after-year.

What these relationships lack in depth, they make up for in breadth, in repetition, in time. After watching our customers’ children grow over the last decade, there is a different kind of connection that grows. There is a care that comes from simply seeing each other in person each week. In that way, growing these vegetables and harvesting them feels a bit like a little prayer for our community each and every week. We can’t help but think of you all as we go about our work, calling to mind who will be especially excited about a new crop or remembering another CSA member who might be struggling with life that week.

In 2006, when we started this whole business, I’m not sure I fully anticipated the unique role the pick-up itself would come to play in our farming experience. I also could never have anticipated the way society would change around us. A common topic of conversation among people these days seems to be how physical in-person interactions with our community appears to be declining. Certainly people still see their good friends or their family, but many people have decreasing numbers of community interactions that are less intimate — that bring them into contact with people they might not otherwise visit with. Schools can still serve this role for many people who are parents, but other former such institutions are waning: churches, clubs, and other social activities. A friend who has been involved on Linfield’s campus since 2007 has noticed a marked drop in student participation and leadership in activities corresponding to what appears to be a big increase in cell phone and social media use. This tracks national and generational trends.

At our farmer gathering, a farmer from tiny little Waldron Island in the San Juans reported a similar trend. On that island (year-round population of 100 people), residents used to make a gathering event out of going to the post office to check mail the three times a week it was delivered. Now, with email and easier communication options for residents, getting mail has become less of a priority. A natural community meeting occasion has slowly slipped away, and she reported that the older residents feel the loss most keenly, remembering well what it used to be like in that remote community.

Overall, I actually feel like the greater McMinnville community as a whole works hard to sustain these kinds of connections. I love how many opportunities there are here to connect in person. But it does feel like we have to choose to connect because social media can dangerously “fill” that social need without actually filling it. We can become friends with people who don’t live in our community or we can dangerously find ourselves frustrated with people who do live in our community. The on-screen aspect of communicating can strip people of their humanity and make it harder to forgive or move on from arguments in the same way we often have to do in real-life communities (ideally, anyway!).

Anyhow, as a person who genuinely loves people and finds their stories and experiences fascinating and inspiring, I am continually grateful for the opportunity to interact with you all. Most of you we wouldn’t otherwise know or have regular interactions with, and our life would be less rich as a result! If all we do is connect with people who we immediately like or who have lots in common with us or do the same things all the time, we have fewer opportunities to grow and to learn.

All this from some vegetables! And more! Which is why we always said, “it’s not about the food … ”

That being said, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Nettle sauerkraut — We picked the first of the nettles this weekend! They are just coming up, so we didn’t go crazy, but we were very excited about that unique smell and flavor. Every year, we fall even deeper in love with this wild plant. Casey wanted to do something significant with the first of it, and he thought he’d experiment with adding it to a larger ferment. We haven’t taste-tested it yet, but we’re excited!
• Apples — Goldrush and Fuji
• Seasonal salad mix
• Cabbage
• Kale
• Chard
• Marina di Chioggia squash
• Butternut — We want you to know a little cool thing about butternut … as they store over the winter in our special “squash room” (which we keep at room temperature — their preference), butternut start to shrivel a little. This is a natural part of the extended curing process and it means the squash is getting sweeter. So, don’t be afraid of a little shrivel on your butternut! That is a sign that it will be tasty!
• Pie pumpkins
• Spaghetti squash
• Carrots
• Beets
• Sunchokes

Kale! Growing happily in the field.

Here we are, at the beginning of February, but my senses tell me that spring has arrived. The cover crop is deep spring green and growing so quickly now. The field grown kale is putting on new leaves. In town, I hear lawnmowers in the distance. The sun is warm on my skin. Frogs sing their mating songs in the night. Birds sing their dawn songs in the morning. Flowers put forth buds all around.

It’s hard to not just rejoice in these things! And, we do! Without reservation, to be honest. Although it’s arrived earlier than we sometimes anticipate, the sensory experience of spring is just so full of bliss, especially for us farmers.

It’s wonderful to watch recently sown seeds germinate and grow rapidly in the greenhouses, bringing us the knowledge that in not too long we’ll be harvesting treats like tender arugula and the first of the radishes. So soon! So early! Such a contrast to last winter, which felt like it would never.ever.end. (It did, obviously, but in April we were doubting that we’d ever have a dry spell long enough to work our ground.)

On weeks like this, when we are treated with truly some of the most glorious weather for being outside in the entire year (much more comfortable than hot summer days!), I find that thoughts drift away, carried on emotions of contentment. Some days, this is just wholly enough — that gentle warm winter sun on my skin.

I’ve also been keenly aware lately of how much privilege provides that feeling of simple enough-ness — that I can feel those eternal moments of simple bliss because my basic needs have been met. Because I am not worrying about where I will sleep tomorrow night or how I will feed my children.

So many people in our immediate community, and in our global community, live with insecurity that eats away at any possibility of peaceful reverie. For whatever reason, my personal reading list has included several excellent recent non-fiction works that share, in detail, the stories of people living in different kinds of insecurity. The books document the daily struggles and huge sacrifices people make in order to find something resembling security, in order to eventually (hopefully) experience the full breadth of the human experience, including its joys. A theme of these newsletters in the last year has been the importance of empathy in our journeys together on this planet. Reading about real human stories helps me stay reminded of our inter-connections, our similarities, our differences … it helps me experience the breadth of my own humanity, including my ability to think beyond my own immediate perspective.

I highly recommend all three books; they are each incredibly detailed, well documented, and thoroughly researched. They are also all highly compelling narratives (page turners!), put together by very skilled authors. (For your convenience, I’ve provided Amazon links here for more information, but all these books are available in our local library system and could be ordered by your local book seller.)

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration ~ Isabel Wilkerson weaves together the history of the 20th century migration of African Americans out of the south with specific stories of individuals who left in different decades and landed in different regions. The book is heart-breaking and inspiring and eye-opening.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity ~ Katherine Boo follows the lives of many different people all sharing life in a makeshift settlement (i.e. “slum”) in Mumbai. Through their experiences, the reader gets a glimpse of the modern politics and situation of India, which affects everyone living in the country, even those who have no permanent address and live on the streets.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea ~ Barbara Demick tells the story of several North Korean defectors from one city, beginning well before they ever dreamed of leaving their home country. Their accounts of life in North Korea reads like a dystopian novel.

Reading is of course only one way we can begin to connect other people and the world we live in. Spending time outside feels like another crucial one too, as our connection to the other plants and animals that share this planet feels equally important to cultivate. What do you do to cultivate that understanding of people and beings beyond yourself? If it is not something you work on, I recommend finding a practice that will help you feel regularly humbled, connected, in awe. Meditating on the vastness of the universe. Community service. Listening to young children learning to read. Gardening. Prayer. A faith community full of flawed people to learn how to love. We need these practices as much as ever in the course of human history. It seems that it is only through an understand of our connections that we can ever find our way to true love and true peace.

And, also enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Reminder to extend your CSA season! In last week’s newsletter, we announced that our CSA season will now extend through October 18, but we want to hear directly from folks that they want to stay with us through all of those 40 weeks of delicious local eating. If you’re currently only signed up for the winter/spring season and want to extend through summer/fall, you can do so right now by filling out this simple form:

Yes! I want to extend my CSA season through October 18!

[contact-form-7 id=”4518″ title=”Season extension 2018″]

Or, you can extend in person at pick-up by signing your name on a paper form. Whichever is easiest for you!

If you haven’t signed up yet at all for 2018 and still want to, we are taking new members at any time! You can sign up online here, and we will prorate your price for the remaining weeks in the season.

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Sauerkraut [plain] — A new batch of ferment this week! This week’s is a more traditional plain sauerkraut made (of course!) with good organic cabbage from the farm. If you’d like some, bring a clean jar with you to pick-up or we can serve it to you in a bag.
• Seasonal salad mix
• Kale
• Chard
• Butternut squash
• Marina di Chioggia squash
• Spaghetti squash
• Pip pumpkins
• Sunchokes — In our first newsletter of the year, I included a basic roasting preparation for sunchokes. That is one of our favorite ways to eat them, but we also often eat them raw. Their fresh texture is crispy like a carrot but with the pop of jicama (no relation! … just similar texture). You can literally just eat them (which our kids enjoy), but Casey and I often will chop them up fine, or even pulse in the food processor, and add them to cole slaw-like salads in the winter. We like to chop up fine cabbage, sunchokes, carrots (and maybe even some kale or chard) and mix it with a mayonnaise like dressing. To make it more of a filling salad, we’ll sometimes add chopped leftover chicken or raw tuna. These salads make a great meal for when we’re out and about, but they’re also yummy at home too.
• Beets
• Carrots

The mild weather has been great for early greens in the greenhouse! Direct-sown greens are coming up already!

Time for a big update for this year’s CSA! We have figured out the rest of the year’s season details, and we are adding another 20 weeks on to the end of the 20 weeks we’ve already signed everyone up for!

As we shared in last season’s final newsletter, Casey has been accepted to Willamette Law School for the fall. He’ll be starting in their part-time program, because he’d like to continue farming as well. We’re so grateful that this wonderful option exists so close to our home and farm! But even though we knew technically the part-time program will provide time for him to farm, we wanted to get more details before extending the season that long — specifically, would any of his necessary classes conflict with CSA pick-up? He got in touch with the school recently and learned that he will have several options for his schedule, so we now feel comfortable that it will indeed work, and we are feeling very enthusiastic about the next 38 weeks of CSA veggies.

We hope that you feel excited about this news too! For our existing CSA members, we’ll have a easy form for you to fill out at pick up, or here’s a quick and easy way to extend your season through the end of the year right now:

Yes, I want to extend my current CSA season through Oct 18 (40 weeks total)!

[contact-form-7 id=”4518″ title=”Season extension 2018″]

Since the season will now be twice as long, your total price will be twice as large as the winter/spring season you originally committed to. If you are making ongoing payments, the subsequent payments will be the same cost as your first one, and they will be due on March 29, June 7, and August 16. As usual, I will email everyone a payment reminder and statement about two weeks before each payment is due.

If you are not yet signed up for this year’s season at all, you can also do that now via the slightly more extensive sign-up form found here.

As we work through the season, we are going to make one change to how pick-up works to help better accommodate the changes in our family’s commitments. We are going to change the CSA pick-up window of time back to our previous 3:30-6:30 pm on Thursdays. We had extended it a few years back because we were doing a lot of other sales of meat and eggs at pick-up and thought having a longer window would help us handle the volume of transactions we were doing. At this point, it seems like most people can make it in that slightly more narrow window of time.

We’ve already changed the time on the website so that new members will have that in mind, but will officially make the change at the halfway point of the season (June 7) so that current members have time to adjust their Thursday rhythms if needed. Please talk with us if you have a schedule conflict so that we can brainstorm possible solutions. We’ve been known to be creatively flexible in surprising ways in the past.

As I said, we are filled with enthusiasm for these coming weeks and months of delicious locally grown organic produce! Recently sown early crops are already coming up in the greenhouses (as seen in the photos above), and it feels like spring is just around the corner. We’re finalizing our crop planning for the season and beginning to order seeds. This is always a very exciting time in the season, when we are refreshed from our winter rest and looking forward to the fun work of sowing and planting. Every year, it feels like a gift to be direct witnesses and participants in the miracle of spring and summer’s growth. It is with joy that we grow and harvest for you, our community of eaters. Thank you for your continued support and eager cooking and eating!

Let us know if you have any questions about the season! And, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables: Remember to check the last two week’s newsletters for lots more winter recipes and serving suggestions!

• Apples
• Spicy sauerkraut — Casey made a big batch of his famous seasonal ferment! This one has cabbage, chili peppers, beets, sunchokes, garlic, kale, winter squash, and carrots. To make sure everyone gets a taste, it will be limited to one item per household. If you want some, please bring a clean jar to take it home in! Or, else we can serve it to you in a doubled up plastic bag. Refrigerate!
• Seasonal salad mix
• Kale
• Chard
• Cabbage
• Sunchokes
• Beets
• Carrots
• Spaghetti squash — We have fallen in love with spaghetti squash over the last two years, ever since we found a foolproof delicious way to prepare it (thanks to CSA members! You all give the best cooking suggestions!). Cut the squash in half lengthwise. Remove seeds and pulp (they are easy to scoop out with a spoon) and put in a baking pan cut side up. Drizzle the squash flesh with olive oil and salt and then bake at 350° until it’s soft all the way through. Cooked this way, the spaghetti squash should be cooked but easy to pull out with a fork in the long “threads” that make it a perfect substitute for pasta spaghetti. We like to add more butter while it’s hot and then salt it and either eat it as a side dish or top it with more cooked veggies and/or meat or whatever! Red sauce is great too, of course!
• Marina di Chioggia winter squash
• Butternut squash
• Pie pumpkins

Winter in our farm kitchen — a large squash waiting to be cooked, while kids browse new library books and snack on carrot sticks.

Even though this winter has been relatively mild so far (at least compared to last winter!), it is still winter indeed in so many ways. This coming week, we’re watching for high water here on the island as the rain storms passing through the region will fill the rivers. We’re not sure how high the water will get as of yet, but the prediction graphs show an upward trajectory, and we’re keeping watch and making plans.

High water is part of our normal winter experience here on Grand Island and something that we’ve got long-term systems in place for. Mostly, it’s a matter of not placing important things in the known paths of flood waters!

Another regular part of winter around here is the food. Winter food is different, folks! Delicious! Hearty! Filling! Often quite sweet! But different still, especially compared to the summer vegetable garden foods that many people are most familiar with. For those of you who are still getting into the rhythm of eating seasonally, I thought I’d share some actual meals from our family’s kitchen this week to help inspire you to think simple as you prepare your vegetables.

Big squash

This week, we’re giving out Marina di Chioggia squash in the CSA. It’s a big squash (see photo above), definitely more than one meal’s worth, even for a family of four. We’ve learned over the years that many households just don’t want such a big squash, so we’ll be offering portions of it as an item this week (or a whole squash for multiple items if you want the whole thing!). Casey can help you navigate that choice at pick-up.

So, you might be wondering: why do we grow it anyway? Because it’s delicious! We’ve yet to grow another squash that has the same characteristics in terms of flavor and also long storage (it stores incredibly well through the winter and actually becomes more delicious this time of year after it’s been in storage for a few months).

In our house, we’ve learned how to make best use of this giant squash. It’s actually quite simple! We thoroughly clean the outside (because the skin is edible and we usually eat it too) and then pop the entire squash (minus stem, which can be knocked off) on a jelly roll type baking sheet. (If you only have part of a squash, you can do this too!) We then bake it at 350° until we can easily slide a knife all the way through the flesh so that we know it’s cooked through. Then we let the squash cool a bit on the counter and then put it in our fridge for later.

Once we’ve got this whole cooked squash in our fridge, we eat it regularly. The simplest preparation is to take thick wedge-shaped slices out of the squash, pull out the seeds, and then reheat the slices on a baking sheet or in a cast-iron pan. If you use a seasoned surface and some butter, the squash can be nicely browned on both sides, which is tasty! We put another big pat of butter on top when serving, and salt to taste. It’s a great side-dish to any kind of meal we might be eating. I even sometimes heat up a slice to eat with eggs at breakfast! If we have a Marina in the fridge, we will serve these reheated slices at least once a day.

But, we also like to do at last one other thing with the squash while we have it around, usually to make something sweet and dessert-like. You can pull the flesh easily away from the skin and remove the seeds/pulp, mash up the flesh and use it in place of cooked pumpkin in any of your favorite pumpkin recipes (muffins, breads, souffles, pies, soups, etc.)

A simple soup

This week we were all craving something extra cozy in our diet, so I put two packages of beef soup bones in our crock pot with some water and let them simmer for over 24 hours. Then I prepared an extremely simple soup. I sautéed some garlic in a bit of oil in a small stock pot. Next I peeled and chopped a few carrots and put them in (I made larger pieces so that they wouldn’t turn to mush). Then I chopped a whole cabbage finely and put it in too. Finally, I strained the beef broth I’d made (just by ladled it out through a strainer into the stock pot), and picked the meat off the bones and added it too with a little salt.

I started cooking the soup mid afternoon and then turned the heat off about an hour before dinner so that the flavors could meld without the veggies over-cooking (I think soup is the best after it’s had time to “rest”!). I thought that this soup would be a little boring, even if it was comforting. But it turned out to be simply delicious. The kids, Rusty especially, raved and raved about it. Cabbage! Carrots! Some beef broth! Who knew that it would be such a hit in our house, but I suppose winter foods are well suited to what we crave in this season, especially when the days are dark and rainy.

“Root parade”

Many, many years ago now, Casey and I were first learning about eating seasonally, which mean learning about what foods are actually in season in winter where we were living in Washington at the time. We discovered that there were many colorful roots and such foods that we were less familiar with: beets, potatoes, winter squash, sunchokes, carrots, and more. We went to the local food co-op, bought several of such items at once and lined them up on the conveyor belt at the check-out stand. I looked down at our line of vegetables and declared that it was a “root parade”! The name stuck, and we used it to refer to the mixed roasted root dish we cooked up that evening. And ever since, we’ve called a pan of mixed winter vegetables “root parade.” Now, you can too!

Whether you use the name or not, I highly recommend trying some variation on this dish anyway. It’s such a great way to take a motley collection of winter vegetables and transform them into something seemingly greater than the sum of its parts.

This week I had beets, carrots, potatoes, and butternut squash in the kitchen, but not enough of any one to be the main vegetable for dinner. So I cut them up and made a batch of root parade. When prepping vegetables for roasting together, it’s important to keep in mind that they have different cooking times. The faster cooking items should be cut larger and slower cooking items cut smaller. Faster cooking vegetables are potatoes, carrots, and winter squash. Slower cooking vegetables are beets and sunchokes.

I put my cut veggies in a pan with butter (of course!) and baked them at 375°, stirring regularly to make sure they were coated in butter and cooking evenly. Toward the end, I let them sit a bit longer on one side to get a little crispy. The resulting dish had such vibrant colors and yummy flavors! We love root parade!

Kale +

And, finally, a standard staple in our house that we eat at least every other day: cooked kale, plus … plus whatever! Casey and I eat cooked kale almost every day with eggs for breakfast, but sometimes it becomes our other meals too.

I always start with some butter in a big cast iron pan over medium-high heat (I mentioned last week that we eat a lot of butter — I like to use a BIG chunk when cooking kale). I chop the kale fine (usually removing the thickest bottom part of the stem first) and add the chopped kale to the pan and cover to let it begin to wilt. I stir regularly until the kale is soft and yummy looking. “Done-ness” is a matter of preference. I personally favor mushy, savory/spicy, mixed up foods (when I discovered Indian cuisine as I child, it was a revelation for that very reason!), so I let the kale cook until it is quite soft. But it’s totally okay to eat kale “al dente” too.

Now, for the “plus” part … you can serve the cooked kale as a dish dish. Or, you can add other items to it to make it a main dish. Recently, I stirred in a small amount of leftover chicken meat and then topped it with goat cheese. Ta da — a meal! (Or, if that’s not quite enough for a meal yet, serve it with a reheated slice of squash on the side! Or, dress a winter salad!) For a vegetarian option, tempeh or tofu plus a dash of sesame oil and soy sauce would delightful.

Hopefully these simple ideas will help inspire you in your own kitchen this week. Seasonal eating does not need to be complicated, especially if you focus on basic preparations that can be modified to work for different versions of similar vegetables. Root parade can be applied to what’s in the CSA almost every week this time of year. Cooked kale can be used with other cooking greens instead, such as chard and collards. And so on. Keeping some other basic spices or condiments on hand can help diversify flavors too. I like to always have tumeric and dried chili peppers around, as well as various ferments for condiments. Just remember to use good quality other ingredients to go with your good quality vegetables!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples
• Seasonal salad mix
• Cabbage
• Kale
• Chard
• Pie pumpkins
• Spaghetti squash
• Butternut squash
• Marina di Chioggia squash — The big one in the photo above!
• Carrots
• Beets
• Sunchokes

Dottie walks through the very green cover crop at the north end of our fields on today’s rainy winter afternoon.

The CSA begins again tomorrow (Thursday, January 18)! Welcome back to all our returning members, and welcome to our new members too! We are so glad to have you all join us for our thirteenth growing season, our “farmer’s dozen,” as we’re calling it.

We’re starting again smack in the middle of winter, as we always do. But, so far, this winter has been very different from last year’s, which was marked by extremely cold weather and lots and lots of snow! That was “fun” in its own way, but as farmers we’ve enjoyed the moderate weather we’ve had so far this fall and winter. There’s been plenty of sunlight to keep our over-wintered plants like kale and chard happy.

We’ll see what the rest of the winter and early spring bring, but right now it feels like a very green winter. Our cover crop is lush and actively growing on the sunnier days. I always find it remarkable how the colors in the fields flip spots on the far ends of the year. In winter, thanks to our consistent cover crop habit, we look out upon green fields backed by the brown/gray branches of bare deciduous trees (mostly Oregon ash and cottonwoods). Then, in spring, the whole world fills with glorious green as the leaves return. Until finally in summer, we arrive at the opposite configuration as much of our fields (and for sure the grassy wild edges around our fields) turn brown from summer drought or from active cultivation (revealing the rich brown of good soil) while the leaves remain green in the trees. Winter = green below and brown above. Summer = brown below and green above.

Obviously summer is more diverse than that as fruiting plants bring orbs of red, yellow, green, orange, and purple into our landscape. But if I squint my eyes, I swear I could tell the season just from the predominant horizontal bands of color shaping the Willamette Valley landscape.

And, the beginning of the CSA marks another kind of landmark in our winter season as we return to our weekly routines more firmly than we do during our break. Our “break” is a varied experience comprised of project-based farm work, family time, and usually a special trip or two (we just got back from an epic tour of NW Washington where we reconnected with many friends on Whidbey Island and in Bellingham). Overall, the defining factor of these weeks “off” is primarily their flexibility — I can take several hours to work on end-of-year paperwork while Casey hangs with the kids. Or Casey can spend two days working on building a fence without interrupting harvest routines. But now we’ll be getting back into our rhythms, which feels good too. There’s a helpful kind of momentum built into the farm rhythms we’ve established over the last decade, with days built in for harvesting and days built in for field work. Casey has already begun sowing seeds in flats for later transplanting and has direct sown the earliest crops in our high tunnels. It’s hard to believe, but spring will be here before we know it. The daffodils are even beginning to pop up in our yard (as enthusiastically pointed out by Rusty this week)!

We are looking forward to sharing the best of winter’s bounty with you over the coming weeks. At times we’ve thought we’re crazy to operate a winter CSA (shouldn’t we just go to Costa Rica for the winter or some such thing?), except that it is such a delicious time of year and it would be a real shame for all of us to miss out on the unique food experiences that can be enjoyed even when the sky is dark with incessant Oregon winter rains. In fact, we believe that the winter foods brighten those days significantly, bringing their sweetness and nutrition to our bodies at a time of year when we appreciate it so.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Paid yet? If you haven’t mailed us a check for your first CSA payment, please bring a check or cash to pick-up this week! Please let me know if you have any questions about your balance due. Thank you!

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables: Each week I share the list of our harvest, along with preparation ideas. Winter is always a time when folks can use a little extra help, since sometimes the vegetables are less familiar (or in less familiar forms) than summer harvests. So, over the following weeks I’ll aim to share our favorite tried-and-true ways of preparing the vegetables in your share, focusing on the basic and simple methods that are staples in our kitchen. You can always ask Casey and me for more clarification or ideas at pick-up too!

• Apples
• Seasonal salad mix — A mix of the unique tender greens that we grow in our fields in the winter. We love winter salads. They have more texture and flavor than summer lettuce, which can be an adjustment. But they are our favorite, in part because they can really handle a lot of dressing without wilting. We like to make mayonaise-like dressings (egg + vinegar + lots of oil) and tossing the finely chopped salad greens by hand so that all the leaves are coated. Add some extra toppings and it’s a salad fit for a meal. We recommend any of the following toppings (but maybe not all at once!): dried fruit, chunks of tuna or chicken, nuts, chopped bacon, slices of good sausage, cubed sharp cheddar cheese, or crumbled goat cheese.
• Cabbage — In the winter, we almost exclusively eat our cabbage cooked. It becomes a simple base for many of our meals (sort of a pasta-substitute!). I chop the cabbage very thin while meanwhile heating up butter with chopped garlic in a big deep pan. If you’re familiar with our household’s cooking, you’ll know that we really like butter and use a lot of it. If I am cooking a whole cabbage at once (which I usually do), I might put a whole stick of butter in the pan to melt. Yes, really! Then I add the cabbage, put on the lid and turn the temperature to medium-high, stirring regularly to avoid sticking. This initial high temperature cooking will begin the cabbage wilting. Eventually it will start to stick, which is often a sign that it’s being caramelized and the sugars are starting to burn (yum!). At this point, I remove the lid and reduce the temperature to medium-low to finish the cooking. I like to cook the cabbage until it is very tender and caramelized, which also reduces its total mass so a whole cabbage can easily be eaten in one meal. The result has the savory comfort-food goodness of mac-and-cheese (but in vegetable form!). I’ll often turn cooked cabbage into a main dish by adding other things into it as it finishes cooking. A staple version of this dish (which I cook once almost every week) is made by adding tuna and tumeric. We garnish this dish with plain yogurt and whatever kind of good fermented thing we have in the house (a spicy kimchi or fermented sriracha is our favorite!).
• Kale
• Delicata winter squash
• Pie pumpkins
• “Sunshine” kabocha squash
• Carrots
• Sunchokes — What are these funny looking things? They are also called “Jerusalem artichokes” but have no relation to either Jerusalem or artichokes, so we prefer the name “sunchokes.” They are the tuber that grows at the base of a native sunflower (a beautiful tall one!), and they can be eaten cooked or raw. For cooking, we recommend first chopping into one-inch pieces (trimming off any extra ugly bits along the way) — no need to peel. Then roast in a deep pan with butter, stirring to prevent burning, until they are caramelized outside and tender inside. I’ll share more ideas for raw preparations next time we have them.
• Beets

The darkening November landscape …

This week is the final week of our 2017 CSA! Just in time, as the weather has definitely taken a turn toward the dark, cold, wet season that we call deep autumn or early winter. We still have our two holiday harvests, including next week’s Thanksgiving Holiday Harvest! I’ve posted a separate post with the availability list and ordering information here. And, you can sign up now for our 2018 CSA season here (more information below about season length)!

As we close this year, here at Oakhill Organics we are already deep in planning mode for 2018. As usual this means digging potatoes to store and signing folks up for the CSA and so on. But, we’re also looking even farther ahead, to fall of next year when things are going to change for us in a big way.

Ready for some surprising news? Casey has been accepted to Willamette Law School for next fall. Law school! Did you just fall off of your seat?

Here on the farm, this next step for our lives has been a slowly brewing inevitability. Casey has been itching to return to school for a couple of years now, but it took time to figure out what kind of further professional training he wanted and how we would make it work. The last year of seemingly extra intense national politics plus his own reading life have helped him narrow his focus to seeking a law degree. In our house, we often talk about what each person is “really into.” Right now Rusty is “really into” history. Casey is “really into” politics and law: reading “law blogs” (this is a thing?), attending oral hearings at the Oregon Supreme Court, interning and doing research for a lawyer friend, and generally geeking out over the intricate language of law and how the application of those laws (or lack thereof) has a real affect on people’s daily lives, their rights, and their access to opportunities in our country. We have also both been realizing that life is long, and we have many interests we want to pursue in addition to farming. There is time and room in life for multiple pursuits, and law school is the next one for Casey.

It certainly helped the decision making process to realize that Willamette Law School is one of the closest graduate schools (of any kind!) to our home and offers a part-time option. Both of these features mean that we don’t have to uproot our whole lives for this opportunity. Casey is going to start next August part-time, and we have about nine months to figure out exactly how to accommodate the new endeavor on the farm and in our family. We’ve already had several long discussions about what this could look like — what is sustainable and/or desirable for Casey and the whole family.

As a starting point for that process, we’ve decided to sign everyone up for a shorter starter season to begin with in 2018: a 20-week winter/spring season that will run from January 18 through May 31. We will decide early next year whether that season will be followed by a summer/fall season. We’ll let you know what we decide with plenty of time for people to make other plans if needed for those seasons, but we feel like we need to be a little closer to this big change to better understand how it will work for us.

Either way, we are looking forward to our 2018 winter/spring season — our 13th season as a CSA (our “farmer’s dozen,” I am calling it!). As always, you’ll have a wide range of seasonal vegetables, some from our storage rooms and others from the fields: winter squash, potatoes, kale, cabbages, sunchokes, chard, carrots, and so much more!

And, in the interim, our family will enjoy a few weeks of a break, much of which will be spent “doing” the holidays with our friends and family. Between Thanksgiving, Rusty’s birthday, and Christmas, we end up with a lot of different wonderful gatherings to attend and plan.

We hope that you too have a joyful holiday season ahead of you. As we go into this dark season, there can be so much love … and also sometimes so much sadness. We always aim to hold both realities in our hearts and prayers, knowing that this season can be very hard for people experiencing loss or struggling with depression.

This weekend, we hosted our homeschooling co-op out on the farm for a fall lantern walk. The children all made little tissue paper on glass lanterns, which we lit with safe LED tea lights, and we walked through our fields in the darkness singing. The point is to remember how even a small light can guide our way through the darkness. If we can find even a small source of light in our lives, it may not make the darkness disappear, but we can walk through it.

The darkness is certainly gathering outside my windows now, putting to bed a day when it felt as the sun barely came up. It’s a sign of the continuing turning in the yearly seasons, and for us a sign of the continuing turn in the seasons of life too.

So much love and gratitude to all of you as we end this year’s season!!!! Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. Looking for our CSA sign-up? It’s here. Looking for the Holiday Harvest information? That’s here!

P.P.S. Wondering what might be next for me, Katie, in this midst of Casey’s new pursuit? In 2018, I plan to lock myself in our cabin one whole day a week with writing materials (and no internet) and see what happens!

~ ~ ~

McMinnville Women’s Choir Winter Concert

Looking for a seasonal concert to ring in the holidays? Join the McMinnville Women’s Choir for our annual winter concert on Saturday, December 9 at the McMinnville Co-op Ministries’ Great Room (544 NE 2nd St, McMinnville). We’ll have two performances, one at 3 pm and 7 pm. Tickets are on sale now at Oregon Stationers.

I have been singing in this choir for several years now, alongside many current and former CSA members. Our winter concerts are not your typical “holiday fare.” We’ll sing a wide range of songs from different faith traditions, cultures and languages. We sing of the diversity of the human experience, including the darker parts of this season with the joyous parts too. Join us for songs and storytelling!

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Brussels sprouts
• Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Seasonal salad mix
• Kale
• Chard
• Delicata winter squash
• Pie pumpkins
• Spaghetti squash
• Butternut squash
• Carrots
• Beets
• German butterball potatoes