Hello everyone! Welcome to the 2017 season. We are so happy to have all of you enjoying our vegetables on your table with your friends and family…we appreciate your support of our beautiful farm and look forward to working with you for the next 24 weeks.

My name is Jane and I’m the CSA coordinator for the 2017 season. On behalf of the entire SIO crew, I will be writing the blog this season (in addition to Katherine’s wonderful recipes) where each week we will try and highlight the vegetables you are receiving as well as other goings-on at the farm. Starting next week, I will also be introducing you to one of your farmers each week or two; we have a wonderful, solid crew of folks who have been working together now for many seasons.

We will be providing information about the share that could include storage tips, varietal information, or special notes about unusual crops or conditions as they arise. You can expect us to feature at least two crops a week throughout the season.

Due to the wettest winter ever in Portland (wow!) we had a bit of a slow start this spring, but the past month has been go, go, go! Our crew has been hard at work seeding, transplanting, and weeding, and we have been excitedly anticipating the coming of this week.

The early weeks of the share provide an opportunity to showcase all of the wonderful greens that thrive in our bioregion. The beginning of the season will be ripe with vibrant spring greens of all shapes, colors, textures, and flavors. These greens like very high humidity in order to stay happy. Refrigerators dry out the greens, and overnight a juicy, lush head of bok choi will become weepy and sad. We recommend storing all of your greens in plastic bags in order to keep them perky and fresh.

In Your Share This Week:

• Bok Choi
• Fennel
• Green Garlic
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Spinach

Crop Highlights

Bok Choi: The crisp, meaty ribs of bok choi are one of my favorites in the spring. We keep our choi covered underneath ‘floating row cover’ (more about that later) which keeps the greens protected from weather and pests. It also results in more delicate leaves- so in the interest of not bruising, cracking, or crushing, we opted not to wash your choi. Just give it a quick rinse under cool water before you want to use it in case it has any soil stuck to the stems or bottom.

Fennel: This is one of the crops that grows really well for us at SIO. We love growing and harvesting fennel, and it is our field manager/tractor operator Brian’s favorite item to snack on raw. For all of you ice cream fans out there, Salt & Straw has been purchasing our fennel in August for 2-3 years now to make their fennel-maple seasonal flavor. The bulbs you are receiving are small, but tender and perfect now, with plenty of stem and frond to enjoy cooking with as well.

Fresh Garlic: You’ll find young garlic in your share- essentially immature garlic that has not reached full size or maturity. When you prepare it you will notice small bulbs forming as well as all the layers of wrapping that would later on dry, cure, and tighten to form the papery skins that enable mature garlic to store for so long.

Kohlrabi: The skin on this Azur-Star kohlrabi has the most eye-catching hue of purple! Kohlrabi is related to cabbage, broccoli, kale, radishes, and turnips- and has a flavor that resembles broccoli stem, which is essentially what a kohlrabi is. Over time, the plant has been selected to feature a swollen stem, which is the round bulb that we eat. We left the leaves attached since they taste pretty good too!

Lettuce, Mini Heads: This is our second year growing mini head lettuces, and they are wonderful! The varieties we are introducing you to are Breen (bronze romaine) and Rhazes (dark red bibb). They are proving to be a nice component to our lettuce and salad mix, so those of you who also have a salad share may find them mixed amongst the other items. The dark red bibb lettuces have a smooth buttery texture, while the bronze minis, like full heads of green romaine, maintain a nice crispness. Because they do not grow very big, we can plant them very close together, which allows for a fast and light harvest and results in beautiful strips of color from the beginning to end of each bed.

We hope you enjoy your first share of the season! Please remember to visit Katherine’s blog for delicious recipes!

http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/
(The first time you click this link you will need to use the username and passcode we emailed you).

SIO at 5:45pm Monday, June 5th 2017:

In Your Share This Week

• Beets
• Celeriac
• Corn
• Kale
• Onions
• Parsley
• Potatoes
• Tomatoes

On Rotation:
-Sweet Peppers & Kohlrabi
-Green Bell Peppers (Tuesday Pick ups)
-Eggplants (Thursday Pick ups)

Pardon Our Mess

We just wanted to let you know that although the share this week is very bountiful and beautiful, some of the items that you wouldn’t expect to appear dirty (like tomatoes or peppers) do indeed look a little dirty. The culprit is the rain we’ve been getting recently…its been lovely to see some nice Fall-feeling weather and rain, but it sure makes keeping those hot-weather crops well-maintained really difficult! In some instances you may find actual soil on your crops (mud just has a way of getting EVERYWHERE) and some of what you see is in fact resins from the plants themselves. As our harvest teams make their way through the pepper and tomato fields, the moisture on the plants, our hands, and the fruit mixes with the plant resins and leaves what looks like thin, watery mud smudges on the fruit. Our standard practice is to always harvest these crops in the afternoon sun when they are plenty dry, but what can you do when its raining all day? Just give your veggies a quick rinse or wipe down and they’re good to go.

Crop Notes

Beets: This week we mixed together pink Chioggia heirloom beets with our white beets. If you’ve never been a big fan of beets, the white ones may very well change your mind!

Celeriac: This is a real farm favorite! Also known as celery root, this knobby vegetable has a great earthy flavor that really shines alongside potatoes- in hashes, or gratins, shredded, mashed, roasted, and soups too. Just note that celeriac takes longer to cook than potatoes so make sure to slice or chop it more thinly, or start cooking it slightly ahead of the potatoes. This is a classic vegetable that folks see in stores or farmers market, but don’t know what to do with. Fear not, even the New York Times has something to say about how to prep and ‘Master Celery Root’…check it out for some quick tips on how to get the UFO veggie prepped and ready for cooking. Celeriac will store for months in the refrigerator (yes, months) if stored correctly. Don’t peel or trim until you’re ready to use it, and keep it wrapped in a plastic bag to retain the moisture.

Kale, White: The first pick of what will be our overwintering kale field, we have several varieties of white kales that we are featuring in the share this week. The leaves on all of them are really tender and succulent, so just a super-light saute is all you will need. Try the stems too, they are mild and sweet in cooler weather.

Peppers: Well, we FINALLY have some sweet peppers! We admittedly planted them later than usual in anticipation of a cool, wet spring…so we have been anxiously awaiting some ripe fruit. We hope the plants will really start producing lots of fruit just as the tomatoes begin to wane, but before too much rain and cool night temperatures settle in. Look for both gold and red sweet peppers in the shares in the upcoming weeks.

Onions: As previously mentioned, we have now moved on to storage-type onions for the remainder of the season. When I trim an onion I like to save the top, bottom, and outer skins in a ziploc bag that lives in the freezer along with other trimmings or bones. When I have critical mass, I make a batch of stock.

In Your Share This Week

• Cabbage, Napa
• Chard
• Lettuce
• Parsley
• Potatoes, New Red
• Turnips, Hakurei

In Your Share This Week

• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Fennel
• Lettuce
• Radishes
• Scallions

Crop Highlights

Cabbage: Everyone will receive a red cabbage this week, and full share members will also be getting a unique conical green variety! These cabbages are also well-suited to early season growing and have a sweet, mild flavor. I’m told they make great kraut, and because of their elongated shape, can also make fun wrapper leaves for salads and such. These pointy cabbages aren’t very commonly found in American markets, but are more well-known in Europe. Due to the hot then cold, then hot again weather this spring, the cabbages seemed a little confused about what was going on. They made nice heads, but are on the petite side.

Fennel: Remember those tender little fennel bulbs from Week Two? Well, we harvested the bulbs for that almost as though we were thinning- which is in fact what we were doing. We harvested the most developed bulbs and left the rest behind to size up. Upon further inspection, we realized that the plants have no intention of doing so- they will likely just splay open and become unusable. This variety is really delightful as a young bulb, but at heart is just not a bulky, rounded, meaty fennel bulb. We thought we would capture these before they’re gone and give you all another little fennel bonus. TIP: If you find the flavor of fennel to be overpowering, or isn’t you’re favorite, try cooking it. Sautee it just like you would onions (I often mix fennel in with my onions when I’m starting off cooking down onions for a dish). The flavor becomes very muted and savory. You might even experiment with tossing the whole fennel on the grill with a little olive oil and salt!

Radishes: This is the last time we will see radishes in the share during the main season. Radishes enjoy the cool weather of spring and early summer but do not fare well during the summer heat, so we stick to the early time slot only. Just like the spinach last week, its quite possible you’ve never seen radishes like these! When we looked at these in the fields we were a little sad, thinking that we were too late and that the radishes had sailed past their prime in all the hot hot weather. However, a taste test was pleasantly surprising- they weren’t pithy, tough, or woody- just sweet, juicy radish delight! We scrambled a crew together and pulled the entire radish field- just in time! 

Scallions: This is a second showing of the same purple/white combo as last time- we hope you like the color and flavor as much as we do. The purple scallions add a fun splash of color in the early season shares, which have a tendency to be very green. Next week you can look forward to our awesome Shimonita scallions- an amazingly giant and delicious scallion variety that hails from Japan and also a farm favorite!

Around the Farm

In addition to squash, we have fall cabbages getting transplanted, and are seeding our fall and winter chicories in the greenhouse (think radicchio, sugarloaf). It always feels odd to be dealing in fall and winter crops before we have picked a single zucchini, tomato, or pepper…its not even summer and we’re already getting ready for winter! 

We also have our tomato trellising installed in the fields, as well as our cucumber trellising. Let me say, growing cucumbers on vertical trellising is the way to go! Gone are the days of bending over for hours, rustling about in the scratchy leaves to find the fruits and having to clean the soil off…and hello to perfectly clean, straight fruit hanging in plain view right at face-level. Woohooo! We are also very anxious to get started on some more intensive tomato pruning (yes…PRUNE YOUR TOMATO PLANTS) but have been unable to due to the afternoon rain. Its important to handle tomato plants when they are good and dry to prevent the spread of any potential blight as much as possible.  

In Your Share This Week

• Beets, mix
• Cabbage, red
• Carrots
• Chicory Mix
• Onions, Red Bull & Cortland 
• Radishes
• Salsify
• Turnips, Gilfeather
• Winter Squash, Baby Blue Hubbard & Thelma Sanders

Our past sunny summer of record high daytime temperatures and the warmest nighttime “lows” on record seem like years ago already.  The rains since November have been relentless. Just to put amounts into perspective, the average total annual rainfall for Portland is 35.98 inches. Up to this morning, on the farm, in the last two and a half months we measured 41.125 inches of rain.

Crop Notes

Chicory, mix: Its hard to believe, we are already taking action to get the 2016 CSA underway. We would like our greenhouse to be available for an early beet sowing…so we need to harvest all of the delicious greens that have been in there over the winter. We have a nice assortment of chicories and instead of choosing just one, we thought…hey, why not have them all? This blend could be eaten either raw or cooked and includes escarole, two types of frisee, and a frilly ‘bunching chicory’ type. I think it will store quite well in the bag, so it should last for at least a week or two without any problem. We are really proud of how vibrant and festive this mix looks and tastes! 

Vegetable Identification: We realize that this week’s share features Gilfeather Turnips and Watermelon Radishes, which can appear very similar on the outside. To help make sure you can identify them, we packed them in opposite corners of the box, and have this photo to help. The radishes can have pink skins, but they are also white and green, just like the turnips. Even local chefs have had vegetable identification mishaps!  

Radish: We are also pleased to feature the Misato Rose watermelon radish from Wild Garden Seed. The crisp, juicy texture and festive color are a welcome treat in the winter root lineup. These are actually bred to be a ‘storage radish’, which has worked fantastically well. They are grown in the late summer and harvested in the fall. We kept them in a refrigerated storage facility for the past few months, and behold- they are still as gorgeous and delicious as the day we harvested them! Plants are amazing!

Turnips,Gilfeather: Some of the skins are rather smooth, while others exhibit a rough brown texture on parts of the root. If you find that to be the case, just peel that portion and add it to the stock pot. The flesh is mild and delicious, and pairs well with potatoes mashed and in hashes. We obtained our seed from local favorites Wild Garden Seed, who say it best on their website: ”A Vermont heirloom root crop with a long story as well as a long history. John Gilfeather first began selling his farm-original rutabaga, calling it a ‘turnip’ (as rutabagas are often called in Vermont) in the late 1800’s, jealously protecting his propriety by careful trimming of the tops and roots to prevent “unauthorized reproduction” of his genetic treasure. Some seeds did however eventually escape and were commercialized by a market farming couple unrelated to the Gilfeather family. The name was thereafter protected by a registered trademark until 1995, when the trademark was allowed to lapse. The genetic story is also interesting. The Gilfeather “turnip” is actually an interspecies cross between a rutabaga (Brassica napus) and a true turnip (Brassica rapa). Such crosses are uncommon, but occur at a rate of 1% or less when the plants flower together in close quarters. Mr. Gilfeather’s discovery likely resulted from keeping his own seed on the farm, and paying attention to the ‘off-types’ that can result from doing so.”

Salsify: The seeds for the Fiore Blu Salsify in your share this week were sourced from Italy and seeded the last week of April 2015.  And finally, 8 months later, these roots are making their debut! This very special looking root is delicious when quickly sautéed in butter until soft.  Or, it is very tasty if used as a base layer in the pan used to roast a chicken or turkey.  It should be washed thoroughly before cooking and the little rootlets can either be scraped off with the sharp edge of a pairing knife for a neater presentation or left on and eaten more rustically. This White Salsify (aka Oyster Plant) is not the Scorzonera (aka Black Salsify) that can sometimes be found in specialty market produce departments- it is a much rarer and more elusive treat. If you have a flower garden at home, you can transplant the Salsify roots now and wait for its dainty grassy foliage and the really gorgeous and edible blue aster like flowers it will produce this summer. During a rather indulgent (I mean, scientific) taste test experiment, we verified that cutting the unpeeled roots into rounds and cooking them in a healthy amount of butter along with mushrooms, garlic, and winter savory makes an excellent topping for steak and mashed potatoes. It looks odd, but tastes AMAZING!

Its all about Winter Squash

You know what we are excited about? Winter Squash. I think it is my personal favorite- I like to read about it, grow it, harvest it, store it, look at it, eat it, and talk about it! Winter squash are a very interesting and varied crop with an entire rainbow of colors, shapes, textures, flavors, and storage qualities. In a culinary sense, you can think of winter squash as resembling a good wine- there is a point in time when it has reached its optimal maturation and the peak of flavor occurs, followed be a decline in body and flavor. 

SIO has joined a group of local farmers, chefs, and plant breeders in Oregon who are all participating in a project to refine varietal selections in order to develop a palette of squash to extend the typical ‘squash season’ beyond the fall and well into the late winter and early spring. Part of this effort includes outreach, education, and marketing to increase the knowledge and awareness of all things winter squash. The variety, timing, and preparation method really do matter. We took part in a fun squash tasting event where we all created flavor profiles and notes on a huge list of squash varieties served both raw and cooked. You would not believe the array of differences in color, texture, and flavor when you try over 20 squash side by side! If you find this type of thing interesting, make sure to check out Lane Selman’s efforts with the Culinary Breeding Network

Wishing you and your family a nourishing and peace-filled 2016!

In Your Share This Week:

• Beets
• Cilantro
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Onions, Walla Walla
• Peppers, Mixed Bells, Jalapenos, Poblanos
• Tomatoes, Red Slicers

  Crop Notes

  Cilantro:AKA ‘Coriander’, Cilantro is a member of the Apiaceae family, which includes celery, carrots, parsley, fennel, parsnips, poison hemlock, dill, cumin, and caraway. The word ‘cilantro’ is Spanish for coriander, which in our part of the world is how we refer to the seeds of the plant. Its hard to say exactly where Cilantro originated, because its very widespread across Southern Europe and into parts of Asia. It has been wild-harvested and cultivated for a very long portion of human history- archaeologists have found coriander seeds dating back to over 1000 years BC and in King Tut’s tomb. The entire plant is edible, including the roots!

  Corn:Again this week, we have an assortment of corn that mostly appears bi-colored. And again, odds are you will find an ear or two with the ever-present late summer corn borer larva on the tip. Just trim the damaged part off and enjoy. Apparently corn borers like sweet corn just as much as people do!

  Cucumbers:The season for cukes has come to a close. This will be the last time you see them in the share for 2015…but there’s a fun summer surprise that looks ready just in time to take up the slack as the rest of the hot-weather crops retire. Hint: its red and gold and oh-so-sweet.

  Peppers:This week you will be receiving a mixture of bell and hot peppers. The bell peppers are mostly green, with the occasional red or bi-colored fruit in the mix. Poblanos are the conical dark green peppers, and you’ll also find jalapenos as well. Poblanos can be eaten raw, but really shine when roasted or blackened over a flame.

  Tomatoes:Its another bountiful week of Red Slicer tomatoes, so get any canning, freezing, or preservation projects in now because the plants are getting very tired very fast, so its possible that we can stretch another CSA distribution out of them for next week and thats probably about it. The Heirlooms weren’t even able to hang on for that long and faded so quickly that we could not muster enough to put them in the share this week (we were optimistic that we would be able to). We are always improving our ‘library’ of varieties each season, so if you had any extreme favorites or dislikes, let us know. Cherokee Green (a lobed, solid colored fruit that was greenish/yellow) and Persimmon (a solid orange globe) were good performers for us this year with some of the best flavor.

  Around the Farm

  Its been such a HOT HOT SUMMER that our summer crops are all tired and declining rapidly in production. We’ve already said goodbye to summer squash, this week its goodbye to cucumbers and heirlooms, and next week its likely goodbye to slicer tomatoes and eggplant. Would you believe it, we are already harvesting the first if our winter squash this week, along with some dry beans and the last of our onions. We also have several plantings of carrots and a field of beets that are very ready for harvest. As a sneak-peek, odds appear very favorable to start receiving sweet peppers in the share next week…the last bit of summer has arrived- red and gold treasure!

  Meet Your Farmer

  Lauren Nicole Nelson

  Hometown: Cusick, Washington

  Joined SIO Crew: May 2015. Lauren has her hands in a variety of farm activities and specializes in CSA harvest and boxing, produce processing, and flame weeding. Lauren grew up on a small family farm that included a huge garden, chickens, ducks, turkeys, horses, dogs, cats and all of that good stuff.

  Favorite part of working on the farm:Being outside, working hard, learning about vegetable production, and driving Hot Dog (our beloved 1972 Ford pickup truck) around the farm.

  What he does off the farm: Lauren loves to snowboard (shred) in the Winter and is also a certified snowboard instructor. During the Summer months Lauren skateboards, plays guitar, and gets out into the woods as much as possible.

This past weekend we recorded a high of 98° on the farm, our hottest day of 2015 so far! With the chronic summer heat so far this season, we are seeing eggplant, tomatoes, and squash ripening at record rates. Other crops like kale and lettuce are enjoying the heat slightly less, but are hanging in there.  The tomato harvest is just beginning for the summer- we had just enough so that everyone can get a little taste this week and look forward to larger amounts in the coming future. Also, members have given feedback in the past that weekly doses of eggplant become overwhelming very rapidly, so we have implemented a new strategy this year where eggplant is now on rotation- meaning that rather than everyone getting it every week, members will alternate which weeks they receive eggplant. This allows us to plant a smaller block of eggplant, utilize the harvest more efficiently, waste less, and you get have a pause between eggplant weeks! But is there really such thing as too much Eggplant Parmesan?

Elsewhere on the farm, we have transplanted out all of our winter chicories (radicchio, pan di zucchero, escarole), and fall kohlrabi, kale, napa cabbage, and pac choi. In essence the stage has now been set for our fall and winter CSA shares and restaurant sales…now we water, weed, and wait. All of the plants (both our crops AND the weeds) are growing at an explosive rate and we spend most of our days harvesting, irrigating, weeding- and then we repeat. We have arrived at the moment in the season where we transition out of the leafy greens and tender spring crops and into summer favorites like corn, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, and cucumbers. You’ll also be receiving root crops like carrots and beets along with herbs, onions, and greens like chard and lettuce for a balanced assortment of colors, flavors, textures, and cooking possibilities. We hope youre enjoying the share!

In Your Share This Week:

• Beans, Gold Rush
• Beets
• Corn
• Cucumber Mix
• Onions, Walla Walla Sweet
• Parsley
• Summer Squash Mix
• Tomatoes, Red Slicers
• Eggplant (on rotation, either Japanese type or Italian Bell type)

Crop Notes 

Meet Your Farmer

Genevieve Flanagan