Oakhill Organics

What’s the big news on the farm this afternoon? I’m sure the same big news that is drawing all of you outside your homes and workplaces with a big smile on your face! The sun is out!

I wrote about the rain in last week’s newsletter, and I could write about it at length again this week. Because, well, it’s been wet. Build-an-ark kind-of-wet (or so it has felt, day in and day out with very little break).

Everywhere we go, people are talking about it. Complaining mostly. As though a very wet March is some kind of anomaly, which let me tell you: it isn’t. We’ve been gifted with some beautiful springs in recent years, including a 2015 when it felt like summer arrived in February (and it stayed that way!). But I can very keenly remember a different March, five years ago, when we were pacing and pacing, waiting for what felt like forever, before we could begin the spring work of tilling and planting.

We’re waiting for that now too, but with the advantage of a few more years of experience under our belts and four large greenhouses to grow in to boot. So, it feels different.

Not to say we aren’t welcoming this sun! Oh yes! Oh yes! Especially when we do have outdoor projects to work on. This Monday, we plan to dig a long trench and finally put in a simple buried mainline on the home farm. This is something we’ve been talking about for, well, ever. Having a few strategically placed risers around our fields will make irrigating our farther out fields (and greenhouses) much simpler — we won’t have to manually lay down above-ground pipes every time we want to irrigate something. Those above ground pipes are a pain for a few reason: they’re work to move around, they get in the way of vehicles (which can’t safely drive over them), they often leak at the junctions, and they make it hard to mow or keep fields weeded. We’re looking forward to needing less of them this season, so hopefully the weather will cooperate as we go to work!

We’re not the only ones who have been waiting for this glorious burst of sunshine either. Casey and I have been amazed at how the fruit tree buds that started swelling weeks ago have just hung out at that state during this recent spell of cooler, wet, stormy weather. The pear tree by our door has especially attracted my attention as I can see it easily every day as I wash dishes. The buds have been fat, ready to burst, for several weeks now.

I anticipate that we’ll see those white blossoms soon, if the weather holds. And we noted today that there are pollinators out too, to help make those buds fruitful after all. As Casey and I picked rapini, tall open blossoms were open all around us, and if we paused in our talking we could hear the buzz of honey bees visiting those blooms. One of the best sounds of spring — little creatures hard at work. I can’t help but attribute emotion to those sounds, as they remind me so much of a contented cat’s purr. I don’t think my connection there is too unfounded — if bees can feel emotion (and they can dance, so why not?), then surely these moments bring them joy as they bring back the first fresh pollen and nectar of the year to their hives.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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CSA payments due this week! Just another friendly reminder that your CSA payment is due tomorrow (Thursday, March 17). You can bring us a check or cash to pick-up. Please let me know if you have any questions.

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples — This week our Goldrush apples are back! These are the ones voted best overall apple by our CSA members last fall.
• Salad mix — This week’s salad mix is a fun blend of lettuce, cabbage rapini, radicchio, endive, kale and kale rapini.
• Radishes
• Butternut squash
• Marina di Chioggia winter squash
• “Leaf” broccoli — What is leaf broccoli? It’s the tender leaves and stalks of winter-grown greenhouse broccoli. Think kale with more broccoli flavor. Delicious!
• Rapini
• Red Russian kale
• Chard
• Parsnips
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Spring onions

Hey! It’s March! And, it’s rainy! This is how I think of March — lots and lots of gray and lots and lots of wet. We inevitably get a few beautiful spells too, but wow can the rain come down in this month in the Willamette Valley.

As I drove around this week, I was struck by how much the landscape is transformed by the rain — hilltops obscured by mist in the trees. It reminded me a lot of the persistent winter landscape of the Puget Sound, where I grew up.

But, on this rainy evening, I’d like to take a little break from story telling and just share some farm newsy stuff. We’ve got a few things coming up that I want to make sure you know about.

CSA payment due next week! Our second CSA payment of the season is due next Thursday, March 17. You can mail us a check (to P.O. Box 1698, McMinnville OR 97128) or bring cash/check to pick-up. I emailed out statements to folks earlier this week, so you should have your balance due in your inbox. If you have any questions, please email me or ask me to clarify at pick-up tomorrow!

Last chance for pork! On May 2, we are taking six hogs to the butcher — our last for now, as we’ve decided not to continue this part of our farm into the foreseeable future (for lots of reasons, but mostly it just comes down to wanting to simplify what we’ve got going on and having to choose where we spend our energy). If folks would like to buy a whole or half hog for their freezer, this is your chance! The price is $5.50/lb for the hanging weight (which is the carcass before processing — our heritage hogs typically dress out at 50-65 lbs each). We pay for all the butchering costs except for making into bacon and sausages, which you would pay if you want that. Our butcher does a beautiful job with no-nitrate added “curing,” and we can have them make bacon, Bratwurst and/or hams for you if you like (again, you would pay for those costs). Email us ASAP to reserve your half or whole!

Farm events scheduled for 2016! And, finally, we took time to sit down with our calendar and schedule out this year’s farm events. We hope you can join us for at least one event this year. I’ll provide more details (and directions to the farm) in the newsletter before each event:

• Potato planting & potluck ~ Sunday, April 30, 3 pm ~ We’ll plant potatoes (delightfully fun work suitable for families!) from 3 – 5 pm and then gather together for a potluck at our house. Bring your favorite dishes to share!
• Ratatouille Rendezvous ~ Saturday, August 27, 5 pm ~ Join us for our favorite way to end the summer — with a big feast of ratatouille (a summer stew)! We’ll make a GIANT batch of ratatouille; you bring a bowl and a potluck side dish to share (salad, side, bread, cheese, desert, etc.).
• Pumpkin Patch Open House ~ Sunday, October 23, 2 – 4 pm ~ Come out to pick your family’s pumpkins, tour the farm, and participate in a fun variety tasting (vegetable or fruit to be decided). We may even round up some live music again this year.

We’re excited about all of these events and look forward to hosting you on the farm!

That’s all the news for now. Before I sign off, I’ll share with you a few more fun photos from a very rainy afternoon on the farm:

Happy rainy evening to you!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples
• Radishes
• Salad mix — This week’s mix: tender lettuce, endive, spinach, and escarole.
• Rapini — A mix of turnip and kale rapinis to choose from.
• Cabbage
• Collard greens — I think of collards as being ideal in two opposite seasons — late winter and mid-summer. No need to tell you which of those seasons we’re in now! Our over-wintered collards plants are beginning to put up rapini, and their tender thick stalks are just covered with abundant new leaves. Picking these bunches was such fun — we just snapped off whole plants (leaves, stalk, rapini and all) and bunched them! You can prepare collards as you would kale, except that it often does require a little longer cooking time. Traditionally, people would boil their collards for an extended period in broth or salty water. We prefer cooking in a pan with butter. We do put in broth at first and cover the pan to help cook the greens (we do this with winter kale and cabbage too), then remove the cover and let the liquid boil off and the softer greens saute. I also sometimes enjoy chopping collards fine in a food processor and mixing with finely chopped carrots and other vegetables to make a chopped salad.
• Chard
• Red Russian kale — From the greenhouse! Long tender leaves.
• Sweet potatoes
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Leeks

In case you’ve wondered, this moment — RIGHT NOW — is a highlight of my week. The moment when I sit down with my laptop, upload a few photos from the week, and begin to turn our experiences into a little story or essay to share with our lovely community of eaters. I love the ritual of it — looking at Casey’s handwritten (ahem, scrawled) note of this week’s vegetables and pausing to ponder what tips folks might appreciate as they turn these freshly harvested items into their week’s meals.

At this point in my life, writing these weekly newsletters is the bulk of my regular writing experience. I’ve come to view it as a practice of the best sort — a dedicated routine that keeps me doing something I love but might otherwise let slip in the midst of life’s pressures and endless ‘to do’ lists.

As we pick up new CSA members each year, the genesis of our farm slips farther into the past, and many of the new crowd know Casey and me only as the 30-something-farmers-with-cute-kids we are today. But of course, we grew into these roles. Ten years ago this month, we were embarking on this adventure, leaving behind the life we’d had in Bellingham, Washington, where we had been students, teachers, and farm workers (as well as studio-apartment-dwellers, food-co-op-shoppers, and frequent-burrito-eaters).

Before we moved, we had the privilege of completing Master’s degrees, and mine was in creative nonfiction writing (Casey’s was in ecology). Having that degree under my belt doesn’t necessarily mean that I am a great writer, but it does mean that I once upon a time took my writing very seriously and spent a good amount of time getting better at it with the help of fabulous mentors! An experience for which I am grateful! In fact, my gratitude for that experience grows the more perspective I have. Those early years of adulthood were so packed with growth that it is really only now that I can begin to unpack all the lessons we were gifted in a few years of life.

Back then, the world seemed like our oyster, of course. I look back on who Casey and I were when we moved to Oregon, and I remember how the world seemed so open. We were scared, of course — terrified! We were seeking to settle down and commit to something — to a new way of life, to a new endeavor, to a new community — and it was thrilling to think of the potentials but also nerve-wracking to give up all the other possibilities we could have pursued at that point in our life. To commit to one thing requires giving up others — in our case: further graduate studies, other careers and places to live.

We haven’t spent much time dwelling on the “what ifs” since starting the farm. This life has been so consuming in its demands on our presence and attention, and it has been so fulfilling too. But, of course, who doesn’t sometimes wonder about all those other paths? Especially when there was true love and passion there too.

With starting the farm and having kids, writing has been something that I have definitely pushed to the back burner. I’ve chosen this worn out metaphor on purpose, because I think it’s very appropriate here. The back burner isn’t a place where things stop cooking — those pots aren’t removed from the stove and allowed to cool off completely, forgotten. The back burner is where we put soup that we want to let simmer for hours and hours before dinner so that their flavors will be improved as they only can through the slow work of time.

For a few years (mostly before we had kids, as if that isn’t so obvious), I did keep writing and publishing a little bit — mostly farming articles and essays. But, my primary writing in the last ten years has definitely been this newsletter, my 45 essays a year that get published with essentially no revision on our little blog, read by our immediate community. A satisfying practice to me, but certainly a different publishing road than the one I was trained for in graduate school.

In recent years, I started telling friends that I know no longer considered myself a “Writer,” and I really meant it. It wasn’t a defensive stance so much as a helpful way for me to let go of old ideas about what I “should” be writing and where or how I should publish. Letting go of that assigned role allowed me to better appreciate the very hard work and dedication others have put into prioritizing writing as their craft in ways I have chosen not to do. Letting go of that role also allowed me to whole heartedly embrace other ways of spending my time that have felt rejuvenating to my spirit as I try to balance the mother-farmer roles of my life with other creative pursuits. Specifically I found that singing with a women’s choir became a more important use of my free time than sitting alone in my office on my computer! For me, connecting in that way with a community of women was a better balance for the sometimes isolating parts of rural life.

But, in the meantime, that big pot of soup has been on the back burner, tended by me as I continue this still beloved weekly practice of writing the newsletter. I don’t exactly know what the destiny of that big pot of writerly soup will be, but I have faith that my patience will produce something delicious. Or, to borrow a metaphor I got from Oregon novelist Ursula LeGuin (who I believe picked it up from Gary Snyder?), the writing life can also be thought of as a compost pile — a big, beautiful compost pile that will eventually produce the fertility for a vibrant garden full of color and flavor. But first, it needs a lot of different materials (experiences) added and allowed to break down together over time. If I remember correctly, in sharing this metaphor, LeGuin was making a case for not expecting to write much of excellence before 40.

Incidentally, I heard LeGuin talk at the first ever McMinnville Terroir Writing Festival back in 2010. I listened to LeGuin while standing in the back, rocking a sleeping baby on my chest. Many years have gone by since then, and the festival is still going strong and will happen again this April (registration happening now!). I have only attended again once since that first year, but I love watching this festival from a distance and appreciating all the writers who dedicate their time to connecting and learning from each other (and producing fabulous poems, books, articles, and more for all of us to enjoy!).

And, perhaps to everyone’s culinary benefit (I hope anyway!), I did finally really truly get started on that Big Writing Project that has been simmering away for the better part of two years now. The cookbook is finally really in progress! I think I first mentioned this book at the end of 2014 as a possibility, but it has taken this long for me to really wrap my head around the details — the tone and scope of the project. If you’re wondering what it might be like, look no further than these newsletters. You’ll hear a lot of my voice in the cookbook, sharing my passion for cooking fresh veggies in simple ways, just as I’ve done almost every week for the last ten years!

We’ll see how much I can compel myself to sit alone with my computer (beyond this valued weekly occasion), but I feel excited about how it is going so far. Books are Big Things, even when they’re just CSA cookbooks written by a farmer! So, I know better than to make any guesses about finish dates or much more beyond announcing that I am excited to be writing it! It’s a book that I want to exist, which I think is one of the best motivators. And working on it is enjoyable — the second best motivator.

And, now it’s time for me to bring my weekly writing ritual to a close. After a mostly dry harvest day, the rain is pounding on the metal roof outside the window as the world grows darker and darker gray. Casey and the kids are downstairs finishing the day, cleaning up the living room, setting the table for dinner, looking at an atlas together (a favorite pastime around these parts). I am excited to join them and to taste the fruits of the day alongside family I cherish. Here we are in the life we chose a decade ago, in the house we built, eating food we’ve grown. And, lucky me, I get to write about it.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. You need at least one cute farm kid photo this week. How about kids grazing on extra pea plants starts in the hot house? They sure eat a lot of fresh veggies this way:

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Next CSA payment is coming up on March 17! This coming week I will email everyone a statement and reminder of what you owe, so watch your inbox! Please let me know if you have any questions about your account balance or payment history.

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples
• Radishes! — Many items from the greenhouses this week, including the first of the season’s radishes. These round, red gems used to be the mark of spring for us, since they are consistently the first item we can harvest from spring sown crops. This is because small red cherry radishes are ready to harvest about 22 days after sowing! That’s like instant food! (Ok, not really, but in crop times it is.) It’s definitely not spring yet, but the radishes have won the race again. These are mild flavored, but the heat does build up in your mouth if you sit and eat several plain and raw (as I did as a snack after lunch today). They make a beautiful salad topping, sliced into little circles and sprinkled over lettuce.
• Bok choy — Bok choy is another on of those faster early season crops that does great in the early cool season but just can’t handle the hot summers (radishes are the same). This makes it a special item to enjoy in these early months. Bok choy is an Asian green, somewhat related to mustard greens and turnips. When it is tender, it can be chopped and dressed as a salad, but traditionally it was cooked — often stir fried with yummy sauces (think soy sauce, ginger, and sesame oil) or chopped and added to brothy soups.
• Head lettuce
• Marina di Chioggia winter squash
• Butternut winter squash
• Mustard rapini
• Purple sprouting “broccoli” — These tiny broccoli florets have more in common with rapini than with what you might picture as big summer broccoli heads. But the flavor is all broccoli (with a purple tint!) and they’re delicious added to stir fries.
• Kale rapini — Kale rapini is going to have a very similar flavor and texture to the purple broccoli. They would be delicious chopped and stir-fried. Try a combination of bok choy, kale rapini, and carrots!
• Red Russian kale
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Leeks

This last Saturday morning, the sun came out and we all felt like going on an adventure together. Sometimes, our adventures take us far(ther) away from home, but we all wanted to explore our place on this day and decided to walk a circuit along the edge of our home field and out to a distant spot on our rented land where in previous seasons we’ve seen a red tail hawk nesting.

We began by visiting one of our high tunnels (which I talked about at length in last week’s newsletter). Late last week, Casey planted out the first of this year’s zucchini plants and wanted me to share in his excitement over a full and growing greenhouse.

Outside the greenhouse, I said hello to our farm cat Mokum, who was hanging out in one of our orchards.

Next, we wandered down to the first orchard we planted (back in early 2009).

At the orchard, we checked on the earliest plum blossoms. They were bulging and looking ready to burst open. By now, there’s lots of open white blossoms on these trees, but on Saturday they were just on the verge.

If we needed more signs of spring’s presence, we found it as we headed back around the corner to our land on the other side of the creek — we found some random daffodils growing in the hedge along the creek!

At our land next door, we found ourselves going deeper into that vibrant gray area between carefully cultivated fields and the wilderness. Those fields are farther away from any human homes and are rich with plant and animal lives who live at the edges or, in some cases, right in the middle.

Ever since we expanded our acreage, we’ve been on a journey to figure out exactly how to best steward 100 acres of land. Our ideas of how that goal fits into our farm’s business have evolved and are still evolving. But without a doubt, we love knowing that all of this land is now organic and that our farming practices have allowed more and more wildness to move into this space that is now free of chemicals and free from monoculture agriculture. Diversity teems.

Any single hour spent outside, three or four different kinds of raptors may fly overhead. Over the entire year our farm is visited regularly by Red Tail Hawks, Bald Eagles, Osprey, Kestrels, Harriers, Cooper’s Hawks, and Turkey Vultures (and many types of owls at night). All the smaller birds delight our ears with their calls all day long.

As we continued our walk, we saw two more signs of important land-bound animals that make our farm part of their bigger home.

And, as we looked up, we saw a deer running through the field far ahead of us, just below where we hoped to spot the Red Tail Hawk nest.

At this point, the wildness was starting to do its work on the kids, who waded deep into our search for frog eggs in puddles.

I found myself inspired too. Not to take off my shoes, but just to breathe deeper and more fully. How can I not feel inspired on a day such as this, surrounded by this beauty?

We’ve come to appreciate how essential these intersections are between agriculture and the wilderness. The scrubby areas at all the edges provide essential stable habitat, but our fields provide a dynamic kind of habitat for many smaller animals as well as food sources for insects, small mammals and all the larger life that feed on those. At times, we’re tempted to just let it all “go wild,” but ultimately I don’t think that’s the answer. Continuing to farm this space, with the wild in mind, can promote more life, more diversity. Always, those other lives and the vibrancy of the wider natural world are in the forefront of our mind as we choose how and where we farm on our land — how we work fields and when and to what extent. What we plant. What we [don’t] spray.

We spotted the nest, by the way. We didn’t get too close, because we want the hawk to stay, and we’re guessing that spot was chosen because of how far away it is from the likes of us. But we put out a picnic blanket and the kids ate a snack, surrounded by our open scraggly fields.

Winter is definitely a high point for wildness out here in the fields. Our presence as farmers is less obviously visible to the eye, even though we know how much of what we see has very much been shaped by our actions over recent seasons — the vast expanses of forage that we carefully seeded years ago and will be mowing and chopping this year. And, just a few hundred feet to the north of the nesting site, we reentered another more typical human landscape as we visited our third (and most recently planted) orchard. Here we found blossoms already open on our peaches.

Then we were hungry for lunch and headed back to our home, the kids still barefoot and enjoying every puddle along the way.

Our house greeted us with a hammock smile as we walked under the still leafless Black Walnut tree outside. Spring felt so present and even as we passed under those bare branches.

I made a mental note to refill our bird feeders by the house so we could enjoy more of our beloved wildness even closer to home.

What a place we live in! What joy our work is! On weeks such as this, when mild weather invites to truly savor our time outside we cannot imagine living anywhere else or doing anything else.

And, of course, it doesn’t end at the borders of our farm. Inspiring wildness abounds in our part of the world. Just this week, the kids and I went on a happy hike at Baskett Slough, and we spotted so many blooming trees in well tended yards and scrubby hedges all along the drive. We hope that you have been savoring all these late winter delights yourself — raptors and blooming trees and more.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples
• Salad mix! — Casey made a salad mix for you all that is a mix of field grown over-wintered greens and tender greenhouse grown greens. It contains endive, spinach, and cabbage rapini. These greens all offer different flavors and textures from lettuce (but none of them are spicy or bitter). We love these winter salads. I recommend trying a creamy dressing and dress before serving up. Just pouring the dressing over the greens at the table won’t have quite the same effect as thoroughly coating all the leaves by tossing in a bowl. I usually use my [clean] hands to do this!
• Butternut squash
• Marina di Chioggia winter squash
• Turnip & mustard rapini
• Red Russian kale
• Mustard greens
• Chard
• Rutabaga
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Leeks

Casey and I have gotten pretty lucky, all things considered, during these recent winter CSA harvests. The more dramatic rain and cold weather seem to consistently fall on days other than our harvest day (although honestly there hasn’t really been too much of the extreme winter weather either way).

This afternoon, as we headed out with the kids to bunch greens, the weather was as mild and calm as ever. I grabbed light jackets for the kids just in case as I closed the door to the house. A half an hour into harvesting, however, the sky grew darker. By the time we finished the chard, the rain was coming down steadily, and the kids retreated to the cover of their play house (hoorah!). By the time we were in the thick of the kale picking, we were really working in a downpour. Thankfully, the temperature was still mild enough that we weren’t in danger of dangerous discomfort — but we were getting wet!

And, so we were thankful for our post-harvest plan of planting broccoli in one of our field tunnels. Casey recently put end-walls of greenhouse poly on our two older houses, to prepare them for more late winter planting. As we entered the space, we were greeted by calm air, cheery diffused light, and dry air.

The children helped plant a little bit, but mostly tumbled and ran and jumped in the beds that had recently been worked up but were not yet planted. Barefoot kid feet + freshly tilled riverbottom soil = sensory pleasure to the max.

We have been grateful for these four high tunnels of ours this winter. We’ve been slowly preparing them for those hungry months of late winter and early spring — that inevitable season when our over-wintered crops are finished before spring crops are ready to pick. Greenhouses like these are perfect for getting us through that gap by providing little pockets of “man-made” spring under cover.

They’re also just wonderful places to work in the winter. Outside, but not exposed to the harshest of the elements. Casey often takes the kids with him as he trellises our peas or sows more greens or weeds the strawberries. At this point, they’ve learned the rules of where they can and cannot walk or play, so they scamper about enjoying all the same things we love about these places.

The plants seem to love them too. They get more than a bit “babied” in these spaces, and grow in very different ways than they do outside. They are earlier of course, but they also grow faster and produce different textures and flavors, providing more variety in the seasonal eating experience.

You’ll receive the first of the greenhouse grown crops in this week’s share: head lettuce! This is just the very first of this crop (and of the greenhouse bounty in general). Most of the crops are still young and have a ways to go before reaching maturity. But we love checking in on all of them and appreciating these early glimpses of the coming season.

Speaking of coming season, I just have to share a few important seasonal notes from the outside world. We picked our first daffodils from our yard this week, and I know we are not alone because I have seen their cheery yellow smiles elsewhere as well. We also picked the first of the spring nettles in the woods and enjoyed in one evening three nettle delights: nettle-apple pancakes, nettle pesto, and nettle tea. In my mind, I associate nettles and daffodils solidly with March, but after two mild winters I am beginning to lose track of what is really “normal” around here. Are they truly February phenomenon? Am I just recalling my experiences from farther north in Washington? Or, have the last two years just been extra early, as I tend to think? I suppose we’ll remember in coming years, as we inevitably experience different winters and springs. For now though, we love having both in our home.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples
• Head lettuce — The high tunnels share their magic with us! This week’s harvest is really truly just the first, and we’ll have to limit it to one head per household. We want to make sure everyone gets to have the special treat of a lettuce salad in February. This lettuce will be very tender and should be dressed lightly just before eating.
• Turnip rapini
• Chard
• Red Russian kale
• Marina di chioggia winter squash
• Butternut winter squash
• Parsnips
• Sunchokes
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Garlic

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And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs! — $6/dozen. We hosted some guests overnight this weekend (an old friend from Bellingham and her partner), and on their way out the door, they paused to share an important parting message: “Those eggs this morning at breakfast were perfect.”
• Pork — Roasts and ground pork are $8/lb; pork chops and hams are $12/lb.
• Lamb — Roasts and ground lamb are $8/lb; chops are $12/lb.
• Ground beef — $8/lb
• Beef CUTS and bones! — A few items are left, but these went fast last week! Roasts are $8/lb, bones $4/lb.

I am writing the text for this week’s newsletter quite early. It’s Monday morning right now, and the farm is just simply DRENCHED in the most exquisite sunlight I think I have ever seen. Everything is just glowing with warmth and vibrancy.

We are headed out after lunch today for our annual farmer retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs. Our excitement is even greater than usual knowing that we’ll be exploring that magical (and raven-filled) forest in some perfect weather. We certainly love the years we get to tromp through snow (which is more often the case), but there is a special ease and wonder to being in that place during sunny, dry weather.

We will arrive back to the farm to a full week of activities ahead. We’ll jump right into the remaining CSA harvest — we already washed all the roots and things and will be bunching greens for you as normal on Wednesday afternoon (while the kids play in and around their now-famous play house!). Then that night some or all of us will head into town for an Ash Wednesday service at church. Because the Christian season of Lent is beginning!

For those unfamiliar with this lesser observed season in the church calendar, it is the 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday. The date of Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. This year, the Full Moon comes only a few days after the equinox, putting the start of spring and Easter only a week apart! And meaning that Lent starts early quite early this year!

Lent is a “penitential” season in the church year, which means it is a time to prepare and a time for contemplation. It is not a time of festivity, and in churches it is common to not sing particular songs or say certain words (such as “Alleluia!”). Typically celebrations like marriages do not take place during Lent, although a kind priest made an exception for Casey and me 16 years ago (we celebrate our anniversary on March 18).

Before Lent begins, many cultures like to celebrate the opposite at that quiet season with lots of loud revelry. Hence Mardis Gras, which falls on “Fat Tuesday,” the day before Ash Wednesday. It’s good for the soul to feel all these different things in rhythms — the loud exuberance and then the quiet (followed by more loud celebration at the other end!). The seasons provide their own rhythms of quiet and exuberance too of course!

I have to admit I was feeling just slightly disappointed to not be home to celebrate any kind of Mardis Gras / Shrove Tuesday / Carnival type of thing here with our family (at the very least to eat pancakes for dinner, which is a tradition in many churches!) … but this sun. I think it’s doing the celebrating for all of us — here, we are reveling in all its glory just before we return for a last, long, intentional spell of meditation on the dark. The timing is appropriate, because of course winter is still here, and we are certainly not at all done with dark and stormy and dreary days. Lent will provide an opportunity to contemplate those topics again while we simultaneous get busy with some serious spring farm work (Lent, after all, does mean “spring”!).

I’ll be sure to add a fun photo from our little get away with perhaps a post-script if there’s anything noteworthy to share from our time in the mountains with other farmers. We look forward to seeing all your smiling faces again on Thursday! Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. Well, we’re back! And exhausted! (As usual!) The unofficial theme of this year’s gathering seemed to be all about finding balance, redefining success as a family farm business, and looking to the future — all things that resonate with us too right now. As we closed out the last session that I attended (all about the dynamics of farming and family relationships), I listened to old friends share from their heart about how this life has shaped their relationships — both the challenges and the benefits and all the growth that comes from both. I was moved to tears hearing their words, which reflect so much of our own experience. But my tears were also stemming from deep gratitude for our far-flung farmer friends, many of whom we have known for ten years now. We don’t see each other nearly often enough, but just knowing they are out there walking this path too keeps the connection present in our daily life. So much gratitude tonight! We will see you tomorrow!

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples — Your choice between Liberty & Goldrush apples
• Scarlet Turnip rapini — The first of this winter’s rapini! We mentioned this last week, and we are so excited to add it to the winter shares. To us, rapini is such a sure sign of the progressing season. And, it’s delicious! We use the word “rapini” to refer to the bolting shoots and blossoms of all brassica-family plants. Most brassicas are biennial plants, which mean that they have to over-winter before flowering (broccoli is a notable exception to this rule! One might think of it as the brassica that has been most carefully cultivated for its — LARGE! and early — rapini!). From now through spring, each of the brassicas we have in our fields now will take its turn shooting up from growth points and producing tender, delicious stalks and flower buds. Turnips always come first. You can eat these in many ways — they are often tender and sweet enough to be chopped into salad. Or, you can chop and throw in with your other cooking greens in the pan (which we often do). They are also wonderful when tossed with oil and laid in a single layer in a pan to roast at 425° until the stalk and leaves have browned and gotten crispy. Salt to taste and eat these with your fingers!
• Red Russian kale — I get to stand next to this gorgeous crop at its place in the CSA veggie line up (right at the beginning — its place of glory!). I love hearing the comments from folks about how amazing it has been. I concur.
• “Spaghetti” winter squash — I included directions on how to prepare this squash in last week’s newsletter if you missed it!
• Butternut winter squash
• Pie pumpkins — I included directions for these too!
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Leeks — As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this winter’s leeks have been more slender than we might sometimes expect (which is why we’re bunching them together more like large scallions). We are still using these in place of onions or leeks in every dish — starting our cooking process with that exquisite smell sensation of chopped leeks sauteing in butter (I’m sure there’s no better smell … except of course for ripe August blackberries hanging on hedges … or stinging nettles drying in the pantry … or … ). BUT! You might also try a different preparation that puts the leeks in a highlighted position. Try roasting them (whole, halved, or quartered) until they are crispy and cooked through (use butter or oil and salt of course!). Serve one on the side of each dinner plate or gracefully draped over the top of another dish. Eat these with your fingers. The whole thing is edible and outstanding.

~ ~ ~

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs! — $6/dozen. Our supply is still growing. Only half of our flock is laying yet (we started two batches of chicks last fall), so we look forward to having even more as we walk toward Spring!
• Pork — Roasts and ground pork are $8/lb; pork chops and hams are $12/lb.
• Lamb — We just loaded up the freezer with a whole new round of lamb! So we’ve got everything you might want! Roasts and ground lamb are $8/lb; chops are $12/lb.
• Ground beef — It’s baaaaaaaack! We have restocked our wonderful, amazing, beloved ground beef! The price this year is $8/lb (to match our other ground meats and to reflect the increase in price to us as we are using a different butcher).
• Beef CUTS! — We also had a quarter of this beef butchered into cuts! Yes, you’ve been asking for that!!!! Prices will be the same as our other meats: roasts $8/lb and steaks $12/lb. Come and see what we’ve got!
• Beef bones — Folks have been asking about bones too! Here’s a new batch for your beef bone broth! Get them while they last! $4/lb.

Yesterday we celebrated Imbolc here in our house by picking out and ordering some special seeds for the kids to grow in their own garden plots this year. Also known as Groundhog Day or Candlemas, February 2 seems to be an important moment in many Northern Hemisphere cultures as it approximately marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox — thus the halfway point in winter.

In this mild and temperate part of the world, I remark every year that Imbolc almost feels more like the end of winter. Really, that would be premature — snow (lots of it even) has fallen here after February 2 in at least one year. But it certainly marks a shift to a different kind of winter days. Days continue to lengthen and the world wakes up in slow but dramatic ways.

I love to mark those seasonal turns, and in this quiet time of year, the littlest signs can feel loud and exciting. I have to admit that in mid-summer’s abundance I don’t quite as readily notice the succession of changes until they take a turn toward fall. But now, each tiny marker is noted and celebrated. The daffodil greens that have already put out the first buds. The bright green leaves that are unfolding on the earliest of the Indian Plums. The first of the turnip rapini shooting up from their roots (we’ll pick the first of it for next week’s share!).

Our bird feeders have been busy places lately too. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many species in our yard at once as I have these recent weeks. Recently while I was cooking lunch, I counted more than ten different species on or around our feeders. I am still such an amateur birder than I have yet to positively identify all of them, but I’m working on it. I want to know more about who is a resident, who is coming, who is going, and so much more. The world feels very much alive on the farm right now — the vitality of the earth and its residents pushing us toward spring’s eventual arrival. Hoorah!

Enjoy this week’s newsletter!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Let’s talk about plastic bags & food storage … Our goal as CSA farmers is to deliver produce to you that will serve you well over your week of eating. That means helping you take it home in good condition and store it properly. For some of our vegetable items, plastic bags are incredibly useful in meeting both those goals. But, of course, plastic bags have their own challenges too.

We have received positive feedback over the years about the quality of our bags — many of our conscientious customers reuse them dozens and dozens of times before finally recycling them. Oh, hoorah! That warms our hearts to hear, and we are glad that a simple piece of packaging we provide can serve a longer term purpose in your home.

However, we also know that many of you would prefer to simply not bring plastic home at all. We are happy to help you meet that goal. If you would like us to fill your own bags (reused plastic or cloth or whatnot), just ask Casey at pick up for what item you’d like placed in there. He is happy to do this (although at peak times, you may have to wait some extra time). Another option is for you to simply empty the contents of one of our bags directly into your tote bag or basket and then return the bag to us. We are happy to reuse bags that have not yet left the store in this way!

Remember though that many vegetable items really do need to be stored in some kind of container in your fridge. Fridges have a drying element inside them (that’s what keeps the air circulating for best cooling and prevents frost build-up), and if you, for example, put carrots directly on a shelf without protection, they will shrivel and become rubbery with a few hours or days. It’s quite sad. Most other foods will do the same — tender greens can wilt to almost nothingness. So, we do recommend using something to contain your vegetables within your fridge — plastic bags that you reuse, a tupperware-type container, or a moist muslin bag (make sure it’s wet or else the same thing will happen).

While we’re talking about food storage, also beware of crushing greens in the bag. This is a sure fire way to have them get slimy and wilt sooner than they would if they were stored with space.

If you ever have any questions about how to best store your produce, just ask us! Since everything is harvested fresh for our CSA each week, we expect our produce to last at least the week that will pass before the next share. Most items will actually be good longer, but why wait? Eat those yummy veggies while they’re super fresh — what a joy and delight they are when they still have all the vibrancy of the field in them!

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Apples — Your choice between Liberty or Goldrush apples (or some of each!)
• “Spaghetti” winter squash — We love these squash so much. They make a simple meal and definitely can be a delicious substitute for spaghetti on the plate. Start by slicing your squash in half lengthwise and scraping out the seeds with a spoon. Then bake each half, cut-side down, on a baking sheet at 350°. Bake until a paring knife enters the skin without any resistance — 30-60 minutes, depending on the size of the squash. At this point, the skin will be browning and when you turn the squash over, the flesh will be loose enough to pull out in the “spaghetti” strands with a fork. I usually leave the squash on the pan cut-side down until I am ready to serve up, because it stays warm that way. Then, when I am ready to serve, I carefully hold each half and scrape out the flesh onto our plates. I might toss it with butter and salt or just top it with some kind of delicious stew-y dish — kale cooked with sausage and lots of butter, or a Ragu-style tomato sauce with lots of mushrooms and chard. Those are just ideas!
• Pie pumpkins — Contrary to what you might expect, a good pie pumpkin is usually less sweet than other kinds of winter squash. The goal of a pie pumpkin is to achieve flavor and smooth flesh that is balanced between moist and dry. These pumpkins fit the bill, and they make delicious flesh for using in all kinds of baked goods (including, yes, pumpkin pie!). We will often bake a pumpkin before we even know what we’re going to make, just so we have the cooked flesh available. It’s easy — just pop it on a pan whole (you may need to knock the stem off to fit it in your oven) and bake at 350° until a paring knife pierces the skin with no resistance at all. After I remove the pumpkin from the oven, I like to cut it in half to let it cool before putting it into the fridge. Once it’s cooled, the seeds and pulp will come out easily and the flesh can be peeled away from the skin. We love making pumpkin muffins around our house, and here is our favorite recipe (it’s grain-free!). But most standard cookbooks like The Joy of Cooking have quick bread recipes calling for pumpkin. Pumpkin bread with chocolate chips is pretty divine.
• Mustard greens
• Red Russian kale
• Green chard
• Turnips
• Parsnips
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Leeks

~ ~ ~

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs! — They’re sizing up! The price is back to our normal $6/dozen. We only feed our hens certified organic feed, and they are raised on pasture. These eggs are the best of the best, rich in Omega-3 fatty acids.
• Pork — Roasts and ground pork are $8/lb; pork chops and hams are $12/lb.
• Lamb — Roasts and ground lamb are $8/lb; chops are $12/lb.
• Beef — More beef coming soon!

Casey spent a good chunk of this last weekend (Friday through Sunday), building a new field implement for the farm. He got the idea from some farmers in our area — we don’t know them personally, but he saw one of these in use in their fields and thought it was one of the best ideas he’d ever seen.

Now that we don’t have employees, we’re certainly aware of finding new ways to make the best possible use of our limited time in the field — what can we do to be more efficient harvesters, planters, weeders? How can we do this work with as few interruptions as possible in our progress? How can we take the best possible care of all the bodies involved in that field work? Brilliant innovations are welcome on any farm, but especially a small family-operated farm like our own.

So, Casey began with an existing trailer that we used to use as part of our former milking operation. It has also been used for other various farm-y purposes, but in recent months it has mostly been sitting and waiting for a new role out here. Ten years into our farm, we definitely appreciate the high value of farm equipment that can evolve with our operation — that is flexible enough to serve multiple purposes over many years. Trailers certainly fall into that category — they can serve as the home for a mobile milking set-up, the chassis for rolling chicken houses, and more.

After cleaning off the trailer, he began the building of our new tool. The kids were interested in watching the progress of this step, which mostly involved cutting and hammering wood. From what I can remember, Friday afternoon was stupendously gorgeous outside, and the kids ran back and forth between the house (where I was cleaning the kitchen) and the pole barn (where Casey was hard at work building) and our yard (where they climbed on their climbing dome and played with animal toys in the grass).

On Saturday, the kids were able to pitch in, as the new field tool needed a coat of white paint to help deflect the warm summer sun. It can be hard to remember at this time of year, when the sun just feels gooder than good, but in the summer it can become quite oppressive with its powerful heat. We sacrificed a pair of Rusty’s pants to the effort to have two young people help with the painting. He’ll outgrow them in two more minutes anyway.

On Sunday afternoon, Casey finished up a few more details with some metal and more wood. Those last pieces of the project required some major lifting and bending to get it all put together, and Casey unfortunately felt some of that work in his back afterward. But the kids delighted in seeing the tool take its final shape. And, after a few hours of work, Casey hooked up our new implement to the back of the tractor and drove it to my dad’s shop to fill up the tires with air. Tires always deflate on our farm, and we wanted to make sure we’d get maximum performance out of our new tool when we finally pulled it into the fields this week.

What’s the new field implement? I’m sure you’re curious by now (I hope you are anyway!). Maybe you could already figure it out in that photo, but let’s pull back so you can see it in its full glory. Look — the farm tool whose construction so excited the kids:

It’s a MOBILE PLAYHOUSE! As with all the best playhouses, it’s scaled to kid size. Casey and I can’t quite stand up inside, but we’re amazed at how well it fits their bodies. And perhaps also like the best playhouses, it’s fairly simply constructed, allowing the kids to fill in so many details with their imaginations. Casey built a little folding table and two little benches inside:

I can see the house now, parked out in the field near where we were harvesting kale and chard for the CSA this afternoon. It will move around, depending on which projects we’re working on and where. Now the kids have a little “home base” in the fields — a place where they can eat their snacks, draw, store their extra clothes and toys, and get in out of the rain and sun when needed. Today’s afternoon weather was so incredibly mild and comfortable (no wind or rain and in the mid-50s) that they mostly rambled around the fields, but they returned every now and then for snacking or to hang up their coat inside on a hook.

Honestly, days like today are not when we need this little shelter, but there will be a day when Casey and I once again have to harvest for the CSA in the rain. And, then that hot summer sun will return too. It really will!

And, if you’re wondering about the details of our little farm life — the kids and I definitely don’t spend all day in the fields with Casey. This time of year, we have two afternoons per week that the kids regularly spend either working alongside us or just playing while we work (one of those days, I stay inside to do farm paperwork). In the summer, we’ll probably shift our time on the farm to the mornings, and perhaps add more more spontaneous other projects and work times. For a three and six year old, that feels like about the right amount of time to be outside with the option to participate in farm work (or to play about). Besides, we have other things to do too — our school work in the mornings, our homeschooling co-op on Tuesday afternoons, the CSA pick-up on Thursday afternoons … life is full!

But, as a family farm, having our kids truly on the farm is a priority to us. Already, we are amazed at what they know about this place and its work, just from growing up here. We consider immersion in our farm life to be a vital part of our homeschooling experience (along with more traditional looking book learning). Eventually, the kids will make their own choices, and if they choose a different path, we hope that these early experiences will instill in them (at the very least) a strong work ethic and a deep love of the natural world. A love that comes with understanding of the complexities of natural systems and how they affect everything else. From there, they can go almost anywhere in the world.

I’m not sure if we have any other big changes we want to make in our farm’s system of tools and infrastructure this year. The playhouse was a fun and spontaneous project that felt just right for completing at this time of the winter. But more and more our work will be occupied with the usual prepare-for-spring stuff — we’ve already sowed lots of flats of fava beans, peas, broccoli and more. Today after harvest, we weeded strawberry plants growing in one of our field houses. I’m also working on my winter work — taxes, paperwork, preparing for certification work, etc. We’re finding that we’re both getting lots done in dribs and drabs — a few bills paid here; a few flats sowed here; a few feet of weeding there. Those dribs and drabs can be effective!

We hope that you too are finding some fun spontaneous projects and/or getting much needed work done in your own life!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Liberty apples
• Marina de Chioggia winter squash — In my routine of making Very Simple Soups with our chicken broth, today I made a quick squash soup with some Marina that had previously been cooked in the oven and was in our fridge. I removed all the cooked flesh from the seeds and the skin and added it to a saucepan with plenty of broth, some butter, some salt, chopped garlic, and a little turmeric and salt. I let it simmer on the back burner while I was cooking the rest of our meal and then pureed it with my hand blender just before serving. It was a delightful addition to our lunch!
• Butternut squash — You could also make a simple and quick butternut soup using chopped, peeled cubes of raw squash. If you put them in a pot at the beginning of cooking the rest of a meal, they would cook quickly.
• Brussels sprouts OR cabbage — Casey harvested the very last of this winter’s Brussels sprout harvest (he couldn’t even get to these at one point earlier this winter because they ended up on the other side of us across some flood waters) — what is left is a small amount and we will limit how much each household can have for this share (we only do this in rare instances). We look forward to a more abundant Brussels sprouts harvest this coming fall.
• Kale
• Chard
• Sweet potatoes — An important note about sweet potato storage — do not put them in your fridge! Instead, remove them from any kind of plastic bag and put them in a dry, warmish place until you are ready to cook them. Great sweet potato recipes abound, but as always our family favors the simplest preparation: I peel them and roast them at 425° in butter, stirring regularly so that all sides get coated in butter as they cook. I roast them until they are crispy outside and soft inside. Avoid overloading the pan, or they will steam rather than roast!!!!
• Sunchokes — These funny looking roots grow at the base of a surprising looking plant — a sunflower! Sunchokes are sometimes known as “Jerusalem Artichokes,” which is useful to know if you look up recipes, but they are neither artichokes nor from Jerusalem. They are native to North America, in fact. As a food, they have many interesting properties. They store well through the winter, and yet they are not starchy like a potato. Instead, their structure is crisper and contains a sugar that apparently doesn’t affect blood sugar levels as dramatically as other root vegetables do. Consequently, you can (and should!) eat these raw. Our favorite way to eat them is to clean them well (cutting the nobs apart and scrubbing can help with this process) and then shred or chop them fine and make a winter cole slaw type of salad. Adding cabbage or carrots can stretch it out and make the color and flavor more complex. Sometimes, if we want to turn our salad into a meal, we’ll also stir in canned tuna or cooked chicken meat. Sunchokes also roast up beautifully, and I love their slightly chewy and crispy flavor after roasting. Unfortunately, Casey and I both experience a slight tummy ache after eating cooked sunchokes, which is a somewhat common challenge for people (some lucky people don’t have that experience at all, however! If you are in that category, enjoy your roasted sunchokes in my stead! They are so good!).
• Rutabaga — Although it looks like a turnip in shape, rutabagas are actually more closely related to kale (whereas turnips are more closely related to mustard greens). The flavor reflects that lineage too — rutabaga flesh is super mild and suitable to lots of uses without affecting soups or stews with a strong flavor. I like to peel and chop rutabaga to add in place of (or in addition to) potatoes. I made a delicious simple creamy rutabaga soup last week using our chicken broth and a little salt. These are also good just eaten raw in “stick” form — perfect for putting on a raw veggie platter with carrots and dipping in hummus or your favorite dip!
• Turnips
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Garlic

~ ~ ~

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs! — The supply is still growing and so are the size of the eggs. But we do have little pullet eggs for sale in limited quantity. The price is $5/dozen while they are still small.
• Stewing hens — This may be our last week for this winter’s stewing hen supply. The price remains $3.50/lb.
• Pork — Roasts and ground pork are $8/lb; pork chops and hams are $12/lb. Casey has been making the kids a very simple “breakfast sausage” from our ground pork. He thaws a package in the fridge and then mixes it with some chopped sage, diced garlic, honey and salt. Little patties cook quickly for a tasty winter breakfast!
• Lamb — Roasts and ground lamb are $8/lb; chops are $12/lb.
• Beef — We sent a steer to the butcher this week! More beef coming soon!

Once again this year, I am reminded that one unique aspect of winter life on the farm is talking. Connecting and talking with other farmers in ways that we don’t really have time to do during the growing season (and neither do they!). I mentioned in last week’s newsletter sitting down to chat at length with the folks from LETumEAT. This afternoon, we hosted a group of farmers from all across the valley who have been participating in a “Winter Farming” workshop.

Casey gave the group a tour of our farm, in all its present winter glory (the return of rising flood waters included!). We always wonder at what others see when they look at our winter fields, because — well — it can be hard to make sense of what’s going on out here. Summer fields are relatively easy to “take in” — rows and rows of growing vegetables at various stages of maturity paint the perfect picture of a classic market garden. But in winter, we nurture and care for plants that grow much slower (cold + lack of sunlight). Because of that, we go into winter with quite a lot of our ground planted to hardy vegetables of some age. But some of those veggies will basically just hang out in our fields until late winter or spring. Tiny turnip plants will make quite unimpressive rows of scraggly greens until early February when they begin to lengthen and throw out their tasty buds and new leaves — that’s the gold for us, and we harvest it almost as soon as it arrives, knowing that those late winter and early spring crops come and go more swiftly than you might imagine after so many weeks and months of waiting.

In other rows, such as our chard and kale plants, we bring older more mature plants into winter, knowing full well that the leaves on the plants in November will probably never be harvested. Instead, the will become the shelter for the younger leaves that will weather all the storms and frosts of winter. Then, as those leaves grow, we will pick them (moving aside the now bedraggled leaves that have covered them).

Yes, the landscape of our farm looks profoundly different and quite a bit more mysterious right now. Even sweet roots like parsnips hide beneath the mud, leaving almost no signs of their presence above (their greens having been frost killed weeks ago).

So, we shared that scene with farmers today with a sense that what we see and value might not translate. That’s a perennial challenge with transferring information about the farm to others. So much of what happens out here takes quite a lot of patience and time to see and understand. Certainly one can appreciate the broad picture of the farm with a quick walk through, but one won’t notice the particular winter weeds that are growing at the base of the mustard greens or that some of the Red Russian kale plants have begun to divide and grow smaller leaves (an early sign that rapini is coming soon!).

I think that this phenomenon of patience and time in one place is perhaps the defining element of our experience on the farm — that experience of seeing everything come more and more into focus over time. How is it that we are still noticing new things in this place where we have lived and worked for ten years? And, yet, we do. New patterns become visible that help us understand prior seasons. We identify a songbird for the first time that has probably been visiting our yard for all ten years. The complexity of the place becomes more and more real, keeping us humble even as we grow in our understanding.

And, winter is definitely a time requiring extra patience and time to understand — trees bare of leaves stand stark, asking you to learn them again from their shape and their bark. Weeds become greener than certain vegetables in the fields, asking you to see abundance in new forms.

Casey once said something wise to a then newly hired employee. Casey himself doesn’t remember saying it, but the employee did and related it to us years later. He said: “I’m not a good teacher, but the farm is. Pay attention, and you’ll learn.” Yes, and yes, and yes. The farm has been our teacher for ten years now, and although I miss the days of having human mentors to guide us, the farm has taught us over and over and over again about this place, its life, and how to do our work.

Which is why, although we enjoy talking with other farmers (and think it is a critical piece of this whole farming-in-community-experience), we now take those experiences with a grain of salt. We want to share our experience, yes. We want to hear other people’s experiences, yes! Those connections allow us to grow and understand our experiences in totally new ways that can be transformative in profound ways. In fact, we look forward to having more such conversations as winter continues and we continue with the winter talking work. But those conversations are certainly most fruitful with the foundation of the first-hand work and immersion. For us, a little bit of talk in the winter (plus a few good books and magazine articles) can be enough to propel us into our next season with new ideas and energy for how to work through the perennial challenges of this beautiful work!

And, while I’m speaking of conversations and connecting, I have to mention what a joy it was to reconnect with all of you last week at pick-up. We love the farm; we love our work; we love sharing it with you. We also love all the conversations we get to have with you all about other parts of life. It’s a special treat to simultaneously get to share our harvest and also step out of our normal farm-focused life to check in with our wider community about all the projects you are working on. We love hearing about the lessons you are learning, your challenges and joys. Those hours at the pick-up are a highlight of our week, and we look forward to doing it again tomorrow!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Goldrush apples — These apples won our apple variety trial tasting that we hosted at our fall open house. They are great for eating, with a crisp, strong and tangy sweet flavor. They are also wonderful for baking or cooking. They are our apple of choice if we want to make a pie or tart.
• Purple-top and scarlet turnips — Turnips that are red outside! These serve two purposes in our winter fields. We can pick them now for turnips to eat, or wait and enjoy the earliest rapini of the year from these plants. We try to do a little of both.
• Chard
• Mustard greens
• Kale
• Butternut squash
• Marina di Chioggia and Crown Pumpkin winter squash
• Carrots
• Parsnips
• Potatoes — I blew Rusty’s mind this week by roasting some really great potatoes. I know, such a simple food! But I feel like this winter I’ve truly mastered the art of roasting (perhaps it helps that I’m less interrupted in my cooking than in recent years of babies and toddlers crying regularly!). For the potatoes, I peeled them, then cut them into 1/2 inch chunks and roasted them in a pan with plenty of butter at 375°. I stirred frequently so that all sides of the potato got coated with butter and got crispy brown on the outside, just as the insides were getting deliciously soft. I roasted parsnips at the same time, using the same method (but with smaller pieces, since parsnips are denser than potatoes). We enjoyed it all, but Rusty has requested the potatoes for every meal since.
• Leeks

~ ~ ~

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs — NOT QUITE YET! More and more eggs get laid every day as our hens mature!
• Stewing hens — We still have stewing hens for sale — get them while they last! $3.50/lb. I’ve been enjoying making very simple soups while the rest of our meal is cooking. I fill a small sauce pot with finely chopped, peeled root veggies and cover with chicken stock and simmer until the rest of the meal is ready. Then I add some butter (because fat is yummy) and salt and puree with my hand blender. This soup can be made with any kind of root veggies and makes a great side to winter meals. Soup is so warming, and starting with the base of a delicious chicken stock makes it super easy to accomplish a quick soup!
• Pork — Roasts and ground pork are $8/lb; pork chops and hams are $12/lb. We find that pork goes especially well with all kinds of greens. We’ll often cook a roast in our crock pot (we prefer to do this without adding any liquid so that the meat caramelizes and retains all its flavor). Then we chop the cooked meat and throw it into the pan as we finish cooking greens. With a little tasty goat cheese and sauerkraut over the top (and perhaps a cup of soup on the side), this makes a warming winter meal all on its own!
• Lamb — Roasts and ground lamb are $8/lb; chops are $12/lb.
• Beef — We are still temporarily out of beef, but I wanted to give the update that we are sending an animal to the butcher next week! It will still be a couple of weeks for the beef to hang and be processed, but more ground beef (and perhaps some cuts too!) will be on their way soon!

 

Hello, friends! Oh, how good it has been this week to re-enter our usual farm rhythms after a restorative period of time off. As much as we appreciated (and needed) our break from the CSA, we have been smiling all day as we harvested this week’s share. And, I certainly feel a welcome return now to this weekly practice of writing about the farm for you all.

Yes, the CSA begins again this week! Tomorrow! Thus, beginning the next season of our life here on the farm — the part of our winter that is less focused on the internal work of dark December and instead begins to unfold toward the eventuality of spring. Of course, the last two days have been quite the return of dark, gloomy, WET weather, making it hard to remember that we’re moving swiftly toward that lighter season again. But, we really truly are. Signs of it are all over the farm already, including in the fact that we begin again feeding you, our community, on a weekly basis.

So, welcome back! Or, welcome for the first time! We are so glad to have you. Just yesterday I had the pleasure of sitting down with folks from a local food project called LETumEAT. They’d like to feature us as “Feeders” on their growing website, so we sat and chat over tea, each sharing the story of their food adventures. I was excited to hear about what they’re working on, but it was also with deep pleasure and gratitude that I shared our story. I couldn’t help but express repeatedly our family’s amazing gratitude for the community that has sustained this farm for ten years now. It was a perfect way to reflect on our farm’s history as we start this new season (our eleventh!). And, again, THANK YOU.

We think that this winter will be delightful in many ways. This winter has already been delightful in many ways. Our family has had great adventures over our break, as we explore our local landscape in its more barren, wet, muddy version of itself. But, this is also a sweet season for local eating. And, by sweet, I mean sweet. I have to admit, sometimes when Casey and I are slogging in the mud to pick kale in January or fretting about how the spring hard weeks will go, I question the whole “seasonal local eating” thing. Why are any of us doing this crazy thing when there is food in the stores regardless of our efforts?

Many reasons. The fun of it. The challenge. The connection to our place. But I want to refer back again to it being sweet. Literally. How do all these hardy vegetables manage to maintain their shapes in the midst of winter’s cold? They do it by getting sweeter. And denser in the process. The result are vegetables that you just cannot recreate by shipping foods from other climates out-of-season. To us, kale in winter is an almost entirely different culinary experience than kale in summer. The flavor and texture are both fundamentally different, and Casey and I come to believe that the state of winter-grown vegetables meet some needs in us too. By getting sweeter, the kale serves its own purposes, but I also feel like that kale is what my body craves during these dark, cold months. It doesn’t crave the greens that might be grown in Mexico right now; it craves these greens in our fields. The greens that are experiencing, and responding to, the very same seasonal elements that I am experiencing and responding to with my body as I harvest.

Likewise, the proliferation of comforting sweet roots and storage vegetables feels like exactly the right thing to bring to our table when dinner is eaten after the early dusk — roasted sweet potatoes or parsnips elicit “hoorahs” from us all as we hunker down for winter evenings of reading books on the couch before going to bed early.

We hope that you too will find yourself embracing the season through foods this winter. Ponder how each food represents this time. We’ll see that even that kale I mentioned will change as days lengthen — buds will appear as it prepares to flower in the spring, and we will enjoy those tender delights too (we call them “rapini”). Winter eating is always an adventure — a fun one!

2016 brings other adventures to our farm as well. This year we have made the decision to operate the farm with no hired labor — this will be the first time since 2008 that we haven’t had any employees working alongside us! I must say that there is something truly wonderful to know that Casey and I will be personally harvesting everything that we share with you this year. I’m sure I’ll return to this thought again and again as we find our way into this new reality of our farm. I’m sure we’ll have much to learn.

For now, we will continue going on cold weather hikes with the kids on the weekends, homeschooling and farming mid-week, and meeting with you in joy every Thursday. We look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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First CSA payments due! A reminder to everyone to be sure to give us your first CSA payment of the year tomorrow (if you have not already mailed it to us). We accept cash or checks. You can pay in one lump sum now or just one-fifth. If you pay in five payments over the year, the next payment will be due by March 17. I will send an email statement and reminder.

Pick up reminders: CSA pick-up is open from 2 to 7 pm every Thursday. Please bring your own tote bags or baskets to our McMinnville storefront to pick up your vegetables. You can find us off of the 2nd St parking lot between Davis and Evans St! As a reminder, we’ll have other items available for sale as well (see the list of what’s available below!).

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Liberty apples — Apples and peanut butter have been the favorite snack in our house this winter — it’s a classic combination! The Liberty apples are definitely one of our kids’ favorite.
• Butternut winter squash — I have heard of people cooking these whole and then using the cooked flesh (which is how we prepare our other large squash, which I will discuss in a moment), but we almost always like to peel, chop and then roast our Butternut squash. We usually cook it in two different rounds, making one squash last for two meals. I’ll start the first day by cutting the top off of the bell end and peeling and roasting just that part of the squash. I put the remainder in a bag in the fridge overnight for use the next day in a similar fashion (normally we don’t recommend storing squash in the fridge, but once it is cut, it is a good idea to keep it fresh that way). I like to use a paring knife to peel, but I’ve seen Casey using a veggie peeler with good success too. We like to chop the Butternut into relatively small bite-size chunks and roast at high heat (425°), turning regularly, until crispy. These are like candy.
• Marina di Chioggia winter squash & Crown Pumpkins — These are two similar winter squash (they are in the same “family” and offer similar cooking and eating options). Because of their large size and relative challenge to cut/peel (because of the bumpy skin), we almost always bake these whole. I wash the skin again and remove the stem by bumping it on the edge of the counter (I have to do this to get the squash to fit in the oven!). Then I place it on a baking tray and bake at 350° until a paring knife slides in with absolutely no resistance. Once the squash is cooked, I pull it out and let it cool on the counter. If it’s meal time, I’ll cut slices out and remove the seeds and serve them hot. Otherwise, I might just put the cooked squash in the fridge for use later. We eat the cooked squash in many different ways over several days — we might make some squash muffins or bread (or even a little pumpkin pie!), but mostly we take out slices, remove seeds and reheat them by pan frying or roasting at high heat until warm through and slightly crispy. With butter and salt, this is quite the treat.
• Mustard greens — Mustard greens are spicy when raw (this are not the greens for putting in your juicer, unless you like drinking spicy things!), but their flavor dramatically changes when cooked. They still taste like mustards, but without the heat. We have always loved pairing mustards with pork products — cooking it with bacon or ham. We also love them cooked with butter and a little broth and served with fried eggs for breakfast.
• Green chard
• Red Russian kale
• Turnips — Our favorite way to eat turnips is easy — peel, slice and eat raw. Tonight at dinner, Casey served turnip slices and carrots sticks with homemade mayonnaise for dipping. The fresh, crispy flavors are wonderful!
• Carrots — We’ve been eating loads of carrot sticks this winter (second favorite snack after apples). I always peel our carrots before slicing. To me, that simple act elevates the results from good to superb.
• Parsnips — I also prefer to peel our parsnips before cooking. Often there are funny looking bits on the skin that peel right off with a couple of swipes with the peeler. Any bigger parts that seem in need of trimming, I’ll take off with a paring knife so that when I go to chop the parsnip, I’m left with just beautiful white root flesh. I’m sure no one would be surprised to learn that we mostly eat our parsnips roasted. This winter, I feel like I’ve really mastered the art of roasting parsnips. Root vegetables don’t all cook in the same fashion — they benefit from slightly different kinds of treatment. I have found that we really enjoy the parsnips when they are roasted for a little bit longer at a slightly more moderate heat (375°) with lots of butter and lots of stirring during cooking. Eventually they will start to turn golden brown while the inside turns soft. It’s quite a transformation from the woody-looking, ugly root that often comes out of the ground!
• Potatoes
• Leeks — What this year’s leeks lack in size they make up for in flavor. As much as possible, I start our meals with some chopped leeks frying in butter. That particular smell just delights the whole house and gets of all us ready to eat dinner.

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs — NONE AVAILABLE QUITE YET! We have a new, young flock of layers that are literally just beginning to lay. We’re getting five eggs a day right now, with more to come soon. On the upside, with all these layers being young and fresh, once egg production begins, it should hold steady through to the end of this year.
• Stewing hens — In related news, we have stewing hens for sale! Our family has been eating these at least once a week all winter. We stew them in the crock pot all day and then pick the meat off the bones for dinner. It’s incredibly flavorful and tender. If you prefer the crispiness of a roasted chicken, we’ve found that we really enjoy taking the stewed chicken, parting it out and then putting it under the broiler until the skin and meat start to get crispy. As far as the remaining stock, that stuff is pure gold in our house. We used to try to make soups, but we realized that we love it so much that we just want to drink it plain. So many of our meals this winter have been paired with a little cup of broth for us to drink as well (this was especially as our family was visited by all kinds of viruses and the like during the holidays). Or, we’ll add it to our greens as they are cooking to speed up the process. What broth we don’t use the first day, we store in a jar in the fridge for use later.
• Pork — We have all kinds of fresh pork cuts in the freezer, along with some no nitrate-added bacon and hams! Roasts and ground pork are $8/lb; pork chops and bacons/hams are $12/lb.
• Lamb — We have assorted cuts. Roasts and ground lamb are $8/lb; chops are $12/lb.
• Beef — We are temporarily out of our classic ground beef staple! We have more beef animals that gaining weight on the farm right now, and we will restock the ground beef when they are ready.