It’s Time! Submit your entry to the 2014 Urban Fair

The Urban Fair is a new event hosted by Hillsdale Farmers’ Market. We need your homemade preserves to help make it a success. Each Sunday in September, we’ll be taking entries for the Preserves Showcase. Our version of a county fair, this is your opportunity to win an Urban Fair ribbon for your best home preserve. Who qualifies? You! We encourage preservers of all ages to submit their water-bath canned preparations. Bring two jars and a registration form to the market info booth between 10am and 2pm on September 7, 14, 21, or 28, 2014. Visit the info booth for more information, or follow this link to our website: http://www.hillsdalefarmersmarket.com/2014-urban-fair/

Entry Categories for the Preserves Showcase

Jam Preserves: Spreadable goodness, savory or sweet, single ingredient or blended combinations. Submit your best toast-topper to this category!

Pickled Preserves: Vinegar- or salt-brined; sour, spicy or sweet; classic or creative preparations. Submit your briny masterpiece to this category!

Nostalgic Preserves: This is an open category that could include jam, pickles, sauce, relish, or anything that came to you from your preservation elders. Think Grandpa’s tomato sauce, a pickle recipe your great Aunt was famous for, Mom’s amazing chutney. This category is a nod to the generations past that inspired you to preserve and whose flavors are worth carrying forward.

Ribbons will be awarded in each category for the following classifications:

Best Single Origin preparation: A preserve that best showcases a single fruit or vegetable ingredient, be it Hood strawberries, Chester blackberries, or Persian cucumbers.

Best Combined preparation: A preserve that skillfully harmonizes two or more main fruit and/or vegetable ingredients.

Best Appearance: A preserve that is worthy of displaying at the front of the shelf, whose colors and textures are an artful addition to any pantry. Only entries in smooth-sided jars will be considered for this prize category.

Best Young Preserver: The most outstanding preserve made by an entrant 18-years of age or younger.

Download the Urban Fair Handbook and Registration Form Here: http://www.hillsdalefarmersmarket.com/urban-fair-documents/

Each entrant will receive an Urban Fair souvenir as thanks for participating, and will be automatically added to a raffle for preservation-themed prizes. Raffle prizes will be awarded the day of the Urban Fair (you need not be present to win).

The Urban Fair is a celebration of local fruit and vegetables and we encourage participants to source the majority of their ingredients from market vendors, local farms, or their own garden.

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter August 31 2014

If you load up with best of the late summer fruit - table grapes, plums, tomatoes and tomatillos - at tomorrow's Hillsdale Farmers' Market, please resist the awful refrigeration reflex. At least take a moment to think about treating these fine berries and drupes a bit more kindly. These fruits will last days, weeks, even months in colander on the counter, we also use a cooling rack. They want to be dry, and the kitchen counter is a fine habitat. The refrigerator just injures the fruit unnecessarily. We have had tomatillos last into April with no ill effects. Depending on their condition, peppers and tomatoes are good on the counter for a week or two easily. But then again, we will be coming in once a week through September, so you don't have to test things to the extreme.

That urgent issue out of the way, we will have a good selection of table grapes and plums tomorrow, as well as Will who can tell you many good stories about his life so far. We will also have the long red onions, garlics, fenugreek, favas, frikeh, popcorn, preserves and other good stuff. The exact mix of fruit will be determined by the length and extent of the rain showers that have just started.

Barley, Hordeum vulgare, is the small grain with the greatest diversity. There is a wide range of kernel colors, including white, tan, brown, blue, purple and black. There are varieties with two and six rows of kernels, and some indecisive sorts with four rows. There are varieties that have an indigestible hull adhered to the kernel, and those that thresh free of the hull, termed naked or hulless. The types that retain their hulls are typically used for brewing and animal feed, though they can be pearled which removes the hull, and parts of the aleurone and the germ as well. The presence of the hull reduces bloat in draft animals and is essential to malting process where it prevents the germinating grains from overheating. The hulless trait is controlled by a single gene and means humans can eat the whole grain. The hulless varieties are more nutritious because the whole grain is edible and retained.

In the sometimes silly race to promote "ancient grains," barley is considered too prosaic to earn a mention. However, even 2,000 or so years ago, Pliny described it in the superlative as antiquissimum frumentum, or the oldest of the cereals. That's old, folks. And, no, we are not going to claim that any of our seeds were pulled from a tomb or old pot buried somewhere. Crop seeds are a living legacy of civilization, and are generally viable for no more than a decade at best. Barley was sometimes assigned the status as a sacred grain and it is the grain Demeter holds along with a poppy capsule in the classic renditions of the goddess.

We started working with hulless barleys over 10 years ago and have offered it off and on through the decade. There is a cluster of naked barley devotees out there, people such as Will Bonsall of Industry, Maine, and Anpetu Oihankesni of Hotchkiss, Colorado, who provided much of our collection. They have varieties from around the globe, and we combed their collections for varieties with notable flavor. Keeping all the varieties separate became too much work for a farm at our scale. So last year we took all of our varieties, mixed them up and planted them together in a single plot. A sacrilege of sorts, but otherwise hulless barley culture at Ayers Creek was doomed as an erratic and meagre offering.

This week we will bring in the mix, a classic American melting pot of barley instead of humans. You will see the blue kernels from the Arabian variety, the large brown seeds of 'Dolma' that was collected in Kinnaur, India by Oihankesni, the white kernels of two Italian varieties from Bonsal, the tiny, rice-like kernels from the Korean 'Kamet-mugi' and the Japanese 'Sangatsuga'. The black kernels are from a variety of uncertain origin called 'Jet' that we acquired from Bountiful Gardens. We soak the barley overnight, refresh the water, bring it to a full boil and simmer it until until tender, about 40 minutes or so. Use barley as you would rice. Make pilafs, add it to soups, make grain and vegetable salads. It is flavorful, nutritious and pretty. That is the fine package that attracted us to the grain in the first place. And perhaps we can be forgiven for the sin of mixing the various types because it is an attractive collection.

We look forward to seeing you all tomorrow.

Carol and Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm

as well as,

Will and Jon Hunt
On loan from Italy Hill Farm

The Fat of The Land - Pollinators

As gardeners, we tend to think in terms of outcome, working to create an abundance of nourishing food, beauty, color, fragrance, liveliness, or serenity. We give to the garden in the form of compost, amendments, time, and water in order to receive again. It is a well-practiced agreement, one that stretches deeper into our history than written language. Underlying that bargain, or perhaps punctuating it, is the clause of partnership.

Numerous are the hazards that await a newly sprouted seed. As all creatures of the earth, it must struggle and endure, fitted with a biology prepared for some of the hardships that may come. Even so, destinies are not always attained, and those that are owe their victory, in part, to the efforts of others.

Pollinators seem the perfect metaphor for the everyman: one vote is all she gets, one voice of action. And while the pollinator is rarely glamorous or exceptional, his collective work has great influence. From the perspective of our species alone, pollinators are vital to our food supply—75% of food crops rely on pollinators for fertilization, while 100% benefit from the efforts of predatory or parasitic insects.

Known as ‘beneficial insects,’ these myriad species invisibly protect our fields and gardens. Syrphid flies, a fly in bee costume also known as a hover fly, snacks on pollen and nectar as an adult and hatches larvae that eat aphids, thrips, and other soft-bodied plant pests. Ladybeetle larvae have a voracious appetite for aphids, which the adults maintain at a slower but steady pace. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs on sap-sucking insect bodies that their larvae parasitize, eating the insides as they grow, leaving behind empty aphid husks as they pupate.

Such humble work is invaluable to any gardener, especially one wishing to avoid chemical pesticides. And for those that desire their trees to bow with branches heavy in fruit, for their squash patch to proliferate, or their berry harvests to boom, pollinators are irreplaceable partners. Diversity of pollinators means more bodies carrying pollen around the garden or field, and translates to increased yields of higher quality fruits.

Outside our cultivated spaces, the same results apply. Although we tend to think of honeybees when we talk nectar and pollen, native insects account for 80% or more of a given area’s total pollination. Honeybees, an introduced species, are useful for their colonizing habits. We can keep them in controlled hives and transport them from field to field in the orchestrated pollination of large crops. But in our gardens and natural areas, native pollinators do the lion’s share of the work, maintaining production as they maintain plant species diversity.

This arrangement reveals a compelling law of attraction. The equation is simple: what you give to eventually wants to give back. To nurture those who nurture you is a smart move on the evolutionary scale, one to which we have given a name and that we carry on in our own human terms: kindness.

Entering this positive feedback loop and being kind to your pollinators means planting the food they are accustomed to and providing the habitat the need. Many native bees nest in the soil, so leaving some undisturbed ground and plant debris (think sticks and leaves) means protecting nests. Native insects have evolved to eat native plant nectar and pollen; growing these species in clusters large enough to be noticed will attract native pollinators into your garden. Keep in mind that native pollinators are active all but the coldest months of the year; providing blooms spring through fall means feeding a diverse range of species with different hatching times.

There are many online resources from which to learn more about serving native insects by adjusting your gardening practices. A good place to start is the Xerces Society (www.xerces.org), a local organization that performs research, writes books and free publications (including plant lists and tips for gardeners), and advocates for these necessary species.

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.

Wild Oregon Update August 28th

Wild Oregon's BIG Chinook and Albacore tuna from the South coast are perfect for Labor Day weekend grilling. We have both fresh smoked too! I have been collecting Wild Huckleberries for topping off the feast.  Hope to see you at the market.  You can pre-order salmon and tuna for your freezer or canning this Sunday too. We’ll have an assortment of other sea treats too!

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter August 24 2014

When the bell chimes Sunday morning at 10:00 AM, you will find the following botanical bounty at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market:

Berries: Astiana tomatoes, tomatillos, table grapes -- It was fun to watch Greg Higgins and his staff try to fit "A gAstiana tomatoesrape with no name" on the written menu. The alternative was what Jack calls them: Anthony grapes. The former held sway. Remember, grapes are wonderful in savory dishes, as well as in the fruit bowl.

Compound Fruits: the very last of the Chester Blackberries for 2014. The farewell round of this now very delicate fruit.

Drupes: green gages, Seneca prunes and la mirabelle.

Bulbs: onions & garlics

Grains: popcorn, frikeh and cornmeal

Legumes: favas

Pepos: cucumbers & summer squash

Thursday, All Crop #67208 had her first outing in decades. With the large wooden straw rack swaying side-to-side, her gait has a touch of the rumba in it. She filled bags of hulless barley effortlessly, and we should have some cleaned and at the market within a week or so. The challenge of having her ready for Will and Jon's visit was met, and Will can tell you all about this amalgam of canvas, wood and steel at the market next week.

Sotweed, Spuds and Tomatoes

Harvesting tomatoes leaves your hands and arms covered with plant resin that has a fragrance instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up around a pipe smoker, that of fine burley tobacco. Tomatoes and tobacco, also called sotweed, are both in the nightshade family, along with potatoes, tomatillos and peppers.

The Sotweed Factor, John Barth's novel set largely on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, refers to a traveling agent, a factor, who purchased tobacco from farmers. Like Barth, Carol's father, Peter Black, had a deep affection for the Eastern Shore, both for its history, landscape and nature, as well as its natural affinity for scoundrels. His country hams, smoked and dried for seven years or more, sliced as thin as paper and served on beaten biscuits, are missed as the holidays roll around, along with Thelma Johnson's persimmon pudding and, earlier in the year, the soft shell crabs. The blue crab is of its own kind and should never be compared to its sweeter West Coast cousin.

One evening, as we enjoyed the cool breeze that came down Plain Dealing Creek and through the well-placed house surrounded by old pecan trees, we talked about another of Barth's novels when Peter digressed, explaining to us the second meaning of the "sotweed factor." Tobacco is an extractive plant, feeding heavily on the land and required a seven-year rotation between crops. Thus a tobacco grower seeking to harvest an acre of tobacco a year needed seven acres total, a factor of seven. With care, other cash crops could be grown in the rotation, but building the soil for the next crop of tobacco was paramount. The farmer could grow on a shorter rotation, but the leaf lost its aromatic quality and flavor and was considered worthless. The human factor would decline to purchase it.

Closely related to tobacco, potatoes and tomatoes share this trait. One year, we foolishly followed a crop of tomatoes with potatoes and they were the worse spuds we ever pulled out of the ground, absolutely flavorless and unfit for our discerning customers. Diagnosing the failure, we recalled Peter's discussion about the sotweed factor, and now we make sure we keep seven years between crops in the nightshade family. Other crop plants show a similar propensity, though not as aggressive. Processors require three years between crops of sweet corn for the same reason; shorter interval result in less flavorful corn.

As a general matter, it is a good idea to separate similar crops by several years. We also heed the Biblical instruction to leave the land fallow every seven years, though we are not strictly observant when it come to the exact frequency. The fact is, land needs an occasional rest. Until the middle of 20th century, a fallow year was included as a matter of course in crop plans. Not only does the soil rest, allowing it to refresh its mineral availability, the fallow also creates a break in pest and disease cycles. We had an email exchange with youngish organic farmer who was growing several crops of greens each year with good success for about five years, and suddenly she started having disease problems. We recommended a fallow year. Conventional growers can address those disease and insect problems with chemicals, but the flavor and quality of the fruits and vegetables still declines with intense crop cycles.

The other day, with our spuds not yet ready to harvest, we cooked up some fine looking Brand X certified organic potatoes and they were as bland as bland as can be, reminding us of the nasty crop we erased with a plow many years ago. Organic growers cannot produce a good crop, even if they avoid disease and pest problems, if they insist on throttling down on the rotation and never leaving the land to rest. True, variety selection and the cultivator's competence are important as well, but they are for naught if the need for rotation is ignored. And on the seventh year, the land shall rest.

We will see you all Sunday,
Carol and Anthony Boutard

Tomato (Mania!) Guide

Each year around the height of tomato season, the market hosts one of our most popular events: Tomato Mania. Volunteers gather tomatoes from market vendors, slice them into samples, and spread them out with labels that state the variety name and the vendor that supplied it. It’s a marvelous way to explore the range of tomatoes available at the market, savoring old favorites and finding new ones. Below is a preview of some of the varieties we expect to be sampling this Sunday.

Assorted Cherry Tomatoes: Sweet, bite-sized, and available in a rainbow of colors, the cherry tomato category also broadly includes pear tomatoes (shaped like their namesake fruit), grape tomatoes (larger than a typical cherry tomato), and currant tomatoes (smaller than a typical cherry tomato). Bright yellow-orange ‘Sungolds’ are one of the market’s most popular varieties—possibly the sweetest, most addictive cherry tomatoes you’ll ever taste! Cherry tomatoes are best eaten fresh: out of hand, topping salads, or folded into pasta just before serving.

Purple Calabash: Green shouldered, pleated fruits with a distinctive flatness. Their flesh is nearly true purple and offers full flavor and well-balanced acidity some liken to a fruity cabernet. Delicious fresh or cooked; a popular variety at last year’s Tomato Mania!

Striped Roman: One of the flashier tomatoes out there, this one has it all: sweet, rich flavor and fantastic color make ‘Striped Roman’ a marvelous fresh tomato for the salad plate. Like its cousin the red Roma, its meaty flesh cooks down easily into sauce—some say this variety makes the sweetest.

Oregon Star: A variety bred in the early 1990’s by Oregon State University, ‘Oregon Star’ is like a large, nearly seedless paste tomato. Its dense, flavorful flesh is perfect for simmering into a quick sauce, and the low ratio of skin to tomato flesh cuts down on prep work for larger sauce batches. ‘Oregon Star’ tomatoes are juicy and flavorful eaten fresh: they make a great tabbouleh  or salsa tomato, and are perfect for salads and sandwiches. Another customer favorite from previous Tomato Manias!

Copia: Sweet and juicy, ‘Copia’ are a cross between ‘Green Zebra’ and ‘Marvel Stripe’ that was developed in Napa, CA with chefs in mind. It’s red and yellow striping extends to the interior flesh, resulting in gorgeous marbling when sliced. Selected for flavor as well as beauty, ‘Copia’ are perfect for any occasion you want a show-stopping tomato to take center stage.

Cherokee Purple: This true heirloom (meaning it is not a recently developed cross of tomato characteristics but a strain whose seeds have been passed through generations of gardeners) plays up the savory side of tomato flavor: deep, rich, and earthy. Its purple skin fades to a saturated red in the tomato’s center. Curious about those green shoulders? Turns out they are a sign of superior flavor. The same genes that cause green shoulders in tomatoes are responsible for developing complexity and sweetness. The green parts may ripen much later than the rest of the tomato—don’t expect full ripening and peak flavor to coincide. Cut off the green and slice this heirloom favorite up for dinner!

Black Brandywine: The original pink ‘Brandywine’ tomato was once the poster child of heirloom tomatoes; these days it has a lot more company, but it’s still delicious! ‘Black Brandywine’ is a selection from the original strain: similar rich flavor with skin blushed purplish-brown. Great for fresh eating or cooking.

Yellow Brandywine: A yellow selection of the ‘Brandywine’ heirloom, revered for its surprisingly rich flavor and balance of sweetness and acidity. Best fresh, ‘Yellow Brandywine’ adds a lighter touch to sauces or salsas.

Beefsteak: More a category of tomato than a specific variety, beefsteak tomatoes are all the name implies: large, meaty, full-flavored, and perfect for serving in thick slabs just like a steak. These are the classic sandwich slicers. ‘Brandywine’ and ‘Cherokee Purple’ fall into the beefsteak category. Red varieties are often labeled as beefsteak tomatoes rather than by the cultivar name because it is a more recognizable label.

Roma: A type of plum tomato, ‘Roma’ and similar varieties are the quintessential sauce tomato. Their drier flesh and smaller seed cavities concentrate into perfect sauce and are ideal for halving and slow roasting in a low temperature oven. Synonymous with Italy, these are the home-preserver’s tomato of choice for canning whole and as sauces, ketchup, or pastes.

The Fat Of The Land - Kitchen Dispatch: Tomatoes

Tomatoes are the darlings of the main-season garden—their aromatic foliage smells fervently of summer, and it is from that radiant tangle our favorite fruits emerge in colors and combinations seemly without limit. In truth, tomato plants grow like weeds, flopping and out of control. While we struggle to hold them to their trellising, they take their time setting green fruits that hang for what always feels too long before the first hints of ripening appear. Slowly, with a storyteller’s patience, they become our imaginings—a mythology months in the making that we pluck, relishing its smooth realness all the way to the kitchen.

What a show they put on, grandly occupying vast stretches of small gardens from May to October, only to offer relatively minor bounty (especially with the larger heirloom varieties) compared to a succession of root and salad crops. Some years I must forgo tomatoes in my tiny backyard garden for the sake of rotation. But the tomato summers are always my favorite, and it is always worth their theatrics for this meal: a just-picked tomato carried in the gardener’s hand; zesty foliage and fruit’s rich perfume mingling.

Summer is ripe when tomatoes line the kitchen counter, spoils of market or garden awaiting transformation. Few countertop residents cause as much anxiety—truly vine-ripened tomatoes arrive already plump and soft, needing action. We know how to slice and dress them with basil and oil, slabs of fresh mozzarella. We know they make effortless sandwiches (now is the time for BLT’s), salads, and pizza toppings. We know they are perfect unadorned save a bright pinch of salt.

When we have done all that and the curiosity wants to stretch further, find new territory, tomatoes not only await, they demand our ingenuity. And what is more versatile than these sweet and savory globes? Melting or meaty, sour or satiny, their flavor easily concentrates or thins, and resonates with nearly anything the garden can throw at it. Like an agile partner, they know the tunes, they have the moves; we simply need to turn on the music.

Tomatoes respond well to slow heat, their moisture reduces, sugars develop, without wiping out all of the fresh fruit’s complexity. Slow roasted tomatoes are delicious simply atop a slice of fresh bread, but hold their own among heartier dishes like braised lentils, grilled meats, eggs, or buttery tarts. Paste, plum, seedless, or ox-heart type tomatoes are best for cooking—their dense flesh and few seeds means they contain less watery juices that would dilute their cooked flavor.

To roast tomatoes, pick an afternoon where you have tasks around the house and set your oven to its lowest temperature. Drizzle halved or quartered tomatoes (depending on their size; thick slabs also work for larger tomatoes) generously with olive oil. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet in a single layer, cut side up, and sprinkle with salt; a small amount of sugar adds surprising fullness, and seasonings like thyme, oregano, or black pepper add depth. Stick them in the oven and forget about them until the smell becomes irresistible. Take a peak. Roast them until they are shriveled, softened, their color deepened, anywhere from 2-4 hours. Store covered in oil in the refrigerator for up to a month.

Tomato sauce can be a daylong project, or an impromptu supper, depending on your resolve. Home-preserved tomato sauce is a great treat in winter, and a long project in the heat of summer. If you do choose to go that route, consider saving the skins you've so painstakingly removed and dry them, as Amanda Hesser suggests in her book, The Cook and The Gardener, in the oven (again on its lowest setting) until they become dehydrated but pliable. Chop and use as a punchy garnish, or save in a sealed jar to add to the stockpot down the line.

Never completely savory or sweet, cooked tomatoes always end up a combination of the two. Tomato jam, an unctuous preserve for scones, tarts, or even sandwiches, displays this quality well. Made with sugar, like any jam, it is luxuriously sweet; underneath is a base strikingly green, hearkening back to the florescent scent of the garden’s tomato brambles.

Fresh tomatoes are perhaps the sweetest form of all, especially those selected for this quality: cherry, pear, grape, and zebra-striped varieties make for syrupy mouthfuls without any embellishment. Or, Deborah Madison offers this simple preparation in her book, Vegetable Literacy, using cream to play up the fruit’s natural sugar:

Warm four tablespoons of heavy cream on low heat with a clove of smashed garlic and a fresh basil leaf until it comes to a boil. Set aside to steep while you peel a selection (about ½ pound) of fresh sweet tomatoes by dropping them for ten seconds in boiling water to loosen their skins. Place them directly in ice-cold water to stop them from cooking and slip off their skins. Slice and add tomatoes to the cream and bring to a bubble for 2-3 minutes. Season with pepper and salt (she recommends smoked salt) and serve covered in breadcrumbs or over a slice of toast.

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.

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter August 17 2014

What has become a tedious annual event, the staff writer is in a bit of a funk. Management has to jump in and remind you all that, despite the temperamental scrivener, the principals will be their usual cheerful selves at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market this Sunday. The bell will ring at 10:00 AM.

We will have Astianas in good supply. This is the finest culinary tomato we have found and we produce the seed here on the farm. Fresh or canned, the sauce made from these tomatoes is worth the effort. If you buy more than 20 pounds, the price is $1.75/pound, so you get a fabulous sauce tomato at a great price for certified organic tomatoes. We will have them for the next three weeks or so.

We will also have green gages and possibly some of the 'Grape with No Name.' Unfortunately, the staff writer picks the grapes so we will have to pull him out of his funk.

We will have Chesters, onions, garlics, frikeh, popcorn, favas, cucumbers, Amish Butter cornmeal and a smattering of preserves.

We will see you all Sunday,

The Management
Ayers Creek Farm

The Fat Of The Land-Salt

There is perhaps no better way to taste a sun-ripened tomato than by slicing off a thick slab and sprinkling it with salt. This ubiquitous powdered mineral is the magic wand of the kitchen—transforming and enhancing flavor, shelf life, and even texture with a pinch here, a flick of the wrist there.

In a manner of speaking, all salt in the form we know it comes from the sea: sea salt is evaporated directly from collected sea water, while much of the world’s refined table salt comes from deposits left by ancient oceans. Salt deposits that form veins in the rock are extracted though shaft mining and the resulting salts are mainly used for icy roads and agriculture. Salt beds—wider underground deposits—are extracted using solution mining, where water is pumped underground to dissolve the salt, then pumped back out and re-separated in a salt evaporation facility (most table salt is manufactured this way).

But the ocean isn’t the origin of salt, merely its concentrator. Like an enormous caldron, the ocean collects minerals eroded by rainwater from rocks on the earth’s surface, which is transported to the ocean by rivers or underwater hydrothermal vents. As ocean water evaporates, it leaves minerals like sodium chloride behind, where they concentrate. Ocean dwelling creatures use some of these minerals, such as crustaceans that need calcium for their exoskeletons or diatoms that need silica for their shells. Other minerals, mainly sodium and chloride (which constitute 85% of the dissolved minerals in sea water), appear to go unused.

Fresh water carries sodium chloride from earth to ocean, and so it contains trace amounts of salt itself. Plants also extract sodium chloride from soil deposits, though the quantity is functionally insignificant for human dietary needs. Animal meat contains slightly higher amounts of salt than vegetables, as their bodies’ cells, like our own, depend on sodium to maintain proper fluid balance, as well as nerve and muscle function.

Though diets of primarily animal protein may have provided sufficient sodium to early humans, hunter-gatherers and agrarian people alike began supplementing their diet with harvested salt as long as 10,000 years ago. The ocean was the easiest and best source, and salt was a valuable commodity for millennia of local and global trade. Inland salt could be collected at salt springs; one of the oldest known salt extraction sites is located in Romania next to a mineral spring with high salt content, a production that began around 6,050 BC.

Modern day refined salt has little in common with these ancient extractions. The refining process results in stripped down sodium chloride further treated with additives like iodine and anti-caking agents. Because all other minerals are removed, some argue, common table salt offers less nutritional benefit. Unrefined salts collected from the living sea or ancient deposits contain a vast array of subtle flavors imbued by the environment from which they are extracted—hence briny or even vegetal sea salts.

Traditional salt evaporation methods also lend salt a wide range of textures—from large, heavy crystals that sink like granules of sand to the bottom of the saltpan, to the light, crystalline flakes of salt that form near the surface. Fleur de sel, or flake salt, are the product of this former method, resulting in what is known as a finishing salt—flakes whose tender, airy crunch adds an ethereal quality to a bowl of dressed salad greens or a plate of roasted vegetables.

Salt is one of the five tastes our tongue can perceive—an appointment that seems to betray its importance in our development and well being as a species. And salt (from any source) makes food taste better by masking bitter, metallic, or chemical flavors (and therefore enhancing the perception of sweetness), balancing and concentrating flavor, and creating a perception of thickness or fullness (especially in sauces and soups). We crave not just its inherent saltiness, but also the transformative power it has on the foods we require for all other forms of nutrition.

To me, summer is the time of salt and its subtleness—to enliven garden vegetables and to make the brines that will preserve them for winter. Pinch with a light but steady hand.

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.

Vendor Profile-Unger 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

Strawberry season doesn’t hit fever-pitch at the market until Unger Farms returns with their flats of perfect Hood strawberries, those ephemeral poster children synonymous with June, Oregon, and delicious. Long lines of shoppers wait for the opening bell to ring, eager to take a half-flat home to freeze, can, or simply snack on this early summer treat.

By August, summer in Oregon has settled into fields of golden-hued grass, hazy skies, and copious dust. The Hoods are hunkered down in the heat, waiting for a fall mowing and their lush return with winter’s rain. Albion, a workhorse strawberry with sweetness and a touch of acidity—if not the Hood’s grand perfume—has taken the Hood’s place and will bear through October if the weather holds. August at Unger Farms is ruled by raspberries and blackberries, of which they grow ten varieties.

Matt and Kathy Unger bought the 140-acre farm a little over 30 years ago, continuing an Unger family tradition: Matt grew up farming strawberries on his family’s land, just over the hill from their farm, and Kathy worked on her future in-law’s farm after moving to the area from north Portland while still in high school. The two struck off on their own venture in 1984, growing berries and cucumbers, and selling their harvests to local canneries.

They soon realized that cannery prices were not able to keep the farm afloat, despite how efficiently they ran their operation. In the late 80’s, they decided to try opening a booth at the Hillsboro Farmers Market and the farm has never been the same since. Over two decades, they grew their fresh market business to comprise over 80% of farm income, reviving a tenuous young farm and becoming a cornerstone vendor of many Portland area markets.

The Ungers specialize in berries, and have maintained a focused operation, always striving to produce the best product they can, carefully selecting varieties with good flavor and size, and utilizing sustainable farming practices to minimize their operation’s impact on their land and surrounding environment. Their careful farming is evident in the tidy, well-managed berry and grape rows rotated among the farm to keep soil pathogens from building in any one spot, to the flats of plump, shining berries picked each morning and cooled in the farm’s storage cooler for markets and deliveries the next day.

This year, Unger Farms is selling at fifteen area markets, a handful of farm stands, and New Seasons grocery stores, as well as their own fledgling farm store located on an annexed property purchased after a neighboring nursery operation left. They built the farm store four years ago with public interaction in mind, including nearby U-pick fields of flowers and berries, a café and bakery with patio seating that looks over the farm’s pond and distant berry fields, and impressive displays of fresh vegetables, berries, and other local food products. This year, the farm store added an OLCC license, allowing them to sell beer and wine, and launch a new series of wine, beer and music events on select evenings through the summer.

The Ungers have recently added a CSA component to their farm model as well, growing a couple acres of vegetables along with the berries for families wanting a weekly box of farm-fresh vegetables and fruits. This year, Matt enthusiastically planted 18 varieties of potatoes, a crop he also grew up tending, and the store will feature these plus a host of fall vegetables and berries until they shut down for winter. Start a weekend drive through the country with a waffle breakfast from the farm’s Berry Café, or come for a Savor the Summer evening event and sip wine on the patio with views of rolling farmland and live music. Find the farm store hours and more at: http://ungerfarms.com.

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter 10 August 2014

We have been caught in the riptide of the season where the harvest of the Chesters continues apace and we are sowing our winter crops. Hence less prolix than usual. The seedling chicories, including our first re-selection of the late Treviso type, are emerging. Barely visible, they show up as a thin green line when viewed down the row rather than as individuals. To make up for last year's disaster, we have doubled the planting, such is the thing of a farmer.

Into this mix, we are restoring a 1941 Allis Chalmers All Crop 60. We dragged it home ten years ago and we have tackled the project bit by bit, with progress measured in its disassembly. Our son-in-law and his kid are visiting in late August, and the goal is to have it up and running by then. Otherwise we won't have chickpeas and barley this year. Every restorer's nightmare, nurtured by the hapless coyote in Roadrunner, is that a single bolt is forgotten and, upon starting, the machine collapses into a pile of rubble. If it is oddly missing during the Ramble, that is what happened.

We will take a moment Sunday to bring you lots of Chesters, cucumbers, summer squash, long red onions, garlics, along with dry favas, popcorn and Amish Butter cornmeal. The first of the Astianas are ripening and we will have a couple crates, and maybe a few green gages. All this will be available for purchase once the Hillsdale Farmers Market bell rings at 10:00 AM.

Best,
Carol and Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm

Vendor Profile: Sun Gold 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

Not too many years ago, the bend in Dairy Creek where 135 acres of Sun Gold Farm sit under their celestial namesake, there was, not surprisingly, a dairy. Charlie and Vicki Hertel, the owners and operators of Sun Gold Farm, ran that dairy (originally bought by Vicki’s parents in the 1930’s) for 22 years. Both Charlie and Vicki were raised on dairy farms, and both thought dairy would be their lifelong career. That is, until the late 90’s, when environmental concerns about runoff pollution from their manure pile forced the Hertels to make some difficult choices.

Rather than pay the exorbitant price of moving much of the dairy’s infrastructure up slope from the river, they chose to sell their cows and began to transition their land to vegetables. Though Vicki had been selling extras from the family’s kitchen garden through a consignment booth at the Hillsboro Farmers’ Market, they knew little about managing row crops or diverse vegetable production systems.

“Jack of all trades, master of none,” Charlie said of his operation on a recent tour of the farm. Looking out over the culmination of a 17-year learning curve, it’s hard to fully agree with him. Their operation works like a well-conducted orchestra: autumn-spread horse manure and lime, cover crops, and crop rotation account for their soil management and fertilization program. No pesticides or herbicides are used on the farm; instead, natural predators like coyotes and birds are encouraged to visit the farm and a profusion of wildflowers (some may wrongly call them weeds) attract beneficial insects. A four-person crew (three of them seasonal) assists Charlie and Vicki with planting, weeding, irrigation and harvest, and their two children, Chris and Stephanie, returned to the farm after post-high-school time away, contributing their business and marketing skills to growing the farm’s profit margin.

Starting in late winter, Vicki fills five of their unheated greenhouses with nursery starts and hanging baskets of flowering annuals, which they sell at their spring markets. Early summer is busy with planting and weeding 25 acres of vegetables, cutting and bailing 80 acres of Timothy hay, which they rotates around the farm to make use of resting vegetable fields, and ramping up for peak market season. By now, the crew is working hard to manage a dizzying number of succession plantings of their 160 vegetable varieties in order to supply a 500-member CSA and eight weekly markets. Though it is still the height of summer, farmers’ must think far in advance, and the Sun Gold crew already has a field of fall brassicas planted, with more going in soon for overwintering.

Fifteen years ago, not long after they transitioned to vegetable farming, the Hertels were trialing new tomato varieties for the Logan-Zenner Seed Company and ended up with sungold cherry tomatoes in their batch. The variety was a standout at the farm (and internationally!), so much so the Hertel’s changed their farm’s name, inspired by the delicious new tomato and the clever ring to its name. They’ve been selling pints of sungolds ever since, and the rest of the farm’s sun gold—a rich assortment of year-round fresh vegetables, fruits and storage crops like dry beans, potatoes and winter squash—continues to feed hundreds of lucky Oregon families twelve months a year.

Sun Gold Farm was the 2014 Edible Portland Local Hero Award in the Farm category. Find out more at: http://edibleportland.com/2014/04/farm-sun-gold-farm/. Learn about their CSA program, including their unique, one-time Thanksgiving share, on their website, http://www.sungoldfarm.com.

Fat Of The Land-Eggplant

By Sarah West

Photo by Sarah West

I have to admit that the eggplant has maintained an air of mystery in my life. I grew up without eating a single one (not a family favorite), and nothing about the spongy, thick-skinned, midnight-purple football of a vegetable made any sense to me as a young cook. Beyond an oil-soaked eggplant Parmesan here and there, I had little exposure to this perplexing produce-aisle standard.

Seed catalogs sparked in me the first authentic eggplant curiosity—this was a vegetable that, in heirloom collections, came in alluring variety: green or yellow grape-sized fruits to slender, pendulous purple cucumbers to white and lavender marbled tear-drops, bright red tomato-shaped fruits to pure white, egg-shaped fruits. Hence, the name: once upon a time, someone saw this sort of round, paper white fruit and said: eggplant.

Hailing from a native range that included northeast India to Burma, northern Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and southern China, eggplants have long exhibited wide variation of colors, shapes and sizes, which in turn reflect the tastes and preferences of their cultivators.

The eggplant went to Persia through ancient trade routes, and from there, to eastern Africa and eventually (post-Roman empire) Mediterranean Europe via Muslim expansion. As a vegetable, eggplant was slow to catch on, especially in northern regions, where it was believed to harbor powers ranging from the aphrodisiac to the psychotic. The word for eggplant in Italy maintains some of this old suspicion: melanzana, or ‘mad apple.’

Following western exploration to the Americas, the eggplant met for the first time its cousin the tomato, both members of the botanical family, solanaceae. The two were united again back in the Old Country, and in the capable hands of southern Italian and Spanish cooks, were masterfully paired—tomato’s sweet acidity flavoring silky, rich eggplant, a combination that now stands as a Mediterranean classic.

My first attraction to eggplant was visual, and, indeed, as eggplant spread to farther regions of the globe, eating the unusual fruits was not always the inheritor’s first impulse. Like tomatoes, eggplants are closely related to poisonous and narcotic species of nightshade, bearing much resemblance and residual misgivings. In some of the first seed catalogs, such as France’s 1760 edition from Vilmorin, they were listed solely as ornamental annuals.

Though we think of it as a vegetable, eggplant fruit is, by botanical definition, a berry. It has none of the sweetly sour, fresh-eating characteristics of culinary berries, but its seeds are embedded in a single, fleshy ovary, and therefore it is more a berry than strawberries or raspberries.

As cooks, however, we concede that raw eggplant holds little appeal (many still believe it is poisonous raw, a holdover from centuries of nightshade associations), and for eggplant to enthrall us, we must embrace its unctuous qualities. When fresh eggplant is cooked well, flesh that was spongy and bitter melts into sweet, silky, umami-rich softness that easily harmonizes with surrounding flavors.

The Persians, early adopters of eggplants, preferred to roast them whole in the ashes of a wood fire, later flavoring the flesh with oil, vinegar, and spice. Roasting a whole eggplant in this way helps to mitigate one problem with grilling or roasting the spongy fruits in slices: unless sufficiently oiled, their flesh tends to dry on the surface before it cooks through. Steaming the flesh inside its own skin results in superb texture and lighter flavor, as it is not soaked through with oil. Contemporary eggplant enthusiast, chef Yotam Ottolenghi, recommends an updated version of this Persian preparation in his cookbook, Plenty, roasting them directly on the low flame of a gas stove burner.

Though much of eggplant’s low ratings among the general populous may be rooted in historical misunderstanding, it is more likely a victim of poor selection and kitchen technique. The more slender, Asian varieties usually have thinner skin and sweeter flesh than the ubiquitous globe-shaped varieties; experimenting with different types may be the key eggplant-hater conversion.

All eggplants do not keep well once harvested. Like tomatoes, they dislike cold storage, which can damage their delicate flavor and fine texture. On the countertop, they age quickly, maintaining peak condition for only a few days. Eggplants picked while their skin is shiny and their flesh firm will taste sweeter and keep a less watery texture when cooked soon after harvest.

In the kitchen, we must embrace eggplant’s idiosyncrasies. They absorb fats copiously, so make sure the pan is good and hot before adding sliced eggplant to a sauté in order to protect the inside with a good sear (if you wish to avoid preparing oil sponges). Utilize their talent of sopping up flavor to sop up complementary, balancing flavors: acidity from lemon juice or tomatoes, warm spice blends, garlic, ginger, or tangy miso. Oiled and roasted eggplant turns into a vegetable version of butter, making it a great base for flavored spreads (start with babaganoush, then think outside the box).

Or take a few on the trail and, like an ancient Persian, throw them in your waning campfire to scoop smoky spoonfuls sprinkled in salt for a no-fuss meal, tasting their full, unadorned flavor: concentrated, caramelized richness coated in artichoke-like sweetness and something unmistakably eggplant.

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.

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter 3 August 2014

Who would miss the first Hillsdale Farmers' Market following the Lammas? We will be there, ready at 10:00 AM.

This week we will have Chester and Triple Crown blackberries, long red onions and a mixture of cucumbers, frikeh, popcorn, Amish Butter cornmeal and dry favas. The focus will be on the blackberries. We have even purchased smaller scales so we can fit more Chesters in the van, how's that for dedication.

Several years ago, we prepared a pot of favas for a visit by friends. Cooked slowly with a bit of rosemary, garlic and olive oil, and still in their skins. Prior to dinner, we sat down with a drink. They are well-traveled and full of stories. They recounted how they visited a farm in Sicily or maybe the south of France or Spain, little matter. In the midst of all of the beautiful fruits and vegetables growing on the farm, their hosts chose to serve a simple bowl of favas, still in their skins, cooked with bit of rosemary, garlic and olive oil. They thought it peculiar and offhanded. In the midst of all of the beautiful fruits and vegetables growing at Ayers Creek, the two of us exchanged a quick glance and dinner evolved.

For the farmer, favas are a crop that expresses the very elements of the land. They are the most feline of the legumes, scarcely giving a damn how the farmer tends them. Strong-willed, they grow without supplements or irrigation. Lentils and chickpeas are of a similar nature. They are deep rooted and the land rather than the farmer gives them their character. This is perhaps why farmers distant from one another would act similarly as hosts. It is our nod the soil as the ultimate influence on what we produce.

We have a used copy of John Thorne's collection of essays, Outlaw Cook. It is spotless with the exception of the neatly pencilled word "reread" at the beginning of the essay on ful medames. We have obeyed the previous owner's direction, and commend it. The fava, known as ful and variations thereof through the Middle East, is a fragrant and very nourishing legume. We prefer to soak the favas for a couple of days and then cook them. Cook them slowly and gently until the interior is creamy. At this point you can season them in the manner of ful medames, or add a variety of summer vegetables. They are also wonderful roasted or fried so the skin becomes a crunchy contrast to the soft interior. In the winter we roast them with the root vegetables. There is a fascination in the United States with disrobing the poor dear, discarding the skin and keeping just its soft interior. This is the same place that decided that the skin of chicken is somehow unsavory, so they are sold skinless as well. Suit yourself, the flavor of the skin is essential to our enjoyment of the fava and the chicken so, like most other civilized people around the globe, we enjoy both in their fullness.

Incidentally, these favas are a variety that are traditionally dried. They have a beautiful celandine blush, a sweet flavor and a wonderful fragrance. The favas most commonly grown for their fresh pods are awful dry. Even so, not everyone loves favas. It is a defining rather than an acquired taste.

We will see you all Sunday,

Carol and Anthony

The Fat Of The Land-Ripe

photo by Sarah West

At one time or another, we’ve all had the splendid experience of biting into ripe fruit—juices oozing, sweetness and aroma filling our senses, exclamations of exaltation. But to find oneself with such a fruit in hand seems, especially in the grocery aisle, like a bit of a crapshoot. For every tart, firm, or lackluster specimen, there are too few superlative ones. Shopping at the farmers’ market or growing your own helps you avoid varieties bred and cultivated for ease of shipping rather than eater satisfaction, but doesn’t guarantee countertops covered in a gallery of perfect fruits. Understanding the nuances of ripeness, and what to expect from different kinds of fruit, can help shoppers and gardeners alike become savvy gatherers.

Our ripeness training is mostly based on color: tomatoes are red, peaches are glowing orange with a blush of red, berries gleam in glossy jewel-tones. While there is some truth to this bias, it is hardly the whole story. Ripeness indicators extend beyond pigmentation, as anyone who’s grown a melon can tell you. Fruits like kiwi and pears are even more mysterious, as the majority of their ripening processes (and the associated signs) occur post-harvest.

We mean many things when we say ripe: a ripe filet bean snaps when bent, a ripe cucumber crunches tenderly and fills our mouth with vegetal sweetness. While these fruits are prime for our own culinary purposes, they are not botanically ripe. A sweet slurp of peach; a fragrant, buttery bite of cantaloupe; a tomato whose juice has the complexity of red wine: this is where our preferences and nature’s purposes intersect, resonating to become the word ripe.

From the plant’s perspective, ripeness is the culmination of weeks (or months) of foundational work. From the moment of fertilization, a young fruit begins the process of cell division, organizing a compact version of its mature form that will fill over time with food storage substances such as starches or oils. Like an empty (and intricate) balloon, a young fruit contains all of the cellular structure it will require just a dozen or so days after fertilization—a larder waiting for its contents.

As the fruit matures, these empty cells fill and expand with energy-rich fluids, stretching the small fruit until it reaches its mature size. Triggered by environmental conditions like temperature or sun exposure, along with genetic cues, such “green” fruits begin the process of ripening: sweetening up their cellular fluids (often, though not always, by converting starches already stored within the cells to sugar), softening cellular structure to allow various enzymes access to more of the fruit’s chemical reservoir, and creating intoxicating perfumes via this mélange of volatile compounds.

Once picked, all fruits march steadily (some faster than others) toward the process of decay, a further enzymatic softening that culminates in bacterial decomposition. Along the way, some fruits will continue to develop flavor components (primarily sugar content), while others will not. Pears and kiwi are two fruits whose flavor development does not initiate until after harvest. Tomatoes, peaches, melons, and blueberries may advance in texture or pigmentation, but will not become more flavorful. Watermelon, soft berries, grapes and cherries do not notably improve post-harvest.

As eaters, ripeness is relatively straightforward—it tastes like the ideal version of itself. As harvesters and shoppers, ripeness is trickier to detect, requiring that we engage all of our senses. Look for deepness of color. Smell for complex aromas (in the case of tomatoes and melons, this is the best indicator of ripeness). Gently lift (but do not squeeze—this will cause bruising) the fruit to detect weight (ripe fruits are heavier) and tautness of the skin (eggplants, especially, exhibit over-ripeness and less desirable flavor when their skin begins to slacken). Listen for the fullness of its enchanting, saccharine silence. And know that once a fruit is ripe, there is no better time than right now to enjoy it.

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.

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter 27 July 2014

This Sunday morning we will take a break from delivering Chester Thornless Blackberries to Pastaworks, Food Front and New Seasons to, well, to get up much earlier than normal and bring more Chesters to the Hillsdale Farmers' Market where we will lord our own produce section from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

Does that sound like a rut, or what. Nonetheless, the fragrance of some many fresh blackberries never wears on us, and even with the last deliveries, we will grab a few off the top as we load and unload them. If you want Chesters from the store, when they bear our yellow sticker they are the genuine fruit.

In addition to Chesters and Triple Crown blackberries, we will bring some cucumbers, long red onions, purslane and amaranth greens, plums, frikeh, Amish Butter cornmeal and popcorn. Probably some other stuff, too, if time permits.

We do not bring in preserves during fresh fruit season; you will need to seek them out at the following stores who are kind enough to carry them:

City Market, 735 NW 21st Ave.
Food Front, both Hillsdale & NW Thurman
Foster & Dobbs, 2518 NE 15th Ave
Gaston Market, Gaston, OR
Pastaworks, 3735 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Peoples Cooperative, 3029 SE 21st Ave.
Vino, 138 SE 28th Ave.

Sparrow Hawks

Ayers Creek Farm is 144 acres, almost a half-mile square, actually more a trapezoidal-rhomboidal hybrid than a simple square. At the northern end of the property we have about 22 acres of oak savannah and the farm buildings. It is a raptor rich area, supporting a nesting pair each of great horned owls and red tailed hawks, two pairs of barn owls, as well as two to three pairs of kestrels.

Kestrels – those of us over 50 most likely grew up calling them "sparrow hawks" and we like that name better – are the smallest of the falcons and in nest in holes. They have narrow, swept back wings and a long tail, and the head markings often adopted in the ancient helmets of warriors. These traits are shared with their larger brethren, including the merlins and peregrines that linger during migration. These birds of the savannah and grasslands are permanent residents in the Willamette Valley, and you often see them hunting from utility wires. We build 20-foot tall perches to make their wintertime perch-and-pounce hunting method easier across the property. On the lighter summer and autumn air, kestrels will hover above the field. The slighter males have slate blue wings which distinguishes them from their mates that have brown wings.

At Ayers Creek, the kestrels have utilized both natural cavities in trees as well as boxes we build. However wholesome "natural" may sound, as with us, a fine stickbuilt with an ample floor plan is preferred by the birds over a dank cave built by a woodpecker in a rotten tree. The boxes have a 10" x 10" floor, and are approximately 12" deep, with a 3" entry hole. In the British Isles, they use a box that acts more like a ledge than a cavity. Our boxes are used by flickers and starlings, as well as kestrels. All three are welcome birds, even the much maligned starling who may eat a few cherries and grapes, but is first and foremost an insectivore that eats many thousands of grubs.

When offered a selection, the kestrels change nest boxes annually. Just as in organic farming, the rotation interrupts the buildup of pests and diseases. We have come to the conclusion that it is important to offer at least three boxes per nesting pair. The kestrel, starling and flicker belong to three different bird orders, just as humans, dogs and cats belong to different mammal orders, and the three different birds move nest to new locations each year. Last year, as soon as one of our kestrel families left their nest, a pair of flickers moved in and raised their family over the remaining days of the summer. We have three nesting pairs of kestrels close to one another and we suspect this is due to a high density of suitable nest sites.

Their diet in the winter consists of mice and voles. These they carefully eviscerate, abandoning the guts but eating the rest of the animal. We find the entrails left on top of the smaller nesting boxes where the kestrels perch to enjoy their prey. Occasionally they will eat a bird; this spring I watched one grab and consume a junco. They also eat insects, especially grasshoppers, as well as worms and small snakes. The preference is for mice and voles, but in the summer grasshoppers probably assure their survival.

The southern half of the farm provides no natural nesting cavities, nor are there any in the vicinity. There is a grove of trees, but it consists of Oregon ash and hawthorns, neither of which provide a good source of cavities. The ash falls apart before cavities appear and the hawthorn is too small of a tree. As a result, kestrels are rarely seen on that part of the farm during breeding season. This year we added four nesting boxes to the area; a pair settled in and the young are now out of the nest and hanging out in the shelter of the ash and hawthorn grove. One of the considerations in locating the boxes is having cover for the young who cannot fly when they plunge out of the box and are quite helpless for the first few days. Even when they do get aloft, their attempts to land are more akin to a crash onto a limb, and perhaps not the one intended.

Rich Van Buskirk, Associate Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Pacific University, has been studying kestrels in the valley, including the four pairs nesting at Ayers Creek. The adults have been trapped and banded, and the chicks are banded as well. The female nesting at the southern end of the farm was from one of the clutches Van Buskirk and his students banded here last year. His work will give us a finer grain picture of the kestrels on the farm over time, and their relationships to one another. He has also been studying the success of birds raised in natural cavities compared to nesting boxes. We enjoy seeing the Professor and his students at the farm on their regular visits. We are, after all, just naturalists who happen to grow some food on the side, and happy when people notice.

See you all Sunday,

Chesters Growers Nonpareil
Carol & Anthony of Gaston

The Fat of The Land - Home Cooking

A Conversation with Katherine Deumling

After only a quick peruse of Katherine Deumling’s ‘Cook With What You Have’ website, I knew that I would love to pick her brain on the place of home cooking in our chef-obsessed but also convenience-touting culture. Once upon a time, home cooking was the only option; now it is framed as either a hobby or a chore. Fun eating means going out, practical eating comes packaged as a minute-in-the-microwave away. But what happens when you take the time to chop a vegetable and add a touch of your own nostalgia, whimsy, or daring? Read on as Katherine and I discuss the personal and social transformation that can result from stepping into the kitchen with intention.

I may be lucky in that my mom was one of those cooks who would often devise our dinner menu by looking at what was in the fridge. She found clever ways to put together what we already had in the house and that approach had a strong influenced on me. Home cooking means cooking from scratch and learning from recipes, but to me it also means using what I have on hand as much as possible. Home cooked food isn’t restaurant food, composed and perfectly prepared. It is sometimes sloppy, sometimes under seasoned, sometimes unexpectedly amazing, always a work in progress. What does ‘home cooking’ mean to you? What does it mean to “cook from scratch?”

My definition is very similar to yours with the exception of the under seasoned bit! I really emphasize tasting as you go, adjusting with salt, acid, herbs, spice, etc. so that the simplest from scratch dish is as flavorful as possible. Of course it takes practice but also just trusting your instincts and tastes to create something—realizing you have all the control and agency. And frankly when you have produce like we have here in Oregon, it’s pretty simple to make delicious dishes.

I absolutely love the challenge of looking around my small garden, fridge/freezer and pantry and creating something nourishing. I also happen to have a well-stocked pantry with beans, lentils, grains, dried peppers, spices, oils, vinegars, nuts, seeds, etc. which makes cooking pretty simple. I love the crafty, frugality of cooking this way. I get great satisfaction out of preparing dishes with seemingly “nothing” or dribs and drabs (as my grandmother would have said) of vegetables left in the crisper. I once made mixed vegetable savory pancakes with radish tops, carrots, scallions, a bit of cabbage and some cilantro that was about to go bad, into a dinner that my family raved about. That’s my idea of fun!

Many people have become accustomed to purchasing prepared or “instant” foods and do not believe they have the skills or the time to cook their own meals from scratch. When I began cooking fresh greens like kale or chard, I marveled at how quickly they could be sautéed into a delicious and healthy meal. Throwing together a hearty salad or stir-fry can take as little as 10 minutes. We perceive cooking as a time consuming, arduous task, but with a pinch of willingness, it becomes clear that time is not the primary obstacle to making tasty, nutritious meals. What do you believe are the main barriers to becoming a successful home cook?

You hit the nail on the head. I think the barriers are multiple: 1) People often think they don’t like many vegetables because they’ve never had them prepared in a way that is simple and tasty and thus they don’t see the point in cooking them. 2) As you say, people think it takes a lot of time and has to be fancy and involve lots of ingredients. I think cooking shows have been a bit of a disservice in this regard as it furthers the idea that cooking is performance, art, fancy, etc. 3) Our culture (if I can generalize) gives the message that it’s not the best use of your time, it devalues everyday cooking, makes it something to be avoided. 4) Relatedly, it’s seen as a burden rather than something that might actually simplify one’s life, make it better, tastier, and more fun. 5) People aren’t accustomed to tasting as they cook and using their own judgment and taste buds in the process—so lack of confidence, lack of translating skills people use in other parts of their lives to cooking.

Food activists such as Dan Barber and Michael Pollen see cooking at home as a political act and believe it is the first and most necessary step to reversing a number of disturbing national trends relating to the industrial food system (increases in chronic diseases and obesity, factory farming, GMO crops, and even global warming and water use issues, to name a few). I tend to agree, largely because I see cooking as such a profound but simple act. It forces a higher level of awareness and is embedded with healthy constraints (i.e., because you are not hoping to preserve a meal longer than the time it takes to get it on the table, you would never use as much salt as is found in most processed foods). I would add that learning to cook also has the ability to create a sense of empowerment and satisfaction. What would taste mediocre at a restaurant tastes great at home because I made it. What do you believe home cooking has the power to transform?

With the risk of sounding hyperbolic, everything! First of all, if you know how to cook with simple, whole ingredients, including staples like beans and grains that are inexpensive and shelf stable and you can grow some herbs, you can eat well on little money and be healthy. There are many, many people who truly have few dollars to spend on food and many who don’t even have access to a stove or basic kitchen equipment, but if you do and have the time/ability to cook for yourself, you will be much better off than with the industrial, pre-fab alternatives—resulting in better health, more agency, and confidence.

And while we talked about how cooking doesn’t have to take a lot of time I also want to stress that it does take forethought, organization, and certainly some time to do this on a regular basis and for a family. Doing so can be immensely satisfying and nourishing in many ways and does, as you say, connect you to place, community and ideally people and farmers—all of which runs counter to the industrial food system.  Cooking with children gives them skills, engagement, joy and potentially a life-long independence and an awareness of the impact our food choices and policies have on people and planet. And lastly, the joy of good food shared with others should not be an underestimated force—this is one of the tenets of the Slow Food Movement—and we could use more well fed, happy people!

Dan Barber goes on to say in his new book, The Third Table, that “a pattern of eating can support a landscape,” meaning how we cook and what we eat is a road that goes two ways. The food that is available to us in season informs and creates, over time, a unique regional cuisine. Likewise, the popularity of and attraction to foods in their prime season supports the realities of agriculture: we cannot have everything always, though our industrial food system has tried very hard to make that so. Gary Paul Nabhan, another advocate of regional eating, has proposed the idea of distinguishing what he calls foodsheds—boundaries defined by the sustainable (and therefore reliable) food sources unique to a region’s landscape and climatic limitations. What do you see as some characteristics of the foodshed, or the “pattern of eating,” in which we live?

We used to (pre-1980s) grow more staple crops in the Willamette Valley; even though our wet climate isn’t completely ideal for beans and grains, there used to be more. Since the economic downturn in 2008, we have seen a slow shift to more beans and grains again, in part because with the crash the grass seed industry took a hit and some of those acres are being transitioned to edible crops instead. I am particularly interested in these very nutritious, shelf stable crops and hope that we can really increase the number of people who purchase these foods locally and support this transition. The interest seems to be there, with seed breeders and farmers working hard to cultivate varieties that thrive here.

I believe we have an opportunity to do more of what Dan Barber talks about and not just eat the “sexy” fleeting greens and vegetables that get more attention. Even though we have an extraordinary abundance and breadth of varieties grown for market here, we still have a fairly small number of people who primarily buy local products so I think there is a bit of tension between how some perceive our region and the reality of how people shop and eat. Even with our vibrant local food scene, farmers do not have an easy time making a living and I would like to see our foodshed strengthened, especially on the consumer front in really putting our money where our mouth is.

Big box stores certainly command the lion’s share of the food market in our country, and farmers’ markets are perceived by many as an expensive, privileged alternative. I began shopping at farmers’ markets when I was a poor student and could provide myself with enough vegetables to get through the week on just $10-$15. I chose to shop at the market less because of price and more because I wanted a high quality product—one that would taste better and keep longer. I credit my cooking practice for teaching me how to taste and appreciate freshness, and farmers’ markets for exposing me to many new kinds of foods. How does where you buy your food influence what and how you cook? How do you respond to the idea that cooking is a pastime of the privileged?

Where I buy my food completely influences what and how I cook. The produce is so delicious that it enables me to spend less time on cooking it and fussing with it to make it good. I also cook things based on recommendations by the farmer who grew it. What I cook is completely determined by where I go to shop and I rarely go to the market with specific items in mind (other than restocking cornmeal, beans, etc.) but what I find that looks good and I can afford.

As to cooking being a pastime of the privileged I would say two things: It has been framed as such for a variety of reasons such as longer work hours, poorer wages, the growth of fast food and convenience foods of all kinds, and the notion that cooking is drudgery. We have a tension in our culture of cooking being, on one hand, relegated to the poor and mostly women who don’t have enough “skill” to do more “important” work, and on the other hand, it’s said to be a pastime of the privileged.

Crafty cooks can eat better on fewer dollars by cooking from scratch than by purchasing processed or prepared foods. I know many people, including some of the Head Start staff and families I work with, who cook well from scratch and with food boxes and are not privileged in the conventional sense of the word. I understand why this tension exists and there are so many structural reasons for it that are complicated and hard to even parse, and that vary from place to place. I think of my job, my teaching and recipe creation and farmer “boosterism” as a small part of working to counter these assumptions and real and perceived challenges about cooking.

That said, cooking boutiques make it appear that dozens of expensive gadgets are needed to cook well. What tools and resources do you believe are the most essential for beginning home cooks?

A good, sharp 8-inch chef's knife, a big cutting board, and a cast iron or other heavy skillet. I love certain food blogs as a free and accessible resource to learn from, especially Heidi Swanson's 101cookbooks.com. If you find a blog that resonates with you, it can be a regular source of inspiration and education. There are dozens of fabulous ones; I also love Rachel Eats (based in Rome), which keeps me feeling connected to my long-past Italian days. As for cookbooks, I LOVE many of my books. I'm not sure they would all be great for beginners, but one of my favorites that might appeal to any level of cook is Nigel Slater's Tender. Other excellent primers include: Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, and Deborah Madison’s The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  

But really I think cooking—for beginners or more advanced folks alike—is about doing and doing with as much of your own creativity, judgment, and instinct as possible. This takes inspiration by others of course, but doing, doing, doing and guessing and trying and tasting is what I would suggest. And asking your friends, parents, grandparents, and farmers about what they cook and how they do it. This is how I learned to cook, and my mother makes any vegetable taste good with simply her giant cast iron skillet, olive oil and salt. Don't start fancy. Start simple and you'll be rewarded with satisfying meals. Sauté a bunch of summer squash until they are browning and soft, be sure to salt well and then sprinkle with fresh herbs and/or grated Parmesan. Fry an egg in one side of the pan and have yourself the most satisfying dinner!

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.

Ayers Creek Farm Newsletter July 20 2014

When we open the stall at Hillsdale Farmers' Market this Sunday, Carol will be with me for the 10:00 bell.

The introduction of my longtime friend Jeff Graham was reciprocated in Wednesday's USA Today, with his reflections after his visit.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/15/voices-ditching-tech-on-the-farm/12657569/

We will see what happens with the great chickpea challenge. It was fun having Jeff and Ruth help at the market and the farm, and I hope I will never have to do a tweet.

Opening the A&E section of the Oregonian on Friday was a less pleasant experience. This once distinguished daily broadsheet has devolved into a flimsy, irregular tabloid. But, for crying out loud, you would think they could get the facts straight on blackberries, a fruit for which the backyard of Oregon is known. Under the title "State's lesser berries win time to shine," the entry for Chesterberry states:

"Developed in 2007, the chesterberry is a close cousin to the blackberry, but the fruit is roughly three times as large. In the marionberry family, chesters come with small seeds and a bitter taste."

Chester BlackberriesThe name of the berry is 'Chester Thornless Blackberry' not chesterberry, though we use the less formal Chester. It is capitalized because it is named after a person. Chester came out of the breeding program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, in 1968, not 2007 as asserted by the author. Sakes alive, we have been selling them at Hillsdale since the market opened in 2002. It is a blackberry, pure and simple, not a cousin. The Chester, a thornless, semi-erect, plant is from a very different breeding line than the Marion, a thorny trailing type plant. There is no familiar similarity between the two and their different ancestries are reflected in the flavor of the berries. Finally, what is this nonsense about the fruit being bitter?

For some strange reason, the primary blackberry researchers at Oregon State University hold the Chester in very low regard, and this shapes the opinions of people who have not actually tasted the berry. I have had numerous discussions with Chad Finn and Bernadine Strik about Chesters, pointing out that it is a magnificent fruit for the smaller, organic grower and perfect for out-of-hand eating, but they are unshakable in their distain for the fruit. Fair enough, we harbor a similar distain for the Marion which is great for industrial, machine harvest farms but not a fruit where the farmer plans to park the ATV and eat berries for a while and think of shoes and ships and sealing wax. I guess that is why we don't grow it. This year, we have plant more blackberry rows, Chesters of course.

Several years ago Kathleen Bauer posted a good essay about the Chester blackberry, nicely illustrated, for those who want the full and interesting history of the berry:

http://www.goodstuffnw.com/2010/08/farm-bulletin-pt-2-taxonomy-of-chester.html

So this is leading up to the acknowledgement that we will have some of the first Chesters of the season tomorrow at Hillsdale. Not many, just a harbinger, first come, first served.

We will probably have some Imperial Epineuse plums as well. Very hot weather slows down the ripening of fruit, so the last couple of cooler days should help. I won't know until I finish writing this and put on my picking harness. It is going to be a good year for the plums and grapes.

We will have plenty of frikeh, some fine purslane and amaranth greens, as well as some fine examples from Frank and Karen Morton's lettuce collection. Amish Butter cornmeal and popcorn. Next week, the Chester season starts in earnest, so this is the week to pickup preserves. Real estate in the van is limited and we do not cede space to preserves when we can bring fresh fruits and vegetables.

We will see you all tomorrow,

Carol and Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm
Proud Cultivators of the Chester Thornless Blackberry since 1998

Summer Salad Greens

By Sarah West

As summer starts to hit its stride, confronting garden rows with dryness and heat, head lettuces tend to make like a Parisian and go out of town for the month of August. While it is entirely possible to grow head lettuces through the summer, performance is often lackluster and frustrating once the temperatures rise—without abundant irrigation and steady fertility, head lettuces tend to suffer stunted growth then bolt in the blink of an eye.

Luckily, summer offers its own assortment of heat-loving greens and the selection in local markets and seed catalogs seems to get better each year. Below is a guide to some off-season greens that we’ve seen from time to time at market. Add new dimension to your salad repertoire, take advantage of the unusually dense nutrients some of them offer, and keep the fresh greens flowing in the heart of grilling season.

Baby Greens Mix While it is challenging to grow mature lettuces in the peak of summer’s heat, baby lettuces, kales and mustards make a delicious and quick salad crop. Scatter seeds in a new 2-4 square foot patch every two weeks for a continuous supply and water regularly, or let your market farmers do the growing for you!

Lambsquarters Cousin to spinach and beets, lambsquarters (also called goosefoot and pigweed) is a weed of cultivated ground, appearing in gardens and among agricultural crops in profusion. Their young leaves are succulent and tender and make delicious salad greens with a nutty and rich mineral greenness. Lambsquarters is one of the most nutritious salad greens, high in protein, calcium, iron and vitamin-A, as well as many trace minerals of which it is an excellent scavenger. Sautéed, lambsquarters easily stand in for spinach or even surpass it if you appreciate a concentration of smooth spinach flavor. Try laying roasted zucchini on a bed of lightly dressed lambsquarters to slightly wilt them and complement zucchini’s mild, sweet flavor with lambsquarters’ rich base.

Quinoa Leaves Close relative to lambsquarters, quinoa has a fleshier leaf and more versatility in the garden. As a salad green, quinoa is best harvested before it starts to set its flower stalk. Similar to lambsquarters, quinoa is a nutritional goldmine wrapped up in vegetal spinach flavor. In the garden, quinoa does triple duty as salad green, ornamental, and seed crop. As quinoa seed heads mature, they take on electric hues of pink, orange, burgundy and green that add interest and bold color to the vegetable patch or ornamental border. As a food source, quinoa seeds are a high-protein grain-like food that, when cooked, have a texture similar to couscous. Get the best of all three growth stages by harvesting raw greens from juvenile plants, then letting them grow to produce seed. Leaves from mature plants may still be eaten, though are better cooked at that stage.

Purslane Succulent and strange to our flat-leaf-oriented tastes, purslane is an anomaly of a salad ingredient. Wild native of the Mediterranean, northern Africa, Middle East and India, purslane has an extensive catalog of uses in salads, soups, porridges, stews, pickles and even as a pastry filling. As a salad green, think Mediterranean flavors: toss with tomatoes, feta, cucumber, oregano, and a robust vinaigrette. We would all do well to embrace purslane’s briny lemon-and-pepper juiciness, for it contains more omega-3 fatty acids than any other green vegetable, along with calcium, potassium and vitamin-A. Purslane’s stalk is too fibrous to eat raw; remove its leaves by pinching the base and running your fingers along the length of the stem to release them. The most challenging aspect of purslane is its mucilaginous texture. Start with purslane as an accent before making it a summer salad base.

Orach Another spinach tribe salad green, orach is a soft-leaved, scarcely domesticated green with handsome arrowhead-shaped leaves available in a dazzling variety of colors. Garden orach, the most domesticated edible variety, got it’s name from the French word arroche, derived from the Latin word for ‘golden,’ a nod to the golden green leaves some garden varieties sport. Gardeners throughout orach’s wide natural range have always reveled in its spectral genetics, and renewed interest in orach as a garden green has helped continue the tradition of selecting for vibrant pigments: magenta, purple with fuchsia-pink veins, burgundy red, and eggplant. Turn your salad into a party by seeding a mix of orach varieties. Though orach’s greens hold longer than spinach’s in summer’s heat, orach will eventually bolt and performs best as a food crop when sown in succession into moist, rich soil. Harvest leaves until the plants reach 18-inches, then let it go to seed; its ornamental bracts are as lovely in the vase as they are in the flower garden.

Fresh Herbs We tend to think of herbs solely as a seasoning agent—concentrations of aromatic flavor, we use them more sparingly than not in our cooking. Rich in vitamin A, flat leaf parsley has a pleasing combination of sweet and bitter notes, with a backbone of celery aroma. Young leaves are tender and make a delicious salad green, chopped finely and tossed with cooked grains, as in tabbouleh, or simply tossed with oil and something acidic like lemon juice or pickled onions. Try adding a handful of basil, dill, parsley or cilantro leaves to your salad mix. Keeping the leaves whole means their volatile oils won’t begin to dissipate before you take a bite.

The Fat of The Land Home Grown

From woodlands to meadows to marshy banks and alpine perches, the lily family is well represented among the wildflowers of our temperate region. Members of the lily clan served as important food sources for tribes throughout the Pacific Northwest long before European settlement—from the starchy staple of camas root to medicinal wild onions—and later as a source of garden specimens sent back to mainland Europe in the early days of Western exploration.

Lily family species are one of our oldest foods—onion and garlic have been cultivated for over 7,000 years and provide a foundational flavor in nearly every cuisine. Lily flowers were featured in the ancient gardens of Crete, Iran and Egypt, holding a special place of honor (and associations with gods and goddesses) for the purity of their beauty and the power of their fragrance.

Fast-forward a few thousand years and you may be surprised to find that an important chapter in the advancement of ornamental lilies took place right here in Oregon. Lacking pharaohs or kings to extol their virtues, lilies of our era are subjects of the marketplace and their royalty is granted based on durability and profitability.

As a species, lily blooms tend to face downward, their petals peeling back to reveal enlarged pollen anthers to attract pollinators. Before the 20^th Century, lilies were not a desirable bouquet flower because their drooping blooms created an odd contrast.

Long admired among garden aficionados, lilies before the early 1900’s were a finicky lot. Mostly wild-collected specimens, they were considered troublesome in the garden—prone to viral diseases and other hazards of existence outside their native habitat.

Jan de Graaff changed all that in 1941 at his Gresham nursery, Oregon Bulb Farms, when he made a lily cross that produced disease-resistant, upright orange blooms for the first time. The variety, which quickly reversed the reputation of lilies as horticulturally difficult and commercially undesireable, was named ‘Enchantment.’

Soon after, de Graaff converted his mixed bulb nursery exclusively to lily production, sending his lilies throughout the world to commercial flower growers and gardeners alike and remaining a hotbed of lily breeding for the next 40 years. The only shortcoming of de Graaff’s effort was that, in breeding for hardiness, flower orientation and color, he outbred the species’ celebrated fragrance.

The work of Leslie Woodriff, an eccentric but genius lily breeder living in Brookings, Oregon, corrected that absence. In his messy greenhouse, Woodriff created unconventional crosses and was well known in the flower industry for his outstanding varieties. Lacking business skills, assets, or much income, he worked away on his unkempt farm until a collaborative opportunity with an up and coming bulb farmer, Ted Kirsch, came his way. The two worked out a deal to transfer ownership of some of Woodriff’s breeding stock to Kirsch’s new farm in exchange for a set fee and full-time work.

The breeding stock that Kirsch bought and Woodriff tended at the new farm resulted in the discovery of a seedling that has become the world’s most famous, and profitable, lily. Called ‘Star Gazer,’ the lily stood out for its striking fragrance, bold coloration, and that elusive flower orientation, whose star-ward gaze inspired the variety’s name.

Though more acreage of Star Gazer is cultivated today than any other lily and its ubiquity is apparent in flower shops across the globe, neither Woodriff nor Kirsch ever made their rightful fortune from it. Woodriff was out of luck as he’d sold ownership of the stock just before discovering Star Gazer. Kirsch made some unfortunate patenting decisions that resulted in a significant financial loss to his company over time.

In the 1960’s and 70’s, Oregon Bulb Farms attracted and trained many of the next generation of American lily breeders, among them Judith Freeman, whose work with laboratory hybrids greatly expanded the diversity of hardy and delightful garden lilies. Her farm, The Lily Garden, still breeds and sells a wide range of exciting lilies just outside of Vancouver, Washington.

From our indigenous lilies to the innovative breeding work that Oregon was host to, our home ground has a long history with this species. And as you smell a Star Gazer in your market bouquet, admire beguiling hybrids in the garden, or come across a wild lily in bloom on your next hike, you will find their charm remains as apparent as it is abundant.

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.