Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter July 6 2014 Market

When the Hillsdale Market opens at 10:00 AM tomorrow, I will be assisted by my friend Jefferson Graham and his wife Ruth.

When Jeff's family moved from New York to the Berkshires in the early 1970s, he missed the city terribly. We met as two teenagers who had cameras around their necks, processed their won black and white photos, and were otherwise polar opposites in all apparent ways. Jeff is a technology columnist for USA Today and host of Talking Tech. I spend my time consumed by plants, nature and old farm equipment. Nonetheless, his influence in my life was and is substantial. As soon as we had access to a car, we visited his old haunts, Nathan's, Chock-Full-of Nuts for the donuts, and Katz's Delicatessen where you can "Send a Salami to your Boy in the Army." We drove to the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts to see their MGM musical double bills, the old Ancram Opera House to see the old Astair & Rogers RKO musicals in the weltering July heat, and the Village Vanguard to hear Sonny Rollins. For those who have one of our calendars on the wall, credit Jeff for giving me the idea when he sent a calendar celebrating their visit to Ayers Creek. He may even wear down my resistance to technology some day. "When an irresistible force such as you meets an old immovable object such as me . . ." He's working on it but don't hold your breath.

Now a mea culpa, perhaps stir crazy from the five days of rain, last week I let my guard down and had staff harvest some raspberries between the showers. They were delicious and perfect, however any moisture on the raspberry dooms it to a moldy fate. The raspberry is, after all, a hollow fruit and it is in that dark cavity where problems arise. We thought they were dry enough, but we received a call from a longtime customer who told us her red raspberries at the bottom of the hallock were moldy. Her purples were fine, just those delicate reds. We have no idea whether this was an isolated or pervasive problem. If you picked up a hallock or half flat with moldy berries, please take a replacement and tell us. In the future we will hew to the "four hours of sun" rule before picking. One of the challenges we face as a commercial farm is keeping track of quality, and our staff does a good job in that effort. When the farm's owner breaks his own rules, problems happen. We do appreciate feedback from customers who have a problem so we can address it.

This week we will have a good variety of fruit, with Montmorency cherries and purple raspberries in the fore. Both are at their peak quality. We will also have both red and green gooseberries this week, as well as red and black currants. The 95° degree spike on Tuesday will leave us very short on the other cane fruit. For the grains, we will bring cornmeal and popcorn, frumento and the first bit of frikeh. Wild amaranth greens and tarragon as well.

My best,

Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm
Gaston, Oregon

The Fat of The Land - Purple Food

 image by Sarah West
My grandmother had a dark purple velvet armchair when I was a young child that smelled like an exotic spice and was soft or prickly depending on how you stroked it. The chair fascinated me and I loved to sit in it, looking up at a mobile of Japanese umbrellas hanging from the ceiling above it or ringing a collection of small brass bells she kept on a shelf nearby. Sitting in that chair surrounded by beautiful and precious objects, I felt like royalty from a far away place. Its color has stayed with me, tucked away in its own regal corner of my mind.

With the exception of the “grow your own” movement, I have not been one to jump on food fad bandwagons. It may be to my detriment in the end, and certainly is a brand of laziness, but I just eat what I feel like eating most of the time, surrounding myself with whole foods so as to minimize the junk food snacking and maximize the home cooking. It seems to be working out so far.

But when a fad comes dressed in brilliant purple hues, I can’t help but take notice. Like a robe of velvet, the phytonutrient anthocyanin is responsible for staining fruits, vegetables and grains in shades of red, royal purple and blue. Anthocyanin-rich berries, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, and corn can be so darkly pigmented they appear nearly black. Others like burgundy lettuces, cherries, raspberries, onions, and even citrus (think blood oranges) exhibit anthocyanin’s red spectrum.

In addition to being visual standouts in the produce aisle, anthocyanins have become a popular subject of recent health and nutrition research. Anecdotal evidence as well as in vitro and laboratory animal studies hint at an antioxidant wunderkind, with applications in memory loss prevention, cardiovascular disease and diabetes treatment, as well as in reducing some cancerous tumor growth.

From the plant’s perspective, anthocyanin functions in three main capacities. In photosynthetic tissues (leaves), anthocyanin pigments act as a kind of sunscreen, absorbing high spectrum light waves that could otherwise do harm to the energy-harvesting chlorophyll. Flowers utilize red and purple ornamentation to attract pollinators; anthocyanin pigmentation of fruit entice scavenging animals (and market shoppers) whose ingestion of the fruit helps disperse seeds.

What hampers researchers studying anthocyanins is a lack of understanding regarding how (and if) the phytonutrient is absorbed and how it functions within the body in its absorbed state. Even in the source plant’s tissue, it is unclear how effective the antioxidant properties of anthocyanin are in combating free radicals located in separate tissue structures.

Since a scientifically proven catalog of anthocyanin’s benefits is yet forthcoming, we are left only with its brilliant colors and the equally unsubstantiated connotations they stir in us. Coincidentally, color has also been found to play an integral role in enhancing memory performance, the two linked like the sea and salt air. Visible and invisible, sight and smell, color and memory: all move through the circuits of our minds creating moments that are both old and new. And so it is that I stand in my kitchen cutting a potato black as midnight, to find my grandmother’s chair (and its impossibly distant world) waiting inside.

Sarah West is a gardener, eater and admirer of the agricultural arts. She gladly spends her Sundays as assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, basking in the richness of its producers’ bounty and its community’s energy. Find archives and more at http://thefatofthelandblog.wordpress.com.

Volunteer Profile: Mike Ponder

Hillsdale Farmers Market couldn’t function without the work done by a dedicated group of volunteers. Board members, market assemblers, token sellers, smile givers, community creators: our volunteer force has always been the secret ingredient to our success. We’re celebrating their unique contributions to the market by sharing part of their story.

This Sunday as you stroll through the market, you will be offered a dish of vanilla ice cream topped with fresh market berries, and a sincere “thank you” for being a market customer. July ushers in one of the market’s most anticipated summer events, aptly named the Red, White and Blueberry Sundaes fundraiser. But this event serves up more than a refreshing treat; since its inception, the Sundae event has been a volunteer-driven effort to gather donations for Neighborhood House and their emergency food box program.
 
Communities are built on this sort of thing—a pancake breakfast here, a farmers’ market there, movies in the park, dedicated local businesses, strong community services, conversations, connections, and families who stay and invest in their neighborhood. Long-time market volunteer Mike Ponder is one such community member. A resident of Hillsdale since 1980, Mike and his then wife, Dianna, were early supporters of Hillsdale Farmers’ Market and were quick to become frequent volunteers. The couple initiated the Sundae event on July 4, 2004 with the idea that ice cream could be a persuasive way to solicit donations.
 
“With my Stanford Food Service Ice Cream scooping skills and Dianna's organizational prowess, it was a good event for us to champion,” Mike told me. And champion the event they did, continuing to scoop out sundaes each market around the 4^th of July, serving as regular volunteers throughout the market year, and, in Dianna’s case, acting as board president, until her sudden passing in the summer of 2010.

Mike resumed the event in 2011, this time as a memorial to Dianna and her commitment to the market, and it continues each year with the help of Neighborhood House executive director, Rick Nitti, and board president, Ellen Singer.
 
As an industrial engineer, Mike enjoys the planning side of the event. Have you ever wondered what it takes to serve sundaes to 600 market shoppers? After ten years of scooping, Mike’s recipe has settled at: four 3-gal tubs of ice cream, 8 half-flats of strawberries, 4 half-flats of blueberries, and 4 half-flats of raspberries with 6 cans of whipped cream and 2 jugs of chocolate syrup. Now in its 11^th year, this annual event (and Mike and Dianna’s efforts) have raised over $5,000 in benefit of Neighborhood House.
 
When I asked Mike what stands out about Hillsdale Farmers’ Market in a city with so many great markets, his answer, like many of our volunteers’, is that it crystallizes so many things he loves about his community:
 
“Hillsdale has a sense of place and sense of purpose that permeates the mindset of everyone involved with the market and makes it a wonderful gathering place to hang out with friends and neighbors and connect with the community. The market was initiated as a way to capture the spirit of the Annual Pancake Breakfast, so the vibe was strong and attracted the activist in all of us. The market started during the early days of the Iraq War, and we used to end the day with a Peace Walk to Multnomah Village and back, complete with signs and placards. I was once called an old hippie by one of the few who disagreed with our views and I still consider it high praise.”
 
Mike’s commitment to the market and the community were honored in 2012 when a friend commissioned to have him included in the “Faces of Hillsdale” mural. Mike is pictured handing out sundaes and wearing his market apron. Across the street outside of Food Front, Mike sponsored a bench at the bike plaza as a memorial to Dianna.
 
Retired and newly married, Mike and his wife Bea have been traveling the region, “promoting,” said Mike, “the wonders of Oregon to a long-time Santa Fe resident (Bea) who is enamored with flowers and water.” When at home, the two enjoy weekly bouquets from Herr Family Farms and lots of summer berries, taste testing in anticipation of this year’s Sundae event.

Feeling inspired?  Want to try your hand at market volunteering or just want to know more about what is involved?  Find us every Sunday at the market information booth (Capitol Hwy entrance) or email Sarah at hillsdalemarketvolunteers@gmail.com.

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter June 29 2014

Some of the fruit you'll find tomorrow

Once again I will ponder the utter idiocy of growing soft, early season fruit in the Willamette Valley as I wind my way up Bald Peak on the way to our first Hillsdale Farmers Market of the summer. Fortunately, we have a competent and kind staff which removes some of the anxiety that the last few days of rain generated. Still, it is a foolish business. The market's opening bell is at 10:00 AM.

Linda Colwell has a conflict on the date we gave for the Ramble and we cannot image having the event without her. The new date for the event is the 12th of October. If you plan on attending, please note the change in your calendars.

Despite some bumps along the way, we are very happy with outlook for the farm this year. We have about 30% more ground in cultivation, which is a huge jump for us and our staff. We hit our stride and it made sense to keep planting. Our manic seeding spree meant we had to buy 4,000 more seven-foot poles for the beans, as well as more of all the other essential inputs. We start parching the frikeh on Monday, and it should be ready two weeks later. By August, things will be tearing along if the weather cooperates.

Many of you are familiar with our charming customer Ellis. – As farmers with two Allis Chalmers machines, we valiantly resist, mostly, calling him Ellis Charmer. – His whole life he has brought his parents to the market, and is fully engaged in the process. The secret to his enthusiasm is, no doubt, his mother's talent for preparing the food they have collected at the market. We have enjoyed the food at Katherine Deumling's table and understand why Ellis approaches market day with such gusto.

For several years, Deumling has used her talent to write custom recipes for farms offering CSA boxes, and now she is ready to extend this service to the general farmers' market community. Deumling's recipes are simple, adaptable and free of the dreadful suggestion that food needs to be medicine, i.e. no post-neo-Adelle-Davis preaching. Just a good mix of influences. For $25 a year, less than most cookbooks, you can receive the Seasonal Recipe Collection and eat like Ellis. For more information and details, go to: http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com.

A relationship that frays after more than a decade and ends up in a separation, exacts its financial toll, the alimony. As you will notice on Sunday, we have gone through that recently. After 14 years of using Oregon Tilth as our certifier, our differences led us to an uncontested separation, the surrender of our certificate, and now we are certified as organic by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Because of the new certifier, we have all new labels and signs. A snappy yellow banner will greet you all on Sunday, as well as more legible labels on the popcorn, cayenne and cornmeal. We are happy with the change on all accounts.

This year, Joshua McFadden of Ava Gene's and his staff will host an Outstanding in the Field dinner on the 12th of July. The brave lad has to impress a table of 180 guests. The venue is at Ayers Creek and, if you want to see how they fit a table with 180 into our landscape, there may be some tickets still available. (http://outstandinginthefield.com/events/north-american-tour/) Like most of the chefs we work with, Joshua and his staff know the farm on the ground, not just as a delivery service. He has taken the time to understand the process of growing food, not just preparing it. It makes a difference when you are a farmer.

Here is what I will have on Sunday:

Fruit: π-cherries, spectacular gooseberries, alluringly plump red and black currants, jostaberries, purple raspberries, red raspberries, blackcaps and Loganberries.

Grain: Amish Butter popcorn, Amish Butter and Roy's Calais Flint cornmeal, soft red wheat.

Preserves of many sorts.

Joe's Long Cayenne peppers (dried)

The fact that some of this note is in the first person has nothing to do with the aforementioned separation. Carol's foot is on the mend, but standing on the hard pavement for seven hours is not a good idea at the moment. So she will remain on the farm for the first three markets. Be nice to this poor old man, who picked up a few more grey hairs with this week's rain, as he brings you our hard earned fruits.

NOTE: Please consult the Hillsdale Farmers Market website for parking changes. The Wilson High School parking lot will be closed for a while.

See you all Sunday,

Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek farm

Summer 2014 Parking

Important Parking News

Field Construction changes Parking Availability

Wilson High School has begun the installation of a synthetic turf surface on the football field. The construction requires the use of the parking lot directly behind the stadium. THERE IS NO PARKING AVAILABLE ON THE WILSON CAMPUS AT THE SW CAPITOL HWY END OF THE MARKET. Parking is available on the north side of SW Vermont St and the side streets adjacent to the Rieke-Wilson campus. You can also park in the lot surrounding Wilson High at the east end of the campus. The south side of SW Vermont St has a new bike lane and there is no legal parking available. Below is a map to help you.

If you want to use a GPS device, you can use Rieke's address, 1405 SW Vermont St, Portland OR 97219. The address for Wilson High is 1151 SW Vermont St. if you want to find the parking lot.

The Hillsdale Farmers Market, Missio Church and Portland Park's Wilson Pool all use the campus on Sundays. Please be patient.

Fat Of The Land - Sol Food

When we think of sunshine foods, we default to adjectives like fruity, floral, and exotic. We imagine coconuts, passion fruit, and peppers rather than cabbage, lettuce, or kale. Though mango and pineapple do not survive this northerly climate, our own brand of sun-steeped harvests makes its appearance this time of year.

Falling between June 20^th and 21^st, the solstice represents more than opening day of summer shenanigans. Denoting the sun’s longest journey across the sky, the summer solstice is also known to gardeners as the time of endless greens—bottomless heads of lettuce, kale with wide paddles for leaves, unrestrained growth in every direction.

Though the solar calendar says it’s summer now, our climate tends to linger in the doorway a bit longer, extending spring showers and cool temperatures intermittently into early July. This oscillation of warm, sunny stretches and cooler, rainy days helps to check the growth of these greens, allowing them to take full advantage of mid-June’s extra long days.

Our lengthiest day of the year totals just short of sixteen hours of sunlight. To a plant’s physiology, extending day length is akin to increasing production hours. The chlorophyll in plant leaves is active in the presence of sunlight; the more sun there is, the more energy a plant is capable of synthesizing.

Plants invest some of the season’s surplus energy into creating more chlorophyll (and therefore more surface area, i.e. larger leaves), which in turn both creates an ability to manufacture more stored energy and a need for someplace to store it. In step luscious root crops like beets, radishes and turnips that seem to materialize over night as the solstice nears—the latter two transforming from tiny seeds to hefty bundles in under a month.

The whole garden is a rowdy place in June. What was freshly turned soil studded with seedlings becomes a bubbling quilt of colors and textures, plants touching shoulders with infectious camaraderie, vines tangled and climbing toward the sun that fuels them. Even slowpokes like carrots, potatoes, and onions seem inspired to catch up to their neighbors.

Perhaps the same spirit that infects the vegetables rouses the gardener as well, and perhaps some of the affection we have for this season comes from the sun’s penchant to party. We feel an urge to get out, to see, to commune and celebrate, to sit in the sun’s radiance. A garden in solstice is that urge made visible, and an appeal to find numerous and interesting ways to prepare a salad, to cook a turnip, to embellish kale or mustard greens or cabbage.

We are lucky to live in a place where we can grow tasty greens year-round, but I think solstice greens are the finest—tender and succulent in their freshness, glowing with the deep, verdant pigments of ample sunlight and water. No trials of heat or cold to endure, they open to their fullest, most vulnerable beauty.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by a garden, for the undesirables grow as quickly as the desirables, and I am often overwhelmed until a wave of summer heat tempers the revelry. But in that heat, I begin to miss those soft, sweet leaves and the lush, hulking garden that produced them. So I try to savor every bit of it now, weeding and eating my way through these long, exquisite days.

Vendor Profile: Salvador Molly’s

Farmers’ markets are a collection of businesses, a temporal grocery store where each shelf comes with a smiling face and a wealth of knowledge about the products they produce and sell. We’re giving our vendors the spotlight to share more about their role in the Hillsdale market community.

By Sarah West

Before the phrase “food cart pod” was in existence, restaurants had to incubate themselves by renting a brick-and-mortar space right off the bat, or by repeatedly selling out of a popular dish at the farmers’ market. Such is the story of Salvador Molly’s, which began in 1994 as a tamale cart at the downtown Portland Farmers Market.

Scott Moritz, the tamales’ creator and proprietor, soon hit it off with one of his regular customers, Rick Sadle. As the two became friends, they began imagining how to expand the Saturday tamale operation into a full-time project. In 1996, with Scott’s tamale recipe as the main attraction, Rick helped open a café they called Salvador Molly’s.

The menu (and décor) quickly became eclectic, incorporating flavors and motifs from spicy, tropical cuisines. Their notorious Great Balls of Fire appetizer brings in challenge-seekers (and the occasional television crew) to brave habanero infused fritters and earn a place on the Hall of Flame. Spicy standoffs aside, the menu’s bold flavors and sun-drenched associations hit a chord with Portland diners that continues to attract new and long-time customers alike.

Throughout the last eighteen years of growing and developing a restaurant business, Rick and his daughter, Darielle (who became manager and part-owner seven years ago), have stayed true to their business’s farmers’ market roots. Hillsdale and Portland Farmers’ Market shoppers know their cheery booth, and the smell of their steam-bathed tamales, well. The tamales (and menu items at the restaurant) often incorporate ingredients purchased from Hillsdale vendors.

The Sadle’s commitment to farmers’ markets is further reflected in their community ethos. Each month, the restaurant hosts fundraisers for local schools and non-Profit organizations. Scott and Rick chose Hillsdale as the location of their restaurant for its close-knit neighborhood appeal, and Salvador Molly’s continues to be a gathering place for friends and family as a favorite Hillsdale eatery.

This month, Salvador Molly’s expands again with the opening of their new Roadhouse and Tiki Garden in the Brooklyn neighborhood. The new space will be much like the old, with tropical-themed murals and decorations, Great Balls of Fire, a lighthearted and family-friendly atmosphere, as well as an outdoor patio. (Fire pit and water feature coming soon!)

The menu at the Roadhouse will remain similar to their Hillsdale location, focusing on food from places where palm trees grow, with some new items including: Thai fish cakes with mango red onion salsa, house-made bread and sausages, and Korean chap chee. During lunch, their drive-up window will be open for take-away sandwiches and house-made sausages.

We snapped a few shots before they opened last week. Stop in soon to watch the space evolve, try new menu items or enjoy the secluded patio. Find the Salvador Molly’s Roadhouse and Tiki Garden at 4729 SE Milwaukie Ave in Southeast Portland. They are open from 3pm until late Tuesday thru Saturday. Learn more at www.salvadormollys.com.

Preserving Resources

Whether you are new to preserving or have been canning your whole life, online and print resources are a great tool for learning the basics or staying up to date on the latest food safety recommendations. Below is a list of resources we recommend for home-canning techniques and recipes:

Online Resources

The National Center for Home Food Preservation

If there is a one-stop shop for home canning information, this is it! Run by the University of Georgia Extension, NCHFP offers free food safety bulletins and home-preservation training through online tutorials, as well as extensive supporting resources.

http://nchfp.uga.edu/index.html

USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning

A comprehensive publication that is the last word on safely processing foods at home.

http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html

The Oregonian’s Introduction to Home Canning

An easy to reference trouble-shooting resource for beginning canners.

http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2009/08/introduction_to_home_canning.html

Food in Jars: Canning 101

There are a number of blogs out there to teach you about home canning. We liked Food in Jars’ Canning 101 archive because it offers a well-organized list of home canning topics.

http://foodinjars.com/canning-101-archive/

Print Resources

The Ball Blue Book was (and still is) the go-to publication for home preservers, but visit any Portland bookstore now and you’ll find that the number of home canning recipe books on the shelves is overwhelming in its scope. These are a few of our tried-and-true favorites, with an eye for small batch, fresh, and innovative recipes:

Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry by Liana Krissoff

A comprehensive guide to all things water-bath-cannable, plus recipes for using some of those preserves for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber by Christine Ferber, translated by Virginia R. Phillips

The queen of confiture, Christine Ferber’s elegant recipes have garnered a foodie cult following. Often incorporating an overnight maceration, her jams and jellies bring out the best of their ingredients in this jam-making master class of a book. (Not recommended as a beginner’s guide as the book does not explain the basics of water bath canning.)

The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves: 200 Classic and Contemporary Recipes Showcasing the Fabulous Flavors of Fresh Fruits, by Linda Ziedrich

Clearly written, comprehensive guide to preserving farmers’ market fruits written by Scio, Oregon resident.

The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market, by Linda Ziedrich

Same as above, but for pickles. Great collection of recipes!

The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving: Over 300 Recipes to Use Year-Round, by Ellie Top and Margaret Howard

A wide-ranging collection of recipes focusing on small-batches, so you can have your canning and eat it, too (without staying up past midnight).

compiled by Sarah West

Want a copy of this list? Download a copy here (link).

Fat Of The Land - Persuading Pectin

Chef Kathryn coaxing pectin out of strawberries

Fruit preserves have entered a certain level of ubiquity in our kitchens—topper of toast, peanut butter buddy or teatime trimming, jam is a sweet thing we eat because we always have. Some like it rife with proof of the fruit it once was, others prefer a smooth, refined spread without the seeds, please. All in all, jam seems a straightforward condiment that offers simple pleasures. That is, until you try making it yourself.

Standing over a steaming pot of fruit whose bubbles burst out in sugary magma, jam’s simplicity tangles into a thick briar of questions: Should I stir it? How often? Is it done? Why is it covered in foam? And when you pop open your first jar and the jam is spreadable or it isn’t, the fruit has held something of its delicate flavor and texture or it hasn’t, the gel has set too thickly or not quite enough, the questions multiply.

Jam truly is a balancing act, finding that place on a seesaw of fresh flavor and just-so gel where the two sit still and look across at each other for a moment, one holding the weight of the other; and from that spoonful of strawberry preserves in January, you can see right through to a summery spring day at the market when your arm was slung around a flat of fragrant berries.

To achieve that balance, a preserver must transform fruit while interfering as little as possible with its flavor and texture. The three basic tools at her disposal are sugar, acid and pectin. Sugar, in moderation, helps develop the jam’s flavor profile, activates pectin, and is a preservative, inhibiting bacterial growth by displacing water. Acids (usually lemon juice and/or rind) function similarly to sugar, though their preservative role is to lower the solution’s pH, which also halts most bacterial growth.

Pectin is jam’s most finicky ingredient, as it is (in truly great preserves) not an additive but something you coax. Though many know pectin as a white, finely powdered substance added to jams along with copious amounts of sugar, pectin is already a component of your main ingredient’s cellular structure.

A carbohydrate, pectin binds the fibrous components of cell walls and increases as the immature fruits grow. When a fruit begins to ripen, pectic enzymes break down the cement-like structure of pectin and allow the cell walls to soften and expand with sugary solution. Thus, fruits that are just under ripe (still a little firm) boast the highest amounts of natural pectin.

Some fruits contain enough natural pectin to avoid adding a supplementary source at all. Apples, quince, cranberries, blackberries, gooseberries, plums and citrus rind will generally gel without added pectin. A traditional technique for attaining naturally gelling jam is to use one-quarter under ripe fruit and three-quarters fully ripe fruit to split the difference between flavor and pectin availability. Blends of high and low pectin fruits are another old-timey trick, such as adding tart apples to cherries or raspberries to increase their gel.

Citrus rind and apples (or crabapples) are such a great source that commercial producers isolate pectin from them using refining techniques. However, to activate commercial pectin, you must add large amounts of sugar. This alters the end product’s flavor by masking its subtleties with sweetness and watering it down, as the commercial pectin solidifies excess water rather than evaporating it.

Pectin is composed of long chains of sugar molecules that, if properly cajoled, bond with each other, forming a net-like matrix that binds liquid into gel. Pectin has a slight negative charge in water, and naturally resists bonding. Acids help diminish that negative charge, but water-attracting sugar is also necessary to decrease water content and act as a bridge between pectin molecules. Boiling further reduces water through evaporation and provides the magic temperature (221° Fahrenheit), at which pectin and its saccharine mediator connect and create a gel.

Getting a good ratio of these three components is both science and art. It’s important to follow a recipe in detail, without cutting sugar or other ingredients, until you have a firm grip on which ratio produces jam of a consistency you like. This ratio will be different for each kind of fruit you preserve.

Savvy preservers also avoid the need for refined pectin by making batches of green apple pectin concentrate with the fall’s first harvest. Freezer stored pectin concentrate will wait at arm’s reach for the first fruits of summer that compel you to seduce them into a jar.

Fat Of The Land - Let Us

We eat salad without a second thought; so ubiquitous has lettuce become in our restaurants, groceries and home kitchens we might never guess at the peculiarity of its path from wild food to pantry staple. Nor could many consumers of lettuce conceive of the myriad forms it can take. Until I began my own kitchen garden, I knew lettuce as green or red, ruffled loose leaves or crispy-bland iceberg. It turns out that lettuce is capable of infinite variation in flavor, color and texture.

Native to the Mediterranean region, lettuce’s wild origins were as a weed-like leafy annual that released a milky sap when cut. This “milk” is actually a kind of latex, and the basis for lettuce’s binomial nomenclature: Lactuca sativa (“lac” meaning milk, “sativa” meaning sown or cultivated).

The Egyptians were the first civilization to leave a lasting record of their reverence for lettuce. Often depicted in reliefs alongside the fertility god, Min, lettuce was a symbol of sexual stamina and represented Min’s formidable talents. This association may perplex modern lettuce eaters, but the lettuce of ancient Egypt was a different sort of plant than what we are familiar with today: starting as a rosette of narrow leaves, the plant would rise up from the ground on a thick stalk that could reach three feet in height. Egyptians discarded the bitter leaves and ate the succulent stem—a rarity among the flora of their desert clime.

The ancient Greeks also cultivated lettuce, though they appear to have selected their varieties more for leaves than stalk, and ate something likely similar to what we know now as Romaine lettuce, a name given by the French in homage to lettuce’s next curator, the Romans.

In ancient Rome, lettuce became more or less what we think of it as today—a leafy vegetable notable for its combination of sweet and bitter flavors, useful both as an appetizer to encourage hunger before the meal, and as a post-meal digestive aid. In answer to the question of whether one should eat salad before or after dinner, the Romans split the difference and advised both. (As a side note, the word salad comes from the Roman’s preparation herba salata, “salted leaves.”)

Lettuce traveled with the Romans as they charged to northern Europe, each culture that received it making it their own, beginning a trail of diversity whose proliferation we still benefit from today. A true eccentric, lettuce’s genetic library exhibits a high degree of variation. And because lettuce is self-pollinating, it is among the easier vegetables to breed at the home garden scale.

Such is the story of Frank Morton, a Philomath-based seed breeder who sells his innovative lettuce varieties under the name Wild Garden Seed (and shares land with vendor Gathering Together Farm), who got his start tinkering in his own lettuce patch. Morton’s catalog reads like a love letter to lettuce, and his numerous original varieties achieve the vegetable consumer’s holy trinity: beauty, flavor and nutrition.

Today we organize lettuce into five broad categories. The cos or Romaine group with their thick midribs, mild and sweet flavor and sturdy leaves; the crispheads with their crunchy, juicy leaves and often blanched inner heads (think iceberg); the butterheads with their floppy, silken leaves and intricately folded heads; the looseleafs, spacious and open in their growth habit, wavy or densely ruffled or lobed like an oak leaf; and the celtuce, lettuces almost exclusively found in Asian markets that, like the ancient Egyptians’, are grown for their thick, mild-flavored stalk.

Farmers’ markets are the best place outside of a backyard garden to experience lettuce diversity at its finest. That plain old ruffled green from the produce aisle is as predictable as it is reliable. Iceberg is still the most-consumed vegetable of all other vegetables combined. These, along with Romaine, used to be all the choice we had, but we live in the midst of a lettuce renaissance. So let us choose to explore its magnitude, walk the length of its vast kingdom, discover new flavors and the health benefits that come with them, and ease that nutritionally destitute iceberg off its throne for good.

Fat Of The Land - Wild Garden

It has taken me years to begin seeing difference in natural ecosystems—a bare ridge and a shaded forest are dissimilar enough, but one forest and another easily blur together. A horticulture degree and years of pouring over native plant ID books helped, but it was the intangibles that truly made the difference.

Looking is a slippery act: look too closely and you miss the web of connections, look too broadly and you ignore the enriching details. Look for one right way to look and you miss the boat entirely. And though I am still (and always) a student of looking, what has taught me, more than anything, how to observe the natural world is my own fumbling imitation of it. Hours of planting, weeding, watching, and loving my own cultivated spaces have taught me how to sit in a wild garden.

Anyone who has battled a weedy plot knows the power of ecosystem succession. As gardeners, we focus on curating a space of beauty, fascination and function. Meanwhile, the plants in our garden are engaged in a constant struggle for access to light, water and nutrients. We help by placing them in an auspicious site, weeding out competitors, feeding and watering them. Yet, even with our limbs and affections as allies, they sometimes fail.

The first time I entered an old-growth temperate rainforest and knew I was in an old-growth forest, I was awestruck. The gardener in me wanted to know how such fragile beauties lived in profusion there—trillium, orchids, lilies, and many others I couldn’t yet name—arranged in artful clusters on mossy stumps or as glorious trailside specimens, growing as any plant would in a weed-free utopia.

But old-growth forests, and other undisturbed ecosystems, are not utopias, nor are they static in their achievement. What impresses us in such a forest—its vaulted ceiling, open stillness, mossy softness and handsome plants—is balance, accomplished over hundreds of years of struggle similar in spirit to that which we deploy against our weedy garden beds. Such balance never stops to rest or admire itself, and it is its centered harmony, one it runs its bow back and forth across, which mesmerizes us so completely.

Forests that have been disturbed by logging, fire, landslide or other calamity grow back somewhat like our own gardens—thick and ferocious with life, specialists exploiting their particular skills, vying as individuals and as species to either capitalize on their moment in the limelight or eventually win long-term standing in that more open, tranquil place, where the may stretch into idyllic versions of themselves.

As gardeners, we are more disturbance than balance. We fancy ourselves balancers, concocting careful strategies to allow our gardeners to thrive, but each scratch of the soil is like pressing a reset button. Embrace it, for the struggle it brings is why we garden and how we earn any sense of accomplishment in our work.

Out on a rocky ledge, breathing the fresh mineral air, sitting in the white sunlight, I try to bring as little disturbance as possible. It is in such a place that my favorite type of garden grows. Alpine rock gardens, fragile and resolute, offer spectacular wildflower specimens and fabulous views to boot. The contrast of macro and micro is endlessly delightful to me—a neat foliage clump shooting out stems of brilliantly colored flowers can, with a quick shift of my gaze, give way to a long drink of conifer-covered mountains, rocky outcroppings, maybe a snowy peak.

June and July are the season for wild alpine gardens (higher elevation sites flower later than those at lower elevations, rewarding persistent hikers with many weeks of show-stopping blooms). What looks at first like a bare slope reveals itself to be a museum of highly adapted species; the alpine garden’s specimens, spread widely among cracks in rock faces and loose gravel, demand close looking and reward the careful observer with an eclectic diversity of shapes, textures and colors.

Rocky alpine gardens are not everyone’s ideal—most gardeners certainly prefer the fantastic blooms and foliage that dazzle us (and me) at nurseries and botanical gardens. Yet the sense of awe I feel in the alpine garden is as a student in the presence of a masterwork. Many alpine species are notoriously difficult (or impossible) to grow in cultivated gardens. Up on the ridge, they sit in effortless arrangement, embodying their breezy perfection in what seems like an impossible home.

Here, the wild garden teaches me to un-garden, to witness instead of act, to sink into the inimitable and shifting balance of wilderness left to its own devices.

Sarah West is a gardener, eater and admirer of the agricultural arts. She gladly spends her Sundays as assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, basking in the richness of its producers’ bounty and its community’s energy. Find archives and more at http://thefatofthelandblog.wordpress.com.

2014 Hillsdale Farmers Market Urban Fair

We are introducing a new market event this October! Called the Urban Fair, it’s our take on a county fair: celebrating the agricultural products our market vendors bring to Hillsdale each week and the home cooks who transform them.

We know that HFM shoppers are dedicated to our market’s produce. We’ve seen you taking home flats of berries and bags of pickling cucumbers. Now we’re inviting you to bring a sample of your own handiwork back to the market by submitting an entry into the Preserves Showcase. A panel of judges will evaluate Showcase entries for flavor, texture, appearance and proper canning technique.

We will award Urban Fair ribbons to four winners in each of the Preserves Showcase’s three categories: jam, pickles and nostalgic preserves. To encourage preservers of all ages to participate, there is a special ribbon in each category for preservers 18-years-old and younger. All participants will receive an Urban Fair souvenir and be entered into a raffle drawing for a chance to win preservation-themed prizes. Find out more about entering your preserves in the Showcase by picking up a copy of the Urban Fair Handbook and a registration form at the market info booth on Sunday, or on our website (link).

The Urban Fair is also an opportunity to learn more about your community’s food resources, as well as to see demonstrations of traditional cooking techniques. We’ll have booths set up on the south end of the market where some of our community partners will share resources on growing, sourcing and preparing fresh foods at home. We’ll also have a demonstration booth where vendors, chefs and other food artisans will give brief tutorials in their area of expertise. We are still compiling a schedule of experts; stay tuned for a schedule and updates at http://hillsdalefarmersmarket.com/2014-urban-fair/, as well as in our newsletter.

Throughout the summer, our market chef Kathryn Yeomans will demonstrate recipes for using market products and be on hand to answer your cooking questions. She is a trained chef as well as a certified Master Preserver, and an excellent resource for learning how to improve your home-preserving technique! This season she has already demonstrated making strawberry preserves and spring vegetable pickles. Find Kathryn in the Feed Me Fresh Cooking Demo booth each Sunday from 10am-1pm.

Our goal is for the Urban Fair to be a fun and educational event that will inspire market shoppers and community members to make the most of the amazingly fresh and nutritious ingredients our local growers and producers bring to market year-round. Help us celebrate the bounty; start preserving now for the 1^st Annual Urban Fair!

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Fat Of The Land - All In A Pickle

Pickles have personality that seems larger than the sum of their parts—puckering acidity, chopped vegetables, salt and a pinch or two of seasoning add up to refreshing brightness and enigmatic flavors that effortlessly invigorate a bowl of rice, a sandwich, or a steak.

There are essentially two kinds of pickles: fermented and not fermented. Fermented pickles use a salt brine to isolate lacto-bacteria and create an acidic environment that preserves the food suspended in it. Fermented pickles are a compelling combination of salty and sour flavors, and include among their ranks the now ubiquitous deli staples of sauerkraut and kosher dills.

Pickles made without fermentation rely on another form of acid to hinder spoilage, usually vinegar. Vinegar pickles may be sealed and stashed in the pantry using the water-bath canning method or stored unsealed in the refrigerator. They are acidic, salty and often sweet, as sugar is a common addition to balance out the vinegar’s sharpness.

The difference between the two categories is vast. Fermentation transforms a vegetable into something new, creating biological and flavor components that were not present in its raw form. Vinegar brines build, maintaining the spirit of the fresh vegetable’s flavor and adding layers of brightness, herbal notes, and sweet or aromatic spices.

Fermented cucumbers were my first pickle love, and I adored the subtle funkiness of their flavor so much I often wrote off their vinegar-brined kin as being too ostentatious. The grocers and restaurants of my formative years offered little diversity in pickles; then came a pickle renaissance, and in sauntered so much more than overly sweet relishes and bread-and-butter medallions.

As interest in home canning has increased in the last decade, vinegar pickle recipes have proliferated, stretching far beyond the traditional beet, dilly bean, and cucumber standbys. Driven by DIY ethos, some restaurants now compose their own pickled preparations, lining their pantries and countertops with handsome, exotically colored jars. Pickled novelties garnish plates, perch on cocktail rims, and add an instant dash of culinary mystery to otherwise familiar dishes.

Vinegar pickles have one serious advantage over fermented pickles for chefs and home cooks alike: they can go from preparation to plate in as little as a few minutes. Known as quick pickles, vegetables doused with vinegar, salt and any number of flavorings may be used immediately for the highest contrast of flavor and texture, or after marinating for a few hours or days to mellow and blend.

While pickles became mainstays of nearly every culinary tradition because they are so good at preserving foods rich in vitamins and minerals, we also acquired a taste for them along the way. We’ve since developed a wide range of food preservation techniques and greatly increased our access to year-round fresh vegetables, and yet pickles still satisfy and inspire us.

Now a traditional food, a frill du cuisine, a blank canvas for gastronomic whim or nostalgic indulgence, pickles are always refreshing—cutting through rich flavors, showcasing seasonal produce, making us at once thirsty with their salt and quenched by their acidity. But perhaps, more than anything, we love pickles because they allow us to conspire with time and its magic.

"On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar." - Thomas Jefferson

Want to learn more about pickles? Chef Kathryn will be sharing pickling ideas this Sunday starting at 11am.

Sarah West is a gardener, eater and admirer of the agricultural arts. She gladly spends her Sundays as assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, basking in the richness of its producers’ bounty and its community’s energy. Find archives and more at http://thefatofthelandblog.wordpress.com.

Draper Girls Country Farm

Farmers’ markets are a collection of businesses, a temporal grocery store where each shelf comes with a smiling face and a wealth of knowledge about the products they produce and sell.  We’re giving our vendors the spotlight to share more about their role in the Hillsdale market community.

By Sarah West

The view from the farmWorking in her parents’ Hood River Valley orchard as a child, Theresa Draper always knew she wanted to continue the family farm for her own livelihood. She and her then-husband bought half of her parents’ property while Theresa was in her early twenties and dove into the project, removing some of the old apple and pear trees to diversify their offerings and launching the farm into a U-pick roadside attraction.

Theresa now directs all the farm operations herself, with the help of her three daughters, a small staff and seasonal workers. The forty-acre property sits along highway 35 near the town of Parkdale, where, on a clear day, it feels like front row seats to a panorama of Mt. Hood. The orchards now host a plethora of fruit, including strawberries, cherries, cane berries, blueberries, apricots, peaches, nectarines, apples, pears, and plums, as well as vegetables, pastured sheep and laying hens.

Theresa DraperSince taking the helm, Theresa has focused on agritourism, opening her farm to the public first as a farm stand with U-pick and more recently as a vacation rental. The home she grew up in and in which she raised her daughters is now available to visitors wanting to explore the Columbia Gorge or Mt. Hood National Forest, or for anyone looking for a taste of rural living: waking up on a working farm to pick a bucket of perfectly ripe fruit, mingle with farm animals, or gaze over verdant fields at an iconic mountain.

U-pick is at the heart of the Draper Girls’ business. Each June they open up most of their farm and allow visitors to roam, harvesting whatever fruit they fancy in mixed buckets, enjoying the shade of an orchard tree, a picnic by the farm stand, or just the pleasure of rambling through a field where delicious food is at arm’s reach.

Theresa enjoys watching visitors experience the farm, learning where their food comes from and perhaps encountering their first taste of truly fresh fruit. She’s found that her customers are quickly seduced by the bounty of a ripe orchard.

“They just get out of their cars and start picking; they don’t really know why,” Theresa told me.

Sometimes they return to the farm store, smiles on their faces, with flowers or an unripe fruit, sheepishly admitting that they couldn’t stop themselves. Though the farm has guidelines in place to keep U-pickers safe and staff who monitor the fields to insure customers purchase their fruit before devouring it, Theresa just shrugged and chuckled about it, clearly appreciating the compulsion as one that keeps her farm buzzing with customers.

The Farm StoreThe farm store is like a metaphor for the whole business—a room full of local preserves; cider pressed on site; freezers of cuts from their grass- and fruit-fed sheep, goats and hogs; bins and baskets of fruit; antiques and knick-knacks filling any empty space—where there is likely something for everyone and nearly everything is for sale. The store is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on a self-serve honor-system basis, with a locked green box and a friendly sign manning the payment station when employees are off-duty.

Such open-door policies for their farm stand and U-pick program communicate a sense of trust that fits our ideal of the rural way of life and lends their business the transparency and character of true authenticity. Though the property is decked out in all the cues of a tourist attraction—petting zoo, blooming gardens, picnic tables, a charming farmhouse and rustic store—no amount of trimmings can stand in for the hard work and long hours Theresa and her staff put in to keep their farm an edible paradise, and the generosity with which they invite the public to explore it.

U-pick season kicks off soon with strawberries ripening under a stunning view of Mt. Hood, followed shortly after with a bumper crop of pie and sweet cherries. Visit their website for more information (www.drapergirlscountryfarm.com) and “like” their Facebook page for updates on farm happenings throughout the harvest season (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Draper-Girls-Country-Farm/170708548386). 

Fat Of The Land - Nectar

Synonymous with sweetness, fragrance and divine sustenance, nectar is a term borrowed from mythology. Stemming from a Greek word meaning “death-defeating,” nectar was the literal drink of the gods that, along with ambrosia (the food of immortality), granted eternal life. Appropriated in the 1600’s to imply a sweet substance, the word nectar has never fully shaken its mythical origins.

As flowers and their ethereal scents came about long before Mount Olympus, the concepts of nectar and ambrosia were surely influenced by the real thing, challenging human imagination to reach beyond their earthly limitations. The word nectar still elicits fondness and wonder, that a thing so small and insubstantial can enter the nose and mouth with such outsized charm. Nectar is sugar, but with complex scent and deepness that still hints at magic.

Pull it apart with the tweezers of analytics and you’ll find that nectar is one thing, pollen and aroma compounds another. Bees are searching for nectar (at base, a sugar solution expelled by plants) as they pass from flower to flower, collecting and spreading pollen on their hind legs as they go. Aroma is less consistent from species to species: sometimes absent, sometimes residing in the pollen or nectar, sometimes exuding from petals or other flower structures.

In biology, nectar is a reward—liquid energy exchanged for pollination or protection—a symbiotic arrangement that is one of nature’s most sophisticated. Flowers direct bees’ ambitions with a multifaceted marketing program that includes elaborate architecture, fragrance, pigmentation and “nectar maps” often drawn in wavelengths invisible to the human eye. Now that our species is involved, the dance has become even more complex, with humans manipulating bees and coming ever closer to annihilating them (through no fault of traditional beekeepers).

Though we are certainly not its primary directors, our involvement with honey production and collection has taught us a few things about nectar. Namely that, beyond its sugary sweetness, the flavor profile of nectar is as diverse as the plants from which it is harvested. From light and mild clover honey to aromatic citrus-blossom honey to the smoky dark flavor of buckwheat honey, nectar varietals offer a wide assortment of culinary possibilities.

Even without the nectar-extracting skill of honeybees, the sweet and fragrant flavors of certain flowers have found their way into our culinary traditions. I grew up sucking on the trumpet-shaped tubes of honeysuckle and columbine flowers. I’ve used edible flowers as a garnish for their punch of sweet (and sometimes spicy or bitter) flavors, layered aromatic blooms in sugar to absorb their fragrance, or sprinkled them in a steeping pot of tea.

A versatile nectar to harvest this time of year is that of the black or blue elderberry tree. Flowers from either tree may be used to make elderflower cordial, a simple syrup infused with the rich aromatics of elderflowers.

Elderflower cordial is a popular beverage base in northern Europe, where it is used to flavor sparkling water. I’ve added mine to cocktails, iced tea and even drizzled it over fresh strawberries for a refreshing dessert. Elderflowers may also be added whole to pancake, pastry or fritter batters, and lend a delicate richness to strawberry preserves. Be sure to correctly identify foraged elderflowers before using them, as some varieties are mildly toxic.

Bringing nectar into the kitchen requires a subtle hand. While some honeys are strong enough to hold their own in a barbeque sauce, fresh flowers, especially, have an ethereal flavor that hovers and easily flutters away among more powerful seasonings. Put in the right place, nectar, pollen and flower fragrance offer substance fit for the gods.

Stephens Farm

Chuck and Rachel Stephens have been farming for nearly three decades, maintaining the Stephens family lineage of farmers, in Chuck’s case, and entering into new territory in Rachel’s.

“I grew up in Kansas, where I had only ever heard of three kinds of apples: green, red and yellow. And we didn’t even have them all the time; apples were a special treat.”

When she came to Oregon to support her husband’s farming ambitions and settle on a 120-acre plot on the eastern side of Grand Island, Rachel was introduced not only to numerous apple varieties, but a wealth of fruits and vegetables that the Willamette Valley’s rich soils and mild climate make possible.

“Out here, it’s like you can eat anything.”

They bought their property in 1985, which was, at the time, “all weeds and grass” and a healthy stand of cottonwood trees. The site is separated by elevation into two sections: one barely above the Willamette River, which it borders for a third of a mile of riverfront, and another atop a ridge, where they built their home. Although Chuck cleared the lower 80-acres of cottonwood trees in their first two years on the farm, he now leases that field to a neighboring farmer and keeps the majority of his own crops in the upper 40-acres, where the land dries out quickly and is more protected from flooding.

There, Chuck has planted an Eden of fruits and vegetables, constantly tweaking his preferred varieties to meet market demand and feel out his own product niche. When he started, Chuck filled much of his plantable land with apple trees, a solid commodity crop at the time. A few years later, the apple market crashed following a 60-Minutes report that a ripening agent used on red apples was a known carcinogen. After selling box after box of apples below his breakeven point, Chuck decided to rip out most of his trees and diversify his operation.

His fields now host a mind-boggling array of edibles: meandering orchards of peaches, pears, apples, plums, nectarines, apricots and cherries are interplanted with blueberries, grapes, strawberries and vegetable rows that he sows as soon as possible each spring to insure early harvests.

The soils of Grand Island are rich and well-draining, an unusual combination in our region that allows Chuck to begin tilling and planting while farmers in other areas are still waiting for the soil to dry.

Outlying areas of the farm are planted in figs, an experimental crop that has proven lucrative for Stephens, and a few trial almond trees along the riverbank. Nearly every available nook and cranny of the farm is host to some sort of enterprising vegetation, a concert of florae conducted by a man who is the poster child for not putting all his eggs in one basket.

Each crop has its year, Chuck explained, and you just have to go with the flow. And while he’s learned and embraced that philosophy the hard way, his entrepreneurial spirit has helped him build a buffer of resiliency amidst the high-stakes nature of farming. When he hears about an intriguing new variety, he buys a few and tries it, which is how he has amassed a collection of 10-25 varieties of each crop he grows. Such diversity also helps to extend harvests throughout the season.

The Stephens’ endless optimism keeps their farm charging forward, seeking out the next revenue stream while many of their contemporaries settle into retirement. Chuck doesn’t seem like he’ll stop any time soon, with a new greenhouse under construction, new fruit trees planted that won’t produce for a few years yet, and talk of initiating an agritourism arm of the business. Given how energized he is by his farm, setting up a vacation rental that markets its bucolic setting and riverfront beaches may be as close to retirement as Chuck wants to get.

Look for extended harvests of strawberries, tree fruits, grapes, figs, root vegetables, corn and more at the Stephens Farm booth throughout the summer season; try all the varieties and find your favorite!

The Fat Of The Land - The Flavor Green

There is something common among the canon of spring vegetables that is found few other places—a freshness that cannot be fully preserved, a tenderness and depth of subtle flavors that quietly slips away in the heat of summer, lacks the robustness to survive winter. As spring days lengthen and the rich soils warm, the world becomes green for a few delicious months, and we dine on its delicate plenty.

Certainly leaf vegetables and herbs taste green year-round—that sometimes bitter, sometimes astringent, always tonic hallmark of healthiness—but the flavor green belongs to spring. In spring, arugula is succulent and nutty, pea shoots are soft and rich as butter, kale leaves are tender enough to eat in raw mouthfuls, lettuce’s bitter notes are balanced by sweetness and green substance. The flavor green even goes so far as to permeate the milk of grass-fed ruminants, lacing it with powerful odors (too strong for some) that taper into sweeter, floral aromas, casting the milk in deep orange hues.

The green color of plants comes, of course, from chlorophyll, the primary pigment responsible for transforming light energy into chemical energy. This explains the increase of green pigment in spring; more sunlight means plants leap into action, capitalizing on the newly available energy. But just what makes spring vegetables—and the flavor we think of as “green”—taste so opulent this time of year is more difficult to nail down.

Though most people associate chlorophyll with green-tasting foods, it is, from a cook’s point of view, mostly color. Hidden by chlorophyll’s powerful presence are concealed pigments that complement its work. When it comes to flavor, the carotenoids (ranging in color from yellow to orangey-red) may be some of the most significant of these accessory pigments. Acting as a buffer, carotenoids provide chlorophyll with light reserves as well as shield it from excess light that would otherwise cause harm.

Beyond their role as pigment, carotenoids double as precursors to flavor compounds as well as A-vitamins. Left in their whole state, functioning as light harvesters, carotenoids have neither intrinsic flavor nor odor. When processed by enzymes or oxidization, their chemical components convert to vitamins and antioxidants (as in the human digestive tract) as well as flavor.

As we chew a green leaf, the tearing action of our teeth releases enzymes present within the leaf itself that quickly convert carotenoids into some of those grassy flavors we associate with chlorophyll’s green color. Other flavor compounds are released by chewing, and in complex concert create the particular flavors we know as lettuce, asparagus, pea, and so on. Even black tea, whose chlorophyll has been converted away from green by oxidization, has carotenoids to thank for some of the lighter, grassier elements of its flavor profile.

Spring milk, too, gets its hint of green from carotenoids. Ruminants are capable of transferring the A-vitamins they’ve gleaned from carotenoids (and all associated flavor compounds) into their milk, so a diet higher in fresh forage will translate to stronger flavors (and more vitamins) than milk from primarily grain-fed ruminants. Not surprisingly, the color of spring milk, a rich yellow-orange, comes from carotenoids as well.

To me, the flavor green is equally a texture, that soft, melt-in-your-mouth tenderness only spring vegetables have. The serendipity of fresh molecular content, soft fibers, ample moisture and fewer bitter compounds may all have a hand in fashioning the subtleties of early-season flavor.

In our region, spring is a cavalcade of moisture and sunlight, one following the other in sometimes hourly successions, tempered by cool nights. While the nutritional content of spring vegetables is certainly not greater than their summer counterparts, it is available in abundant and succulent mouthfuls.

Sarah West is a gardener, eater and admirer of the agricultural arts. She gladly spends her Sundays as assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, basking in the richness of its producers’ bounty and its community’s energy. Find archives and more at http://thefatofthelandblog.wordpress.com.

Fraga Farmstead Creamery

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Farmers’ markets are a collection of businesses, a temporal grocery store where each shelf comes with a smiling face and a wealth of knowledge about the products they produce and sell. We’re giving our vendors the spotlight to share more about their role in the Hillsdale market community.

By Sarah West

Spring is an exciting season for a small goat farm: pastures springing back to life; baby goats sprinting in the bright green grass, climbing onto anything they can (is this why they call them kids?); and milk production increasing with the fresh forage and new mothers. In addition to their herd of Alpine and Nubian milking goats, Fraga Farmstead Creamery is growing a new dairy.

Steve and Elisabeth Monahan purchased the goats, infrastructure and recipes of Fraga Farm from Jan and Larry Neilson in the spring of 2013. Long time vendors at Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, Jan and Larry were ready to retire from full-time farming but wanted their business to continue under someone else’s care. The Monahans stepped in and have been learning from the Neilson’s ever since.

After a year’s tutelage in herd management and cheese making, Steve and Elisabeth are finishing preparations at their own property near Gales Creek (about 30 minutes west of Portland), including the construction of a new dairy building attached to the property’s existing barn. Complete with a milking room, milk-cooling chamber, cheese production room, walk-in coolers and aging rooms, the new facility will help the Monahans increase their cheese production by more than fifty percent.

Their farm in Gales Creek is much larger than the Neilson’s property in Sweet Home (where the milking herd and cheese production are currently located) and will allow Steve and Elisabeth to extend their herd size from forty to sixty goats, which will graze on rotating pastures dotted throughout their 38-acre property. Formerly a Christmas tree farm, the goats have much more than grass to browse on. They love to nibble the Douglas fir stands, the needles of which may help to prevent intestinal worms.

The Monahans have kept the same cheese styles developed by Jan and Larry during their twenty years as proprietors of Fraga Farm. Why mess with a good thing? They have also acquired organic certification for their home property and their products are still available at many of the same locations Jan and Larry distributed to, which includes (outside of farmers’ markets) Food Front, New Seasons, People’s Co-op, and the new Green Zebra grocery stores.

Steve and Elisabeth have made a few tweeks: adding honey chevre to their lineup and, most recently, updating their name and logo. Now “Fraga Homestead Creamery,” the new logo features their home property’s historic barn, where the remainder of their herd will move once the dairy is ready for full-time milkers.

Twenty-five years ago the Monahans took a vacation from California to the Rockies via the Willamette Valley. They were instantly smitten and kept it in the back of their minds as a place to settle, perhaps in retirement. Now they own a 36-acre farm in the foothills of the Coast Range, a herd of 40 milking goats, and are deep in the process of building a new farm business between farm sites that are two hours apart, while balancing outside jobs (Elisabeth is a registered nurse) and dairy construction with family and farm obligations. The word busy doesn’t quite do them justice.

Though the simple life may not be as simple as advertised, the Monahans have embraced it with all of their creativity and energy, spawning small side-projects and supporting local small farmers in their spare time. One young farmer is using a corner acre of their farm to grow organic hops for a beer-making venture. They’ve also planted a quarter-acre in black currants (inspired by rote grutze, a dessert from Elisabeth’s native country, Germany), keep a small herd of American Guinea hogs (that help with whey management), make seasonal wreaths with their property’s abundant noble fir boughs and will soon be annexing a neighbors field to grow their own hay.

Steve and Elisabeth have been featuring samples of their Foster Lake Camembert at market, a soft-ripened cheese with a delicate rind, firm center and silky richness in between. This camembert celebrates the floral richness of spring milk, and it, along with a fresh loaf of bread, can elevate a lingering May evening in your own back yard to a gustatory event. Visit Fraga’s booth at the market this Sunday to sample their entire lineup of innovative and enchanting goat’s milk cheeses.

The Fat Of The Land - Spring Alliums

Most cooks are familiar with the virtues of alliums, a botanical genus that includes garlic, onions, shallots and leeks. The alliums are a tribe of powerful flavors that constitute the backbone of countless soups, sautés, sauces, roasts, salads and stews. They are the definition of savory: pungently aromatic, acidic and spicy when fresh, oozing with deep, often sweet umami flavor when roasted. Their essence permeates a dish only to harmonize the other flavors, providing a song for them to dance to.

In the garden, as on the palate, alliums are lingering guests. Leeks, onions, garlic and shallots all have long maturation periods, occupying valuable garden real estate for up to nine months. Garlic, leeks, and shallots accomplish much of their extended growth period over winter, when little else is growing, but most onion varieties require spring planting and a long, luxurious soak in the sun to reach bulbing stage.

Late spring is the narrows of allium bulb availability: winter leeks are beginning to bolt, onion sets have just been planted, garlic and shallots are still a month or two from harvest, and storage bulbs are sprouting.

Luckily, lush, green spring has its own brand of alliums, enlisting fresh, herbal flavors, sweetness, and succulence in place of shelf-stable bulbs.

Scallions, also called green onions, bunching onions, or spring onions are one of two things: a variety of onion that never produces a bulb (usually labeled scallions or bunching onions) or a bulb-producing onion that has been picked before bulbing (usually labeled spring onions). The difference is horticultural, though not usually significant in the kitchen. True scallions (those that will never produce an onion) are one of the most nutritious alliums, boasting 140 times more phytonutrients than a typical white onion. Eaten fresh, they promise peak flavor and powerful nutrition in a small but versatile package.

Chives and their attractive purple flowers are one of the first edible alliums to appear in spring, sprouting as early as late February in our region. By May, their bloom is in full force, sending up a composite flower that is as attractive in a vase as it is delicious sprinkled on anything you can think of. Consider chives and their flowers as spring’s perfect condiment, adding a dash of oniony sweetness and densely packed nutrients to eggs, salads, pastas and more.

Salad onions, sometimes also called spring onions, are a variety of sweet, bulbing onion harvested before reaching maturity. Their juicy, tender bulbs and green tips are delicious raw or roasted. They are one of my favorite spring vegetables to grill: the bulbs caramelize into silky, smoky sweetness while the green tips get a little singed, adding a crispy, toasted onion accent.

Garlic Scallions are the garlicky cousin of scallions, immature garlic plants pulled while their bulb-ends are still tender and soft. Sliced thinly, they may be added raw to salads or used as a garnish. They are slightly drier than onion scallions, so roasting or sautéing them both deepens their garlic flavor and softens their texture. One of my favorite quiche preparations features garlic scallions; their combination of garlic-aroma and fresh allium brightness balances perfectly with the egg and cream richness.

Leek Scapes or shoots are the leafless flower stems of a leek plant. All alliums produce scapes—shallot and garlic scapes are seasonal delicacies that begin appearing in mid-June—which are an edible bi-product of a plant entering its next physiological stage. Unlike garlic or shallot scapes, leek scapes are best harvested by pulling out the whole plant once the flowering shoot has grown about four inches above the leaves (but has not yet bloomed). The blanched white stalk that leeks are best known for is still edible at this stage, and may be prepared by slicing it up to the point where it transitions to leaves. Peel back the leaves until you get to the firm but tender central stalk.

Later (a week or two from this point), the scape will become stiff like a young tree branch, but at this stage it should be slightly rubbery. The entire stalk and flower bud are edible and delicious, like leek-flavored asparagus. When my leek patch starts to bolt, I harvest them all at once, slicing the white bases and tossing them in the freezer to use later, extracting the scapes to cook now.

Sarah West is a gardener, eater and admirer of the agricultural arts. She gladly spends her Sundays as assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, basking in the richness of its producers’ bounty and its community’s energy. Find archives and more at http://thefatofthelandblog.wordpress.com.

Gales Meadow Farm

Farmers’ markets are a collection of businesses, a temporal grocery store where each shelf comes with a smiling face and a wealth of knowledge about the products they produce and sell. We’re giving our vendors the spotlight to share more about their role in the Hillsdale market community.

By Sarah West

Nestled between wooded hillside and a bend in the meandering Gales Creek, Anne and Rene’ Berblinger’s Gales Meadow Farm feels like a place hewn from the pastoral imagination: nine smooth acres fan out in a rough triangle from the back of the property, bordered cozily by tall trees, onto a vista of the slender Gales Creek valley and its well-muscled foothills that begin galloping into the coast range a handful of miles west of the farm. It is a vista I know well from spending two summers as a part-time farmhand there in 2010 and 2011, enjoying a morning coffee, planting, harvesting and pulling weeds in that glorious backdrop.

Anne and Rene’ began hobby-farming the site in 1999, coming from non-farm careers and a simple desire to work outdoors and grow beautiful food. Their operation soon expanded to include one, then many employees, some who live on-site, most of whom are young people interested in learning more about organic vegetable production. The farm earned organic certification from Oregon Tilth in 2001, and has remained strictly organic since then. They sell summer vegetables at the Hollywood and Cannon Beach farmers’ markets, and spring plant starts here at Hillsdale.

Their plant list boasts an astonishing 300 varieties, an accomplished collection for a farm of this scope. And Gales Meadow is all about collections: tomato varieties number in the forties, pepper and garlic varieties in the twenties, many of which are perpetuated using seed collected onsite. This is a boon both for the farm and the home gardeners who purchase vegetable starts from GMF, as the plants are well adapted to the climatic and soil conditions of our region.
“Sometimes I say that we had to be farmers, since we never had room to grow all the varieties we wanted to try in a garden,” Anne said of her transition from gardener to farmer fifteen years ago.

A quick look at their tomato variety list makes it clear that the Berblingers do not perpetuate the usual suspects. A healthy handful of the varieties they grow are sourced not from seed catalogs but from fellow farmers and customers who pass on their own favorites. The result is a gallery of unique tomatoes, well-tested in both garden and kitchen, many of which are exclusive to Gales Meadow Farm.

Nostrano, a round, red variety that comes from the seeds of a tomato purchased at a market in Turino, Italy are Anne’s favorite slicing tomato for summer sandwiches or just eating out of hand. Italian Heart, a creamy-pink beauty of a sauce tomato with large-shouldered fruits that taper to a point (reminiscent of a heart) quickly cook down to a light, aromatic sauce. Piccolo San Marzano, a miniature version of the classic Italian sauce tomato, makes an excellent portable snack, and is featured in homemade catsup at farm meals.

Gales Meadow Farm is one of this year’s Edible Portland Local Food Hero nominees, an honor they’ve received in part for their farming and nursery work, as well as their dedication to educating gardeners and young farmers about organic agriculture. Anne and Rene’ farm with a gardener’s mentality, valuing beauty, flavor and narrative over high productivity or vegetables with a long shelf life, and many of the lessons they’ve learned in their fifteen-year farm journey translate well to a garden of any size. Anne and Rene’ have reaped delicious rewards from experimenting with seed saving, and encourage all gardeners to try their hand at it.

“Use open-pollinated varieties and save seeds of your favorites,” Anne advises, “especially self-pollinating vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and beans.”

And, at the farm or garden scale, success with organic growing comes from seeing the garden as an ecosystem, a great balancing act.

“Love your pollinators,” encourages Anne, “provide ten months of bloom in your garden, a pesticide free environment, and places for their babies to grow.”

And as for those pesky weeds and tenacious pests, focus on management, “don’t even try to eliminate them.”

The relaxed and patient approach to agriculture I learned at Gales Meadow Farm still informs my own gardening practices, and many of the exceptional varieties I was introduced to there have earned a permanent place in my own seed collection. Hillsdale Farmers’ Market and the local food community are fortunate to have these local food heroes in our midst.

Gales Meadow Farm is only at Hillsdale through May, so don’t delay in choosing one of their alluring tomato or pepper varieties for your garden this year!