Two items of note here, one is the new format for the share photo. Below I'll put down a few more thoughts on the share, but I'm also looking for feedback and I'd love to know if you like the new photo format. 

The second item of note was a milestone in the bike delivery department. Today's route put me over 10,000 miles on the Bullitt! I've been riding vegetables into town for just over two years now and it still so much fun. Wonderful things happen all of the time on the bike, like tonight a CSA member who was walking her dog saw me on the bike and waved me down so she could get her share! All kinds of people ask me all the time about what's in the boxes and the most unlikely folks flash the thumbs up sign from their car windows.

Back to today's share, there are some great items in there. Thursday's share will probably be quite similar, but the lettuce variety will likely be different. Today we have summer squash and cucumbers. We're growing three varieties of summer squash: Y-star, which is a yellow patti pan type, Midnight Lightening, a dark zucchini, and Tromboncino, a long curling light green squash with virtually no seed cavity. Most of the squash today is the Midnight Lightening. We'll try to rotate through all of the varieties over the year so you can taste them all. They all work well in any zucchini recipe. Really my favorite thing is to cook them until they are very soft either in a cast iron with olive oil or, even better, on the grill. Tossed in a bit of herbed dressing after that they are amazing as a side, on sandwiches, or mixed into any other dish.

Looking very much like the zucchini we also have a Marketmore cucumber in the share today (the shares were quite heavy to ride into town). This is a pretty standard slicer which is really tasty. I love cucumbers on my sandwiches, but they're also great in salads, or just by themselves.

The fennel in today's share is young, tender and really beautiful. Both the fronds and the bulb can be eaten raw or cooked. I usually separate the two and when cooking the fronds I like to mix it with other greens. The bulbs should be amazing sliced thinly in salad with a bit of citrus dressing.

There's a good sized handful of arugula in the share. This has a bit of a bite due to the heat. If you prefer it more mild try cooking it first, typically this is done by wilting it in a bit of hot oil. It's also great on pizza or chopped up in pasta if you're looking for something to do with it other than making a salad. It's the most delicate of the share items so it should be used right away.

Rounding out the share is a nice head of Plato II romaine lettuce. I think you all know what to do with this, but you might consider grilling it as well. Usually this is done by slicing the head in half length wise, drizzling it with oil and cooking it until the center is soft.

Enjoy!

Today's share is a bit larger and more exciting than originally planned but I got a little excited about the start of the season when we were harvesting this morning.

Two heads of lettuce today, which is unusual for us but reflects the surplus of lettuce that we have in the field right now. One is a lovely head of Kweik butter and the other is either Samantha or New Red Fire, both are red leaf lettuces.

A small sampling of Sugar Snap peas are an exciting treat. These have edible pods and are nice and crunchy. There are also a couple carrots, the last from an early planting if Napoli in the hoop house.

Green garlic rounds out the share. These are immature heads. The green tops can be chopped up and added to cooked or raw dishes. There are also immature cloves starting to form. The heads can be chopped whole, or the cloves can be separated out if you prefer.

We had a nice group of folks out to our open house on Sunday. If you weren't able to make it for a tour of the fields we'll be doing another in September. We'll also have the berry fields open for upick soon. We'd love to have you out, but until then we'll keep harvesting and bringing some of the fields to you. Enjoy!

Hey ya'll, slab got poured today, 'nuff said. Who's excited to see it at the open house on Sunday!?!? Come check it out! But, don't get too close...

Front...

And back...look they're still finishing up the last bit on the right!

I hope to see lots of you on Sunday!!!!

Til' next time,
Louis

(Apologies for being a day late on this post, I was experiencing minor technical difficulties yesterday - the wonders of modern technology...)

Today is the last spring share, next week we start summer. If you haven't signed up for a summer share yet do it now, we still have some left to sell.

Summer treats are working their way into the shares already. Our first cucumber harvest from the greenhouse was today and they look great. These are actually from a planting for our wholesale accounts but I thought it would be nice to get a sampling in the share.

Sugar snap peas started today too. Unlike in past years when we grew shelling peas, these have an edible pod so eat the whole thing!

Green garlic continues to size up just a bit. You can still use the greens and the white sections and now there's a bit of immature clove as well. Use this anywhere you'd use garlic for flavor, raw or cooked.

Rounding out the shares are carrots and lettuce. I'm sure you know what to do with those. The lettuce is a nice butter called Kweik, the carrots are Napoli which are excellent raw.

We're looking forward to more new summer treats coming up. I hope you all enjoy the end of spring!

Hello everyone, it was a somewhat stormy Thursday on the farm today, but regardless of the weather we went to town on attaching porch ledgers to the building and getting rafters up and onto the porch beams.  It's lookin' pretty darn good, am I right?  And, as you can see by the nifty waterproof barrier now covering all of the roof-like surfaces and the spiffy stain job on all the rafters, Oscar and Dylan spent the beginning of the week rolling out tar paper while I moved a stain brush back and forth for two days (which would you choose?).  But, now the rooms are all dried in, and all the rafters were finished drying and ready to go for installation today so it was anything but wasted effort.

Here is Oscar attaching the metal hangers that the rafters will sit in to the ledger.

Here is a closer view.  You can't really see it in this photo, but where each rafter planes across a beam (the small ones go over one beam, the longer ones go over two) there is a tiny notch taken out called a 'birdsmouth', cool name right?  This little cut makes it so the full edge of the rafter bears onto the beam and allows it to sit securely without rolling in either direction.  This, plus similarly spiffy, stained blocks will be fit snugly between the rafters to prevent any sort of lateral movement whatsoever. 

Aaaaaannd...here's another kind of bird's mouth.  I saw this little guy on my walk up to the job site the other morning.  He let me get up closer than I expected, and man do they make a funny noise.  Have a great weekend!

Til' next time,
Louis

We're a bit short handed today so needless to say I'm running behind. A quick update to say the shares look great, with lots of delicious greens. Joker lettuce, Red Ruffled kale, Magma mustard, Prize Choi, and garlic scapes! More later, meanwhile I'm hopping on the bike to haul these heavy boxes into town.

A new harvest season means another open house. On Sunday, June 22nd from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, we'll be hosting our Summer Open House at the farm.

The return of blueberries, our new flower patch and the always evolving farm store will make for a visit filled with new things to see and taste.

Don't forget those good walking shoes for the farm. Unfortunately, our U-pick will not be open yet.

13390 SW Morgan Road, Sherwood, OR
We'll be meeting at our packing shed (the brown building to the left of the construction site). Please park along the Christmas trees when you arrive.

Hey all, another super productive week is coming to a close, and again I couldn't be happier or prouder of what we've accomplished.  Since all the plywood sheeting has been finished (walls and roofs) and the sheer inspector came by to check everything out (we passed the inspection, just fyi), the focus has shifted to working on the porches/patios that will wrap pretty much around the entire building.  Somehow I was lucky enough to be assigned the most coveted and glorious task of cutting and preparing the old reclaimed barn beams so they could become our porch posts.  No joke, it was glorious, and Dylan and Isaac were totally jealous even though they were the ones who set me up doing it (we share the guts and the glory around here).  But anyways, it was a lot of fun assessing the beams' different shapes and twists, and then cutting super precise notches to make sure that they sit on their bases correctly and that the horizontal beams plane across them juuuust right.  Here's a photo of some of the posts' final resting places (there are more in the back).

The process of actually installing the posts and beams was a pretty fun one too.  After all the posts got cut, notched, and set in place, Oscar and I teamed up to drill and bolt the beams onto the posts, another precise job.  Here is Oscar using a cutting wheel to remove the excess threads after a successful bolting. 

And here is a close up of what a few of the posts look like post beam-bolting (pun intended).  Look at how well that beam planes across those notches! (actually 'saddles' is the correct term to use as opposed to 'notches', I was told.  Makes sense, giddy up!)

Doing all this external stuff is really transforming the job site and the feel of the building itself.  Sometime next week the excavator is coming out to level all the ground around the perimeter of the building, and then the following week the concrete guys will be out to pour the slab.  It'll be crazy not walking around on uneven gravel anymore, something I'm definitely looking forward to.  I'm also looking forward to a restful weekend, as I'm sure you are too.  So enjoy!

Til' next time,
Louis

It's really still three weeks until summer but the share is starting to feel a little more early summerish (or maybe it's just late spring like). Carrots make their first appearance, very exciting. We've left the tops on just because they're beautiful, and they are technically edible, but we'll probably take them off in the future since I doubt many of you will eat them and we like to leave as much pant material as possible on the farm in order to feed future crops.

We did take the radish tops off this week as they weren't looking very appetizing. There is a beautiful bunch of arugula in the share, perfect for salad, or tossing with some hot olive oil and then a bit of pasta and hard cheese.

The last of the green onions are in this weeks share and rounding out the mix is a bit of red leaf lettuce.

We've been planting like mad with all of this good weather. Irrigation is starting to take significant time as well. Even so we're making our best attempt to keep up with the weeds and so far it's working. We'll see how long we can keep that up, right now the summer crops are looking pretty good.