Pizza Party

From SHF 2011

Sunday was our spring party, and, as we did in the fall, we fired up the oven and made pizza! Turn out was great, a mix of CSA share holders, friends, and fellow farmers.

From SHF 2011

Lots of great food besides pizza as well. The weather even cooperated with only a few minor drizzles. The farm looks horrendous this time of year. Everything is ragged from the winter, beds are soaked and muddy, and new growth is just starting. Kji commented on the way out that he was glad we're having a party this time of year so that folks can see what we're dealing with. Kind of nice to give people a chance to see the difference between the farm at the end of winter and the beginning of summer.

From SHF 2011

That's just when we'll be doing it again, at the end of spring, when summer is just starting. Thanks to everyone who came out and enjoyed the afternoon with us, we had a great time and really enjoyed ourselves.

Thanks to Dave for taking over my camera while I made pizzas and actually taking some photos with it, even a few of me, which I don't often get.

The Big Brassica Share

From SHF 2011

Lots of brassicas in the share today, the last of this year's winter share. Most of the share is greens, but there are two other little additions: turnips and popcorn! Yes, that's right, I said popcorn. Japanese Hulless popcorn to be specific, a small, delicate variety. More on that in a minute. First a little explanation of the rest of the contents. The turnips have their greens, which are actually the main reason we're giving them out, as the roots are on the small (but usable) side. There is also Rainbow Lacinato kale, and a bit of the raab (flower buds) from the kale as well. This will keep better than anything except for the popcorn and turnip roots. The one non-brassica green is chicory. We scavenged a variety of different chicories, ranging from radicchios and castlefranco to small sugarloafs. You'll have to look in your bag to see what you got but these will be good in salad, especially if you slice the leaves up and soak them in cold water first. On top of all of these greens we have a number of smaller leaves which will not keep well and should be eaten in a salad, or cooked, soon.

From SHF 2011

The different leaf types are pictured above and from right to left they are: Mizuna, Arugula, Gold Frill, and Spring Raab. The arugula is a little spicy, the others are all very mild.

From SHF 2011

Back to the popcorn, there's just enough for a little snack. If you haven't made popcorn before you'll need a pot with a lid. Turn the burner to high and heat enough oil in the bottom of the pan to coat it generously. I toss in popcorn to make single layer that covers about 3/4 of the bottom of the pan and put the lid on. When I hear the first kernels pop I start shaking the pan back and forth on the burner to keep the kernels moving. Popping frequency should increase, and then decrease. When the popping sounds start to spread out to more than 5 or 10 seconds between them I pour the contents into a bowl immediately and then top with whatever I feel like. This popcorn is good enough, in my opinion, to not need anything extra.

Photo Extravaganza

From SHF 2011

I really wanted to title this, "Happy Pi Day," but I'm a day late. It was a good pi day though, which I realized when I was calculating the diameter of the plywood rounds to cut for a new bed marker (11.5" - guess what circumference that makes...) Not only did I actually use pi yesterday in the normal course of my work, Kji just happened to have a little pecan pie with him that he shared with me at lunch. I love pie. And pi.

From SHF 2011

Since I haven't been so good about taking, and posting, photos recently, I made sure to take a few yesterday. It was a far more productive day than I was expecting. It's been so incredibly wet I wasn't expecting to get much done, but we did pick up our seed potato from Sauvie Island Organics, who were nice enough to receive our order (along with 5800lbs of seed for themselves and a bunch of other local farms). Our seed is certified organic and certified seed and it comes from Colorado. That's a long story, but I've been working with the grower for a number of years now, and he has good seed that is way, way cheaper than buying in small quantities from folks in Idaho or Washington. We're expect to plant about 50 lbs of seed this year, and we've set it out in the greenhouse to warm up and start "peeping" (the technical term I learned from the potato specialist at OSU).

From SHF 2011

Our starts are doing pretty well, and we actually had a part of a bed ready to go out in the field from last Monday's preparation so we plugged some spinach starts into the mud, covered them with row cover and crossed our fingers. This time of year it's just not pretty out in the field but we do what we can to get a few things in that we think might make it early in the spring. Last week's brassica seeding has already germinated and with a little luck we'll have early radishes and arugula.

From SHF 2011

The beds are nice and dry in the greenhouse. We plugged more of the spinach starts into a bed in the greenhouse and reseeded some hakurei turnips and carrots after the ones that we seeded in January failed to really do anything. I'm more and more tempted to give up and just cover the entire farm in plastic. Then I hear from my friend down in Southern Oregon that they lost a house to wind this weekend and I realize that nothing is perfect.

The Bottom Line

From SHF 2011

Seems that things have been getting so busy on the farm that there's no time for posts recently. I'll try to remedy that right now, although I have to admit that yesterday's relative dryness got us so busy I didn't even stop to snap a photo. We did get the first outside seedings in the ground - a bit later than planned, but that's to be expected this time of year. We're quickly filling up the propagation tables in the greenhouse and next week, if it's dry enough, we'll start plugging some of those starts into the field and getting out from under the plastic.

Today? Today I'm doing my taxes. Did the farm make any money last year? According to a bit of accounting Kji and I did a few weeks back we didn't do nearly as well as we did in 2009 but it felt like we made some progress towards the future. We're hoping that pays off some this year, and with the seasons filling up it seems like it might. The bottom line is that we estimate the time put into the farm last season was compensated at a little over $7/hr, compared to over $9/hr in 2009. That's after expenses, but before taxes, and no, there are no "benefits" like health insurance or a retirement plan worked in there. Fortunately there are some other benefits - mostly in the form of doing something we love, in a great place, for great people.

Last year was a tough growing season, and we also didn't fill up the CSA, or sell much of our surplus produce from not having sold all of the CSA shares. These things were somewhat connected, at least mentally. It was easier to have a smaller CSA and not worry about all of the crops that were failing from the cold wet season, give out some more of the ones that were doing well, and wait for this season. That's the short explanation I'm giving for why we didn't make what we hoped to. Our goal for this coming season is to break $10/hr, which I would be very happy with.