If you forgot to bring your crates back last week, not to worry, we will still except them this week 🙂

Go put them in your car right now!!!!

Meet your farmer

Oh hey! My name is Natalie Leder and I am lucky enough to be one of the full time farmers tending this bountiful land. An Alabama native at heart, you can find me roaming around Rainshadow any given day of the week hollering Roll Tide and exclaiming some form of exaggerated southern twang. I graduated from the University of Alabama and worked as a field botanist for a few years before giving up my career to dirtbag around the country…despite my mother’s best protests.

After some time, I found myself settling in the middle-of-nowhere-Kentucky where I transformed a little plot of yard into a garden. It was there that I developed an interest for all the things that come with growing food: the pleasure of a slow morning drinking coffee while pulling the endless number of weeds, getting dirt stuck under my nails while transplanting tiny new life into moist soil, savoring the insurmountable first taste of a season’s tomato.

That little garden plot in Kentucky set me on a whirlwind of life changes that led me here.

Photo credit: Amanda Photographic

The Rainshadow Rodeo

Turns out, it’s still August! The harvesting tsunami is still raging, the weeds are still unsightly, and the heat is coming back for a 9th round. Through all of this, our crew is feeling like a burly team of oxen, working together to grind against the bit that is summer. Each week, we become more efficient, more systematic, more timely, and above all, more stoked. We are dancing around like gosh darn farming antelopes, bouncing from one task to the next with an infectious energy of pure, unadulterated psych. It is absolutely inspiring.

Year’s first winter squash. (photo credit: Nat Leder.)

As the watermelons get bigger (the first are approaching, ooo wee!), and the winter squash continues to swell, something much smaller is beginning to make her appearance. She is the keeper of all things family, the vessel that holds all the unseen information. She is the beginning and the end.

We’re talking seeds here people! In the words of Vandana Shiva,

“Seeds are not things. They are the embodiment of centuries of evolutionary intelligence, and they hold within them the potential of thousands of years of creative evolution. It is our ethical and ecological duty to liberate the seeds and our farmers. We have a duty to defend our freedom and protect open source seeds as a commons. We have the duty and the right to defend life on Earth” (Who Really Feeds the World).

When you support your local organic farmers, you’re not only supporting the farm itself and the people who tend to it. You are supporting the idea of “organic”: that the world deserves a fighting chance in the construct of food freedom. Freedom, in part, of GMOs and patent control on a life source as old as time.

That freedom begins in the tiny little powerhouse that is a seed. Several of the tomatoes you buy from us come from last year’s saved seed. The melons you’ll soon be tasting did too. This year many of our crops came from saved seeds including spinach, onions, carrots, eggplants, peppers, corn, fennel, beans, cilantro, dill, potatoes, and tomatillos.

Seeds hold within them a genetic makeup of the environment they’re grown in; seed saved from a bean grown in Central Oregon will be that much more adjusted to growing in heat and drought the following year, and therefore have an even greater chance of thriving. We often pick the firsts of the season to encourage early ripening rates the following year. Fruits that look great and have high tolerance to mold or pests are also selected. Walking around the farm looking for the best of the best is one of my favorite things to do.

Seed saving is fun and it’s something anyone can do! The best seed saving comes from the fruits you still get to eat after saving, like watermelons! Just spit out the seeds, rinse them, dry them, and bam! Seed for next season. Some fruits require you to leave them on the plant until they become huge and discolored, (inedible but awesome in its own way), such as eggplants. Tomatoes prefer being cut in half, seeds and pulp scooped into a cup with a little water and allowed to ferment for 3 days before rinsing and drying. Spinach likes to go to flower, then seed, then completely dry out before harvesting into a vessel of your choosing.

We are in the midst of harvest season and we still have plants growing! When we harvest carrots we pull an entire row at once. Our peppers are just arriving and ripening. Their numbers should increase over the next couple weeks. Tomatillos, those paper wrapped cousins of tomatoes, are great for making salsa verde and adding to enchiladas. Now is the time to put them up for the winter. Olive, Nat’s dog, helping harvest kale. (Photo Credit: Nat Leder.)

The Salmon are running again!

Recipes

‘Tis the season for GOOD EATING! As Michael Pollan beautifully recites, “daily, our eating turns nature into culture, transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds” (The Omnivore’s Dilemma). That’s the real reason we’re all here right? We love to eat and we love to eat good food that makes us happy and healthy. It’s an ancient pleasure that we are able to revel in every day. Since we’ve got some greens headed your way this week, I thought you may enjoy something tasty but easy and something perhaps a little more unique to try.

Fennel Upside-Down Cake
from the Food Network blog

Ingredients
Fennel:
1/2 cup sugar
2 small or 1 large bulbs fennel, halved and sliced into 1/8-inch half moons
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Cake:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus 1 teaspoon for greasing pan
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon fennel pollen or ground fennel seed
Sauce:
1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
1 tablespoon lemon juice.
Fennel fronds, for garnish

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch cake pan with 1 teaspoon lard or oil of your choosing.
2. For the fennel: In a medium saucepan over medium heat, dissolve the sugar in 3/4 cup water, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Add the fennel, salt and lemon juice, and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the liquid is reduced by three-quarters, about 15 minutes. Spread the candied fennel evenly over the bottom of the prepared cake pan. Set aside to cool slightly.
3. For the cake: Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, olive oil, lemon zest and fennel pollen. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and whisk until just combined. Pour the batter evenly over the candied fennel. Place in the preheated oven and bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean, 30 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then invert the cake onto a plate to cool completely.
4. For the sauce: In a small bowl, whisk together the raspberry jam, lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of warm water.
5. Sprinkle the cake with a few fennel fronds. Slice into wedges and serve with a spoonful of the sauce.

1. Preheat oven to 425F.
2. Slice zucchini into 1/4″ slices and beat egg.
3. Mix panko and shredded parmesan in a 2 to 1 ratio.
4. Dip zucchini slices in egg and then dip into panko and shredded parmesan mix. Place on a cookie sheet. Bake zucchini slices for 15-20 minutes
5. Place zucchini slices on a nice dish, top with sliced tomatoes and snipped or chopped basil. Serve while warm.

Veggie IDs

We have smoked salmon too!

Add-Ons

Email us if you would like us to pack you anything extra from the store for pickup with your CSA. You can pay when you pick up at the Farm Store or our Farm Stand at the Bend Farmers Market.

Pickles/Fermented Veggies:

• Pickled Roma Dilly Beans: $16/quart
• Zucchini relish, Spicy Cucumber Pickle Spears, and Pickled beets: $9/pint
• Cucumber Dill Pickles and Pickled Kohlrabi: $16/quarts
• Purple Sauerkraut and Regular Sauerkraut: $5/pint
• Kimchi: $9/pint
• Fermented Beets and Carrots: $16/quart
• Red Fermented Hot Sauce (medium) and Hot AF Fermented Hot Sauce: $8/5 fl oz

Honey: $10/pint; $20/quart

Flours and Wheat Berries:

• 2 lb bags hard red, hard white, soft white flour: $5/bag
• 2 lb bag buckwheat flour: $7/bag
• 2 lb bag corn flour: $12/bag
• 2 lb bag rolled Tibetan black barley: $5/bag
• 3 lb bag hard red wheat berries $5/bag

Meat: 

• $5/lb: beef liver
• $8/lb: ground beef
• $10/lb: chuck roast, brisket, and short ribs
• $11/lb: cubed round steak
• $12: Top Sirloin Steaks
• $14/lb: Rib Steak, t-bone, ribeye
• $15/lb: boneless New York Strip

Dried Herbs:

• Medicinal Herbs: Yarrow, Calendula, Catnip, Chamomile, Lavender, Lemon Balm, Mint, Rose: $6/oz

Roll Tide! See you on Wednesday!

Please email us let us know if you can’t make Wednesday or if someone else is picking up for you. We can’t wait to see you on Wednesday!