Rain, wind, water & other dramas

(CSA Newsletter: Summer Week 11)

Meet this week’s vegetables::

Farming is so exciting at times! In a good way, yes, but also sometimes in dramatic ways as well. This last week brought us two ‘fun’ mini-dramas, neither of which had terribly high stakes but both of which had all the ‘elements’ of excitement.

Those of you who keep up with our blog will have already heard the first story. Last Tuesday, at 2:30 in the morning, we woke up to the sound of a downpour outside. The day before we had just finished pulling all of our onions from the fields and they were ‘drying’ under our walnut tree, which provides enough protection for dew but not deluges. So, we blearily ran outside to throw tarps and pieces of greenhouse poly over our onions. In a downpour. Outside. In the dark. What can I say? It was exciting.

Fortunately, the onions survived the quarter-inch of rain we received. As did we, although I can’t say that we slept well after that, especially since the rain pounded our metal roof for hours. But the rain was very good for the thousands of plants still growing in the fields, so even as we cringed over our drying onions, we smiled about the rain in general.

The next drama occurred this Sunday, when the current heat wave officially hit the Willamette Valley with some major dry wind. All day long, our farm was battered by the hottest, driest east wind we’ve ever felt here. Just walking outside made my face hurt. (Portland reported a record low humidity for the day: below 25%!) Our greenhouses were flapping and cracking (and trying to take off in one case), and branches were flying from trees. That alone made an otherwise lovely day off somewhat unpleasant — it’s hard to relax with so much chaos and activity on the farm.

And to add to the melee, our slough finally went dry. That day. In the middle of the hot windy storm.

Fortunately, we had anticipated the moment and Casey had already spotted a good new diversion point along the slough. Because the slough doesn’t recharge except in the winter, some spots are deeper and retain water longer. The slough is like many interconnected ponds in creek shape. So, we found another spot on our property that still held water, and on Sunday afternoon we dragged the pump from one spot to another, moved our mainline across the field, and set up our irrigation once again.

It was bizarre to be doing what we think of as ‘spring work’ at the end of the summer, but I guess that’s just what we had to do. And the good news is that the new diversion point is working great. We will definitely have enough water to get us through to the end of irrigation season.

… in further good water news: if all goes accordingly to plan, we should receive our legal ground water rights at the beginning of next month. We’re already lining up the pump work so that we can use our well as soon as we need it next year. We can’t tell you how excited we are to use a well with an electric pump (with a timer no less!). The trash pump we’ve been using in the slough works perfectly, but it runs on gas and the tank is small, so we’re constantly ferrying gas to the pump and refilling it. We’ll still use it occasionally — probably for an orchard if we put one in and for field crops — but no longer on a daily basis. Hoorah!

So, we survived this week’s mini-crises just fine. In fact, considering how very exciting each one was at the time — running around in the rain in the dark and dropping a suction hose into the slough in the middle of a wind storm — our spirits remained high throughout. I’m not sure what was different about this week, but we both seemed more light-hearted than we have in awhile.

Although we’re still busy, I think we’re finally starting to feel the downward slide of late summer. We’ll continue to plant through the end of summer, but we’ve transplanted the majority of our important fall crops. The onion harvest is finished. The farmers’ market is beginning to quiet down.

Either way, we’ve been thoroughly enjoying our time on the farm this week. Our animals have played a key role in that as well, I think. Our carrot-named kittens have continued to live up in sweetness to their namesakes (Nelson & Mokum, two of the great carrots varieties we’ve harvested for you all summer). And we finally moved the chicken house out into the fields this week, giving them much more room to roam in our oat field. They’re easier to watch now, and we have taken advantage of that fact. Their mini-crises and dramas keep us entertained for hours.

And the combination of having enough water and getting a little more sun on the garden certainly helps relax us. The fall and winter gardens are still getting established, and this last little burst of summer is much needed in the fields.

We hope that you too enjoy this week’s warm summer weather. We always think that September is the best month of the year: the weather is perfect; our work begins to wane; and, of course, the harvests are abundant and delicious. Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers,

Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics

A note on working with Azure Standard:

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we purchase our ‘dry goods’ (flour, beans, grains, toiletries) from the distributor Azure Standard. I heard from quite a few people that they were interested in Azure, so I thought I’d clarify the process since sometimes Azure assumes people already understand when they go to place their first order.

Azure delivers to the McMinnville area every other Thursday, and most folks meet the truck at the Wal-Mart parking lot (a pleasantly subversive feeling act in of itself). Minimum orders right now are $400 per ‘drop’ — the word ‘drop’ refers to an individual or group of people who have bundled their orders together (it does not refer to the physical drop site). If you don’t plan to meet that minimum on your own, you can get some friends to place orders as well. As long as you explicitly and specifically name one person as the ‘drop’ (or come up with a catchy group drop name), you can each still place your own orders and pay separately. At Wal-Mart, your items will be bundled as a ‘drop,’ but each item or box will be clearly labeled with individual names. The truck driver will contact you or the ‘drop’ contact the day of the delivery to give you an estimated arrival time, which varies but is usually in the afternoon for us here in the Mac area.

Also, if you want more information about the products they sell, in addition to the 2007 catalog, you can purchase product guides that provide pictures of packaging, nutritional info, and other information about food and other products. I hope that clarifies any confusion.