Many folks visit our booth at the Farmer’s Market and remark, “Oh, I drive by your farm all the time!”  It makes me wonder…what do these people think when they see us out in the fields doing our various tasks that all add up to farming?  One of the weirdest sights must be when we swim for potatoes.

To harvest a small batch of potatoes, all you need is a pitchfork to loosen up a plant or two.  But when we harvest for the CSA or market, we pull up dozens of plants at a time.  And a pitchfork is too slow.  To dig up part of a row, a lifting blade is attached to the back of the tractor.  We drag the blade through the row and it undercuts and lifts the plant and potatoes up near the surface of the soil.  Now, in a perfect world, the potatoes would fall neatly into a little pile and we’d collect them in no time at all.  But this is farming, and “perfection” comes around once and a while, but with potatoes we’ve still got to do some work.  So we go swimming. 
Here’s where the folks driving by might do a double-take.  To swim for potatoes we get down on our knees in the lifted row, and using our arms like fins we do a modified butterfly stroke, scooping soil, plant, and potatoes towards our body.  At this point it’s basically an Easter egg hunt.  The potatoes usually sift above the soil, plant top is tossed over the shoulder (after, of course, removing any hanger-on potatoes that might become next year’s weeds), and the gathered potatoes go into a bucket.  Then we move forward a scootch and repeat the stroke.  It’s a great workout!  The damp, warm soil moves smooth against the skin.  Black beetles (beneficial insects) are unearthed and moved into the next row over.  Now and then you find blue potatoes in the yellow section, a result of the helpful five year-olds that assisted in planting this row.  Before you know it, you’ve reached the tractor, and you’ve got four buckets full of spuds.  We’ve been pulling out German butterball and All-blue varieties, but keep your eyes out for new varities soon!  (It’s funny; we labeled the rows with stakes when we planted, but those stakes have either disappeared or been sun-bleached.  Thankfully Jim is able to identify any potato in the world.) 

Wild Rice from River Refuge Farm

Hi Folks,

It’s broccoli Week!  Our 8 varieties of broccoli came on all at once after our hot spell, so we have loads of big beautiful heads.  Garlic harvest has began with those extra large heads of Georgian Crystal Garlic.

Other vegetables available include:
Lettuce Mix – $4.00/bag
Kales, curly, flat, lacinato – $2.00Onions, both scallions and medium white – $2.00/bunch or 3 whites
Carrots – $2.00
Potatoes – $3.00/3 lbs  All Blues, Island Sunshine
Broccoli – $2.00/head
Parsley/ Oregano – $1.50/bunch
Summer Squash – .75 each
Raspberries – $3.00/halfpint
Garlic – 8oz. bags – $4.00

Enjoy

Michael Pollan, the preeminent writer on food, champion of the small organic farm and a favorite writer of Jim and Debbie (because he so ably expresses the ideas why they do what they do) has a lengthy article that just appeared at www.newyorktimes.com:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html

Hello, farm visitors!  Jeremy Fox is my name, apprentice farming is my game this summer, as I work alongside Jim and Debbie at Fields Farm.  My background is in education and outdoor recreation, and before working here I had only some basic knowledge of farming and gardening and the like.  But each day I learn something new at the farm, and I have discovered that farming is–yes–another form of outdoor recreation.  Things are in full swing right now–lots of irrigating, harvesting, and weeding to be done!  I’m going to try and post my insights at least weekly for your entertainment here on the website, so I hope you enjoy!
Insight #1 Kale: the workhorse of the farm
If you’re part of our CSA, you know that you’ve been getting kale in your bag every week since the beginning.  I hope you’ve been enjoying it (and not getting tired of it!) because kale harvesting is one of my jobs.  In May the leaves were small, maybe six inches long max, but now these plants are leafing out at 12-14 inches!  And it is the same plants that have been producing the whole time!  Maybe this is just exciting and amazing to me, the apprentice who until recently has never been intimate with kale plants week after week, but their constancy and resilience are impressive.  Each week I tear off the lowest and largest leaves; each week those scars scab over and the plant grows taller and larger leaves as if to prove that my harvesting has no effect on the plant.  Head lettuce, spinach, arugula and the other greens come and go, but the kale just won’t quit.  The three inch transplants we put in the ground in April are now pushing two feet tall, enough to tower above the outmost, rapidly spreading squash plant leaves.  We’ve got four varieties: red boar, green boar, purple, and strap leaf kale.  My favorite to harvest is the green boar–it’s leaves break off easily with a satisfying “snap!” and gather into full, blossomy bunches.  As far as I can tell, the kale is here for a while, so I hope you’ve found ways to keep it interesting in your diet!  My favorite is the simple saute in olive oil with some garlic (coming in a couple weeks) and onions (available now!), but kale can also be cooked down to serve as a green layer in casseroles (think spinach!), eaten raw on sandwiches in lieu of lettuce, or brushed lightly with olive oil and a little salt, and baked at 300 degrees for a few minutes to make kale chips.  Either way, it’s a healthy leaf–vitamins K, A, C, manganese, copper, calcium and many others essentials.  If you come out to the farm, you must see the kale forests in our greenhouse tunnels.  It’s also available in our gray fridge out front, the farmer’s market, and often at Nature’s grocery store.  All hail kale!     

The Kohlrabi with sage I wrote about previously, I liked so much, I realize, because it tasted so much like Thanksgiving stuffing.  You can never make enough stuffing because you are limited to what fits inside the Turkey cavity.  I never liked cooking extra in a casserole dish, it never comes out the same or as good.  This year I will experiment with Kohlrabi with sage on Thanksgiving.  I will try mixing with the stuffing or serving it alongside.  Jim will be planting a late crop of Kohlrabi to be available for Thanksgiving.  It is definitely something to incorporate into the Thanksgiving menu.

The versatility of Kohlrabi was evident when instead of using sage, I used basil.  I made pesto the way I normally do, only I pureed it with Kohlrabi and ate it sans pasta.  Just as the Kohlrabi ably replaced the breading, it did not leave me wanting pasta and it was delicous.  Jeremy, the Fields Farm intern, tells me he shreds Kohlrabi raw with carrots and it makes it a great coleslaw.

Not turning on the stove is a great idea since it has been over 90 degrees everyday.  The peak of season hitting at the Farmer’s Market and the hot weather makes for “Salad Days”.  If you need some ideas check out 101 Simple Salads for the Season.  Click the “Single Page” link and do a page search(usually ctrl + f) for the ingredients you have on hand.

Hello,
We are getting into a routine now for summer.
We’re finding that Monday is a project day and we start harvesting for the week on Tuesday.  The Frig is packed Tuesday by noon and veggies are available through Saturday.  Sometimes things are still available Sunday but no harvesting is done the day.  We’re having a higher demand for eggs than we can provide so we’re asking you to limit eggs to 1 to 2 dozen a visit.
Thank you for understanding we want everyone to be happy.We are harvesting our first potatoes and raspberries of the season, last week for kohlrabi.
Potatoes – $3.00/bag
Fingerlings – $4.00/bag
Raspberries – $3.00/boxKale – $2.00Lettuce mix – $4.00Scallions – $2.00/bunchKohlrabi $2.00each
Summer squash and broccoli start next week.
Enjoy

Since I did this website for Fields Farm, Jim and Debbie are nice enough to kick me down some of the Fields Farm cornucopia.  When they offered me some Kohlrabi, I confessed that I had never tried it before.  Kohlrabi seems only to be introduced to the US food supply by the Farmer’s Market/Organic Foods movement, Mom didn’t cook it when I was growing up unless it was in one of those Hamburger Helper packages.

I was struck by the appearance of the phosphorescent purple orb with symmetrical tentacles coming out of it from all directions.  It looked like something that you would find on the cover of a Yes album.  Debbie told me you cut it up and cook it like any other vegetable.  Kohlrabi has been compared to broccoli stems in that it absorbs the flavors of what you cook it with, turnips in that it is a bulbous shape and you can eat the greens and to eggplant in that its purple on the outside, white on the inside, roundish and you have to cook it to soften it up.  But those comparisons are not even as close as saying a mango is like a peach or any exotic meat tastes like chicken, Kohlrabi is pretty unique.

At the Farmer’s Market yesterday I asked Jim why he does Kohlrabi.  He said it is beautiful and that it loves the cold.  It can grow in the spring and in the fall here and won’t suffer with our inevitable frosts.  I got a couple of more Kohlrabi to stuff in my panniers and take home with me.  Meanwhile going on simultaneously and coincidentally Debbie puts a Kohlrabi recipe up on the site.  I discover it when I get home and try it out for dinner.

It is probably obvious that I have been searching Kohlrabi, and one thing I found went on ecstatically about pureed Kohlrabi.  Debbie’s recipe didn’t mention that, but it was the same basic idea.  So I diced up a Kohlrabi, fried it up with a head of the young garlic that I recently got from Fields Farm, in a good amount of olive oil and some salt and pepper.  I had some fresh sage that I got from the Farmer’s Market.  I love sage, but sometimes it is hard to figure out what to cook with it–I think I had a match here.  I grabbed a bunch of leaves, threw it in and pureed it.  I was too lazy to bake like the recipe said, so I just grated some cheese on top of it.  That was fine and it was steamy enough to melt the cheese.  Wow.  It was incredible.  I finished eating it all up before I touched anything else on my plate!

In the impetus these days for local food, I think maybe Kohlrabi can be something significant in the Northwest cuisine.   For instance a basic technique in cooking is using a mirepoix.  Mirepoix is a finely diced mixture of onions, carrots and celery that is a base for sauces and other foods.  It is a french technique but is also a part of elemental foods such as Bolognese Pasta Sauce.  Celery takes 5 months to grow and is very sensative to frost.  Guess what? that means you cannot grow it here.  I hereby propose that for the Northwest Mirepoix we replace the celery with Kohlrabi!  I will be eager to try this variant of Mirepoix out as well as other ways to cook up some Kohlrabi.

Delicious Kohlrabi and easy too!
Grate or chop finely 2 Kohlrabis.  Saute with 2 gloves of minced garlic in your favorite oil until tender.  Cover with 2 to 3 tbsp. grated parmesan cheese.
Pop in the oven at 350 til cheese is brown.  Makes 2 large servings or 4 small.

CSA farms and farmer’s markets get more and more popular and so are home vegetable gardens.  They are all antidotes to the problems of our industrialized food production system.  One problem being, the food often doesn’t taste good, other problems being, eh…I won’t get into it, as others have.

Vegetable gardens are also getting popular, for the same reasons as guns, because of the uncertain times we live in.  People are considering the possibility are that our whole system may collapse.  It may be a good hedge to be able to rely on yourself.  Dimitry Orlov who wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union, describes how small vegetable gardens got people through the disorder and upheaval.  Russians, because of the slim pickings available in Soviet era stores had a history of small gardening.  (By the way, our Farmer in chief, Jim is currently reading Orlov’s book.)

Books on gardening are often found lacking because because it is so location specific.  Luckily for us in Central Oregon, a local longtime expert gardener has written a book.  When Jim first got interested in farming 20 odd years ago, he actually took a class from the author.  The book is available free on her website!

http://www.juniperandsage.com/garden/book.htm

Of course, we have another great local resource, right here, too.