Materials Handlers (week 19)

Posted on 22 Sep 2015

spinachsun

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“Another year gone, leaving everywhere its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

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the uneaten fruits crumbling damply in the shadows, unmattering back

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from the particular island  of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

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except underfoot, moldering

in that black subterranean castle

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of unobservable mysteries — roots and sealed seeds

and the wanderings of water. This

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I try to remember when time’s measure painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing to stay — how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever in these momentary pastures.” – Mary Oliver, Fall Song

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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The Autumnal Equinox is just a few days away… nature is singing her last sweet songs of summer as we welcome Fall. We love this time of year. Starting the day with a wooly and a flannel and by mid-morning we’re in t-shirts. It’s been a nice change of pace from the unbelievable heat of summer.

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We started in on our sweet potato harvest this weekend and got a little over half way through! We plan on taking the rest of the sweet taters out this weekend and get them stored up in the propagation house so they can cure up well. The big greenhouse has been tilled up in preparation for planting winter crops (lots of greens and fresh eating beets).

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Farmers could be called “professional material handlers” (the term was mentioned in one of Chris Blanchard’s farmer to farmer podcasts) especially this time of the year. Harvesting the heavy loads of winter squash, sweet potatoes etc, loading, packing, curing until they are moved again to their final resting place for the winter. Come October and November, repeat all these steps with roots (carrots, turnips, beets etc) and alliums (garlic and onions), etc. The heavy lifting begins in June with squash and cukes, continues with tomatoes and melons and doesn’t end until November when the last harvests of winter stores that are coming in to the cooler etc. Infrastructure is so important on the farm and covered space is like gold. It’s also important to limit the amount of times you are handling everything so you’re not creating double work for yourself.. think: could this go on a pallet and be moved by the forks on the tractor from field to final storage place.. etc The better we get as farmers the more we’re talking TONS rather than 100’s of lbs. And nobody understands that more than our backs 😉 Gotta work smarter, not harder.

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It does feel good to have the barn loft filled to the brim, the propagation house is almost at max capacity and soon the cooler will be chock full of goodies too. Stocking the larder!

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We will also begin cover cropping this coming week. We’ve got our seed and are all ready to go. There will be tilling of summer crops gone by and readying the soil. We had such a beautiful stand last year and are hoping our timing is right on again. (it’s always about timing…) Cover crops are nitrogen-fixing, soil-conditioning, erosion-preventing, bio-mass-building things of beauty. You gotta feed that soil so it can feed you!

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There are many transitions for us this time of year… When we normally would do evening chores after the CSA pick up we are finding ourselves getting to all the animals chores in the midst of CSA pick up. It’s getting dark by 7:30/8:00pm so it’s nice to have things wrapped up before hand. A farmer’s work is never done so it’s nice to establish a routine that works with the sun and our bodies. We’ve been making supper and having it on the table by 9pm and soon we’ll be eating earlier and maybe catching a few extra zzz’s! So many things to look forward to this time of year.

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CSA Member Farm Day is coming up! If you haven’t yet RSVP’d please look for the email invite from “evite” and be sure to RSVP so we have a final number to plan for.

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WHF Pastured Pork! We have our fall USDA certified pastured pork shares and sausage link shares available! As well as unrendered leaf lard and pork back fat for all your cooking, baking and soap making needs. Check the email “Fall Pastured Pork Shares” for more info and email us to make your order.

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WHF Grass Fed Beef! Our 100% Grass fed, organic USDA certified beef shares will be available SOON. We will keep all our members posted with the details.

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Cheers to you all, enjoy the week and we’ll see you soon!

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With kind regards,

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your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

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Change is in the Air (Week 18)

Posted on 15 Sep 2015

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‘Space (on the farm) really is the final frontier’ – farmer brian

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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Here we grow Week 18! August and September are the craziest whirlwind months here on the farm. We keep saying “next week it will start to slow down” and we keep waiting for that to actually happen… ha ha crazy farmers… It will though! We are just about finished with our winter squash harvest so those precious fruits can be out of the weather and cure in the warmth of the greenhouse. Next up will be the sweet tater harvest. We dug up a few plants and found some beauties beneath so we’re hoping for a good yield! Did you know that sweet potatoes need to be “cured” like winter squash? The natural sweetness improves after curing but the primary purpose of curing is to heal injuries so that the sweet potatoes remain in good condition for storage/eating during the Fall and winter. We keep them at 85 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of 85 to 90 percent for 7-10 days.

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We got 4 loads of squash in and only a few more to go!

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All of these steps/big items on the list require other steps – getting infrastructure set up, hauling, loading, stacking, building tables, etc… it’s never as easy as just the idea of it. So, we remember, the only way out is through. And we accomplish by doing. You just gotta start – sometimes that’s the hardest part. At some point this weekend, we also found ourselves shuffling about in the barn in the darker hours to put up another 4 tons of winter hay for the cows. With the forecasted showers it needed to be done otherwise we probably wouldn’t have slept very well (even with only a 20% chance). It ended up sprinkling the next morning so we felt glad that we pushed through and got it done (farmer brian asked the next morning, “at what point are you just too old to lift all this stuff”). Between the hay, garlic, onions, storage maters etc it’s getting pretty full up in the loft of the barn. With only 4 more tons of hay to go our bodies are already excited to have that chore finished!

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Covered space on a farm is like gold… Crispy Fall greens and checking in on our sweet taters!

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Change is in the air. The autumnal equinox is coming up in the next week and the days grow shorter. With the coming of the equinox we will start to see the box transition into Fall! The rain showers will bring splits to the ol’ tomato patch and slow down all the summer crops. Enjoy these gems while they are here! It’s been one heck of a summer season and we’re not sure what the Fall will bring. . so we must enjoy what we have while we have it! Nature teaches us a lot and to live in the day is surely one of those things.

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Once the sweet taters are harvested this weekend we will begin to prep ground for seeding in a mix of cover crop seed. It’s that time of the season where we like to let part of the garden rest while feeding it the good stuff all winter long. Cover crops are nitrogen-fixing, soil-conditioning, erosion-preventing, bio-mass-building things of beauty. We look forward to building up the organic matter in the garden over time and feeding it the best we can so that all the plants that follow can have access to that wonderful nutrition. There’s nothing better than seeing a big old stand of cover crop in the early Spring months… so much possibility awaits and the growing season begins again!

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Stacking 4 ton of hay into the night and Gloucester making sure the job is getting done..

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CSA Member Farm Day is coming up in a couple weeks! Be sure to check your emails soon for an invite.

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Winter CSA! We are thrilled about all the interest in the Winter CSA! Our members sure do love them veggies as much as their farmers do. All of us here on the farm thank you for all of your support! We are excited for the winter season to begin and are so happy you will be joining us for the season ahead! If anyone else would like to get on the waiting list please let us know and we’d be happy to add you.

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With some as big as your head! The greens won’t always be so big… as the days grow shorter and there is less light available the leaves will naturally get smaller.. enjoy these jurassic park sized leaves while they are here!

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WHF Grass Fed Beef! Our 100% Grass fed, organic USDA certified beef shares will be available in the next few weeks. We will keep all our members posted with the details.

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Cheers to you all, enjoy the week and we’ll see you soon!
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Your Farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

– furryfriends

The Only Way Out is Through (week 16)

Posted on 1 Sep 2015

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The only way out is through.

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This week’s newsletter is straight from the farmer’s heart…

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Farming is not for the faint of heart. I am discovering that you have to be a little bit crazy to be a farmer and by crazy I mean you have to love what you do because farming is not easy (it’s a labor of love). It is probably one of the riskiest jobs a person can do. Putting all your cards on the table season after season only to go along with what mother nature brings… where nothing is a sure thing. What is easy is the romantic picture of a farm and a farmer’s life. It’s easy to paint a picture of this romantic notion of the two farmers who are married and farm together and live this lifestyle that we’re all trying to get back to. Farming is romantic to us, not because it’s the dream life, but because farming is what brought us together in the first place.. our goals of feeding the community the best possible food and doing the hardwork it takes to make it happen is our version of romantic.. #thebloodsweatandtears kind of romance.

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Most older generations who grew up on farms will tell you they left their family farms because the work was hard and that they could make more money doing something else that didn’t require so many hours of physical labor, while enjoying the modern conveniences of living close to the stores, the lifestyle, the weekends off etc. Most people left the country to go to the city for a better lifestyle, a better wage, and better opportunities.

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Nothing about farming is “easy” and there sure are a lot of parts that aren’t “dreamy”.. the long days, shifts in the weather, a rainy season, a drought, the mountains of things to achieve each day, the things that come up unexpectedly and that can’t wait, putting the farm first before yourself and often before family & friends, and visits with those family and friends aren’t really possible during the growing unless somebody’s there willing to lend a hand because there never seem to be enough hours in the day.

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Farmer’s also educate. Informing the community and the consumer about why they should support the farm and why they should buy local and why buying food direct from the farmer costs more than the food at the grocery store… fielding questions all the time because education is a huge component of what we do and why do we do the things that we do – to feed the community well. One things for sure it’s not the big ol’ paycheck….

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Feeding our community is a huge responsibility and a privilege and an honor. Our days are purposeful .. brimming with purpose and hard work.. every decision we make impacts hundreds of people, the land, the soil etc and it truly is an amazing gift to be a farmer. There is freedom in being your own boss, being solely devoted to one piece of land, understanding and working with nature, working with the livestock , providing for your community in a meaningful way and through it all learning more about yourself and how to be a better person and farmer.

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Owning and running a farm is like one giant puzzle and if you really like the challenge of decoding said giant puzzle with a guaranteed lifetime of challenge, growth and learning then perhaps maybe you too could be a farmer. In order to succeed you need to keep a child like faith and to be inspired by this puzzle. Never let it weigh you down or fill you with fear because it will swallow you whole. You will be challenged each and everyday. Take a step back and change your perspective. Don’t be afraid to look at something closely to understand what’s really going on. Because let me tell you every season is different.. whether it’s a change in the weather, a whole new experience that pops up, or a disease is carried in on the wind.. a whole crop or years worth of work and preparation could be gone.. in an instant. You will need this child like faith and the challenge of this lifelong puzzle to pull you out from any obstacle that may come up. Otherwise you will feel as though all is for not and grow bitter and resentful… The “I get to’s,” “I can do this” – the positivity, the challenge and the change of perspective makes farming a life worth living for us!

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We’ve been tested to the limit this season as it has been the hardest season yet .. it has challenged us more mentally and physically than any other year. Working in the oppressive heat and drought for months on end is not something anyone can get used to. Besides ourselves, we also learned that most plants don’t do well in that kind of weather either and that we had to work twice as hard (and water twice as much) just to have all the produce we’ve had in seasons past. *even tomatoes eggplants and peppers and other hot season crops get stressed in the hot weather and drop their flowers which could mean a whole succession of fruit will be lost.* As a result we learned SO MUCH. We learned more about irrigation than ever before, we learned what the plants really need in a time of stress, how to work around the sun with out a complete meltdown etc… all while trying to find and maintain a sense of balance within our own selves, as individual people.

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In these times we struggle to find balance. And yet we get up every day willing (and freely so) to do it all over again because we can’t imagine doing anything else …because of the challenge, the puzzle, the drive, the passion, the pride, that child like faith and the result: the amazing food that we believe in and are feeding our community with, and the idea that we are leaving this land and its soils better off for generations to come.. For all those reasons it is all worth it. I only share with you the struggles now so that you may get a greater understanding of what it takes to be a farmer. We hear so much of the time “oh you guys live the dream #dreamlife/ I wish I had your lifestyle..” Well, if you’re crazy enough to do it you will find a way and you too will find out that it’s going to take a lifetime to learn everything a farm and the land will have to teach you. That lifelong puzzle. I realize the older you get the less you know and it truly is a humbling experience. The farm has taught me more about that than anyone can ever know.

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These experiences good or bad give me a chance to change my perspective.. to get a greater understanding of myself and how to make things better. To be kinder to myself, to let go more easily and to just be in the moment. Being a farmer there is no other choice.. the only way out is through. All of these things are easy to say aloud but sometimes, through trying times, they’re not as easy to live by and for that I am grateful to work with my favorite person and my partner who is my strength when I feel let down or tired or happy and everything in between. Together we ride, we endure and we thrive. We will continue to stride ahead, to enjoy the challenge of this amazing puzzle and boldly go where every farmer has gone before.

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With kindest regards,

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your crazy farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

Hazy Days (week 15)

Posted on 25 Aug 2015

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The first of the Fall kale, epic summer harvests and the tomato bounty continues…

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Hello Friends & Farm-ily,

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‘Tis the last week of August.. where did the time go?! It’s also Week 15 of the CSA which means we’re more than halfway through our 28-week Spring/Summer season. Over the course of 14 weeks, Brian and I have sown, grown, harvested and distributed 38,000lbs of produce to our awesome CSA members. That puts us on track for distributing close to 80,000 lbs for the 2015 season! Brian and I love what we do and we couldn’t do it without the exceptional group of CSA members that has rallied around our farm. Thank you for believing in us and in your community. Farmer Brian adds, “This is how we make it (change) happen. You give us money and we will grow you the best damn food we can while paying ourselves a livable wage and making the land we steward better for generations to come.” ‪#‎knowyourfarmer ‪#‎knowyourfood ‪#‎dirtyhandscleanhearts ‪#‎workinghandsfarmcsa ‪#‎twofarmersonefarm ‪#‎herewegrow ‪#‎eatyourveggies

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Week 14 CSA share!

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With the coming of September means that autumnal equinox is less than a month away, which means the days are growing shorter! It’s crazy how you go from hiding from the sun to chasing it as every minute counts! This summer (with it’s heat and drought) had some some long days in store for us so we’re feeling ready for a change of pace, the cooler weather and shorter days! But, in the meantime, we’re charging through these heavy, productive harvests and enjoying the fruits of our labor. (We have high hopes of beginning our potato harvest this week!) With hard work comes the bountiful harvest and we enjoy sharing the bounty/labor of love with all of you.

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Over the weekend the easterly wind brought smoke and haze from fires burning across Oregon and eastern Washington. We’ve been thinking of the many who are facing this head on and are thankful for the brave firefighters and volunteers who are helping the communities that have been impacted directly. It’s hard to imagine what those folks are coping with at this time and we are sending our best thoughts to them all.

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Hanging out with Ms. Rosie, the hazy days of fire season and the cows eating some fresh grass..

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The haze and heat made for an ultimate microwave while catching up on seeding, weeding and planting. At times it felt as though we were caught in the “thick of it” and we’d head inside because the air was literally thick and hard to breathe. It did feel really nice though to have a break from the sun. We are truly hoping for some relief (from the fires, from the oppressive heat etc) in the shape of rain (a real rain) and know that it won’t be long now.. Usually during our dry PNW summers we are blessed with some rain by mid-September. This year it feels like forever (it’s been since April/May that we’ve had measurable amount of rain) and you start to forget what it feels like.

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It helps that the days are growing shorter… giving us a greater understanding and deep appreciation for the seasons..

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This year’s tomato line up..

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Bulk Tomatoes. The tomatoes are ripening by the second. Don’t delay on making your order for Mixed Tomatoes (min. 25lbs) or Romas (min. 20lbs). You will thank yourself this winter when you do 😉 Send us an email with your order!

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Pork. Pork Shares and Sausage Shares are now available for order with pick up starting NEXT WEEK (CSA Week 16)! There are a few new exciting additions to the shares including Peppered Bacon (in the pork shares) and a few new kinds of sausage links: Special Blend (a delicious blend of spices: sage, etc with no sugar added – perfect for biscuits and gravy!) and Chorizo Sausage for all your soup making needs as well as old favorites Oktoberfest, Italian and Pork! We have a ton (literally, well, almost literally) of great USDA certified pork and sausage shares available! For those who have already emailed orders, you should have received a confirmation email in the last two weeks. We will send out reminder emails towards the end of the week/early next week for pick up.

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Working Hands Farm Winter CSA! We have some exciting news to share in regards to growing year round on the ol’ farm… stay tuned to the first week of September when we launch our first ever limited edition Winter CSA program. (yahoo!)

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We hope you all have a wonderful week!

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Summer lettuce heads, a perfectly prepped bed awaiting planting and the peppers just keep getting sweeter..

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All the best,

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Your Farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

The Hump (week 14)

Posted on 18 Aug 2015

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A bunch of bee-zy farmers making big Fall planting pushes through the heat!

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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Phew! The whirlwind that is August has scooped us up and we are anticipating the shorter days of Fall that are just a month away! We had a really productive weekend and are gonna gut through the heat the next few days for harvest and look forward to the cooler weather that is on the horizon! Unfortunately the predicted rain last Friday missed the farm entirely but the good news is we were able to get the remaining 3 tons of onions into the barn to cure (for a total of 6 tons – so many onions)!

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We were also able to plant over 3,600 linear ft of Fall and winter crops this weekend which feels amazing and even put up another 4 tons of hay for the cows. We have a few more “medium” sized plantings set for the next few weeks and it feels good to almost be over the August hump. (Is that you Fall?)

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We’ve been keeping the pace and taking good care of each other. Finding a balance while digging deep. It’s amazing to work side by side with the one I love. Together we rise. And to quote Farmer Brian’s most recent post on instagram, “We are a perfect match and on days like this everything just feels so right. We are almost over the August hump. So close.”

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The one thing that has been getting us through this crazy hot summer.. lots of water and electrolytes!

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It’s gonna be an early one today in order to beat the heat of a 100* day and these crazy, heavy lifting harvests! The last two weeks of CSA the shares have weighed 35lbs for a total of close to 8,000lbs of produce harvested for all our members in just 2 weeks time. That’s a whole lot of lifting, carrying, washing, displaying etc. We pride ourselves on our health and strength but boy we’ve been feeling these extra heavy harvests of late and it helps to know just how much you’ve been enjoying them (thanks for sharing the goodness of what you’ve been whipping up in the kitchen!) 😉 We’re taking care of ourselves though and eating well (so many calories) and getting a good nights sleep. As the work days grow shorter we look forward to the recouping and respite that the change of season brings. Until then, we ride! And we’ll do it all, one day at a time.

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To give a bit of perspective I thought I’d share a post that I made last Wednesday during harvest week, “I’m not going to lie. These past couple of days have been rough. High heat, high humidity and a whole lot of heavy lifting summer harvests. When I woke up yesterday I felt like I got hit by a bus. Farmers don’t get “sick days” and if they did I sure would have used it yesterday to sleep away the aches, pains and exhaustion.  Harvesting hasn’t been easy but I made it through with a whole lot of this good stuff and with my favorite farmer who was right there next to me.. In the exhaustion, the sweat, the bountiful harvest, the heat stress… It got me thinking that Brian and I feed a lot of families each week and in 6 years we have never missed a pick up day. This week we’ve harvested over 3,800lbs for our CSA members… which is an amazing feeling (even if my back is barking). Thank you to all our members for the notes or conversations that let us know you’re thinking of us (your farmers) on these long days and appreciate all the work that goes into growing good food.  On days like this I have to dig deep but feel rewarded knowing that it’s all going to a good home where it will be enjoyed and shared among our friends, farm-ily and community. We will continue to dig deep today – our last harvest day of the week. #dirtyhandscleanhearts #workinghandsfarm”

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Farmer Brian kicking some farming butt in the garden this weekend… tilling, spreading compost, fertilizer, making beds…etc

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p.s. A big thanks for all the Bulk Tomato and Pork Orders! We are continuing to take orders so feel free to send them our way when you’re ready!

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All the best and take good care in this next heat wave!

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Your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

The Big Push (week 13)

Posted on 11 Aug 2015

–Bees collecting pollen, a planting we will go, and the newest planting of kale should be ready in the next few weeks!

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Hi Friends and Farm-ily,

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We hope you all enjoyed the first weekend of August!

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We are almost over the big hump of planting and seeding out Fall crops… Greens of many shapes, some roots and winter veggies are all waiting in the wings this week. One of our favorite things about planting for Fall is the opportunity to start again. To wipe clean the mistakes of Spring, the last remnants of carrots that got away from you, or the tiny cabbages that for whatever reason you tried to plant too densely, etc… It’s the opportunity to transition and wipe the slate clean, to be renewed at the point in the season when it is most needed. The Big Push!

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A nice soak on newly seeded beds (awaiting a flame weeding), cultivating weeds with the Chalmers, and organizing pork shares! (farmers wear so many hats!)

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We have been giving mechanical cultivation a go while all the transplants are relatively small. It’s been working like a charm. Farmer Brian has found his swing with the Chalmers and his confidence can be seen in the cleaned up rows of brassicas, chard etc. In the thick of these hot, summer days, it’s nice to change the pace of working the ol’ back and to jump on the ol’ tractor to cultivate a bit. There’s still plenty of weeding to be done with the hand tools.. no doubt about keepin’ in shape and sweating it out. There’s so much to learn all the time so when something starts to feel like it’s working or helping you to work smarter – it is an unbelievable feeling.

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You wanna know what else is an unbelievable feeling? The amazing response we received about needing to sell pork shares! YOU (our members) are amazing every step of the way. Thank you for reinvigorating your farmers and reminding us of why we do what we do. We are continuing to take orders for pork and sausage shares and will fulfill them as we go.

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Twilight on the barn, Week 12’s bountiful summer share, and farmer B during a magic sunset hour..

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It’s amazing the feeling of community that grows year after year. Growing good food is such a positive thing in our lives and to share that with you all is truly a gift. Thank you all for your constant appreciation and use of everything that we grow. You all have been inspiring us with your posts on the Members Page and continually motivate us to grow better and be better. Thank you for believing in us and in a food system that is sustainable, healthy and that works with nature to provide for this community.

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Tomato-Time! ‘Tis the season of summer bounty! Our Bulk Tomatoes are available (and should be around for at least the next few weeks… it all depends on the weather). This is the 4th season in a row that we have had offered this unbelievable deal to our members! We have Mixed Varieties of our “Seconds” (25lb min order) and Classic Roma Tomatoes (20lbs min order) available. Please see the email titled “Bulk WHF Tomatoes” for more information.

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Ahab and B take an afternoon pause, the morning dew on the newest collards, and baby chick cruising around on mama’s back!

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The big push is on this week/weekend so send us all the good energy you can. We’ll be trucking along and racing the sun and shorter days. We can do this!

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We look forward to seeing you all this week!

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With kind regards,

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Your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

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Agua fresco with watermelon, evenings in the garden and some quality time spent with Rosie in the mornings..

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Full Hearts, Tired Bones (week 12)

Posted on 4 Aug 2015

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“I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
in spite of the best advice.” – Wendell Berry

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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We hope you all made it through that insane triple digit heat wave we’ve been suffering through for what seems like forever… haha! Seriously though, on Thursday it reached 110 on the farm, which is just totally not acceptable (especially on a harvest day). But the good news is, after a succession of 100+ days, the farmers, the livestock and the plants all made it out alive! Thanks to the help of shade, water, you guys rooting us on and commiseration texts with fellow farmer friends we were able to make it through the worst of it. It has us wondering though… when did Oregon become such a microwave?

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Summer sunsets, a rare sweaty selfie and all that glorious hay!

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Physically we’re feeling it. The sun and oppressive heat can take it out of you. Bucking 4 more tons of hay on Friday nearly wiped us out but we’re staying in the moment and in the day as much as we can. Mostly it’s the working around the sun that is getting to us. Not enough hours of sleep it seems especially when it’s an early morning wake up call and a late evening planting… which doesn’t leave that much room for sleep after dinner is made. We’re officially in survivor mode and are looking forward to 80 degree summer days again this week! Good thing we eat good! I often wonder how many calories Brian and I burn through in a day….

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do the best you can.

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Summer is here in the garden… let the tomatoes roll on in (especially after all that heat!)

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The heat wave also has up playing catch up this week with planting. Since it was unbearably hot we were unable to plant last week for fear of too much stress (on the plants and the farmers) but with ‘cooler temps’ we are getting them in one crop at a time. Planting the fall crops has got us excited about what the rest of the season will bring! And we’ve still got so many yummy things to look forward to for summer (tomatoes, corn, melons, pole beans etc).

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We’ve been listening to a lot of Wendell Berry interviews while planting in the field and found inspiration in this little snippet: “The answers will come, not from walking up to your farm and saying ‘this is what I want, [and] this is what I expect from you..You walk up and say, ‘what do you need?’ and you commit yourself and say, ‘alright I’m not going to do any extensive damage here until I know what it is you’re asking of me’. And this can’t be hurried.” – Wendell Berry

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one step at a time.

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His and her veggie quiches, our ode to coffee and gloucester hanging out in the morning shade (80*!)

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We LOVE farming which is what keeps us motivated mentally. Feeding our community amazing fresh food is just the best. The heat is just a whole other beast. If the weather was optimal (partly cloudy and 70-80 degrees everyday) we’d be running around this farm no question about it. Either way, our hearts are full as we go into harvest week/share 12. It’s been 11 bountiful weeks on the farm with so much more ahead! Many more endless possibilities…. Ohhh summer, sweet summer…

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Speaking of full hearts, we also celebrated our first year anniversary as a married couple over the weekend. Hard to believe we even pulled off getting married in the beginning of August (there’s no way we would have survived that this year). Thank goodness for all the friends and family who came and lent a hand the days leading up to it… I always think fondly of that time and experience and it’s definitely one of my favorite memories of our wedding. Besides marrying my best friend, of course 😉

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The piggies love to recycle, Brian doing some late evening bed prep and mama hen and her chicks..

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So many things can happen in the course of a year. Its been a wild ride and I feel so thankful that I have someone like Brian to move through these days with – there sure is something special and sacred that we share between us and I thank my lucky stars for the universe bringing us together. Farming is a mutual passion for both of us and one of the main reasons our paths first crossed. He is my other half (sometimes my better half) and my favorite person and I feel so lucky to walk through this life with him. I wanted to share a poem that Farmer B (the english major) wrote about our first anniversary… it’s a good’un…

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dirty hands, clean hearts

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1st anniversary

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We will mark this occasion by planting Fall crops,

Into freshly turned soil that has been given time.

By rotating our cows and pigs onto fresh grass that has regrown after,

A quick first pass in the cool spring.

And by tending to our flock of hens, watching them,

Watching their newly hatched chicks discover the world,

Learning to hide under mother hen as the Red Tails call.

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We will celebrate this day by doing what needs to be done

By setting future failures aside and focusing on the tasks at hand.

Making our way past the English Hawthorns down to the river and back.

We will do what gives us gravity, a place, a home and

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Gratitude.

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“Farm sweet Farm” said the screen print set in a good solid frame.

Our first wedding gift.

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After eating a good breakfast made with all good things,

We will make a list and make priorities,

And prioritize the things that cannot wait.

We will work side by side,

Begging the farm to give us permission.

Thinking of all the friends and our family that we carry with us.

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And we will first work under the light of the blue moon,

As the crickets drowned the noisiness of the world,

And we will sleep deeply with gratitude for all we have been given.

To adventure and to those endless possibilities.

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We will celebrate this day by doing.

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By Farmer B

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A few snippets from our wedding last season…

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With full hearts (and tired bones) we look forward to what this harvest week will bring. Send us your bottled up energy and well wishes! It’s amazing what a little encouragement and cookies (for farmer brian) will do 😉 And a big thank you to the food faeries in the CSA who have been leaving homemade goodies, snacks, cold treats and even dinners. You have been lifesavers for your farmers! Thank you for thinking of us!

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Oh, and be sure to check your email titled ‘WHF Pastured Pork & Sausage Shares!’ regarding the first of our summer pork and sausage (link) shares!

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Be well and take care of yourselves!

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With kind regards,

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

The Upswing (week 11)

Posted on 28 Jul 2015

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Flea beetle damage on the september broccolis but they are already bouncing back, sunnies and transplants galore!

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Hello friends and farm-ily,

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We hope you are doing well. It looks like we are in for another round of “unseasonably warm weather” (according to our weather app). We did have an amazing weekend for weather though with temps in the high 70’s and clouds to boot. We were able to plant 4,000 ft of fall kale, chard, collards, and broccoli. Next up on the ol’ planting list is romanesco, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi and storage beets! It’s probably going to be another week of long evenings for us (to avoid planting in 100 degree weather or should we say “wither”) but we’re making a big push and getting it done one thing at a time. Send us your good thoughts and spirits!

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“But the real products of any year’s work are the farmer’s mind and the cropland itself.” – Wendell Berry

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It’s funny how one season you will discover something new – both challenging and inspiring (new could mean: methods, pest pressure, weed pressure or disease, plant successes, the perfect way to store things in the cooler, a new cultivating sweep that keeps you off your hands and knees etc) and some seasons you rediscover things you might not have revisited in a long while. “Ohhh yeahhh! I remember when this happened before” Everyday it feels like something new – a challenge to rise to in many shapes and forms!

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Gloucester is the ultimate companion planter, brussel sprouts interplanted with phacelia, and the piper in the pepper patch..–

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We are finding that systems are so important on the farm and we are constantly asking ourselves, “what is the most efficient ways to do this job”, “what is the best way to move this crop from field to curing to customer” Etc As a farmer you need to be efficient as possible for many reasons… especially if it’s just two of you managing the day to day farm tasks. The working smarter, not harder is the key to it all. How many times do you pick something up, how many times do you harvest any one crop during the week (can you harvest it all at once)?, how many times do you hand weed a crop etc etc. This year more than ever we are feeling less set in our established ways and more open to change. Sometimes you choose it and other times it becomes necessity otherwise it just won’t work out anymore… This old proverb comes to mind…

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“Necessity is the mother of all invention.” – English proverb

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These are all new methods that we’ve added to the mix this season to make the land and work more efficient (and things we are still learning about as we go along).. cooling and storing the produce with the cooler, harvesting and moving the vegetables with our CSA trailer, pre emergence flame weeding, direct seeding crops with our precision jang seeder, prepping beds with the compost spreader and fertilizer drop spreader, making dibble marks for planting with the chalmers (for ease of planting, equal measurements and uniform planting), stalebedding before planting, cultivating with the chalmers, investing more in organic compost and amendments for the soil, interplanting phacelia and alyssum as an attractant to beneficial predatory insects, building a permanent pick up area for the CSA members etc. These efficiencies seem to be working as we’re able to grow food for over 110 families (over 400 individuals) as two farmers on 4 acres of cultivated land. As we hone in on the efficiencies we are also us thinking about productivity…. How to make the land more productive and that has been inspring us to invest more heavily in the soils.

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The first of the heirloom tomatoes are rolling on in and the twilight hours in the flower garden are magic..

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“To be a successful farmer one must first know the nature of the soil.” – Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 400 B.C.

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SOIL! We have been talking a lot about our soil this season, how we feel the crops are doing with our custom organic fertilizer mix we blended in the Spring, the extra compost, our tilling and watering methods, etc. Every season we are diving just a little bit deeper and understanding more clearly of what our soil needs are specifically to this piece of land. We are excited to really hone in on soil fertility and to see how much the land will change for the better over time. It all starts in the soil and we really just want to become better soil farmers. Farmer Brian LOVES talking soil science and wishes he had more time just to devote to the science part. Bit by bit though and season by season.. we learn, grow and build. It’s easy to feel connected to the farm, the food and soil when you can look at a plant and decipher what it’s needs are just by observing. As farmers, we measure success by the quality of the soil. It’s all about feeding it well so it in turn can be taken up by the plant. We will continue to give, give, give and it too will return to us a bountiful harvest year after year. Same goes for our pasture that we planted in the Fall of 2013.

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The latest beet succession (on the left) and carrot succession (on the right) using the pre-emergence flame weeding..

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Feelin’ Inspired! So far the pre emergent flame weeding has been working very well for us. So well in fact it feels like we’re breathing new life into the season and into your farmers, which feels amazing. The Upswing as we’ve been calling it. The latest successions of storage carrots, beets, cilantro and greens mix have all come up beautifully. We have prepped and readied another 12 beds to direct seed into this week and will continue to experiment and learn more about this amazing new tool/method we are discovering. It really feels like we are on the right track. The plants have a big head start on the weeds and we are spending way less time hand weeding.. a win-win for us all!

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We hope you all have a great start to the week. It was nice to see some of you last week at the pick up – we were able to see about half our members which was a nice pick me up when we weren’t out there planting (it’s a crazy life we lead….) Thank you for your encouragement, appreciation and genuine awesome-ness. We look forward to feeding you all well into the summer and fall! Here we grow week 11!

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A note of encouragement and a thank you: as you may know the House voted to ban states from labeling GMO foods at the end of last week. Thank you for supporting your local farm/farmers! We couldn’t do any of this without you. (And keep voting with your food dollars!) “Shake the hand that feeds you.” ― Michael Pollan ‪#‎knowyourfarmer‬‪#‎knowyourfood‬

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With kind regards,

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Your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

Variable Quandary (week 10)

Posted on 21 Jul 2015

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Our first greenhouse tomato of the season, the view from the sweet corn patch and some time well spent with Ms. Rosie..

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Hi Friends and Farm-ily,

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Here we grow week 10! We hope this week’s newsletter finds you all happy and well. It was another extra hot weekend and we hope you all found a way to stay cool and hydrated! Despite the heat we really made a push this weekend from all angles. Building paddocks and rotating cows and pigs and chickens, direct seeding another round of carrots, beets, cilantro, rutabaga and turnip, seeding trays of late season crops, weeding, thinning, giving the solanaceaes an Epsom salt foliar spray, composting/fertilizing/tilling and prepping beds for transplanting fall crops this week – so many things. Big pushes all around!

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We are hoping to take advantage of the “cooler” weather (10 degrees makes a big difference to the plants and the farmers) during the week to begin transplanting the newest succession of kale, collards, broccoli etc. There never seem to be enough hours in the day to do it all so we have written out our big to-do list and have been prioritizing things as they come up. It’ll feel extra awesome to begin filling up the garden again with vibrant, young plants that will be productive through the late summer and fall.

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Our sweet mama cows Lucy and Stella, a view of the fall transplants awaiting their day in the garden and these two farm buds, Ahab & Una..

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As productive as this season has been, it sure has been a season of many new variables. The biggest variables being the drought and excessive heat. Each season we are learning and more and more we realize that nature is always changing – every minute, every day – and you have to be adaptable. Adaptability is the name of the game. Every minute, every day. Many of these variables we’ve never encountered before. Namely the extreme, excessive heat. None of the crops really love the heat and can only tolerate it so much. At some point in a very hot season even a tomato or an eggplant or a squash will stop putting up flowers because of the heat stress. We are actually already seeing signs of that in our eggplants and they’ve barely just begun. Water is another variable that you have to pay close attention to. We feel lucky that we have our drip irrigation really dialed in but it’s still a full time job making sure everything is getting the water that it needs. Different crops have different water requirements.. some plants need 2” of water a week or prefer a nice deep soak over a surface level soak. Some roots are longer and more prolific while others don’t get any longer than 4 inches. Most things want moisture to keep the roots cool and to avoid too much heat stress and going to seed.

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Another variable is weed pressure which is also up more than ever before due to the dry heat. It’s hard to keep up with the newly germinating weeds (especially with direct seeded crops) which has lead us to trial flame weeding. We start with stale bedding: prepping the bed, watering it, germinating weeds, seeding into a weedy bed and waiting a few days to flame (just before the crop emerges). It is not necessary to burn the weeds. The flame only needs to overheat the tissues and rupture the cells of the plants (weeds). So far we’ve had success with this as before we were flame weeding, the newly seeded bed would turn into a carpet of weeds (pigweed, amaranth, grass) before the crops even had a chance. Now that we’re flaming, a little handweeding/wheelhoeing once a week on these beds and we will be able to keep up with the crops. We took a chance and are excited with the results and know it can only get better from here. In these new (sometimes scary or overwhelming) situations, when it comes down to it, you just have to trust yourself and try something new and trust that it will all work out for the best.. in this ever changing world, every second, everyday. Now we just need to find someone to build us one of these and we will be in business! For those interested, here’s an article on Flame Weeding from Growing for Market

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Gloucester truly is the king of the barn, first cherry tomatoes, and #tbt to this moment with our sweet Ellie.. we sure miss our old gal..

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Whatever the variable, every season, every day there is something new to be learned or a different obstacle to over come. The more you pay attention the more aware you become… which is great because you are constantly learning, but it can also be hard to balance when you put so much blood, sweat and tears into something. With farming there is a process… it begins with a whole lot of hope and a little bit of know how based on the seasons past. When variables change there could be disappointment or frustration or fear or even sadness, followed in time by understanding and then, of course, letting go. After letting go comes inspiration and determination and improvement (even if it feels like it’s against all odds). It’s the hope and the childlike wonder from the beginning of the season that we try to remember and to feel, to start anew and to do better. It is this hope that will continue to help us become better farmers and in the process, better people too.

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After a couple of frustrating happenings (flea beetles causing destruction, birds enjoying tender seedlings, eggplant flowers dropping etc etc) I remembered a word that one of our members used to describe us last season. Stick–to–itiveness: the quality that allows someone to continue trying to do something even though it is difficult or unpleasant. Persistent determination.

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Practicing stick-to-itiveness. The variables will always be changing which makes sense because one year you might have an amazing tomato year and another year you might have just enough. Or, a new kind of pest or disease might wipe out a whole crop or a spring is too wet and soggy to plant. Through it all, I feel lucky to have my fellow farmer and husband to remind me that everything is going to be okay. I also feel lucky to have my friends, family and extra supportive CSA members. Without that community we would lose sense of perspective which is such an important part of this farming life. I am definitely the natural worrier of the two and farming has forced me to have less fear and do the best that I can do and let go of the rest. To grow better and be the best farmer and person I can be.

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Baby chard getting ready to be planted, “giant dahlia” zinnias and a view of the winter squash patch!

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Despite all odds, we will continue to trudge through the heat and dry and do our best. For those who are interested in learning more about the ins and outs of farming in the U.S. we have been lovin’ the Farmer to Farmer podcasts. http://www.farmertofarmerpodcast.com/episodes The Farmer to Farmer Podcast provides a fresh and honest look at everything from soil fertility and record-keeping to getting your crops to market without making yourself crazy. A lot of insightful conversations from farmers across the U.S.! Lots of “food for thought”!

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Enjoy the week and we send our best to you all from the farm.

With kind regards,

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Your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

The Gift of Good Land (week 9)

Posted on 14 Jul 2015

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Might be the earliest melon year yet (we’re patting ourselves on the back for trying two successions of melons this year) & putting up the first 4 tons of hay!

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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Whooie! What a weekend. Full of excitement, appreciation, long- hard working days and even some clouds (THANK GOODNESS). On Friday it was a calm, cool day and we were able to put up the first 4 tons of hay for the winter. We were a touch sore on Saturday but come September (once we reach the last of our 24 ton order) we should be in tip-top pitching hay shape. A wonderfully cloudy start to the weekend also meant transplanting crops (without them quickly turning into sadness), seeding fall turnips, rutabagas, storage carrots etc and weeding and trellising more comfortably than ever before! When you’ve worked through extremes suddenly the slightest change in weather (i.e. slightly lower temps) can broaden your perspective and appreciation!

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Lovely cherry tomatoes are getting their rosy blush, peppers are popping’ and seeding for the Fall!

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It feels like it’s been summer for a long while so it’s hard to remember that we’ve barely just begun! As we head into the harvests of summer, it’s got us thinking about how the C in CSA stands for many things: commitment, culture, community etc… what does the C in CSA mean to you? For our CSA, the community is at its core and we thank you all for your appreciate, encouragement and enthusiasm. We hope you are all feeling lighter, brighter and inspired in the kitchen. We wanted to extend our humble thanks and say ‘thank you for supporting our small farm!’ By committing to the 28 week CSA season you are investing in so much more than vegetables… you are investing in this farm, your two farmers and are helping to keep the dream alive: to provide the best possible food for our community so that they in turn can live happy, productive and healthy lives. By supporting the farm you are making this small part of the World a better place for generations to come.

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Pumpkins are taking form and so are the summer raspberries. Gloucester is always kind to help out in anyway he can…

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And on that note, in 8 weeks of harvest we’ve distributed 17,640lbs of produce to all of our wonderful members (and we haven’t even had our heavy end of summer/early fall CSA boxes yet)! Let us all be thankful for the bounty this year, the fertile soils of the Willamette Valley, and the farmers who love to toil the soil. ‘Tis a place of bounty and beauty where we can successfully grow a large array of produce that we should always be grateful for (we know we are).

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Big plump maters are just hanging from the tomato plants and the flower garden is buzzing with bees!

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There are so many amazing seasonal changes happening in the garden as of late. Melons are sizing up, pumpkins and winter squash are taking form, peppers are plentiful, tomatoes are getting ready to explode, beans are forming…. the summer palette is about to begin! As the box transitions out of Spring and into Summer we can look back and appreciate all those luscious, mildly spicy greens, first roots plucked from the soil and the cool brassica crops like broccoli and cauliflower. The carrots keep coming and the maters are ripening one by one everyday. The pepper plants are full of fruits and we look forward to them all turning red, orange, yellow and gold. The gods of cool-er weather are even blessing us with a week of 80 degree days and we will relish in a full week of “milder” temps.

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Baby bush beans are taking form, the squash keep coming and the sunsets are fiery and warm..

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We continue to do our best in taking care of ourselves! Maintaining a 40 acre property, 4 acres of cultivated veggies, 20 acres of pasture, a business, a small herd of beef cows, 2 dozen pigs, 100 chickens, etc sure does keep a few farmers busy. This season has got us thinking and talking a lot about continuing on the path of working smarter, not harder and we are hoping a few new ideas that we’ve come up with will help to make that happen. At times decisions and plans may seem daunting but when we take a step back and we allow ourselves to process and to be inspired it is then that we feel that we can do better. It helps having someone to bounce ideas off of all the time and neither of us could imagine doing this with anybody else…. So at the end of every busy day there is that!

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Speaking of smarter, not harder… we feel like a bunch of big kids playing with giant hoses this past week when we were getting the waterwheel set up in the pasture. In the future we are hoping that the waterwheel (which pumps water from our spring fed creek and irrigates the pasture) will help to offset rising hay costs so we can keep them on grass longer and not have to supplement feed before the Fall/Winter. With the drought and the hot weather folks are having to feed their cows hay starting in July and August. Part of the reason why we were able to purchase this property was that there was 10 acres on the south side of the property – where the creek and the tualatin meet – that floods out every year. It floods out anywhere from January until mid-March. This is also the area on the farm that stays green the longest (in the pictures above).

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The gift of good land. To another farmer this may seem like unarable land but for us it provides many things, a very important riparian buffer, a sanctuary for birds, beavers, martins and other wildlife, and this time of the year, possible forage to rotate our cows onto. We are thankful for the dynamism that this property has to offer as. To one pair of eyes, it may seem as though this property is not nearly as productive as the perfectly flat piece of land, but to our eyes it allows us the freedom to utilize the property the best way that we can, to get to know it with time, see it through with the seasons and to work with it.. not against it. It has so much more to offer than we could have ever thought and we truly look forward to seeing how it evolves over time.

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Rosie is seriously the most amazing mama pig. She’s due in September and we’re thinking the winter squash might be ready to cure before that! #crazysummer

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We hope you all have a great start to the week! Here we grow Week 9!

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All the best,

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your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

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When the Farm Farms You (week 8)

Posted on 7 Jul 2015

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“Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you must’nt shirk it. Love, after all, hopeth all things. But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation.”
– Wendell Berry

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Hello friends & farm-ily!

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We hope everyone had an excellent 4th of July weekend and that you’ve been keeping out of the hot sun and drinking plenty of water. We are doing our best to stay sane in this hot and dry spring and summer and we feel like we are in survivor mode. We’ve been getting up before the sun to balance out the extreme mind melting heat come the 2-6pm hour range. It’s a hard balance to find with lots of Fall transplants needing to go in the ground in the next few weeks but we’re finding the time to do it to minimize stress on those little plants (and your farmers). Things just seem to take twice as long when the heat is oppressive like this. It’s got us wondering what August will bring…. we’re thinking lots of tomatoes!

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Thanks to social media and to local farmer friends it sure does help to commiserate with our peers in the Pacific NW and also with farmers across the country. Fellow Farmers in the Midwest and up and down the east coast have been getting record amounts of rain making it hard to work the soil or plant and harvest because the plants are in standing water. And here we are in the midst of a drought with record high temps! One of the farms we follow in instagram said this to us (and we couldn’t’ agree more),

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“A wet year will send you to the poor house and a dry year will send you to the crazy house.”

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Finding balance. It’s days like these (or, it’s that time of the season) where it’s a blessing to get a chance to sit down and reflect on the long days… and even better when you have someone right there with you to love and commiserate with. With each season we grow to love and trust one another even more than the season before. As the seasons pass we grow stronger together as a team and better within ourselves. We love farming and we love farming together.

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Although some crops really thrive in hot and dry weather, it also comes with many challenges: 1. Working in the heat (mainly 100* +) days really takes it out of you. There is no respite from the sun when it feels as though it is beating down on you. We’ve been taking lots of water and shade breaks but usually by 2 or 3pm we have no other choice but to focus on other tasks in the shade. 3.We’ve been burning through the calories and the water in order to tackle the ol’ to do list. We are SO looking forward to a promise of 85 in the 10 day… 3 weeks of 90+ days is starting to get to us mentally and physically. 3. Not all plants do well in the heat and they all need a lot of water! 4. Same for animals… if you’re hot they probably are too and since piggies don’t sweat you can be sure we refill their wallows at least twice a day. 5. Pests galore… the pest population in the garden is insane this year. Flea beetles and cucumber beetles galore. We have been using agribon row cover on most things that are ultra tender but due to the heat we are unable to cover some crops. Some tender greens have fallen prey to the flea beetles (little pinholes or burned brown edges from nibbling) and it’s hard to keep up with the population when the warm weather is promoting more gestation cycles! 6. Weeds are growing at a rapid rate and it’s been hard to keep up with all those buggers. We swear they grow an inch a day!

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We did manage to harvest all of our garlic a few weekends ago. Our crop of garlic was hit with the awful Rust fungus. While we are doing our best to salvage what is left we are beginning to give out uncured garlic incase it does not store well into the season. According to the Cattle Press (http://www.capitalpress.com/Oregon/20150617/leaf-rust-found-in-willamette-valley) Oregon in particular seemed to be hit with the leaf rust fungus this year in cereal crops. The fungus then gets carried by air (wind) and thrives in cool/wet conditions. We haven’t seen ay rust on the onions or leeks so here’s hoping! Preventative measures will include rotating our garlic crop (not planting alliums there for 3-4 years) and buying all new garlic seed since ours didn’t size up enough/we’re not sure if it will keep for a fall planting. Last year was the first season we grew all our own garlic seed (didn’t have to purchase any garlic seed) but we will need to bite the bullet this year and replace all our seed. 80lbs of garlic seed x $19/lb adds up quick but we are hopeful that next year will be better! So much to learn all the time especially with the changes in weather and seasons.

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All that to say, despite the struggles of working outside during the hottest summer ever there are many things that are thriving and growing well in the garden. We have a lot of fun crops in store for the summer and fall and are hoping the flea beetle pressure goes down a bit before we start planting our brassicas in the coming weeks.

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We are doing the best we can and appreciate all your encouragement. The break in the weather (never thought we’d be excited about 85*) in the 10-day will give us a chance to reset and get a few things checked off the list.

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For now, we welcome the quiet mornings and evening summer skies and the chance to check in with each other, to be still and to listen. We’ll remember these crazy summer days fondly in the dead of winter when all the canned goodies are lined up on the shelf once again….. We hope that you all have been feelin’ the love (22+lb boxes last week!) and have been braving those kitchens and eating well since we saw you last. Keep those recipe suggestions coming in the Member Group. We love hearing what some of your favorite varietals have been so far this season… never cease to be inspired or to share the love with your farmers!

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“Somedays the farm farms you.” – said eloquently by our friends at Even Pull (picture above is from last year’s epic fall planting day)

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We hope everyone is doing well and we’ll see you soon! With our hearts full of love and our minds on motivation…. it’s back to the mind melting heat we go…

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With kindest regards,

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

Keeping the Pace (week 7)

Posted on 30 Jun 2015

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Hi Friends and Farm-ily,

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We hope you were all able to stay cool with the extremely hot weather over the weekend. It looks like the 90’s are here to stay in the 10-day as we enter the very first days of July. We’re doing our best to keep the pace with these 15 hour days – starting with the rising of the sun and ending with the light of the moon. Time is moving by so quickly and we can hardly believe that the 4th of July is this weekend! Much to our surprise we even saw the first blackberries ripening on the vine which we don’t usually start seeing until we’re at least half way through with July. Crazy!

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Volunteer Work Day. Many Hands, Make Light Work… It’s (almost) July which means in the next few weeks we will be harvesting our storage onions (all 6,000ft of them)! Please send us an email if you are interested in coming to help (it will be sweaty, hard work) and we will keep you updated with all the details! Here’s hoping for a few cloudy days in our future…

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Happy Update! We finished up the last bits of construction on the 12ft x 20ft coolbot cooler in the back of our packing house. Fist pumps and high fives all around. This will be a gamechanger for us on the farm and we’ll spend the next few weeks figuring out what methods of storage work best for all the different crops that we grow. This will offer some flexibility to our harvest days especially with all the extreme heat that we’ve been experiencing. We’ve said it before and we will say it again, infrastructure is everything and we are so pumped for the exciting changes this will bring! Here’s to growing better!

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Speaking of crops, the summer veggies are coming along beautifully and we’re seeing lots of baby melons, peppers, eggplant, cherry tomatoes and the first baby winter squash etc. We’ve been checking the tomatoes everyday for the first ripe maters in the field and we feel like it’s close. It won’t be long now…

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Farmer Jess welcomed her 31st year over the weekend. To celebrate she spent some time with the bees and added another medium to all the hives and seeded another round of successions for fall crops. One of our really good friends (and fellow farmer), Farmer Beth (@evenpullfarm) was kind enough to drop off a big glorious birthday bouquet from their beautiful farm. It truly is the little things that matter especially with the kind of season we’ve had this year (busier than ever).

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It’s the little things… Thank you all for your encouraging notes, emails and cool treats that you’ve sent our way. We truly appreciate all your good thoughts. The long days continue on as we’ve been tackling projects of all sizes big and small. The bees even gave Jess an early birthday present in the shape of a heart on their hive this weekend (bees will “beard” on the front of a hive when they are trying to cool everything down… first time we’ve ever seen a bearding in the shape of a heart!)

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Here we grow Week 7! Be well and enjoy this week’s bounty!

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With kind regards,

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your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

Pre-Roasted (week 6)

Posted on 23 Jun 2015

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“We woke up and fell asleep talking about stock, seeds, drainage, tools, or how to eke another minute out of the day…. Our bodies were so tired. Sometimes, in the brief moment between bed and sleep, we’d touch our fingertips together, an act we cynically called farmer love.” – Kirstin Kimball, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

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Hello Friends & Farm-ily,

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Hot and dry is the name of the game on this first official week of summer with temps expected in the 90’s and even over 100 degrees over the weekend. We’ve been hustling this weekend to get things weeded, watered, transplanted and well taken care of. We keep joking that the veggies we’ll be harvesting this summer will be “pre-roasted” due to all the heat!

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Keeping our cool. We began construction on the coolbot cooler this weekend with our hopes set on finishing it before the end of next weekend. Farmer Brian has been working morning, noon and night to make it happen. Always something new to learn on the farm… as we take one step closer to growing better and making things easier for your farmers.

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“Grow it right, and you feel insanely rich, no matter what you own.” – Kirstin Kimball, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

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We began seeding kale, collards, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, romanesco etc for the Fall season. It’s much too hot to be in the greenhouse so we set up a nice “cool” area in the shade of the barn’s lean-to for seeding (and, of course, it is Gloucester approved).

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WHF Farm Day update! Due to all the extreme heat this Spring/summer we have decided to postpone Farm Day to sometime this early autumn/fall. As many of you remember last year, it was hot and this year it looks to be dangerously hot. We will keep you all posted as to when that day will be.

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We hope you are all enjoying the bounty thus far. So far the crops have been chugging along with this weather… the brassicas (kale, collards, broccoli, cauli etc) are feeling the heat but the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash etc are growing like gangbusters. We have been staying on top of giving everyone a nice deep soak with the ol’ drip tape – trying to maintain some balance with the extremes that this season’s weather brings! (Fun fact: did you know that according to the EPA drip tape uses 50% of the water that sprinklers use? Score for your farmers sustainability practices) We continue to beat the heat with early mornings and late evenings. We’d be lying if we didn’t say we sure hope this heat breaks at some point as these two farmers don’t want to burn the candle at both ends. Our heads are above water though and all the animals are happy and in the shade. There are many things to be grateful for as we stride ahead into the first official week of summer.

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“‎A farm is a manipulative creature. There is no such thing as finished. Work comes in a stream and has no end. There are only the things that must be done now and things that can be done later. The threat the farm has got on you, the one that keeps you running from can until can’t, is this: do it now, or some living thing will wilt or suffer or die. Its blackmail, really.”― Kirstin Kimball, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

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We look forward to seeing you all soon. If you miss us at the pick up it might mean that farmer Brian is putting the finishing touches on the cooler while Jess continues to sow seeds for the Fall.

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Keep up all the great work in your kitchens! The WHF Member Group continues to be a big source of inspiration and lightness in our long days. We appreciate you all!

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Stay cool out there!

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With kind regards,

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Your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

Steadfast into Summer (week 5)

Posted on 16 Jun 2015

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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We hope you all have been enjoying the delicious Spring veggies as we roll into our second month of harvest! We can hardly believe how quickly the time passes between one harvest week to another. We’ve been extra bee-zy this weekend taking care of the farm and have been gearing up to ceremoniously begin sowing seeds for our Fall succession of crops. Does anyone else think June is just flying by… ?

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Two farmers, One farm. In 4 weeks of harvest we’ve distributed 8,400lbs of produce to our members! All of that produce has been grown thoughtfully and with love. Prepped, seeded, transplanted, weeded & harvested by 2 sets of hands (each and every berry was picked by farmer Jess or farmer Brian). With the shares getting a touch more bountiful with summer crops, that puts us on track to grow and distribute over 60,000lbs of produce this season. It’s a pretty amazing number and we look forward to harvesting the bounty over the next 6 months. **Last year at this time we had distributed 6,800lbs of produce and two years ago at this time we had distributed 2,100 lbs of produce to our members which means your farmers are growing better with each passing season. This is our 6th season running the CSA and every year it just gets better and better.**

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The summer solstice, the longest day of the year, is just a few days away (on Sunday) and we certainly feel all the energy as we’ve been up with the sun at 20 past 5 and heading in at sunset around 9:30. We’ve been getting better at taking breaks during the hottest times of the afternoon/early evening to make dinner and get back out in the fields at 7 for a few hours. We call 7-9pm the “magic hours” here on the farm… from the low, glimmering sunlight to the cooler breeze – it’s just such a joy to be out in the garden. The animals love it too – they’re all out there filling their bellies – in the settling of the day – before perching or laying down for the night. On the farm, we’re all ready to hit the hay hard by the end of the evening.

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Feelin’ hot hot hot. We keep waiting to see some clouds or rain in the 10-day but are amazed to see the weather keeping up with the hot and dry pattern this season. Between slowly acclimating to the heat and taking better care of ourselves we are feeling like we will make it through this hot and dry season with smiles on our faces.

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No matter what the seasons may bring, our hearts are in this crazy farm life and we LOVE providing high quality food to our community, Your support and appreciation and utilization of our produce is so encouraging and inspiring to your farmers. So keep up the good work and we promise to do the same!

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Besides the hot and dry, June is also an incredibly busy time in the garden (perhaps one of the busiest of the year). It’s a balancing act between maintaining Spring crops, weeding, sowing summer successions, watering, weeding, preparing stale seed beds, trellising tomatoes and beginning to seed all our fall brassicas (kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower etc) and root crops (carrots, parsnips, storage beets etc) to name a few. There is much to be done and the list is ever long but we are focusing on the daily tasks at hand. We are being mindful and supportive, patient and encouraging. The simplest thing we can do for each other as farmer’s (and as a husband-wife team) is to remind each other of all the things we have accomplished and try not to worry too much about the things that remain on the list. The balancing act continues..!

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So, happy early summer solstice to you all. We hope you all find yourself enjoying all that summer has to offer. Take time for yourselves, keep being inspired in the kitchen and filling your tummies with delicious food.

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Thank you all for returning berry hallocks and rubber bands. A note about Egg Cartons: please only return our Working Hands Farm egg cartons.

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We leave you with one of our favorite poets.. Ms. Mary Oliver and ‘The Summer Day’…

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The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

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Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

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Beat the Heat (week 4)

Posted on 9 Jun 2015

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“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” – Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

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Hello friends and farm-ily,

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We hope you are all staying safe during what looks like an incredibly hot June! Your farmers have spent the last 4 days trying to beat the heat that the 10 day has brought us. We can’t ever quite remember a June as hot as this one… We’ve been running around making sure all the crops have cool roots and are well watered. Same for all the critters. We are also adjusting our schedules a touch to begin work by 530/6 and come in during the hottest part of the day to reenergize, hydrate and maybe even take a 15 minute recharge nap (or, write the newsletter!). We’ve been pulling some late nights and are hoping this slight adjustment will bring us in earlier in the evening so we can continue to get up before the sun!

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This weekend Brian and I were able to plant all the melons, summer squash, cukes, pumpkins and winter squash. During the evenings this week we’ll be seeding some more beans and corn. It’s a crazy time of year for us (two farmers, one farm) as we try to manage harvesting 3 days a week with all the other tasks that are on the list such as weeding, watering, seeding, transplanting, tilling, garden bed prep, laying irrigation, washing eggs, writing emails, rotating/feeding/watering animals, etc. We’re hoping it’s in the cards for us to begin building on our coolbot cooler. It’s been such a hot Spring already that we’re thinking a cooler will really help keep all produce happy and even make it possible to harvest things in the evening before pick up. Which means less schlepping around 2,000lbs of produce in hot weather and working smarter, not harder!

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Kickin’ butt and takin’ names. It must be all the years farming under our belt 😉 (it’s our 6^th season as Working Hands Farm) as the “community” aspect of the farm really feels like it’s taking on a life of it’s own this season. Part of it could the natural process of things but we wanted to say thank you to everyone for your amazing participation, encouragement gratitude and appreciation. From insightful discussions surrounding food at the CSA pick ups to encouraging and inspiring other members in the Member Group Page, to bringing your farmers a snack or prepared meal after a long harvest week. We appreciate you all and the wonderful energy you breath into this farm. Your impact is far greater than you could ever imagine on these two farmers and it feels so good to focus on all the positive things that the season will bring!

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Thank you to everyone in the CSA member group for your awesome recipes, pictures, suggestions and questions. We love seeing all the images and gaining inspiration for our own food cooking habits as well as seeing all the produce being utilized and enjoyed week by week! We also love hearing about it all at the CSA pick-ups. So thank you creating the community that we always hoped to create surrounding good, wholesome food and connect with awesome human beings who are happy, productive members of society!

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More food related inspiration….

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Edible Education with Michael Pollan : We recently found the lectures to Michael Pollan’s course from UC Berkley called “Edible Education.” Your farmers will be viewing these over the course of the next month or two. If you are interested, please watch along as it might stir up a good dialogue to talk about the future of food. Here is the link to the videos https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=EC28B5EDF74E734607 (NOTE: The first video has introductory information and may need to skip ahead) and here is the course description, “As the costs of our industrialized food system—to the environment, public health, farmers and food workers, and to our social life—become impossible to ignore, a national debate over the future of food and farming has begun. Telling stories about where food comes from, how it is produced—and how it might be produced differently—plays a critical role in bringing attention to the issue and shifting politics. Each week, a prominent figure in the debate explores: What can be done to make the food system healthier, more equitable, more sustainable? What is the role of storytelling in the process?”

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Cooked! Brian and I have ordered copies of Michael Pollan’s book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. We invite you to read along with us.

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Here are a few of our favorite documentaries:

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To Make A Farm – This one hits close to home. It was inspiring, heartwarming, hopeful and very real. A must watch! This doc explores the lives of 5 young farmers who have decided to become small-scale farmers. “exceptionally hopeful, giving us a close-range view of humanity along with a detailed portrayal of the nuts and bolts of agriculture.” The trailer can be found here… it’s available on Amazon, google play & itunes.

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Food, Inc. – This one is a few years old now but it’s one of our favorite food documentaries. This is a great example of why we do things the way we do and keep it small, safe and the best! Here’s the trailer and it’s available on Amazon, google play & itunes.

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More than Honey – These little honeybees are at the heart of our food system so why are they facing worldwide extinction? Beautifully filmed revealing a fascinating, complex world in crisis. Find the trailer here and it’s available on Amazon, google play & itunes.

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We surely hope you are enjoying all the Spring bounty. It’s been an incredible harvest thus far and we look forward to seeing -what the next 24 weeks will bring! Wish us luck with all the heat in the coming week. We have lots to keep up with even though the weather makes us move at a sluggish pace… time to seed, trellis, weed, transplant, water….. here we grow, week 4!

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Remember to bring you egg cartons, berry boxes and rubberbands… For all those who purchase eggs, please save up your WHF egg cartons for us and return them. We also reuse all berry boxes (1/2 pints, pints, quarts) and rubberbands which can be left by the sign in sheet at the CSA pick up.

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With fond regards,

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Jess & Brian

-xt

dirty hands, clean hearts

Step Forward (week 3)

Posted on 2 Jun 2015

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“The future belongs to the few of us still willing to get our hands dirty”

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Hello Friends & Farm-ily,

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Boy, it’s been an extra early Spring and looks like an early summer is here in Oregon. As much as the veggies have been loving the sun, we’re starting the week off with some clouds and even a few chances for rain! My, how we’ve missed it. We’ve been working really hard this season to have more variety earlier in the season and all the hard work is paying off as we have had lots of variety so far in the box! With broccoli, carrots, beets etc in the first few shares we’re giving ourselves a pretty good pat on the back.

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We hope you all have been enjoying the extra fresh goodness that have been harvested the first two weeks of the CSA. There are many fun things in store as we near the summer solstice…. this coming weekend looks like a hot one but we have plans for planting our melons, winter squash, pumpkins, another succession of cucumbers, squash, beans etc!

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The WHF CSA member’s page has been active and buzzing with many delicious recipes, helpful hints and encouragement. Thank you all your participation! One of our 3rd year member’s posted recently. We posed a question to her and asked what advice she would give herself as a 1^st year member. Here is what she had to say…

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This is exactly one pound of veggies. According to Michael Pollan if you eat 1 pound of fresh veggies every day you will reduce your chance of developing cancer by 50%.

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“1) Buy a copy of Tamar Adler’s book “An Everlasting Meal” and read it early and often! It’s more about cooking theory than a set of recipes and it’s very inspiring and confidence building.

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2) Inventory the fridge the night before pickup. Make Leftover Stew/Frittata or something that uses up odds and ends, tidy up the veggie drawers and put down a fresh sheet of wax paper in the bottoms.

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3) Day of pickup: Sauté up a pot of thinly sliced onions and potatoes before leaving for the farm (or do it the night before if that works better)–this will be the base of a “tops” soup.

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4) Wash all the veggies as soon as you get home. Use a 5-gallon bucket to soak big greens first. If you find a bug, yay! Bonus! This is the organic seal of approval 😉

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Taking a moment, to stop, look and be. A practice that we are working on (for our sanity) during the very busy part of our season!

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While the greens are soaking:

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5) Wash and chop all the tops from radishes, turnips, etc. and toss them in the pot with the onion potato mix you’ve got ready to go (pat yourself on the back for being so efficient!) along with some water or stock and set to simmer while you process the other veggies. When you’re done, this soup will be ready to blend up and enjoy with some buttered pan-toasted bread crumbs, sautéed radishes, a squeeze of lemon, a dollop of yogurt, whatever suggests itself…

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6) Wash the assorted other veggies then store them loose in the veggie drawer. Bagging them up makes them hard to see and easy to forget.

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7) Drain the big greens, separate the stems, and then dry the leaves. Don’t throw out the stems–they’re not garbage, they’re dinner!!! Bag some of the greens, but don’t worry too much about the tough ones; put them toward the back of the drawer and use up the tender ones first. If they aren’t in bags, you see them easier and will use them more readily–tucking them away makes them too easy to ignore until they’re sad and limp.

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The onions are sizing up. Walla walla sweets will be here in no time..

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8) Eat veggies with every meal, especially breakfast…sautéed greens reduce to nothing in size and they’re delicious and easy to get into the habit of eating. Start now!

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9) Cook once, eat at least twice–cook up a big whopping batch of whatever you’re making. Eat some now, put the rest in mason jars and freeze it. Spring/summer/fall ready-to-eat food is fabulous to pull out, warm up, and enjoy all winter long or any time you don’t feel like cooking. The ultimate in convenience food!

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10) Make friends with your knife, cutting board, sink, dish towel, salad spinner, stove, and oven. They aren’t instruments of drudgery, they are keys to liberation. The time you spend prepping and cooking food is time to think and be present in the moment–“mindfulness” is a free benefit of CSA membership, so take advantage and enjoy it!”

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We love what she had to say especially the part about how “mindfulness” is a free benefit of being a CSA member. Beyond the produce our CSA aims to improve our members quality of life so that they can live long, healthy lives and be productive members of society. Keep up the great work in the kitchen and feel free to share your recipe successes! We love hearing how everyone is utilizing all the fresh produce.

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Getting back into the harvest swing has been such a natural process this season. So far, over the course of 2 weeks we’ve harvested over 4,000lbs of produce!

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A big thanks to you all for your interest in our 100% grass fed, organic beef and pasture raised pork!

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Beef Shares. Interest was much higher than we anticipated and we quickly sold out of our Spring Beef Shares in the first few hours (wow!). Our next shares will be available in September and we will keep you in the loop!

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Pork Shares. For those CSA members who are interested, we are almost sold out of pork shares and have only 1 share available this Spring. We will have more pork shares available in August.

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June Egg Shares. We are sold out of egg shares for the month of June. We will let you all know if we have any extras over the next few weeks!

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We look forward to seeing you all this week!

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With regards,

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your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

Seeding Success (week 2)

Posted on 26 May 2015

Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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Week 2 is here and over the next few weeks everyone will be getting into the groove of the CSA (including your farmers!) Making more home cooked meals, feeling more confident in the kitchen, being open to trying new veggies! We decided to keep the encouragement high with some helpful tips for CSA success. These aren’t all the ways to be successful as each person’s journey is there own but eating well, preparing food at home, being conscious of our own food journeys, and staying inspired and curious about nourishing ourselves, our families & friends is what it’s all about. If anything, reading through these should encourage you and make you feel great about the choice to sign up for CSA and be a part of your local farm!

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Newsletter & Recipes. First and foremost, read the weekly newsletter and recipe pdf each week! There are lots of farm updates that you don’t want to miss out on.. as well as some tried and true recipes and suggestions from your farmers on how to prepare your weekly share. We love growing the food but it’s just as important to us that you are eating and preparing the food and therefore have a life changing and positive experience!

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Meal planning. This is a great way to utilize each week’s bounty. For those who have their meals planned each week you know that planning goes as follows, pick recipes, make a list, purchase groceries. That’s because we cook from the recipe, not from its ingredients. With CSA cooking the idea is to start planning your meals after you pick up your share. If meal planning seems overwhelming, start with just a few planned meals a week. This change in the process means cooking with what’s in season, and it’s a good habit to get into to eating better and feeling great.

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How to stride ahead. This is a great video showing the simplicity and ease of processing veggies when first bringing them home. Oh, the practical pleasures of eating.. of just how washing or soaking the greens, pre-roasting/cooking, & storing veggies can make for many more homemade meals in a busy week, increase the longevity of the produce and make cooking enjoyable (as it should be!)

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Roots! Root veggies (beets, carrots etc) and other bulb veggies (radish, turnip, kohlrabi, onions, fennel etc) all have leafy greens attached. Make sure to cut the greens and store them separately so that they stop drawing moisture out of the veggie (if your carrots, radishes, beets etc get floppy.. now you know why).

Our bagged greens should keep wonderfully during the week in the “Bio-Bags.” One feature of the BioBag is that it “breathes” without leaking. This unique benefit allows excess moisture to evaporate, which keeps fruits and vegetables fresher, longer. For other items, it’s important to prep bunched greens and lettuce heads by washing, chopping and storing them in a tightly sealed container with a moist paper towel or try washing them wrapping them in a moist towel/paper towel and putting them in a bag. Otherwise the refrigerator has its way with them and sucks out all their moisture… leaving much to be desired.

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Freezing and canning. Our Week 4 newsletter from last season is full of helpful information and places to start. Some suggestions include: The Fermentation Bible: Wild Fermentation – by Sandor Ellix Katz, Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round, Ball Blue Book of Preserving etc. Don’t forget that although you’re enjoying your veggies now there’s something satisfying about saving your extras for later in the year! We are on our last dozen jars of homemade tomato sauce and can’t express how lovely it is to pop open a jar of our summer tomatoes!

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Save those “scraps”! Save the stems from the kale, collards, chard, spinach, the thick stalks from the broccoli, the ends and peels of carrots, tops of peppers, radish stems etc… Wrap up the scraps as you accumulate them (a pyrex or a bag with a moist towel works) and stash them in the fridge. At the end of the week you can make a delicious stock. Some folks make a gallon sized bag of “stock items” and freeze it for later… Check out this helpful blog post with all the details! Or, try out this recipe by Tamar Adler for Garlicky Leaf Stem and Core Pesto! Or, as one of our awesome members pointed out – make a quick pickle out of the stems (chard, beet, kale, collard stems etc)! Pickled stuff is delicious with all meals.

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Enjoy eating new vegetables! One of our greatest examples of this is the amount of people who grew up on boiled to death beets.. or worse, canned tasteless beets. When people try the beets from the farm in a new way (roasted, in a salad, as burgers or even in brownies) they change their minds and there are so many things that contribute to that. Mostly, it’s the openness of trying something new or trying something in a new way. Branch out and explore your palette and see what tastes great to you. You have your farmers to consult and a wealth of resources at your fingertips so don’t hesitate to be inspired!

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Join the Working Hands Farm CSA Member Group on Facebook. The WHF Facebook Group is a safe place (a private group) for Working Hands Farm CSA members to share recipe ideas, kitchen prep successes, food preservation ideas etc! Check your email (titled, ‘WHF Member Page’) for the link!

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Get inspired by Seasonal Cookbooks & Recipe Blogs. Books, such as, An Everlasting Meal, Vegetable Literacy, From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables, The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook, Simply in Season or The Flavor Bible . Blogs, such as, The Year In Food, Smitten Kitchen, Happy Yolks or any of the others listed in the week 3 newsletter from past seasons!

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Cooked! This is something Farmer Brian listened to while working on the tractor over the weekend. It’s Michael Pollan talking at the Philadelphia Library about his book ‘Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.’ We thought it was a fascinating lecture on our relationship with food and cooking and very worth a listen. Sure to inspire and enjoy! Click on the link to give it a listen.

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Eating in season! We live in such a fertile part of the US and should relish in all the wonderful things that grow where we live. Waiting for those first seasonal crops can be hard after a winter of root veggies, brassicas, soups & bread but everything tastes that much sweeter (because it’s fresh, in season and grown just down the road in the dirt & in the open air!) It’s easy to enjoy the conveniences of the grocery store (that’s what it’s there for) but we tell ya that waiting all winter and spring for that first seasonal vine ripened tomato is the best thing for ya! -

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Getting your fridge ready for fresh goodies! Take the time the night before to make space for a new box of goodies, and to take inventory of any veggies that would love to be used up in a ‘end of the week’ stirfry, curry, soup, roasted veg, kale chips, smoothies, or green pesto! Making vegetable stock is always a happy solution for extra veggies – rough chop them, simmer them in a few quarts of water (a cup or two of veggies to one quart of water) for 30 – 40 minutes, and you have stock. Strain it, freeze it, and so versatile! Flavorful, rich in vitamins and minerals..

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More veggies, please. Add or double the amount of vegetables in your meals! See how many different vegetables you can pack in to what you’re already cooking.

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Eat or drink vegetables for breakfast! For breakfast try a simple sautee with greens & garlic, biscuits, with eggs, in a quiche or veggie pancakes. Drink your veggies! There are so many great veggie smoothies out there – whatever you have give it a go!

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As your CSA farmers, throughout the 28-week season we provide you with the most nutrient rich, organic, thoughtfully-grown–with-love, fresh picked & seasonal produce! We strive to…. grow produce according to the seasons and to the best of our abilities. To introduce you to new varieties of veggies & include delicious ways to prepare them! To encourage you to enjoy your time in the kitchen, be playful and to have fun. Each week that you pick up your crate full of bounty we pass the torch to you. We’re a part of each others food journey and we look forward to hearing week to week about what you’re cooking, what was eaten first and what you really enjoyed. It completes our food journey here on the farm to hear and see how the hard work is being utilized and enjoyed!

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caraflexbeansbrco –

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Remember to return berry boxes, rubber bands and WHF egg cartons! We may have some A LA CARTE EGGS available this week at the CSA pick-up. First come, first serve. Your farmers will be there to assist you. $9.50/dozen Please bring checks only. And check your emails soon for information regarding our Beef and Pork shares!

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See you soon!

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Our kindest regards,

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

Here We Grow 2015 (week 1)

Posted on 18 May 2015

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Hi Friends & Farm-ily,

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Let the 2015 harvest season begin! We are so happy and appreciative of all your support and encouragement over the last 5 months (since our 2015 season started). It’s been months in the making and we look forward to the season beginning and to celebrate with a bountiful harvest this week!

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Flow of the CSA. Over the next few weeks we will all begin to get into the flow of pick ups, harvests, seasons, you name it. Spring is a great time to adapt-to and learn new habits, to eat seasonally and fresh. We remind you to be patient, to be excited and to enjoy the ride. There are so many decisions that one person must make everyday – a daunting task at times – revel in those food choices your farmers and the changing of the seasons are making for you each week. Get creative & be inspired. Ask questions & be open – you’ll be surprised what you might find as the season unfolds.

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Enjoy all the benefits of eating fresh (picked THAT morning), eating seasonally (sorry, no tomatoes in May), and local (your local farmer, Brian and I, need the support of our community)!ots of sun, longer days and warmer temps means happy, happy plants!

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Farm Pick Up Time. Farm Pick Ups take place on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday from 4 – 7pm (please double check on your assigned day). Note: Bi-Weekly share members pick up their produce every other week throughout the course of the 28 week CSA season (a total of 14 shares). Members will pick up their share on weeks 1,3,5,7, etc… or 2,4,6,8, etc… depending on your assigned CSA start date. It’s important to pick up between 4-7pm on your assigned day (and not a minute before) as it’s just the two of us and we harvest everything fresh that morning so your farmer’s need the time to harvest, wash and set up the pick up area.

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Parking. There is a nice big parking area for a convenient and stress free pick-up. Park thoughtfully as folks tend to come in waves and the parking will fill up fast! There are also children and families who will be moving from the pick-up area to the parking lot so please drive slowly. We are located on a busy country road so please be patient coming and going from the farm (oh the pros and cons of living on a main country road!)

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Pick-Up Area. We are breathing new life into a very old and forgotten farm property so you will see it become more and more beautiful as the seasons and years go on… 2.5 years ago all that remained on this property was the old farmhouse by the road. The CSA Member Area is now located on the side of this original farmhouse (“Freda’s House”) built in the early 1900’s. Thank you for growing with us and for being a part of this process!

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The Pick-Up. Please sign in before grabbing your goodies. You will enter the member area and move counterclockwise, packing your own share with the allotted amounts of vegetables written next to each varietal. Please bring 2-3 reusable shopping bags to put your produce in. We recommend bringing a bag or two even for folks who are purchasing a crate (for bunched greens etc).

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Pick-Up is also a great opportunity to meet other members and share over the common bonds of food, health and community! If you are unable to come pick up your share from 4-7pm on your assigned day, you can either arrange for a friend or family member to pick it up for you. If you cannot find anyone to pick-up the box on your behalf please give us 48hr notice (emails are best).

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Be sure to visit our FAQ’s for any other questions you may have: https://workinghandsfarm.com/q-a/

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CSA Crates. For those who of you who reserved a WHF crate, they will be ready to collect on your first CSA pick-up! If you have not yet paid for your crate, please bring a check for $25 and one of your farmers would be happy to assist you.

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Egg cartons, Berry Boxes, Rubberbands etc. For all those who purchase eggs, please save up your WHF egg cartons for us and return them. We also reuse all berry boxes (1/2 pints, pints, quarts) and rubberbands so you can return those as well. We are a thoughtful farm in terms of minimizing waste and reuse what we can! There will be a place to return these items by the sign-in sheet.

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WHF Pasture-raised Pork, Grass Fed Beef & Pasture-raised Eggs. We are excited to share that we will begin taking Pork and Beef Share orders NEXT WEEK! We will email you early next week with all the details. For egg orders, check out the email that was sent out this morning “WHF Monthly Egg Shares” for all the details.

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CSA Recipes. There will be 2-4 recipes emailed to you with each weekly share. These recipes have been tried and tested (and doubly approved by your farmers)! If you happen to try a different recipe with some of the veggies from that Week’s Share feel free to send it our way so that we too can try it and share it with others! Check out the CSA Cookoff, Food Preservation Tips from your farmers, and some of our favorite food blogs for more ideas!

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Working Hands Farm CSA Group on Facebook! Share your CSA recipe success… Invites (emails) have been sent out to join Working Hands Farm CSA Group on Facebook. A place for Working Hands Farm CSA members to share recipe ideas, kitchen prep successes, food preservation ideas etc! Check your email or visit this link to join the group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/696698667079657/ Participation is highly encouraged 🙂

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COOKBOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:

From Asparagus to Zucchini – A book made for CSA MEMBERS! This book is a great guide to cooking farm-fresh seasonal produce just for CSA members. 420 original recipes written by farmers, members & cooks who love veggies in Wisconsin as well as the best preservation methods for the different kinds of veggies.

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Farm-Fresh and Fast – This book was created by the same CSA coalition that put together From Asparagus to Zucchini. Even more recipes, a fancier layout and preservation methods.

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An Everlasting Meal – I love this book written by Tamar Adler. It breaks down cooking and preparing foods in the most simple and delicious of ways. Great recipes for using what you have, wherever you are.

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Vegetable Literacy – A beautiful cookbook written by Deborah Madison featuring over 300 vegetable recipes.

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The America’s Test Kitchen Complete Vegetarian Cookbook – ATK’s newest cookbook with 700+ recipes in this comprehensive collection show you inventive and uncomplicated techniques for making boldly flavored main dishes, appetizers, soups and stews, pasta, pizzas, and more. With over 700 recipes you’re surely never to run out of ideas!

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Farm livestock. All of our members will have the opportunity to see/visit the livestock on our farm during our to-be-scheduled CSA Farm Day. Keep in mind that almost all of our livestock are kept inside of electrified fences so parents please keep a close eye on you children during this day. On a weekly basis, feel free to say hello to our wee farm greeters and blackberry management team – our goats – the “Lost Boys” – Tootles, Nibs, Slightly & Curly. The woven wire fence enclosing them in on the parking lot side is not electrified.

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Volunteering, CSA Farm Day, Pumpkin Day, Newsletters etc. Throughout the season we offer opportunities to volunteer, enjoy a CSA Member Farm Day, pumpkin day etc all on the farm. Also, to keep our farm-ily connected to the farm, the seasons and what it takes to grow food locally we send a weekly farm newsletter so be sure to read the whole thing through! We post frequently on instagram, facebook to share in our day-to-day and to stay connected with people (as you can imagine we spend 99% of our time with vegetables and 2-4 legged critters ha!) All of these opportunities are a great way to see the farm, chat with your farmers, meet other CSA members in the community and enjoy the seasons on the farm.

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Thank you again for all your support! It’s been a busy Spring and there is much anticipation to get this season started. We have another exciting season ahead with over 70 different types of vegetables and several different varieties of each (it’s never a dull moment on the farm!) Your farmers have been working harder than ever to get the season started early and have more variety in the shares early on!

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Enjoy the leafy greens and cool weather brassica crops that you will find in the first few week’s of the CSA (the Spring seasons natural cleanse… after a Winter full of root crops and heavier foods). As well as the sun sweetened strawberries whose season is never long enough! The greens will be tender, delicious and untouched by the heat that summer brings. Enjoy them while they are here! The bounty will continue to grow and grow and grow as we near the longer, warmer days of Summer! Thanks again for all your support and we look forward to sharing in the bounty with you this season.

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With kind regards,

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Your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

The Root of the Root

Posted on 5 Mar 2015

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“here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)” – e.e. cummings

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Hello friends & farm-ily,

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February was a whirlwind month on the farm for these two farmers. It was a month of extremes. In the garden, it started off pretty rainy but the rest of the month’s weather proved to be absolutely beautiful. With all the sunshine and dry days we’ve been crossing projects off the list left and right. Our propagation greenhouse is brimming with our first starts of the season (kale, broccoli, beets, lettuce, collards, chicory, onions, cabbage, herbs etc… to name a few). We’ve begun working up the soil and have already planted our first crops of carrots, beets, bunching onions, spinach, peas and fava beans. In the garden, we have never felt more prepared, productive and ahead of schedule and it feels really good.

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At the beginning of the month, during an incredibly rainy time, our sweet Rosie had her first litter of piglets and has been an extremely successful first-time mama. She gave birth to 12 healthy babies and they all continue to grow and thrive. We have been most impressed with Miss Rosie (she’s ‘some pig’) and look forward to cultivating that relationship more and more over time. The heritage pigs have been a great compliment to our small farm and we constantly feel inspired by life through all the animals and plants that we tend to and keep.

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The late Winter/early Spring is a magical time on the farm – full of endless possibilities. Getting the chance to work outside so early in the season feels incredible. To move the body, build, till, mend, fix and cross things off the list. But at the beginning of last week we encountered a major setback on the farm that would impact our beef herd. As many of you know, just a week ago, on February 23rd in the wee hours of the morning, our herd was involved in a terrible freak car accident (for more of the story, you can read about it here). Three of our cows were injured and two of them (our steers ages 16 months & 7 months) were so badly injured that we had to put them down. Thank the Lord the driver of the vehicle was okay but we suffered an immeasurable loss that morning.. physically, mentally, emotionally and financially…What had spooked them? Why they had bent their brand new Behlen gate like a banana and ventured all the way to the road was a question we could not answer. To see them there, in the dark hours of that morning, was like a bad nightmare. It felt senseless and lacking purpose. So many hours, days, months, even years had been put into the care of these animals and it felt like – just like that – they were gone and it was out of our control. As a fellow farmer said, we are “so sorry for this loss of their lives; your labor and their companionship.” We love our cows and truly believe they are the most amazing creatures and, as farmers, our hearts have never felt more broken.

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We’re learning though that something’s in life are just out of your control – no matter how hard you work or how much care you can put into something.  The afternoon, after we buried the two cows under the oak tree, I told Brian, “there is no amount of magic in the world that can keep us from experiencing such pain, but it is BECAUSE of the magic that we don’t give up.” We hurt and it’s hard but we will keep the faith cause it’s all we got. I suppose it is these moments that are a catalyst and reminder to truly enjoy the moments in between such horror and tragedy. Enjoy every moment. Be present and love well.

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The root of the root. In the most challenging of times you must pick yourself up and venture forward and do better. Often times it is after life’s darkest moments that we find a truer, more meaningful sense of life and self. In the wake of their death we have found so much life and love and inspiration within our community. Friends, farm-ily members, fellow farmers and admirers from afar have stepped up to help us out: emotionally, spiritually and even financially. We are in total awe, appreciation and admiration for the community that surrounds us. It has been our saving grace and inspiration during this time of sadness and tragedy. We truly feel touched by every comment, “like”, email, note, and donation that has been sent our way over the past week. “We are rooting for you!” We read every single comment and email that we received. It filled our hearts and left us feeling humbled by all the love that was shown to us. Just knowing that other people are thinking of us gives us strength, inspiration and helps us feel even more connected to our community (near and far) and to the root of the root of why we’re farmers.

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As tragic as this accident is there is a silver lining. We have never felt more connected, aware and inspired as both farmers and individuals. Thank you to everyone who has helped – whether it was a kind message or a generous donation… your outpouring support and love has truly opened our eyes to all the goodness that life can bring when you open yourself up to it. Life is a balancing act and, while we have felt a wide range of emotions this past week, we mostly feel grateful, humbled, connected and inspired to grow better.

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Ready to welcome Spring... Spring is surely is an exciting time of the year with many endless possibilities ahead. Your farmers have been extra busy planning out a year of delicious seasonal crops. We are getting hungry for the 2015 harvest and are looking forward to the delicious bounty in the coming months. Every growing season is different but we work very hard to grow better with each passing year.

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Thank you to everyone who has signed up for the Working Hands Farm 2015 CSA season. We have only a couple dozen veggie shares available so be sure to sign up soon! You can read all about our 2015 CSA here – for the Who, What, When, Where, Why & How (much). As farmers we’ve really come to love the CSA model as members share both the risks and benefits of food production with their farmers and it keeps us all very connected to where our food is coming from, how it’s being grown, who your farmers are, the organic practices we use…. etc

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Share the CSA Love (a note from your farmers): Word of mouth is the best way to help us grow and sustain our small farm. Please encourage interested friends, family, neighbors & community etc in signing up for their 2015 CSA share. Many thanks in advance for your help from your farmers at Working Hands.

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Our hearts are full as we enter the month of March and we thank you all again for your commitment, support, inspiration and encouragement. We are your farmers, who are dedicated to growing you the best, most delicious, safe, nutrient dense, farm fresh food and we believe in excellence as our standard – no compromises. Thank you for believing in us and thank you for investing in yourselves and your health. We look forward to growing for you all in the 2015 CSA season.

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“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.” – Wendell Berry From a great reminder post about gratitude called, Gratitude on the Farm.

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With our fondest regards,

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your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

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Working Hands Farm CSA 2015

Posted on 1 Jan 2015

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Happy New Years friends & farm-ily!

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We hope the winter and holiday season is treating everyone well. Although the winter has its perks, your farmers are feeling inspired and excited for Spring and another year of farming ahead! We’ve been keeping busy with many projects around the farm to get ready for the coming season. We still can’t believe we get to do this every year. We love what we do and couldn’t be more appreciative of the community around us. We are so excited for the endless possibilities that 2015 holds.

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As for this year’s winter (so far), it’s surely been a wet and mild one compared to last winter. Our annual pond has formed where the creek and Tualatin River meet giving a nice waterfront view for our pigs and cows. As always, we are taking advantage of the mild days and are plowing ahead with projects and are VERY excited for the coming season on the farm. Spring is just around the corner (thank goodness the days are now getting longer) and this month we’re gearing up to make our seed order, begin seed starting and crop planning in anticipation of our greatest year yet! We’re so excited to continue on in this journey and to share it all with you.

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As always. a great many thanks for all your appreciation, support and love through the most productive CSA season we’ve experienced to date! – 2014 was a season for the books – over the course of our 28-week 2014 CSA season your (two) farmers harvested and distributed 60,000lbs of freshly picked, organic, nutrient rich, grown with love produce to our CSA members. We could not be more proud to inform you that during the 2014 CSA season our members paid $1.74 per pound for their fruits and veggies! By investing in the CSA we are able to invest in you! Every year we perform a cost comparison by adding up the cost of the produce in each weeks CSA crate and comparing it to our local organic markets and in a typical year our members save in excess of $300 -$400 on their produce. Not that we think our produce can be compared to that of the super market as ours is harvested by either farmer Jess or farmer Brian and given to you the very same day – you can’t beat the freshness of our produce! Also, a store can’t give you the sense of adventure and community that a local farm can. With that being said…

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CSA Sign-Up Starts TODAY! 2014 was not only our busiest season but it was also our most productive year yet (over 60,000 lbs of produce harvested and distributed) and we have a feeling that 2015 will be even better! As you know, our 2015 sign up starts TODAY January 1st with a 2-week priority sign-up for our previous 2014 CSA members. We will be limiting our CSA to the first 100 members who complete the sign up process so we encourage you to sign up as soon as possible. The first 10 members who sign up and pay in full will receive a FREE WHF crate!

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2015 CSA Info. You can read all about our 2015 CSA here – for the Who, What, When, Where, Why & How (much). We have some exciting new CSA updates in store for you all so please read carefully (below)… As farmers we’ve really come to love the CSA model as members share both the risks and benefits of food production and it keeps us all very connected to where our food is coming from and the practices we use.

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Two types of shares: Weekly & Bi-Weekly

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Weekly CSA Shares (our best value CSA share!) We estimate that our Weekly Shares feed 2-3 adults (or a family of 4) that enjoy eating their veggies! Starting in May, for 28 weeks you will pick up your share of seasonal produce each week at the farm. Shares are 8-16 different items depending on the season and average to be 26lbs per share. With every Weekly CSA you will be emailed a detailed list of vegetables and 4-6 recipes that correspond with the veggies in that weeks share.

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Bi-Weekly CSA Shares (new this year!) This share is ideal for individuals or for small households that are, shall we say, learning to love their veggies! With the Bi-Weekly Share you are investing in exactly half the produce of the Weekly Share as you will come and collect your bounty every other week (a total of 14 shares). Shares are 8-16 different items depending on the season and average to be 26lbs per share. Starting in May, members will pick up their share on weeks 1,3,5,7, etc… or 2,4,6,8, etc… depending on your assigned CSA start date (the farmers assign the start date, you choose your pick up ‘day’). With every Bi-Weekly CSA share you will receive recipes and tips on how to store, prepare and fall in love with vegetables! Note: Our expectation is that each Bi-Weekly share will contain enough veggies to meet the needs of an individual or small household for one week per pick up.

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CSA Member Benefits:

In addition to your weekly fruits and veggies you will receive a weekly newsletter full of beautiful photos and updates about the farm.
Over the course of the season you will have the opportunity to visit the farm at our CSA Member Farm-Day scheduled for June & our CSA Member Pumpkin Day set for late September!
Exclusive access to our Working Hands Farm CSA Members page to share recipe ideas, kitchen prep successes, food preservation ideas etc. You have permission to get creative in the kitchen!
WHF Grass-Fed Beef, Pasture-Raised Pork, Pasture-Raised Chicken, Pasture-Raised Eggs! As CSA members you will have the opportunity to buy our 100% organic, grass-fed black angus beef, pasture-raised pork, pasture-raised chicken and pasture-raised eggs.

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Market-Style CSA Pick Up At Working Hands Farm we use a Market-Style CSA Pick Up to display our weekly bounty that is reminiscent of a beautiful farmers market stand! During CSA pick up you get to pack your own share with the allotted amounts of vegetables written next to each varietal. It is very user friendly and FUN! Members have the opportunity to purchase one of our WHF farm crates OR bring 2-3 reusable bags to put their produce in.

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Fruits and Veggies After many seasons of trialing a diverse selection of veggie and fruit varieties we are feeling more confident than ever in our experience (which plants grew the best, produced the most, tasted the best and survived throughout all the seasons!) The varieties chosen last year were some of our most productive to date! We have selected the very best from the past 5 seasons and are excited to incorporate a few new varieties, from local seed companies, that we know our members are going to love. We will be investing in some new perennial herbs and fruit crops like apples, pears etc.. for years down the road, as well as more of our favorites staples – strawberries and raspberries.

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Eggs The ladies of Chateau Poulet appreciate all the love and support this past season. They are raised on fresh pasture as well as an organic, non-GMO feed (no soy, no corn) made in the Pacific NW by Scratch and Peck – a local feed supply that we are proud to support and share the goal of feeding our communities the best possible product (their tag line is “you are what your animals eat!”). We believe in our farming practices and in offering the best possible product to our members and community – a product that you simply can’t find in the store. Everything we do on the farm, we do it out of love for nature, the animals, our environment and the health and safety of our community.

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An important note from your farmers: After sharply rising feed costs over the past three years we have decided that in order to make laying hens a sustainable aspect of our farm we are downsizing our flock of egg layers. Instead of offering egg shares, our dozens will be available a la carte at the CSA pick up on a first come, first serve basis. We have also raised our prices to $9.50 per dozen as this ensures we make at least a $1 per dozen eggs sold. Make no mistake: these are the highest quality eggs you can buy and take it from your farmers they are worth every penny. Remember you are supporting a food system that does not make compromises! One that pays the farmers that grow the certified organic, non-GMO grains, the local company that distributes the BEST POSSIBLE product and also the farmers who grow, manage, tend to and keep the flock.

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Grass-Fed Beef, Pasture-Raised Pork and Pasture-Raised Chicken As CSA members you will have the opportunity to buy our 100% organic, grass-fed black angus beef, pasture-raised pork and pasture-raised chicken. These products are very limited and the sell out extremely fast. We will let you know when these products are available throughout the CSA season and we sell them on a first come, first serve basis.

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Sign-Up & Deposit. Once you’ve read about the 2015 CSA season you can sign-up online. In order to reserve your share we require a $250 deposit that is non-refundable and is applied to the total cost of the CSA. The deposit is due within two weeks of submitting our online CSA form. Once your deposit of $250 is received we will send you a confirmation email welcoming you to our CSA program. We encourage those members who can, to pay more than the deposit upon signing up as this helps your farmers absorb the initial expenses that happen at the beginning of the season. Our farm is a livable wage farm and by being part of our farm-ily you are directly investing in a sustainable agricultural model that doesn’t make compromises! Because of your investment we will be able to provide safe, delicious and nutritious food for many years to come. Remember that our CSA operates on a first come, first serve basis so sign up ASAP!

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Quick Links: 2015 CSA Season (the Who, What, Where, Why, When & How Much) & our 2015 Sign-Up Form. If you have any further questions be sure to check out our FAQs section or send us an email. We look forward to seeing you all at the start of the season! Here’s to good food and an amazing community!

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Sign-Up Here!

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And a quick – but very important favor – for your farmers… word of mouth is the best way to help us grow and sustain our small farm. Please encourage interested friends, family, neighbors & community etc… in signing up for their CSA share. Many thanks for your help from all of us at Working Hands.

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Check out this link to our favorite photos from our 2014 season: it’s amazing how much can happen in a year and there’s so much to be thankful for! Enjoy this compilation of our best shots of the year.

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Happiest of days to you all!

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Jess, Brian & the rest of the farm-ily…

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dirty hands, clean hearts –

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Posts tagged “dirty hands clean hearts”

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Posted on 5 Mar 2015

“here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)” – e.e. cummings

Support your local farm by sharing!

Posted on 1 Jan 2015

Support your local farm by sharing!