Happy Thursday everybody!  It doesn't feel so spring-like anymore, but that's ok because we are back to working in the greenhouse finally!  We got it all set up today with tables, water, and heat, and then we even had time to seed some flats of onions that we were a little behind on.  And there they are in the above photo!  Can you tell from the picture that the greenhouse has moved all the way across the farm since you last saw it?  Maybe not from this close up, but I assure you, it is on some prime real estate directly adjacent to the U-pick blueberries, the new vegetable fields, and the new pack shed and (soon to be) farm stand!  It was quite an adventure pulling it apart on the old spot, moving it, and putting it back together with new plastic and a few minor changes.  We got the whole farm crew together plus a couple of guys from the construction crew to work together doing the reconstruction.  It was a greenhouse party!  But, also completely necessary because pulling plastic over a greenhouse even with a minor breeze can be much more difficult than you would ever think it to be.  So, If anyone ever tells you it can be done easily with two people, think again, and maybe ask them how they did it because I'd like to know. 

Anyways, it's very exciting to be working with seeds again (6 trays of Guardsman onions down, and an entire farm left to go).  it'll be even more exciting when they turn into seedlings and we can start putting them into the new fields, which will happen sooner than we know it.  That little taste of spring we had got me ready to go, but I'll have to wait for real spring like all the rest of the good little farmers. 

I hope you all have a great weekend, talk to you next week!

Louis

It was another beautiful and dry day out on the farm today, so while Forrest talked with Josh about managing the starts in the greenhouse and Karen cultivated the weeds in the garlic I was able to hop on the tractor and prepare the first beds we'll be planting in the field as well as in one of the hoop houses.  But, before I did any of it I thought that I would document the hoop house's journey from cover crop to tilled ground.  Unfortunately though, we have to wait at least a week before we can make the nice, neat beds that we plant into because the tilled cover crop has to break down a bit, so you won't be seeing that today.  But, when that time comes I'll make sure to update the hoop house photo diary so you can see the transformation.  (FYI we apply this process of going from cover crop to prepped ground with beds in the main fields as well.)

This photo shows the untouched cover crop in the hoop house as I am about to go through it with the flail mower to chop it up and evenly spread the clippings.

This photo shows the cover crop post-mowing and just as I'm about to start roto-tilling.

This photo shows the newly worked ground.  Not very neat, but as I said before this just kills and works in the cover crop so it can break down in the soil before we do another light till and make the light and fluffy beds we'll plant our cash crops into.

I hope you enjoyed this little insight into the secret life of a hoop house, with more photos to come!
Have a wonderful rest of the week and talk to you next time!

Louis

Craziness on the farm today with harvest and a big film crew interested in what we're doing. Another big share of carrots and greens today. There's also a bit of beautiful thyme in the share. There are three different greens: kale, collards and Brussels sprout leaves. The Brussels leaves look very much, and taste very much like collards, although you can tell them by their smoother texture. The kale is very dark and sweet from the cold.

Today's carrots are a mix of Jaune du Doubs and Napoli. Both are very sweet right now and should keep well in the fridge. The thyme is a great herb fort winter dishes, root roasts, stuffings and soups. It also dries easily and can be kept dry, on the stem, for extended periods if you don't get to it immediately.

Crop planning for the upcoming season is almost done. That's a good thing because we'll be seeding in the greenhouses by the end of the month. I'll try to give more updates on that soon.

Happy new year everyone!  The crew is back!  After holiday trips to everywhere from balmy Cambodia, to the cold vortex in the Midwest, to a dry California desert, (only to name a few) the full Our Table family was able to get back together today and get started on some ground breaking stuff...literally.  Not only did we have the first full-farm crew meeting of 2014, but we broke ground on the Our Table farm stand and commercial kitchen!  Once the building is finished it will proudly serve as the heart of the Our Table Cooperative and begin to pump goodness throughout the Sherwood and Portland areas.  This is where we will have direct contact with customers like you, and where they will take the plethora of delicious things we'll be producing on the farm, combine them, and turn them into something so much more than a sum of their parts.  Yes, like magic.  So, needless to say, it was a big day for us!  It's always good to be able to start off the new year with an exciting new project, and I don't think this one will disappoint.  Anyways, with that good news I think I'll leave this post short and sweet, I'm still reeling a bit from our almost 5,000 mile round trip to Wisconsin and back.  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and has plenty to look forward to in 2014!

Til' next week,
Louis

Hey folks!  Happy first day of the second half of the first month of the new year!  It sure caught me by surprise, what about you?  So, it's time to start thinking about 2015 right?  No, certainly not.  But, what it was time for earlier was enjoying the amazing spring-like day we had out in Sherwood today.  I felt sorry for the people who were stuck in foggy Portland all day because it was absolutely gorgeous out on the farm.  The sun came out at about noon, and from then on it was 50+ degrees and perfectly clear - the perfect day for packaging frozen blueberries and pre-harvesting some carrots, which, coincidentally, was exactly what we did.  The morning was spent in the packing shed with the blueberries, but then once that sun burned through we were out in the field pulling carrots so they'd be ready to go for Monday's share.  The remaining carrots were still doing ok out in the field, with the gopher and vole pressure definitely being the main issue.  They just continue to chomp through those neat lines of roots we so kindly laid out for them.  There's nothing worse than grabbing a handful of green tops and pulling out a great big bunch of nothing, (except for maybe unknowingly grabbing/squishing a fully rotten carrot between your fingers) but I feel like the gophers leave the tops sticking out on purpose just to mess with us.  Anyways, we didn't get all the roots out, but the few we did leave should be fine until next week when they'll all be pulled and moved into our root cellar until they make the final move into yours and our stomachs. 

Speaking of things migrating into our stomachs, this winter I've been devouring my share of hard squash and have finally began taking the time to use the seeds instead of just pitching them in the compost with the gunk.  It's so easy to do and so good that it is now one of my favorite snacks, and all I have to do is keep eating squash and I'll have an infinite supply of seeds!  So, because I've enjoyed them so much I thought I'd share how I prepare this crunchy, salty, protein packed snack.  Recently I've been using seeds from the American Tondo pumpkin variety we grew last year, but as far as I know any hard squash seed can be used.

First, comes the most time consuming and slightly annoying part (but not annoying enough to make it not worth it).  You have to clean the seed off.  I just use a colander and my fingers under running water to get the gunk off and then I transfer them onto a towel and roll them up to dry them a bit.  Don't worry, they don't have to be perfectly clean or perfectly dry. 

Then, this is where the directions can differ from recipe to recipe.  What I do is I like to let the seeds soak in a brine for 24-36 hours.  I just fill a container with water (one with a lid) and then I add anywhere from 1/8th to 1/4 cup of salt (and spices if you wish) depending on how many seeds you ended up with and how salty you want the end product to be (experiment if you want).  Some recipes skip this step all together and just add a sprinkling of salt onto the seeds immediately before baking, but when I did it that way I didn't get the results I wanted, so the brining did the trick for me. 

After brining, the oven gets preheated to 325 and I roll the seeds up in a towel again just to get the excess brine off.  Then it's onto a baking sheet, with the key being to try to keep it to one layer with as little seed overlap as possible.  Then I sprinkle some olive oil over them, work it in with my hands so they're all nice and covered, and pop them into the oven.  I let them bake for about 10 minutes and then check on them, give them a stir, and put them back in for another 10 minutes or so.  At this point they need to be checked (and tasted) pretty frequently because there's a fine line between crispy crunchy and burnt, but as long as you keep an eye on them you'll have a batch of golden brown snacky goodness ready to store in an airtight jar on the counter, or just in your backpack like I've been doing for on the go munching. 

Well, I hope you try it out if you haven't already.  It'll be hard to throw squash seed away in this household from now on, I just have to figure out how to save the seed from multiple nights of squash eating so I can roast them in bigger batches.  Saving them and freezing them to roast on a later date perhaps?  I'm open to suggestions.  Also, if anyone has any questions about the "recipe" don't be afraid to leave a comment.

I hope you all have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you next week!
Don't forget to pick up your shares on Monday!

Louis

Yep, today is the first winter share, the first share in fact, of 2014. Despite the deep freeze we had in the fall and the outrageous vole and gopher pressure that followed it’s a pretty good one.




Pictured above is an averageish share though the do vary a bit. All of the shares got kale and carrots. The Rainbow Lacinato kale is beautiful right now, the cold really brings out beautiful color in it, but the leave are growing slowly so they’re small, perfect for stir fry. The carrots are Napoli, very sweet and crunchy for fresh eating. The high sugars have cause a few to crack, but just take that as a sign of sweetness.




All of the shares also have a mix of chicories, a red variety and a green. Among the reds are Grumulo, which is the most bitter green we grow, excellent cooked. Bitter is often overlooked in American cooking, but other cultures embrace it and the bitter pairs well with strong flavors like salty, sweet acid tartness, and fatty. I have come to crave it in the winter. There are also two types of radicchio, Rossa Verona which is round, and Treviso, pictured above. The red is beautiful but white ribs on all of these are the real treat: sweet, crunchy and slightly bitter. They can also be cooked or eaten raw in salad. Similarly the green varieties have excellent ribs. Sugarloaf, Castlefranco and Bellesque frisee are the three in the rotation. Bellesque is pictured above. Sugarloaf is light green with broad leaves forming a kind of loaf, and Castlefranco has red flecks. These are also all good in salad or cooked, each with slightly different characteristics, but basically interchangeable. There is some freeze damage on many of the heads showing up as small black or brown spots. These can be trimmed out and don’t negatively effect the flavor.

A few of the shares got a small bonus leek. Unfortunately the gophers found the leeks, and while I’ve never known them to be big allium eaters, they sure did a job on our remaining leeks so we were quite short.

We were also a bit short on time and crew this morning so harvest went longer than I had hoped. Part of that was just us recovering from the holidays. Forrest and Louis are still traveling back from holidays with family so it was just Karen and I to start. Machelle and Amaya jumped in to harvest the carrots and to help with the kale, and Eugenio and Anatolio who were pruning blueberries took a break to harvest the remaining leeks. It was fun to involve other folks from the farm in the CSA harvest and we definitely appreciated the help. 

The next share will be in two weeks and we’ll see what that brings. Lets hope for some warmer, wetter weather (with a bit of sun in between) in the meantime to get the crops growing again.

Josh Volk
Chicory Aficionado