Hello from the farm!

I can't believe it is already week 11, where is all the time going?!?  I'm going to just start calling it the Fall box, because let's be real, it is definitely Fall here on the farm.  These last few days on the farm have been quite beautiful and epic–from crazy thunderstorms to gorgeous rainbows and some killer sunsets in between.  The moodiness of the weather paired with the bright red of our blueberry crop and the lush green of our annual crops is like no other yet this time of the year for us farmers is always bittersweet.  Not only must we say goodbye to the sun, summery vegetables, and days without mud everywhere we also must say the hard goodbye to some of the folks that have been with us all season.  Working day-in and day-out with a small crew sharing in the tasks of a farm doubling its production can be a harrowing, rewarding and crazy experience all-in-one.  We had an amazing group of folks out here with us this year and through the highs and lows we are all so incredibly grateful for their dedication, hard work, patience and amazing attitudes–we just couldn't have done it without them!!  We said goodbye to Martha and Aaron last week, Carl(y)'s last day is Friday and Lewis will be with us a couple weeks more.

GREEN SCALLIONS:  Our good ol' friends.  If they had a motto it would be "can't stop, won't stop."  Hope you enjoy their versatility!

PEPPERS:  Large gets stocky reds and a cayenne and mini gets some peppers with heat: two jalapeños and a basque.  Enjoy these peppers while they last, the end is near!!  For the stocky reds this Spanish romesco recipe would be fantastic with all that flavor!

​CABBAGE (Mini Only):   Most received purple, some received savoy!  Cabbage, like most hearty greens, can also be used so many different ways.  It can be used for kraut, kimchi, slaw, soups, roasts so on and so forth!  Here is a great mason jar kraut how-to.  I'm also a huge fan of fried chicken in the winter so slaw is awesome.  Especially with those jalapeños we put in the box!

SQUASH (Mini Only):  Acorn or Delicata. Both have soft skins that you can eat and are totally beauts! These guys won't last all winter in your pantry so enjoy them now!  Acorn squash is super tasty just baked in the oven and cut up, but you can always go a number of different ways from there: adding to pasta, salads, casseroles and soups. Here are great instructions on how to bake the squash in the oven from cutting up the squash to serving it at the table. 

BEETS (Large Only):  Red or chioggia. They are getting sweeter as the weather chills and boy are they delicious. Use the greens as well!  If you don't want the greens or want to store the roots just make sure to compost the greens, the beets will store much better that way.  Here is a great recipe using the beets, beet greens and chard (that is also in the box!)

CHARD (Large Only):  A nice bunch of young, tender, sweet, green chard.  You can use this Verde da Taglia chard with the beet greens and turnip greens and make a delightful braised dish, the recipe above or if you want to just use the chard and beet greens I've listed a simple 20 min recipe below!

• 2 bunches beet greens, stems removed
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, or to taste
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
• salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 2 lemons, quartered

Directions

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the beet greens, and cook uncovered until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain in a colander, then immediately immerse in ice water for several minutes until cold to stop the cooking process. Once the greens are cold, drain well, and coarsely chop.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Stir in the garlic and red pepper flakes; cook and stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the greens until oil and garlic is evenly distributed. Season with salt and pepper. Cook just until greens are hot; serve with lemon wedges.

BROWN GOLDRING LETTUCE (Large Only):  Don't pay attention to the name, or the looks for that matter of this lettuce. JUST TASTE IT!!  From Wild Garden Seed where we get the seed for this lettuce: This is our least appreciated, best flavored lettuce. In replicated studies over two years that included blind taste tests by 28 teenage Botany students, 80% rated this (unfortunately named) variety as “sweet,” and less than 10% rated it bitter. None of the other of the 20 tested varieties came close to this ranking. One student suggested renaming the variety “Rocket Shine” to better reflect its pertinent qualities. A tight and pointed cos head from the old Abundant Life Seed collection and one of our favorites for midsummer flavor and crunch-juiciness. Brown wrapper leaves create well-blanched hearts of golden “leaf canoes.” Named for the Goldring family of Bath, England, who introduced it.

CILANTRO (Large Only):  So fresh and so green. So great to top fall soups!  Tortilla soup with a cilantro pesto on top?

SCARLET QUEEN TURNIPS (Large Only):  I am really keen on the queen!  Here is a great recipe (from dunkandcrumble.com that another farm I admire from up in Washington) recommended. I'm going to try it tonight.  1 bunch Scarlet Queen Red turnips, washed (not peeled) and sliced into 1/4-inch thick rounds
3 Tbs thinly sliced Leeks
1/4 cup shelled pistachios
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
salt and pepper, to taste
juice of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oilIn a medium salad bowl, combine the turnips,leek, and pistachios. Sprinkle feta cheese on top, as well as a big pinch each of salt and black pepper.  Drizzle lemon juice and olive oil over salad, and toss gently to combine.

In my last two blog posts, I discussed two of the three member groups which make up Our Table – Workers and Producers. Today, I’d like to focus on the third and final group – Consumers or Eaters. This is by far the largest group of stakeholders in Our Table and in many respects, the most important.

Our Table’s vision is: A resilient and interdependent local food culture. The word culture is of great significance here. Wendell Berry famously wrote that "Eating is an agricultural act". He’s correct of course but eating is also a cultural act. Our cultural mores, habits, and preferences are critical factors in determining what and how we eat. In the past 50-odd years, advertising and mass media has become one of the primary driving forces behind defining food culture but perhaps it’s time for us as eaters to take that power back into our own hands. I would like to live in a world where communities even just fifty miles apart can have distinct food cultures based on their own ecology, heritage, and preferences. To build a resilient and interdependent local food culture, communities must first take ownership of their culture.

A few days ago, I read an article in the newspaper that made me really mad. The article noted that the use of the herbicide glyphosate (a.k.a. Roundup) has increased exponentially in the past decade. Despite recent research pointing to the toxic effects of glyphosate on human health and the environment, the government has responded by steadily raising the levels of glyphosate residues that are considered "safe" in our food. One of the fastest growing uses of Roundup is to desiccate a crop of wheat right before harvest – not to kill weeds but to kill the actual wheat plant itself so that it is easier to harvest...

It is time to call a spade a spade: Industrialized food (Big Food) is rife with deception and fraud. Most of us get overwhelmed with cognitive dissonance when confronted with the fact that our food is making us sick. It is impossible, as an average citizen, to police and cut through the marketing claims and jargon. Few have the energy or the time, and what starts off as principled vigilance soon slides into exhausted resignation. I am just as susceptible to this as anyone else. Although consumer choice can be a powerful motivator, it alone is not a sufficient solution because the problems are systemic and the system is rigged. Big Food, is based on the premise of taking ownership and control away from individuals and communities and giving it to large corporations and their enablers in government. Given the stacked odds, the only realistic way to change the system is to form interdependent personal relationships between eaters and food producers and take true ownership of our food.

What does it mean to take ownership of our food? How do we know that the farmer at the corner produce stand is any more trustworthy than the Big Food PR firm? Unless you live in a farming community and personally know your farmer, it is difficult to simply assume that small is good and big is bad – that’s definitely an oversimplification that can lead to more fraud. Clearly, the organic label, or any other label for that matter, is not sufficient either. Who has the time for all this, anyway? Our Table Cooperative was created as a way to address this conundrum. As a truly community owned food producer and seller, our basis is a web of trust and relationships between all the people involved in growing, raising, preparing, and eating food. All these people, from farmer to eater are financial and legal member-owners of the organization, an organization whose sole purpose is to serve the needs of its stakeholders. There is no corporate veil of secrecy to hide behind here. There are no hidden paymasters to service. Our Table gives its community control and ownership over the production and consumption of their food; as member-owners, those are our rights.

Along with these rights come certain responsibilities. As members, we have the responsibility to run the organization in a way that is consistent with its mission. A part of that is to produce the best food we can while caring for the people and land who make it possible. Another just as important part of our mission is to be financially self-sufficient and sustainable. This means that we have to price the food at what it actually costs to produce – we cannot hide costs under the table by pushing them out to unseen people or future generations. Often times, our food costs less than a similar item produced by Big Food. This is because our economic structure is non-extractive by nature and does not involve dozens of middlemen. This is especially true when you’re talking about seasonal locally grown raw ingredients that you take home and cook or prepare yourself. However, just as often, our food costs more than Big Food. This is not because our food is over-priced but because Big Food is too cheap. You are effectively getting what you pay for.

Yes, I am saying that we Americans need to spend a larger percentage of our incomes on food. Today, thanks to the cost-shifting tactics of Big Food, we spend less than 9% of our incomes on food – less than any other country in the world and less than any other time in our own history. At the same time, as a nation, we spend more on healthcare today than any other time in our history. There is a very direct connection between these two statistics. I think we all intuitively know this. You cannot separate food from health and you cannot separate the health of people from the health of the land and nature. It’s really as simple and beautiful as that.

Our Table’s consumer members are the bedrock upon which the rest of our Cooperative is built. These are the folks who not only buy into the philosophy behind the Cooperative, but are also willing to spend their hard-earned money on high quality local food. They take conscious ownership over their choice to value food over other things; a choice which can involve significant sacrifice and one that sadly not everyone in our community is able to make. Although nutrition support programs like SNAP and WIC can help (and we do accept them) they are not always sufficient. In addition, the 24x7 convenience of Big Food where a large red tomato is available any time of the year is difficult to turn away from.

Many of our members have children and it is always a special treat to have kids on the farm. Earlier this year we started offering educational programs on the farm. To date, we have held four week-long farm camps and hosted over a dozen field trips from area schools. The eager faces, curiosity, and joy of the kids serve as a grounding force – they remind us that we work today so that our children and grandchildren can reap the harvest of the future. It is with this spirit that in honor of National Co-op month, I would like to say thank you to all our members; people who have made the choice to own their food.

Well, everyone, we survived the great storm!  In reality, there was only a 30% chance it was going to hit us in a bad, bad way but it is always better to be prepared than not.  I look at it as a great reason for us to bust our butts and get a lot of things taken care of on the farm that otherwise we might drag our feet to get done...now we need not worry!  Also, some really rainy days are a great excuse to tidy up and organize, which is probably my favorite thing to do ever (yes, super dork over here).

On the same subject, not sure how many of you were able to witness yesterday's sudden storm.  Right at lunch there was an intense lightening storm came over the farm and I really wish I had some photos to prove it.  All of your farmers were out there ooo-ing and awe-ing together from cover.  It definitely changed the course of our harvest and afternoon as hail, lightening and huge thunder claps continued on.  Our pepper got a beating but no one got struck (I know several farmers that have been).

LEEKS:  One large or two small.  Beautiful fall alliums.  Leeks are great in gratins, soups, just sautéed in butter, so many options.  I almost like leeks better because they are so easy to cut up and use.   Below is a fantastic soup recipe that is a take on potato-leek but with collards also!

POTATO LEEK SOUP WITH COLLARD GREENS (from Andrea Beaman)

• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 large leek, cleaned and chopped (use both white and green)
• 1 tsp. dried thyme
• 2-3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 3-4 potatoes, peeled and chopped into quarters
• 4-5 cups chicken stock or vegetable stock
• 1 & 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 2-3 tbsp. grass-fed butter
• 2 collard green leaves, stem removed, leaves sliced thin

In a 3 & 1/2 to 4 quart soup pot, heat oil on medium and add chopped leeks and thyme. Saute 3-4 minutes and add a pinch of sea salt. Add the garlic and potatoes, and an additional pinch of sea salt. Sauté all ingredients for 2-3 minutes. Add the chicken stock to the pot, as well as the remaining salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce the heat to medium. Cook 10-12 minutes or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a fork. With a large slotted spoon, remove all of the vegetables from the pot and puree in a food processor. Spoon the puree back into the pot and mix until integrated. Add the butter and collard greens, cover and cook 3-4 minutes. Taste and season with more sea-salt if needed.

YUKON GOLD POTATOES:  Gorgeous yukon golds.  Golden and gorgeous.  When cooked they keep their golden hue and are creamy and buttery.  Right now they've been stored in our root cellar so they are shock full of sugar (to stay alive in the cold).  If you like your potatoes less sweet I recommend letting them sit out at room temp in your kitchen (in the dark) for a week or two so that those sugars convert back to starches.  The sugars in them do make them perform differently when cooking.  Yukons  can be boiled and mashed or used to make gratins, hash browns and purees. They also work well in roasted, grilled and sautéed preparations. They are a popular potato choice when making french fries.

COLLARD GREENS:  The quintessential fall green!  These greens are gorgeous and can withstand cooking that many green cannot!  You can go the common southern route or make wraps with them or as the farmers were talking about yesterday go the crock pot route and make delicious soups with them.  You can use these guys in the soup recipe above!  Not only are collard greens tasty but they are incredibly nutritious!  

GREEN TOMATOES:  Fried green tomatoes anyone?  We won't fill your CSA boxes with these but we do have to send them at least once!  You can fry them, make pickles, make a relish, roast them.  So many different options.  Here is a starting point.

STOCKY RED ROASTERS (Small Only):  More of these gorgeous Italian sweet peppers.  Tasty raw, sautéed or in a soup!

STOCKY YELLOW ROASTERS (Large Only):  Love these yellow guys.  I mean... the color!!  Just like their red counterparts...we love to just take a bit into them but they are great in many a different dish.  We hope you are starting to see the superiority of their flavor!

HOT PEPPERS (Large Only):  One El Jefe jalapeño, one Basque espelette and one Maria Nagy cayenne pepper!  We thought we would give you guys a sampling of some of the peppers we have on the hotter side of life.  If you don't like spice, sorry and we hope you pass them along to someone who does.  Honestly, none of our peppers are super hot as you have to have a heat in order to grow a hot pepper and this summer didn't see a ton of hot days. You can use these to flavor soups, chilis, pretty much anything.  I love just adding a touch of spice to pasta even.  I would say cayenne is the hottest (and can be dried to make pepper flakes), followed by jalapeño and the espelette being the least, although they can be sneaky!  Remember that the seeds are always the hottest part so if you just want some spicy flavor just remove the seeds.   

ACORN SQUASH (Large Only):  The first of the onslaught of winter squash.  These guys are totally beauts!  They are the longest lasting of the different squashes so we always consume them first.  Acorn squash is super tasty just baked in the oven and cut up, but you can always go a number of different ways from there: adding to pasta, salads, casseroles and soups.  Here are great instructions on how to bake the squash in the oven from cutting up the squash to serving it at the table. 

THYME (Large Only):  A fantastic herb for roasts, soups, dressings and more!  Rub it, sprinkle it, you name it!  This little herb bundle can be hung in your kitchen where it will dry and can be used over and over again.

PURPLE CABBAGE (Large Only):  Because we wanted to make your box really heavy!!  This is a beautiful fall cabbage.  Cabbage, like most hearty greens, can also be used so many different ways.  It can be used for kraut, kimchi, slaw, soups, roasts so on and so forth!  Here is a great mason jar kraut how-to.  I'm also a huge fan of fried chicken in the winter so slaw is awesome.  Especially with that jalapeño we put in the box!

Our Table has three membership classes or stakeholder groups – workers, regional producers, and consumers. In my last post I discussed the worker members of Our Table Cooperative – employees of the Cooperative who work on the Cooperative’s farm in Sherwood. Although we grow a large variety of different foods on our farm, including vegetables, berries, honey, and poultry, the fact remains that there are dozens of foods that our farm does not, or cannot grow. For example, we don’t grow grains, or dairy – foods that make up a large part of our diets. Although it may not be practical for our one 60-acre farm to grow a complete diet of foods, it is not difficult to imagine a future where the vast majority of what we eat comes from the local producers. Our Table was set up to provide a single source for a complete diet for our community. In order to do this we had to look beyond our own farm and this is where the regional producer members of the Cooperative come in.

Regional producers are independent farmers and food artisans who are members of the Cooperative and sell the food they create through the Cooperative. Our Table aggregates this product from all these producers and then sells them under the “Certified Local Food” brand in our on-farm grocery store, through our Local Food Box CSA subscription program, and to restaurants. Regional producers are thoroughly vetted by the Cooperative over a one-year “dating” period before they are eligible for membership in the Cooperative. During this time, we work to build a strong relationship with the producer to ensure that they are philosophically aligned with the Cooperative’s values. These values span a range of topics from product quality to the way a producer manages their land and livestock, and the way they treat their workers. The Certified Local Food brand is in essence a promise made by Our Table to the people eating our food. It is our commitment to:

Grow onsite on the Cooperative’s farm or source all produce and products from Oregon whenever possible (If it is impractical for Oregon to grow a particular crop, for example coffee or cacao, our intention is transparent and direct relationships with the source)

• Meet or exceed the national organic standards
• Build a thriving and fair local food economy

Although some farms in our family may not be Certified Organic, we guarantee that the food we sell under this brand is:

• Free of all chemical pesticides and herbicides
• Non GMO
• Raised and cared for ethically and humanely

We prioritize living wages for farm-workers, build soil fertility for long-term health and nutrition, and meet the needs of our community through delicious, local and chemical-free foods. We strive to create a transparent and honest food system in service to the land, our members, and our community.

We’ve all experienced the pain of trying to decipher modern food labels. They are usually a confusing jumble of cryptic “nutrition” facts, ingredient lists, and marketing copy. It’s often impossible to tell whether seemingly simple words like “natural” or “healthy” have any relationship to the stuff our grandparents would recognize as food. Modern food choices have become so complicated that a trip to the grocery store can be a stressful exercise when at the end of the day, most of us just want something that is tasty and honest. In stark contrast to this overly complex world, when you see our Certified Local Food seal, you can trust that the food meets our high standards of quality and ethics, leaving you free to focus on the pleasure of good taste and good company.

Our Table currently has twelve producer members. Once a producer is accepted for membership in the Cooperative, they become owners of Our Table by purchasing a membership share costing $1,500 which gives them the right to share in its governance and its profits. A while ago, these producers converged at our farm in Sherwood for a meeting. I sat at the table that day and looking around, realized that between them, these fine folks raise or produce everything I would need to eat and drink on any given day – from my morning coffee to family dinner. Grains, dairy, vegetables, fruit, meats, fish, coffee, nuts, kombucha, the list goes on and on. All of the highest quality and following impeccable practices. It was truly a revelation and I remember feeling supremely blessed. It is often easy to forget what a bountiful and diverse place we live in.

Personally, I look forward to a time when the vast majority of the products we carry at our on-farm grocery store come from within our Co-op family—either from our own farm or from one of these producer members. I look forward to the beautiful day when I can pick up anything in the store and know that I have shaken the hand that produced it. That is the promise of Our Table; a place that builds true interdependence between the people who produce and eat food in our community.

Hello all!

The last couple of days have been so gorgeous and represent to me what is quintessential Fall..those low sun angles, crisp air and orange or reds everywhere. 

Today at the farm everyone is busy battening down the hatches!  Although it is nothing like the storm folks are experiencing out on the East Coast, we have a little storm coming our way that for our area is a bit drastic and we have to make sure the farm is prepared for it.  Not only are we scurrying around using the last little bit of dry time to till, seed and plant cover crop we are also making sure all of our greenhouses are tied down, shade cloth put away, chickens secure...the list just goes on. There is always an endless amount of things to do on the farm, but when faced with certain events you have to focus and hustle!  It will be interesting to see what happens in reality versus the weather predictions–we get quite a bit of wind that comes through the farm and a couple years ago one of our chicken coops actually caught air in what was quite a bad situation, let's hope nothing crazy happens this time around.  Next week you'll probably only get a bunch of soggy farmer photos, hah!

No CSA photos today, technology is not on my side!

​CIPPOLINI ONIONS:  Specialty Italian onion (pronounced chip-oh-lee-knee).  Their name literally means "little onion" in Italian! Cippolinis are about the size of a golf ball (though some of ours grow to be much bigger) with a slightly flattened appearance. They're thin-skinned and have translucent white flesh with more residual sugar than your average yellow or white onion.  This makes them great for roasting or caramelizing.  Roast them whole or on the stove in butter, they will melt in your mouth.  We grew both red and yellow cippolinis so you may get one or the other or both!

HAKUREI TURNIPS:  No greens this time, but big beautiful roots.  Would be great roasted with the onions!

PARSLEY:  A lovely bunch of the fresh herb.  Great at this time of year for soups, roasts, making stock and the like. Fresh parsley always inspires me at this time of year–it is like dill in the summer!

ITALIAN SWEET PEPPERS (Mini only):  The mini share each received two stocky red or yellow roasters!

YAYA CARROTS (Mini only):  Big, gorgeous, sweet carrots!

ARUGULA (Large only):  One of my favorite greens.  Arugula can be used as a salad green, in sandwiches, as a pizza topping and so much more.  This arugula is flavorful with a tinge of spice.  You can throw it in with your salad mix but we wanted to keep them separate just in case.  Arugula is a little bit more tender than the other salad greens so if you do combine, do so when ready to prepare as storing the two together isn't the best.

SALAD MIX (Large only):  Our beautiful and ever-changing salad mix.  Great for a fall salad, can stand up next to fennel, squash, cranberries, you name it.

FENNEL (Large only):  Beautiful fronds and bulb.  Hope you are beginning (if you don't already) the beauty and flavor of fennel.  If I was bringing this share home I would probably do something with the fennel and cippolinis, maybe just a beautiful roast dish with a little bit of thyme and cheese (bc it's me).

POBLANO PEPPERS (Large only):  Two gorgeous poblanos.  These mild chilis are flavorful and can be stuffed with deliciousness.

JIMMY NARDELLO PEPPERS (Large only):  Some sweet jimmys!  Put them in a salad, roast them, throw them around in celebration (but don't forget to eat them).  I just had some in a cauliflower gratin...yum!!

Also because I'm talking about caramelized onions and Imade it and it is amazing here is Naomi Pomeroy's French Onion Soup recipe.  Try it!

Very busy and short staffed this week so I'm going to keep this blog simple.  Hope you all are enjoying the serious transition into fall we have been experiencing!  I don't know about you but my cooking has drastically changed with the weather. All I want is the cozy stuff...soup-mode engaged.

SCARLET QUEEN TURNIPS:  Like our scarlet ohno turnips but better in my opinion!  These guys are more akin to a salad turnip and are great raw in a salad or roasted.  The color is gorgeous and the skin adds just a hint of spice . The greens are huge and beautiful and can be used in a salad or cooked so don't throw them away!

BRAISING MIX:  If you don't want to eat your turnip greens raw you can use them along with this braising mix.  Either a mix of mustards or one type, these larger greens are great for sautéing or adding to a baked dish like lasagna or enchiladas.  If you are just throwing them in a pan, cook them until they are wilted and tender – if it seems like they are getting a bit too dry, just throw a bit of water in.  Recently we made a veggie lasagna with eggplant, braising mix and spinach – yum!  I love this lasagna recipe (because the braising greens are slightly more tender I just cook them a bit less).  I also like to throw some pesto that I've made throughout the summer into the lasagna.

CILANTRO:  A little fall cilantro action.  Great topping on so many different things.  To store best put in the fridge in some water with no leaves touching the water, that way you don't get that oh-so-fun cilantro gone bad smell. 

SCALLIONS:  These guys just grow so well on the farm!  I love scallions because you can use them like onions or just as a topping.  I feel like a tasty chili could be made with the peppers and top with our cilantro and scallions.

ITALIAN SWEET PEPPERS (Mini 2, Large 4):  Like I've said before, tis pepper season!  In the share everyone received one or a few of the three varieties we have: stocky red roaster, stocky gold roaster and gypsy queen.  All are sweet and beautiful!  Italian peppers are delicious traditionally fried in olive oil and sprinkled with shredded parmesan cheese.

GARLIC (Large Only):  Local garlic, hurray!

STRAWBERRIES (Large Only):  They are still coming on strong and so tasty.  

EGGPLANT (Large Only):  The first of the season!  We only have a small eggplant planting and with the lack of warm weather I was a bit worried we would never have enough but looks like they came on finally.  The two varieties we have are diamond and black beauty.  Eggplant is great stuffed, grilled, stir-fried, braised...as usual I could go on.  You could slice, roast and toss in the lasagna recipe above.  Or just make some good ol' eggplant parmesan.  

​