Oakhill Organics

Meet us at our downtown Mac storefront for delicious eating in 2015!

It’s here!!!!! This is the final week of our 2014 Vegetable CSA season. We still have two more opportunities for you to stock up on delicious seasonal veggies for your holiday events and winter eating (see “Holiday Harvest” info below), but there will be no more CSA pick-ups again until 2015.

Everyone here on the farm is very excited about our 2015 plans. It feels good to be mixing things up, improving how we distribute our yummy foods, and adding a new enterprise (the goat milk dairy dream is universally popular around these parts). But, it also feels good to be closing up shop from this season. We opened 2014 with the farm theme of “maintenance” — our primary goal was to catch up with ourselves, tie up loose ends, take care of everything and everyone in the best possible ways (including ourselves). Every season has its vagaries and surprises, but looking back, it’s clear that we met that goal. Smiles abounded most of the season, which is always the best sign of our farm’s success. We grew a lot of amazing food. We continued growing into our role as stewards of 100+ acres of beautiful Grand Island farmland. Truly a satisfying year.

And, now, we will take our pause. Advent is right around the corner, and even as we look toward 2015, we still know we need this moment of rest in the annual rhythm of our life. The darkness and the cold naturally bring introspection into our lives. You’d hardly know in popular culture, but in the liturgical calendar Advent is a penitential season (the counterpart to Lent in the calendar) — a season of waiting and preparing ourselves for what is to come. A time to take stock of who we are, where we are, where we are headed. It’s not always a comfortable time of year, in terms of the hardships outside our door or the inner work that needs to be done. Already, I have found myself chafing against the forced rest of the season. After a long beautiful glorious warm season, spent running around outside with the kids, I have found myself annoyed with fall’s weather and our household’s rounds of colds. Nonetheless, I can also feel myself slowly building up reserves again, feeling those places that were stretched thin by the activity of summer starting to renew themselves amidst those hours spent reading on the couch with sick kids. Truly every season brings something necessary to our lives!

In that spirit, I want to share with you one of my favorite poems as we walk into even darker days. The tone of this is in the spirit of these short days, when we may feel a bit sadder or lonesome than in the brilliance of summer. Plus, the geese are back, filling the air with their calls. Here you go:

Wild Geese ~ Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Peace to you all as take your own breaks this coming winter. May the lights of friendship and family fill your hearts as we wait for the sun to return. We wish you a very merry holiday season, followed by a happy new year! And, then we are excited to welcome you to our new space as we all begin 2015 together! I can promise you that there will be many delicious vegetables (and more!) awaiting you!

(And, I should add here that although the next month and a half will feel restful, we also have a lot of fun projects on our “to do” lists: greenhouse construction, storefront build-out, dairy start-up! Oh my! But there will be plenty of sitting by the fire in the dark too, because this season is full of such things.)

As always, thank you for being a part of our farm. Feeding your family is an honor. Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Sign-up now for 2015! Our first CSA pick-up of 2015 will be on January 15!!!! (Yes, we are changing to THURSDAY pick-up.) If you haven’t filled out your paperwork for 2015 yet, we invite you to do so soon! You can bring your form to our final pick-up this week, or you can mail it to us at our P.O. Box.

Not in our CSA yet? You are welcome to sign-up now too! We would be happy to have you!

Need more time to consider your options? That’s fine! There is plenty of room, but we hope to hear from you within the coming weeks so that we can best plan for 2015.

Need the info and form again? I included a lot of info in last week’s newsletter. Or you can download the info and form here: 2015OakhillCSACommitment (click to download the file). We will also have hard copies at pick-up again this week.

Want more info about our farm and the new offerings? Take some time with the info on our website. I’ve spent many hours this last week updating it and adding content, so you’re likely to learn something new! (More updating to come too, so keep checking back.)

Have specific questions? Email us: farm (at) oakhillorganics (dot) com. If you prefer to talk to a person, you can call me at 503-474-7661, but I warn you that you may hear screaming children in the background! Ha!

Want some veggies to get you through the break period? Order veggies from our Holiday Harvest! See below!

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Thanksgiving Holiday Harvest info! This is a long-standing tradition of our farm, to offer the opportunity for members to order extra food, which we will carefully custom harvest and bring into town for you to pick-up. You can order food for your holiday meal or just to store for eating during our CSA break time! Our first Holiday Harvest will be next Wednesday, November 26 (the day before Thanksgiving). The actual pick-up location is to-be-determined — somewhere in downtown Mac. I will email you the details after you place your order. Here’s how it will work:

You look over our availability list below and make a list of the items and quantities you’d like to order. Email us your order by 7 pm on Tuesday, November 25. (Email is farm (at) oakhillorganics (dot) com) Wednesday morning, we will carefully harvest and gather your order and bring it into town 2-4 pm for you to pick up (again, exact location is TBD). You can pay for your veggies with cash or check.

This is also a great opportunity to give some of our grains and nuts a try! Find out more info and see recipe ideas for flour here. Find out more about our walnuts here.

Items available for order (this is the Holiday Harvest list — scroll down for the usual list of CSA veggies):

• Salad mix — A mix of the hardy salad greens in our field. $7/lb
• Brussels sprouts — Order by the lb. $3.50/lb
• Cabbage — Order by the each. We will weigh for price. $2/lb
• Kale — Order by the bunch. $3/bunch
• Collards — Order by the bunch. $3/bunch
• Chard — Order by the bunch. $3/bunch
• Parsley — Order by the bunch. $2/bunch
• Leaf celery — Order by the bunch. $2/bunch
• Kohlrabi — Order by the each. They are large! $1/lb
• Carrots — Order by the lb. $2/lb
• Beets — Order by the lb. $1.50/lb
• Sunchokes — Order by the lb. $2.50/lb
• Celery root — Order by the lb. $2.50/lb
• Potatoes (Yukon Golds) — Order by the lb. $2.50/lb
• Parsnips — Order by the lb. $2/lb
• Apples — Order by the each. We will weigh for price $3/lb
• Walnuts — In shell. $5/lb
• Oat flour — Order by the lb. $5/lb
• Corn flour — Order by the lb. $5/lb

We’ll have a second Holiday Harvest opportunity on December 19. A few days prior, I will send out an email and post a list on our blog (and do a little Facebook posting too). It will be a fun moment to touch base amidst all of our busy holiday celebrations! Plus, you can stock up on good food again!

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Brussels sprouts
• Peppers — These are for sure the last of the season. When the very cold weather showed up on the forecast, Casey and Jasper went out and harvested the last of the peppers, knowing that the plants would be done. And, they are! (It is November after all!)
• Pie pumpkin or Delicata squash — Your choice between these two items, either of which makes for delicious seasonal eating! Winter squash has been a staple of our diet lately, making an appearance at least once/day in some form (pumpkin muffins, pureed squash, Delicata rings …). To me, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as squash on these very cold days.
• Rainbow chard
• Parsley
• Kohlrabi — Be prepared; these kohlrabi are large. We grow this variety for winter storage, and surprisingly it is also the most delicious kohlrabi we’ve ever tasted. The hardest part of eating these giants is the peeling and slicing. A large chef knife is useful. I usually hack off a chunk and then peel it with a paring knife. Our favorite ways to eat kohlrabi? Sliced and peeled as a snack (great for dipping in your parsley pesto!). Sauteed in liberal amounts of butter until soft and then pureed (so good!). Chopped and added to brothy soups (we made a turkey soup this weekend that featured kohlrabi, carrots, onions, and chard — so satisfying!). Chopped fine and tossed with a creamy dressing to make a unique winter slaw (this is probably our all time favorite way to eat kohlrabi; add chopped chicken or canned tuna to make it a meal!).
• Parsnips
  
• Garlic

We enjoyed a lovely weekend here on the farm! Dottie checked on the chickens.

Phew! What a weekend! I spent a lot of time on the computer, organizing and working through details for our 2015 season. Casey and I spent many hours in [often interrupted] conversation last week hammering out how exactly we’re going to do things. Because, as I said last week, change is in the air.

After we figured it out, I took the time this weekend to write you all a letter explaining the changes and organizing it all into a sign-up form! I also began the process of updating the other information on our website to help folks learn more about all these other enterprises on our farm that will now be available to everyone (I have the animal information updated and will work on the crops information this week. I also wrote a new page sharing our story with folks who might not know all of it!) You can download our 2015 season letter and form in a Word document here (click link to download):

2015OakhillCSACommitment

Casey will also have printed versions of the letter and sign-up form for folks at pick-up. We are so excited to share all of our news with everyone and hope you will take time to read it. We welcome 2015 CSA Commitment Forms as soon as this week (if you’re ready, go for it!).

In the meantime, here is the same text from the letter for you to read through easily on our website now if you prefer (I think this counts as my newsletter for this week!):

Dear friends,

Prepare yourself: 2015 (our tenth season!) is going to be an awesome year for our farm. We are unveiling a new improved CSA program that will bring together all the best components of everything we’ve done so far! Much of this experience will be familiar to everyone, with a few tweaks that we believe will put smiles on everyone’s faces and put new delicious farm foods on many tables.

One awesome CSA program ~ Back to multiple share sizes & flexibility

First, of all, we will once again have one CSA program, with one pick-up per week. Everyone involved will have access to our full range of food products. Here’s how it will work:

The base of our program will be our successful and popular 45-week long vegetable CSA. In 2015, we’re going back to offering share sizes and flexibility. When you sign up, you choose your share size based on the number of “items” you want to select each week from our harvest offerings. An “item” would be a standard and useful unit for that veggie: for example, a plentiful bunch of kale, 1.5 lbs carrots, a cabbage, 1.5 lbs tomatoes, 2-3 apples, etc. When you come to pick-up each week, you will assemble your own share based on what we have available and the number of items you have purchased. We plan to bring enough variety each week that folks can find what they are looking for.

Improved pick-up location in downtown Mac!

Our pick-up will be at a new improved location — this is still in the works, but it is most likely going to be a storefront space in downtown McMinnville. We will provide exact details in your confirmation materials. This will be spot that we will be able to tailor for our use and make extra comfy and inviting for you, our members. Pick-up will be Thursday afternoons, from 2 – 7 pm (a longer window to accommodate more people coming through and folks with varying schedules).

Access to other farm products too! Eggs, grains, nuts & extra fruit!

In addition to finding your vegetables, each week at pick-up we will also have other foods available for purchase: eggs, oat and corn flours, walnuts, and extra fruit (for folks who like to buy this in bulk quantities). On your sign-up form, we’ve asked you to estimate your interest in these extra items so that we can plan how much to produce and bring each week.

Opportunity to order bulk veggies and fruit too (or do u-pick)!

You will also have the opportunity to order ahead of time larger quantities of vegetables for putting up or storage — we will include an availability list with our weekly newsletter email each week; place an order and we’ll bring it to pick-up! Or, if you prefer, during the summer we’ll offer some u-pick opportunities on the farm itself (at a reduced price per lb) — a unique opportunity to pick your canning foods in an organic environment.

Meat available for purchase in 2015

We will also have pork, lamb and beef available for you to purchase for your freezer. We will sell the pork and lamb in halves and whole portions, and the beef in quarters, halves, and wholes. We will also have batches of roasting chickens available throughout the season and turkeys for Thanksgiving. All of these animals will require advance notice with a deposit — priority for purchase will be given to CSA members. See the sign-up form for more details and our website for more information about our livestock operation and the meat.

Goat milk possibly too!

Finally, we are still working through the details on this one, but aim to have goat milk available for purchase at pick-up starting in late spring. More information will come as this enterprise develops.

A Full Diet experience for all!

So, in 2015, you will have the unique opportunity to buy the bulk of your food from one Yamhill County farm, selecting the items and quantities that work best for your household and its particular appetites and preferences!

More on-farm opportunities

But there are other fun things in the works for 2015: For the first time ever, we’re planning to organize several work parties here on the farm so that you can come out and more fully connect to the place that feeds you. We’ll follow each work party with a potluck, so we can enjoy each other’s company while savoring the delights of the season. We’ll also host our two annual CSA open houses, including another awesome outdoor concert at our pumpkin patch event in October.

Organic certification again in 2015

Also, 2015 is the year our farm is going to pick back up our organic certification. After taking three years off, we are excited to put our ducks in order and give our healthy growing methods the official “organic” label once again (since that is how he we have always farmed!). The crops will be certified in 2015, and we will consider the process of certifying our livestock in 2016.

And a new cookbook!

And, I’m still working on a farm cookbook to share with you in 2015 (I am still taking submissions, by the way!). This will be a gift to all 2015 members, available probably in the spring.

This food is amazing

Those are the basic details, but before signing off on all this 2015 info, I also wanted to say a word about all these other farm products (eggs, meat, grains, etc.) and where they come from. We grow all of them here on our farm on Grand Island. More details about each food item can be found on our website (I didn’t want to overwhelm this season summary), but suffice to say that every single item has been very carefully selected and grown for absolute peak health for everyone — health for the land, the plants, the animals, the human eaters. Additionally, they are all exceptionally tasty foods, the likes of which simply cannot be purchased elsewhere. The longer our own family consumes these farm fresh seasonal foods as the base of our diet, the more we love them and find them to be an integral part of our household’s daily joys. I cannot emphasize enough: these are fundamentally different foods. They are vibrant with health and flavor and consuming them will change your life. Really. We are excited to share them with our entire CSA community beginning in 2015.

Commit now; pay in 2015

Phew! That’s quite a lot of news regarding next season! Please see the sign-up form for more details re: pricing and season calendar, etc. Take some time to consider what you’d like to purchase in 2015 — some of the items are a commitment, and in other cases we are just asking for your best estimate.

To sign-up, please fill out the form and return it to us this year. You can bring it to pick-up or mail it to us: Oakhill Organics, P.O. Box 1698, McMinnville OR 97128.

No money is necessary now! We will contact you just after the New Year with an official invoice and more details regarding the season (including exact location for pick-up).

Please let us know if you have any questions! We are so excited about this upcoming season. We hope you are too!

That’s the news! Read it over. And, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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End of season news! The final CSA pick-up of 2014 is next week (Nov 18 in Mac and Nov 19 in Newberg). The following week, we will offer our annual Thanksgiving “Holiday Harvest,” which is when we take orders for vegetables from you to help you fill your tables with good food for the holiday. Or, you can just use the opportunity to fill your pantry with good local foods! I will include the list of items and prices in next week’s newsletter so that you can place orders for pick-up on Wed, Nov 26 (in the afternoon). More details to come next week! (We will also have a Christmas “Holiday Harvest” in December — we will email you with details and a list as we get closer to that date!)

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Brussels sprouts — This will be the last of our “mixed” fall shares, featuring both the hardy and the tender crops of the season. Cold weather is coming. These beautiful Brussels sprouts will survive, but the peppers and summer squash won’t. Hopefully you enjoy savoring the last of these summer crops as you stay warm amidst the freezing rain and whatever else comes our way this week!
• Apples
  
• Peppers — Green and sweet
• Butternut winter squash — I’m sure that I think every kind of winter squash is my “favorite” — or, more accurately, I probably think whichever one I’m preparing and eating is my favorite, because they are all so good. But today, butternut is my favorite. When cooking butternut, I start by peeling. I use a paring knife to do this, since the skin is rather thick. I usually cut off the long part and use that for one meal and save the round part for another. Cutting them apart also gives me a nice flat surface for peeling the squash. I put the cut edge securely on my cutting board and use my knife to peel long strips down. Then I chop it, at which point it could be added to broth to make soup (so simple and satisfying — cook until soft and then puree!), but I almost always roast it. The key to crispy roasted butternut is even sized pieces, not too much fat on the pan (some, but not too much), high heat (425°), and not too many pieces on the pan. A seasoned pan helps too. I check them through cooking and sometimes shake the pan or stir them. These are like candy.
• Collards — Collards can be prepared in all the ways you would cook kale, but they generally require slightly longer cooking time and/or more liquid/fat.
• Parsley — This weekend Casey made a delicious parsley “pesto” that we ate with some delicious wild caught salmon a friend gave us. Casey pureed the pesto in our food processor (stems included! so sweet and tender!) and added salt, garlic, a bit of olive oil and vinegar, and tahini (which added a nice richness to the resulting sauce). You could tinker with this idea, using different ratios or slightly different ingredients (pine nuts, anyone?), but do try it! It’s such a wonderful way to eat loads of parsley (which, by the way, is an herb that winters well here in Oregon and just gets sweeter and sweeter!).
• Carrots
• Beets
  
• Summer squash & zucchini
  

Walnut tree leaves changing and falling in the wind ...

Saturday morning, we flipped to the next month on our calendar and then turned to build the season’s first fire (the latest we can remember!). Without a doubt, November puts us in the second half of fall and at the beginning of the darkest, dreariest third of the year (November – February). Change is all about us, being blown in on these cold, wet winds, tearing yellow leaves from trees and littering the ground.

Amidst all this seasonal shifting, other shifts are happening at the edges of our life as well. Perhaps we are just paying better attention than at other times, but it feels like this fall has brought with it quite the wave of endings. So many people we care about are closing significant chapters of their lives. My father has retired, after decades years of practice as an anesthesiologist. While this represents a loss to the community as a whole (he is such a skilled doctor), we are overjoyed to have him here on the farm full-time now.

Yet, as joyful as such big transitions can be (because they almost always point to new adventures and opportunities), they can still be disorienting too. The earth shifts a bit, and we all have to learn new ways of being and understanding changed relationships and lives. Much more disorienting to Casey and me this fall has been the news that many farming friends are calling it quits — either totally or in some significant fashion. Some of these farmers started their enterprises a year or two before or after — they are people who feel like we’ve shared our farming journey with and we are so sad to lose that special form of companionship (although we know the friendship will transcend their first link).

Quite frankly, it’s also eye-opening and sobering to realize that we’ve been farming long enough now that it could be its own good-sized chapter of our lives already. But, while we celebrate our farming friends’ choices to seek new adventures, Casey and I are going to keep on with this one. Farming continues to feel like The Work of Our Lifetime (not to mention that this farm represents both our livelihood and our home!). So, while we bid so many farmers blessings in their next steps, we stay put, feeling our way through this dark season and savoring a bit of the nostalgia it brings to our days. We can, for the moment, peacefully reflect on so much, while we sink into these restful months and find next year’s momentum hidden like a seed under the darkness of winter’s soil.

And momentum we shall have. Because with all this change in the air, we are reminded that even a continued adventure such as our farm must offer growth and change in order to be sustained.

After this week, we only have two more weeks left in our 2014 Vegetable CSA (the last pick-ups are Nov 18/19). So, amidst all these feelings of change and shifts and nostalgia and seeking of deep rest, we are also pondering our own growth pattern in terms of 2015. Our goal is to publish our 2015 CSA materials and sign-ups by next week, giving you time to ask us questions in person before we take our winter break. We also hope that a large number of you will be ready to commit for 2015 by the end of this season.

In order to get those materials to you soon, we’ll be spending many of our early morning dark hours reflecting on the changes that make sense for our farm. Like I said, we feel change in the air. Change that can bring the best components of our farm together into something slightly new, slightly old, and totally awesome. Lots to work out on the front this week. Thank goodness for November’s cozy fires, warm tea, and pumpkin soup. The season has set the mood for us to reflect and dream — something about all this dark and decay makes it easier to let go, to change, to shift. The world is actively letting go of this year in preparation for next year, and it is time for us to do the same. You’ll hear more from us next week!

In the meantime, enjoy the growing dark and all the gifts it does bring to our homes and families — that forced rest that can feel unwelcome but is a necessary complement to summer’s wakefulness. Savor it and dig in deep while holding onto that promise of light. Before too long, we’ll turn again, but for now hold onto your lanterns, and enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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“Paleo Spaghetti” — This week you have in your share the ingredients to make one of our family’s all-time favorite meals. We call it “Paleo” spaghetti. This is a reference to our family’s primary “diet” choice, which might be called “Paleo” by some (i.e. we don’t eat grains or beans or much sugar, blah blah blah …). Anyhow, it’s really just an amazing dish on its own, but the flavors and textures (and satisfaction level) reminded us once-upon-a-time of spaghetti and the name stuck. This dish is best when it has had plenty of time to cook, so allow 1-2 hours (this is low maintenance time, for the most part).

In a deep, wide saute pan, saute an onion in butter. Prepare to use lots of butter if you want your dish to be awesome, ok? Next add chopped garlic and tomatoes. Use plenty of both. When I am cooking with fresh tomatoes, personally I don’t bother to peel them. I find that the peels from chopped tomatoes just curl up and mostly disappear, and I’d rather just cook lots of food and eat it than stand around peeling tomatoes all day. You may prefer to blanch, shock and peel yours. I’m sure that would be delicious too! Anyhow, let your tomatoes, onions, and garlic simmer together in butter over medium heat for a bit. Once it’s starting to smell yummy, start adding finely chopped cabbage. If you let this cook long enough to be amazing, your cabbage will cook down a lot, so I recommend using a whole cabbage (also this dish makes great leftovers). After adding the cabbage, I often put the lid on my pan to help aid the cooking down process. Ultimately, you’re going to want to simmer off most of the liquid from the tomatoes and cabbage so that you eventually the cooked cabbage is frying in butter (again, lots of butter helps this whole dish). Depending on my patience level, I may turn the heat up to high and stand at the stove stirring more carefully, or I may lower the heat so I can just come and stir every few minutes without worrying about burning. A thick bottomed pan helps with this too.

We usually add pre-cooked meat to this dish as the cabbage is cooking down. Any kind is awesome. I like to cook a lot of roasts dry in the slow cooker and then keep the cooked meat in the fridge for use later. Our favorite meat for Paleo Spaghetti is chopped pork shoulder roast (so good!). I have to be careful to not add too much meat at this stage, because the cabbage will keep cooking down and we like there to be substantially more cabbage than meat in the final product. You could probably add other vegetables too, but we like it plain for the ultimate comfort food quality.

As the cabbage cooks down and the moisture simmers off, lower the heat to low or medium-low and keep cooking until it’s sweet perfection (or until it’s dinner time). The cabbage will begin to caramelize eventually. That’s how we like it. Salt to taste (we like lots — remember, this is comfort food!). For a truly divine experience, top your “spaghetti” dish with dabs of good quality chevre (soft white goat cheese, such as made locally by Briar Rose Creamery — that’s our favorite). Enjoy!

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Salad mix
• Cabbage
• Chard
• Delicata winter squash
  
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Garlic
  

The sun shone on our farm walk at the open house this weekend!

Ah, after a beautiful (and at times maddeningly) warm and dry early October, fall made its presence known on the farm this last week. Last Wednesday was the wettest day of the year with two inches of precipitation falling here. Bare spots on the farm (roadways, edges) went from dry packed dirt to mud in just a few days. We had to navigate our farm anew, avoiding certain roadways for fear of getting stuck (and on Wednesday, several vehicles did almost get stuck!). Fall is here!

It turns out, however, that said mud was very welcome at our Sunday Pumpkin Patch Open House. Welcome mud? Yes! What a surprise! Leading up to the event, we were worried that we’d be rained out (since it was all in all a very stormy weekend around here). But, just as we were setting up the band (Awaken Jane — so very lovely!), the clouds parted, and the sun shone down on the farm. Yes, the sun! (Of course, how funny is it to rejoice so fully about the sun just a week after its departure!)

Awaken Jane — this awesome trio really brought some class to our humble farm porch ... and good music too!

And so, folks came. We drank hot chocolate (prepared when we thought we’d all be hiding under cover, but still delicious!), tasted different varieties of peppers, picked out pumpkins, walked the farm, listened to good music (Awaken Jane — so very lovely!), and played in the mud. One parent joked later if there was going to be a contest for the dirtiest child. It would have been a tough contest, as some kids get really into the mud puddle adventures, ditching their shoes and socks to squish their toes through all that organic goodness. What a joy it was to watch that fun exploration!

Thanks to all of you who came out and helped a Sunday afternoon turn into a bit of farm community magic. And, if you missed it this year, hopefully you can make it next year! We’ll have to find another good musical act (have I mentioned yet that Awaken Jane was lovely?).

For now, we’re starting to really feel that “hunker down” energy of fall. The rainy days had the kids and me scurrying to the art store for all kinds of painting and drawing supplies (which have been the main interest around the house of late), and the crew is enjoying a slightly later start time in the morning. Casey is already asleep on the couch as I write this, because of course it’s fully dark outside. It is here and building — that quiet fullness of late fall. Welcome!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Brussels sprouts
• Kohlrabi
• Chard — To me, chard feels like a very unique cooking green. So many cooking greens in the fields are of the brassica or cole family — kale, mustards, collards, cabbage. But then there is chard, which is a beta, putting it in a completely different family of plants (the chenopods, a family that also includes spinach and beets). In fact, the plants we grow as “chard” are technically the same species as beets! I suppose through selection and breeding, chard has become a leafier plant and beets have become a “rootier” plant (although chard also grows a big bulbous root too! and beet leaves are delicious to eat!). Anyhow, I always marvel in the kitchen at how chard brings us a novel cooking green experience. And chard itself can be cooked in different ways to achieve different results. My preferred way to cook it is to chop and saute in lots of fat (butter is my favorite) until the leaves and stems are soft and wilted. In my experience, using just fat for cooking leaves quite a bit of body in the leaves, which I enjoy. However this takes a while to do, and some people prefer chard that tastes more like spinach. To achieve that result, add some liquid during the cooking process (we like to use broth) and put a lid on the pan. The chard will cook more quickly and achieve a texture very similar to cooked spinach (which it seems people either love or hate). I also really love adding chopped chard to broth soups — in that scenario it achieves a texture very similar to seaweed (such as you might find in miso soup). Casey also wanted to point out that this particular harvest of chard is very heavy in stem. Chard stems are the overlooked awesomeness of chard when it comes to American cooking. Some people even go so far as the strip the leaves off the stem and send the stem to the compost! We have heard that in France and Italy, the stem is the vegetable and the leaves are torn off and discarded (which also seems like a waste). That stem can be chopped and cooked as a vegetable — it’s especially delightful in omelets or gratins. Of course, I like to use stem and leaf together. I generally just add the chopped stems first since they do require slightly longer cooking time.
• Parsnips — Tonight we roasted up our first batch of parsnips of the season. I am always amazed by this root vegetable and its complex flavor — I find myself tasting all kinds of hints of spices (cinnamon? what is that flavor?). We generally peel then chop our parsnips into bite sized pieces for roasting until soft inside and crispy outside.
• Beets
• Green & sweet peppers — At our open house this Sunday, we presented several different peppers for taste testing. This has become a tradition for our fall open house — to offer different varieties of one food for comparison. Even as farmers, I love the opportunity it presents, because we so rarely take the time to savor the diversity of vegetables in quite that way. In this case, tasting the peppers one-by-one, I was really struck by the variance in sweetness and the different textures of the walls. Our “lipstick” peppers offered very thick juicy flesh in their walls, while the “Jimmy Nordellos” were sweet and had much thinner walls. Always interesting! We’ll have to think of what to compare next year!
• Summer squash & zucchini
  
• Potatoes
• Garlic
  

Non-GMO corn drying in our hot house right now! We know it is non-GMO because we bought seed that was specially bred for organic growers to prevent cross-pollination with GM varieties that might be growing nearby . Healthy deliciousness for humans and animals!

In our upcoming mid-term election, citizens here in Oregon are being asked to vote on Measure 92, which if passed would require the labeling of genetically modified foods sold here in Oregon. A similar measure is on the ballot in Colorado right now as well.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise to learn that folks have been asking Casey and me for our opinions on this measure. We are farmers after all, so we think about such things, and theoretically this measure could affect us too as farmers as well as consumers. Generally speaking, I prefer to keep my voting choices private, and I really don’t feel confident anymore in encouraging others to vote one way or another (perhaps I was “cured” of that confidence after campaigning so enthusiastically for Ralph Nader back in 2000 — that election didn’t go how I expected it to!). Especially with complex, far-reaching legislation, I feel quite nervous about accurately predicting the future impacts and significance. So, in spite of many requests, we have decided to not express a public opinion in regards to Measure 92. I encourage people to read the materials available and listen to the voices from people who are confident in giving voting advice.

If everything that contains GMOs really does get labeled accurately, it will be quite the wake up call for some consumers. Because, if you haven’t realized it yet, the bulk of the processed foods available contain genetically modified ingredients. If a food contains soy, canola, corn, or beet sugar and is not labeled “no GMOs” or “organic,” that food product contains genetically modified ingredients.

Perhaps part of my hesitancy in whole-heartedly endorsing Measure 92 resides in this: after reading the legislation thoroughly, I do not believe it would change how I shop. I believe that I would still seek out foods labeled as “Non-GMO” and “Organic,” and I would not trust an unlabeled food to necessarily be safe. There’s quite a lot of wiggle room in the legislation, not quite a lot of teeth, and some significant foods that will be untouched (for example, animal products from animals that have been fed GM-feeds will not require labels, and for me, this is a critical place to have knowledge when making my food choices). Folks, I want to be damned sure the food I am eating is not genetically modified. Someday, when I have not just quit drinking coffee at the same time that I have a teething toddler, I want to spend more time here talking about why avoiding genetically modified foods is so important to us as farmers and eaters. But tonight my brain is a bit fried, and all this political talk has me feel itchy (can you tell that I am not in my element when it comes to politics?).

But, back to my own purchasing choices: Having been through the organic certification process on our farm six times, I can tell you firsthand that it is a rigorous process. Knowing that GM seeds and GM feed are strictly prohibited from any organic foods (and that this prohibition is followed up with careful paperwork and inspection) is the confidence that I need when choosing foods at the store. When purchasing from other farmers, I trust their due diligence and open communication on the topic.

So, I suppose some of my ambivalence about this particular measure relate to its gaps and a concern that the passage of such a labeling law could give false confidence. A consumer who starts seeing “genetically modified ingredients” at the store would naturally assume anything unlabeled is free, and from what I read in the measure, I do not believe this will be the case. I think that many products will fall through the cracks, and animal products as a whole will not reflect the nature of their feed. Folks, with animal products, you are eating what they are eating. I understand why this was left out of the proposed law, because it would be incredibly huge and expensive to accurately label products from animals being fed GM-crops. But, to me, it is a very significant gap and one that, again, could create some false confidence. (Oh, and by the way, once again if an animal product doesn’t make the claim of “no-GMO feed,” the animal has most likely been fed genetically modified crops by way of GM corn, soy or alfalfa.)

To be clear, I’m not saying any of this to suggest you should vote “no,” for it also seems possible that the law could have all the positive ramifications proposed by its proponents! This law could pass and become the first important victory in Monsanto’s future downfall! Oh, how wonderful that would be! If you believe that to be the case, then please vote for the measure!!! In fact, if I think of Measure 92 purely in terms of a battle against Monsanto, then I think, “oh yes, let’s do it!” But if I think of it from the perspective of a future consumer looking for 100% accurate information about food in the stores, then I feel less sure that the measure will provide quite the total transparency it claims. Like I said above, predicting the future implications of something so complicated makes me feel nervous. And itchy.

I think people should know what they are eating, for sure. Yes, yes, yes. And, I feel confident today that I have choices for healthy clean food. And that is the good news I wanted to share with you. I wanted to remind you that the USDA organic label really does mean something, in spite of criticisms that get lobbed at it by folks who want it to “mean more.” With each passing year (and as more genetically modified crops are approved for use), I am so grateful to have that label as a consumer. I am also grateful for all the direct-marketing farmers like ourselves who do all the due diligence to grow healthy non-GM crops without the use of synthetic chemicals. I am especially grateful for those local farmers, because from them we can learn even more about our food: how the farmers prevent erosion; how they treat their workers; how they contribute to their wider community. These things matter to me too. At the end of the day, the how on the farm is what matters. But that organic label is still mighty useful when at a store.

Whew, am I done yet? This felt like a requisite newsletter, but can I go back to waxing poetic about vegetables and the season now? I hope so! (For what it’s worth, my 20-something self would have had no problem writing this newsletter, but the longer I live, the less sure I become of my own opinions! Experience is humbling!)

Wishing you a clear and thoughtful mind as you approach you ballot in coming weeks. For now, savor some non-GM goodness, and enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Pumpkin Patch Open House this weekend!!!! Sunday, 2 -4 pm

Our fall CSA Open House is coming up this weekend! Please join us for a fun afternoon. The festivities include:

• Pumpkin picking!
• Live music by a new local trio, Awaken Jane (I am so excited to hear them play!!!)
• Farm tour by Farmer Casey (starting at 3 pm)
• Pepper variety tasting

Directions to the farm: Take HWY-18 to the Dayton exit. Drive through Dayton and head south on Wallace Rd / HWY 221. Stay on that road for about seven miles. Turn LEFT onto Grand Island Rd (you’ll see signs for Heiser’s Farm, which is also on the island). Go over the big bridge onto Grand Island. At the first intersection on the island, keep going straight. You’ll go over another small bridge. After that bridge, turn RIGHT onto the gravel driveway (there’s a Carlton Plants sign at the road). Follow the gravel driveway until it ends at our farm! Parking will be along the gravel, so when you start to see cars, park and then walk the rest of the way in.

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed for fine weather! Some years we’re basking in sunshine at our pumpkin patch open house, and other years it’s been a deluge. So it goes! Join us either way!

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Salad mix
• Pears
  
• Brussels sprouts — We almost always cook our Brussels sprouts the same way. It’s a real winner in our house with everyone, including the kiddos. First, clean and trim the Brussels sprouts. Use a paring knife to trim off the butt and then throw them in some water to soak and rinse. Some of the outer leaves will generally float off in the process. Then slice each sprout in half (maybe quarters for the biggest ones) and add to a pan with butter and sauteed onions/garlic. Saute over medium heat until the sprouts are cooked through and beginning to caramelize (covering the pan with a lid for a period of time will help in the cooking process). Simple and so good.
• Pie pumpkins — We love baking with the flesh from pie pumpkins! If you’re new to pumpkin-not-from-a-can, it’s super easy. Place pumpkin on a pan and poke the top a couple times with a knife. Then bake at 350° until soft all the way through (it will likely deflate a bit in the process!). Pull it out and cut it in half to let it cool. Once it’s cool enough to touch, gentle scoop out the seeds and stringy bits with a spoon. Then scoop the remaining flesh away from the skin. You can use this cooked pumpkin in place of canned pumpkin in any recipe. Our favorite is this delicious grain-free pumpkin muffin recipe (I use half the amount of honey she calls for, and it’s perfect). If I have leftover cooked pumpkin and am tired of baking, I will heat it up in a pan with lots of butter and salt and then puree it with my hand blender. Makes a great side dish!
• Sweet peppers
• Tomatoes
  
• Carrots
  
• Potatoes
• Summer squash & zucchini
  

Mist is such a staple part of fall and winter mornings here on the farm. It has returned.

In spite of the return of our morning mists, this week mostly just felt like a post-script from summer. Oh, the dry and the warmth have continued! Casey keeps telling me about summer crops in the field that are putting on new growth and setting new fruit — seemingly freakish sights for October. But the forecast is for a deluge to begin any minute now, so I suppose fall really is here.

As one of our many big fall harvests, corn has been on our mind. We grew a patch of field corn this year that is quite large for our standards and extremely small by the standards of most conventional growers. Also, we grew field corn (dry corn for animal and human food rather than for silage or sweet corn), which is not really something farmers can reliably grow here in the valley, our summers generally being much cooler than those in the midwest. Nonetheless, we have these goals of feeding folks from this place, so corn we will grow.

Our neighbor began harvesting it for us tonight actually, and the ears are beautiful. It’s quite a sight to see ear after ear after ear just sliding off the conveyer of the picker. He quit before finishing and will return tomorrow, after which we will scramble to pick up all that corn and get it dried for the winter. Scurry, scurry, scurry. We feel kinship with all the squirrels this time of year as we race to make best use of all the crops we grew this summer. Many of the vegetables will over-winter in the fields, but all the grains, nuts, and storage veggies need to come in. So, we scurry.

This newsletter also contains loads of newsy bits, so I’m going to end this now and leave you with some fun photos of the corn picking that happened earlier this evening:

You can't really get a good sense of the scale in this photo, but this is a full size corn picker working through a relatively miniature four and a half acre corn field. Look at all those ears!

To get a better view of the picking, the family climbed to the top of our farm pick-up truck's cab.

Please do take a moment to read through all of this week’s little updates and news. A lot is going on in our farm community this month! And, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Pumpkin Patch CSA Open House, Sunday October 26, 2 – 4 pm

Our fall CSA Open House is coming up! Please join us for a fun afternoon. The festivities include:

• Pumpkin picking!
• Live music by a new local trio, Awaken Jane (I am so excited to hear them play!!!)
• Farm tour by Farmer Casey (starting at 3 pm)
• Pepper variety tasting

Directions to the farm: Take HWY-18 to the Dayton exit. Drive through Dayton and head south on Wallace Rd / HWY 221. Stay on that road for about seven miles. Turn LEFT onto Grand Island Rd (you’ll see signs for Heiser’s Farm, which is also on the island). Go over the big bridge onto Grand Island. At the first intersection on the island, keep going straight. You’ll go over another small bridge. After that bridge, turn RIGHT onto the gravel driveway (there’s a Carlton Plants sign at the road). Follow the gravel driveway until it ends at our farm! Parking will be along the gravel, so when you start to see cars, park and then walk the rest of the way in.

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed for fine weather! Some years we’re basking in sunshine at our pumpkin patch open house, and other years it’s been a deluge. So it goes! Join us either way!

~ ~ ~

Cookbook updates/clarifications!

I’ve already heard back from many people with recipe and servings ideas for the forthcoming farm cookbook! Hoorah! There have also been a few common questions, so I thought I’d address those now:

1. No name? Really? I love my recipe and want credit! Yes! I hear you folks! I underestimated the deep level of pride people would have for their favorite recipes! Therefore, I have decided to include contributor names unless someone specifies otherwise (I figure someone out there might not want to be named). If I have some overlap, I’ll give credit in a way that makes sense.
2. My recipe is more of a real recipe. Do you still want it? Ha ha — YES! It sounds like I perhaps over-emphasized that it was ok to submit simple serving suggestions. Real “recipe-like” recipes are also welcome, but please keep in mind these things: I cannot publish recipes that are taken straight out of another publications. Your recipe needs to be your own or somewhat altered/modified from the original source. Also, if the recipe calls for multiple vegetable ingredients, please be sure they are seasonally compatible! And, finally, please know that I will likely edit recipes a bit to create some consistency throughout the cookbook — but I will not alter the content in any way that would affect the heart of the recipe itself!
3. Will I be able to buy a copy or extra copies? Yes! The first recipients of the cookbook will be our 2015 CSA members, but we will also make the cookbook available for purchase too so that folks can buy extras as gifts or so that other people in the community can enjoy these efforts. Since this book will be quite a collaboration, we have decided to donate any proceeds from possible cookbook sales to a local charity.

Please let me know if you have any other questions! Direct recipes and servings ideas to our email farm (at) oakhillorganics (dot) org. Your responses so far have been wonderfully inspiring!!!!

~ ~ ~

2015 sign ups? Oh my, I have already had people ask me about 2015 sign-ups. I still feel like summer is winding down, and yet another year is starting to show up at our doorstep in so many ways! I just wanted to let people know that we will have all the forms and info ready by early November so that you can sign up before finishing out the 2014 season (I know many of you like to get your paperwork done early so you can forget about it later!). Soon, folks! Soon! And, thanks for your eagerness.

~ ~ ~

About Delicata squash!

Our winter squash harvest matured early this year (along with so many other crops). We actually brought it into storage many weeks ago, but it seemed premature to start giving it out when we were still in the thick of all the summer goodness. We decided we’d at least wait until the summer squash was finally done. This week is that week! So, in spite of the continued warm, sunny summer-y weather (which we hear will end tonight), consider this the true beginning of fall!

These squash may be new to some folks, so I’d like to introduce you to one of our CSA’s favorite fall foods: Delicata winter squash. Delicata squash are a cinch to cook and so very delicious. Here are two simple cooking suggestions:

First, wash your squash with running water. I like to do this, because the skin on a delicata is thin enough that you can eat it once the squash is cooked, so it’s nice to make sure it’s free of any dirt from the field. Next, you can chop off the stem and cut the squash in half length-wise. Scoop out the seeds and place the squash cut-side down on a baking pan. I like to rub the skin with some olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Then bake at 375-400° until the squash is tender and the cut edge is caramelizing. We call these “delicata boats,” because they make a great vessel for holding all kinds of other dishes, turning simple food into something rather special. Here are some ideas for filling your “boats”: browned ground beef, cooked kale, cauliflower rice, roasted sweet peppers, etc etc etc. You can also just serve them as is (not filled). Again, you can eat the whole thing, so it’s easy to just cut with your fork and eat!

The second idea begins the same way: wash your squash and cut off the stem. This time, however, carefully cut through the squash to make 1/2 inch (or so) thick “rings.” Each ring will contain seeds, which are easy to scoop out with a butter knife. Lay these rings on a baking pan with a bit of butter or oil. Sprinkle with salt and roast at 425° until slightly browned on both sides and tender (flip halfway through). “Delicata rings” are a favorite in our house, because they are especially fun to little hands to pick up and eat.

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Delicata winter squash — See above for more info about this wonderful fall food!
• Sweet peppers
• Hot peppers — I think folks have given these peppers a try and found that they are awesomely delicious and not too hot. So, we thought we’d keep going with them while they are in their peak season. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed with the quantity (because, really, not every household can consume lots of hot peppers in one week), these are super easy to put up. Just pop whole peppers in a freezer bag and place them in the freezer. You can pull them out as you need them in the winter and let them thaw for a bit on the counter before removing seeds and chopping. We always freeze lots of hot peppers for use in chilis and other dishes through the winter. It’s amazing how good a hot pepper can taste in February.
• Tomatoes — The same method works for tomatoes too. We like to can tomatoes for sauce, but we also make sure we put a few bags in the freezer too, since it’s so easy and we love adding tomatoes to winter and spring dishes.
• Cauliflower
  
• Kohlrabi — Here’s a vegetable that many people still find challenging. We understand. Part of the challenge is that sometimes kohlrabi (especially certain varieties) can get woody and eating a woody kohlrabi sort of defeats the point of kohlrabi. The point of kohlrabi is that it’s like eating a delicious, smooth/crispy, sweet broccoli stem. We eat most of our kohlrabi raw — we simply peel and slice it and use it for dipping in all kids of good things (squash-a-ganouj, for example). Or we’ll even just eat it plain. Now, it’s not really a vegetable that lends itself well to a veggie peeler. I prefer to use a paring knife, because the skin is rather thick. I usually begin by chopping off the top and bottom, so that I have a flat surface to work with. Then I set that flat surface firmly down on my cutting board and carefully peel down with my paring knife. We also like adding finely chopped kohlrabi to winter salads, such as slaws (it makes a great slaw all its own too!).
• Collard greens
• Potatoes
  

Rusty told me today that he is a farmer. He DID grow a lot of pumpkins in the garden this year. He and Casey harvested them this weekend.

Most weeks, I sit down to write our newsletter with a head full of ideas. This week, I mostly just feel hot, which feels like a big fogginess instead of clarity in that place where my ideas come from.

What is this heat? One thermometer this afternoon read 87° … on October 6! I had packed away so many of our warm weather clothes, but here we are back in shorts. And, Casey is back moving pipe through our pastures too, because we might as well make the best use of this warm weather that we can! Presumably it will end.

Beautiful deadly poisonous mushrooms found growing in our yard.

Nonetheless, fall exists in this warm time too. Leaves are changing color on the trees, bringing even more golden beauty into these golden sunny days. Today, the kids and I rode bikes and walked to our neighbor Heiser Farms for pumpkin patch extravaganza (and this weekend, Casey and Rusty harvested the many pumpkins that grew in Rusty’s garden). The tractor has been busy working in fields and preparing them for cover crops and over-wintered grain plantings. And, even further proof that fall is here: we are mushroom hunting again! Last weekend we found our first tasty morsel, a beautiful patch of oyster mushrooms. We’ve found many more since, but not so much edible. More soon, I am sure.

Finally, Casey has returned to project mode. Certainly our weeks contain plenty of ongoing field and harvest work, but there is room in the schedule for him to ponder new projects. On the list for this fall are some fun things, including a new pick-up space for the Full Diet here on the farm, a greenhouse, and possibly goats (?). It’s fun for us farmers to to get a bit of extra time and energy for such new endeavors. Improving our farm and its systems is so very satisfying. We love the daydream and planning, the different kinds of work (Casey poured a concrete floor today!), and the resulting increase in efficiency or quality. Hoorah for seasons that allow us to breathe and step back and reconsider how we do things (and then act on those observations too!).

Anyhow, I think my heat-addled brain really needs a refreshing shower and to be sent to bed early. But before I go, I have three newsy reminders for you:

• First, if you haven’t paid the remainder of your 2014 balance yet, please do so ASAP! Email me if you need a reminder of your balance due.
• Secondly, a reminder that our own pumpkin patch fun is coming up on Sunday afternoon, October 26. More details to come!
• Finally, yes a cookbook is still in the works! I’ve been crafting an email to send out regarding submissions, and for some reason it has taken longer than I expected, but you will hear from me shortly. Hoorah!

The only remaining thing to say tonight is: Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Sweet peppers
• Hot peppers — Casey will provide clear markings to distinguish the peppers at pick-up, but if you forget when you get home, the small purple/black peppers are the hot ones! They’re not flaming hot — just about as hot as a good jalapeño (with similar yummy taste too). I’m pretty sensitive to heat, so I like these. If Casey or I put one in a dish (without seeds), it provides a perfect amount of heat without being overwhelming (heat lovers should add more, with caution!).
• Tomatoes
• Beets — Some people struggle with beets. I understand. I used to be rather ambivalent or even a bit scared myself. But our whole family loves loves loves beets now. The kids are happy to eat them as regularly as I am willing to cook them! My only challenge is making sure I start them cooking early enough, because, folks, if you don’t know: beets take a long time to cook. I am convinced that this is the reason many folks think they don’t like beets’ “earthy” flavor. The secret is that the do not have an earthy/dirt flavor if they’ve been cooked long enough. To give you an idea of how long to cook, I usually estimate at least twice as long as for potatoes of equivalent size. I generally do not peel my beets ahead of time but just scrub them clean and then chop. To speed up the cooking process, I almost always chop our beets into small bite sized pieces for roasting. We love how the edges will get sweetly caramelized when roasted in butter. But there are many other wonderful ways to eat beets — I hope to include lots of ideas in the cookbook, since this is a challenging vegetable still for many people.
• Chard
• Kale
• Cut lettuce
• Potatoes
  
• Summer squash & zucchini — As I mentioned last week, I know that some of these summer fruits are feeling all too familiar at this point in the season. Seriously, try to savor the summer squash and zucchini (along with the tomatoes), because they will end. Over the last few years, we have eaten so much summer squash and zucchini when it is in season that I really do mourn its absence when it finally finishes for the season. Just tonight we ate a summer-y stew with summer squash as the base. I sauteed onions and peppers in garlic, then added chopped zucchini/squash and tomatoes (along with plenty of butter) and let it cook (with regular stirring) for about an hour. At the end, I threw in some beef and pork that had cooked in the slow cooker today, and we enjoyed a truly delicious and simple dinner.
• Garlic
  

On this weekend's long "putting up" list: drying tomatoes and peppers. Our kitchen stays busy most of the time this season.

Ours is a dirty house. Sweep as many times as I may, it’s never enough. Not with two doors that lead directly to the outside, where an entire farm rises up, full of adventure, food and dirt. Toddler and preschooler skip outside for a quick run around and come back in with toys covered in sand or branches for our “nature table” or bits of half-chewed fennel tops. And then the farmer himself comes home, and he’s covered in dirt too. Clods fall off his shoes at the door, and his dusty pants sprinkle a bit every where. Oh, and has anyone seen young children eat? Too bad we don’t have a dog to eat all those bits dropped on the floors at mealtime.

A few times in my life, I’ve found this constant flow of dirt and such into our house to be a source of frustration. But, of course, this is how it is on a farm. One of our favorite books on the subject of farming (and the inspiration for our own Full Diet CSA) is aptly titled The Dirty Life. Casey and I routinely find ourselves sharing the observation of someone new we’ve met, “He was so clean!” Because, nothing in our life is ever perfectly clean. If a clean person steps into our house, be warned!

I had to laugh today as I was sweeping our floor, because I realized how much the contents of the dustpan tell about our family. Not just that it’s dirty here, but also what we are up to this season. Our dustpan is very seasonal. How appropriate.

Here’s what I found today (in addition to the usual dirt, dirt, and more dirt): I found kernels of dried corn, hazelnut shells, and pepper seeds. Lots and lots of pepper seeds. It’s like a little September story, all piled up in a dirty heap.

The corn is from our several acre field of dry corn, which we are growing for both animal and human consumption this winter. The ears are almost ready to pick, but Casey’s been bringing home some to trial along the way. He dries them in our food dehydrator and then he and Rusty shell them with a “hand corn sheller” (like this one), which is effective but also unpredictable. Kernels tend to fly everywhere, landing in all corners of our house (especially when said sheller is wielded by a four year-old).

The hazelnut shells are from our very first hazelnut harvest here on the farm! We planted two and a half acres of hazelnut trees back in 2012, and they’ve been slowly getting established. This is the first year they’ve produced really any fruit, and it’s still a very minor amount on a farm scale. But our little family went out a few weekends ago and hunted for hazelnuts at the base of the trees. We found a handful under each one, and after going through two rows, we had a little bag full. The kids have been cracking these at snack time, to eat with their apples. Do I need to point out that kids cracking their own nuts is hardly a tidy, precise activity? (If you’re wondering how our kids manage to crack their own nuts, the secret is this truly awesome nutcracker.)

Finally, all those pepper seeds? They seem to fall so easily off the counter when we are cooking. Somehow, they just fall, fall, fall so that our kitchen floor looks like it has some kind of pepper seed confetti all over. But this weekend in particular, we processed extra peppers — not just to eat but also to dry (yum!). And, it was time to save seed from our peppers too — peppers being one of many crops that we like to save our own seed from year to year.

I imagine that in a few weeks, I will find different things here, telling a little condensed version of the Big Story Outside. Perhaps a bit more mud. Pumpkin seeds from carving. Eventually even some conifer needles!

Fall is upon us, and how it seems already to be flying by. This season is so sweet — so full of delicious gifts and comfortable, refreshing days of breezy weather.

We hope that you too are finding little pieces of joy tucked into surprising places in your houses this season! (For that’s one way to look at sweeping!) Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. Welcome back to all our newest members! We hope your first week of Oakhill CSA eating was super awesome!

~ ~ ~

Payment reminder! I want to remind our Vegetable CSA members that you may still have a balance remaining due on your account! We’d love to receive all remaining payments by October 1 (that’s this week), unless we’ve made other arrangements with you. I mailed out statements a few weeks back, but please email me again if you have any questions or need a reminder of your balance. Thanks so much everyone!

~ ~ ~

A different way to roast cauliflower! My mom introduced me to an exciting new way to roast cauliflower: WHOLE HEADS! She saw the recipe on Facebook, and here’s a link (I’m sorry that folks without Facebook accounts might not be able to see it!). It’s basically an entire head of cauliflower, rubbed all over with a spicy yogurt sauce and then baked whole! My mom cooked one tonight and shared it with us — it was beautiful and the spicing was a delicious pairing with the cauliflower. My two comments would be: be prepared that it is spicy (Rusty had a shock!), and I’d cook it longer than the recipe called for. Of course, the head my mom cooked was GIANT, and who knows how big the heads were that the authors of the recipe cooked (cauliflower size ranges quite a bit!). But just give yourself plenty of time before dinner to let it go 1-2 hours, and check it after 40 minutes to see if it’s done enough for your preference. Ours was good, but still fairly crunchy. Some people might prefer it that way! I love my veggies well cooked (I think because I am a slow eater and can ingest a lot more when my food is mushy — ha!).

~ ~ ~

• Tomatoes — Savor these fresh tomatoes while they last. I know that in late September, it’s so easy to take fresh tomatoes for granted, but really they are here for such a relatively short amount of time!!!!! I’ve been adding tomatoes to every dish that I can. Casey even slices one to eat with his breakfast every morning. The sight of that deep red tomato next to his eggs is quite beautiful (why not on my plate too? I don’t know; I can eat a lot of things at breakfast, but not tomatoes. Go figure!)
• Green peppers
• “Jimmy Nordello” sweet peppers — I know! These look like they should be hot, right? And, every now and then, you may encounter one that has some heat, but Jimmy Nordello peppers are sweet. These are a favorite with local restaurants. They have a thinner, dryer wall than a classic bell, making them especially well suited to drying (see our photo above!). We generally just chop them and add them to whatever else we’re cooking. With any kind of pepper (sweet or green), I love to chop them fine and throw them in the pan when I’m sautéing onions at the beginning of a dish. That smell is divine.
• Sweet corn
• Cauliflower — Check out that whole roasted cauliflower recipe above! But if you haven’t heard about cauliflower “rice” yet, you’re in for another treat. This is a super easy dish to make, and we’ve received so many rave reviews (no, we did not make this up — it’s a pretty standard dish amongst the Paleo food community). Here’s how easy it is: take some cauliflower florets and throw them in a food processor. Pulse until they are “riced” (i.e. chopped into little bits). Put them in a fry pan with plenty of butter or other fat and pan fry on low-medium heat until the bits are turning golden and cooked through. Some people add a little bit of broth or liquid and put the lid on to speed up the process. Depending on how much cauliflower “rice” you add to the pan, the cooking can take 10-20 minutes. We eat this just like rice, either with other goodies piled on top or mixed in. It’s a favorite in our house.
• Carrots
  
• Kale
• Cucumbers
  
• Summer squash & zucchini — One last mention of our a new household favorite: SQUASH-A-GANOUJ! Casey “invented” this dish this summer, and it’s been a staple at our table ever since. We’ve always loved babaganouj, which is sort of like hummus but with roasted eggplant instead of garbanzo beans — so eggplant plus tahini, olive oil (or butter), garlic, lemon juice (or vinegar), and salt. But eggplant season is relatively so short that we’ve never gotten our fill of babaganouj in a season. In a moment of true inspiration, Casey tried making the same recipe but with roasted zucchini and summer squash instead of the eggplant. Oh my. If possible, I think we love this dish even more. We especially love it with cucumbers. We don’t use an exact recipe; Casey just puts all the components into the food processor until it looks and tastes right. He says that for a tray full of squash, he’d include 1/4 cup of olive oil (or half a stick of butter), 2 Tablespoons tahini, 2 Tablespoons vinegar, about six cloves of garlic and salt to taste. Those are approximate. Each batch varies a bit, and it always tastes awesome. Just start with your roasted squash and add the other ingredients slowly so that you reach perfection. Enjoy!