Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Cauliflower — Some of our over-wintered cauliflower is just now heading! Usually it is completely done long before now — just another indicator of this bizarre cold and wet spring!
- Salad mix
- Red butter lettuce OR Winter Density lettuce — Your choice between these two equally succulent lettuce. Both have the dense tender buttery colored hearts of a classic butter, but with different top leaf colors. Makes for truly delicious salads!
- Chard — Spring chard is some of the best! We love it simply sautéed to tenderness with butter and leeks or onions and then served as a side dish, tossed with pasta or as a bed for fried eggs (greens at breakfast keeps us going all day!).
- Cabbage rapini
- Purple sprouting broccoli
- Salad turnips
- Leeks
Just this week, I twice heard of young folks who express they want to farm when they are older. One was a senior in high school, suggesting that his interest is pretty serious. The other was a toddler, who apparently wants to grow “food” rather than animals (a boy after our own hearts!).
Neither future farmer has farming parents, but they do both live here in Yamhill County. I think that their interesting in farming is a testament to our region’s thriving agricultural economy.
Growing up in a Seattle suburb and a non-farming family, the concept of farming as an occupation never even remotely entered my mind. Sure, there were images of farms on kids’ toys and in kids’ books, but when considering adult work, farming was not a real option. If you had asked me about farms, I probably would have told you that Americans today are moving off the farm — farms could no longer support a family or offer a viable livelihood.
That’s about as much as I probably thought I knew at the time.
Obviously my view changed at some point, but it was slow going.
When we were in college, Casey picked up The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry, which documents and laments the very migration off the farm I perceived as a suburban kid. But Wendell Berry offers hope amidst the bad news, and the book inspired Casey to want to farm, even though he too grew up in a non-agricultural region.
At the time, I thought he was crazy. We were newly married, and I definitely wanted to shout “bait and switch!” I didn’t marry a future farmer! I married a future doctor or pastor!
My freak-out was sufficient for Casey to table his dreams for several years, and he did actually pursue medical school during college. But he was denied admission to his chosen schools when after being asked in an interview what else he might do with his life besides being a doctor. His answer? Be a farmer. I guess the interviewers took that answer as a sign that Casey wasn’t cut out for medical school, and boy are we grateful to those folks today!
It wasn’t until we spent a year living in rural north-central Washington state that I started realizing that farming is still alive in the U.S. Yes, there has been a steady migration off the farm over the last century — especially in the Midwest, where many small farm communities have become ghost towns — but, there continue to be niche markets and communities where farming thrives.
Oregon is one of those places, and Yamhill County especially.
Casey and I have chosen to pursue a special niche type of agriculture that exists outside the commodity system, which is one of the special farming niches that has done well across the country. People like to eat good food and very often love to directly support the folks who do the work. It’s a simple and powerful model of growing and selling and buying produce.
However, here in Yamhill County, there are other niches at work too, resulting in a vibrant and diverse farm economy. I think it’s easy for small organic growers like ourselves to sometimes harshly judge our “conventional” farmer neighbors for being “backward” or stuck in old ideas (namely the reliance upon synthetic chemicals). And, there’s something to that criticism, especially in how some practices can really damage the ground over the long run.
But, Casey and I also have great admiration for our neighboring farmers, both here on Grand Island and beyond. Even though we cringe at the sight of boom sprayers, we also marvel at the complexity of farms that gracefully rotate through high yield, high profit crops — moving from nursery stock one year to lower intensity grains the next to something else beyond that. There is thought put into how and when the farmers plant, how they rotate through the crops, how they sell (often to local canneries or seed companies), and how and when they harvest.
We certainly feel that we have much to learn from other farmers in the area, and above all else we thrill at the sight of driving to McMinnville from our farm — we drive by farm, after farm, after farm, after farm … all of them growing slightly different crops with slightly different practices. We might pass 40 acres of beet seed and then 50 acres of hazelnuts then 200 acres of silage then 50 acres of red clover seed then 40 acres of vineyards!
We live in a diverse and very much alive farming region, and that it is a beautiful thing to farmers like Casey and me who first came to farming in a backward fashion through news of farming’s “demise.”
And, clearly, the presence of so many different kinds of farms has a real effect on more than just Casey and me. To hear these youngsters unselfconsciously voice an interest in farming — as though there is nothing crazy or unexpected about it! — warms our hearts. Clearly they can see the vibrancy too, even with their inexperienced eyes. They see the beauty, the satisfaction of hard work and good food, the hope of a family’s livelihood.
All of this just from the sight of farms along every county road, bursting displays of produce at market, happy conversations among farmers at gatherings, and a real integration of agriculture into everyday life. Farming is real to these young people, in a way that it never was for me growing up. Let us rejoice in this hope!
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
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Reminder for Newberg/Dundee folks!
If you signed up to switch your pick-up to Newberg, that change begins next week! That means that this is your final pick-up in Mac for the year. Starting next week, you will pick up on Thursdays 3:30-6:30 in Newberg (see your confirmation information for more pick-up details or email if you have questions!).
