2017 CSA ~ Week 11
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS:
We will continue to offer bulk flats of strawberries, although the yield may decrease a bit in the next couple of weeks….if you don’t have a deadline for when you need them, reserve your flat and I’ll send them when available. The price is $32.50 per 12 pint flat.
WHATS IN YOUR SHARE THIS WEEK:
- Green Beans
- Beets
- Carrots
- Broccoli
- Cucumbers
- Walls Walla Onion
- Tomatoes
- Strawberries
Some Sites Only
- Cherry Tomatoes
- Eggplant
- Zucchini
- Cauliflower
RECIPES:
Zucchini Stacks – Parmesan Style
Strawberry-Cucumber Salad w/Lemon Cream
What a glorious start to the week! After so much heat, for such a long time (okay, for us Oregonians anyway!), it was a welcome pleasure to have some of the wet stuff visit us over the weekend. While I’m sure those of you that had camping plans, or a yard sale going on, it might not have been welcomed, but our earth sure needed a “drink” and I’m sure it helped the wildfire situation, even the tiniest bit. The farm felt fresh and clean this morning, even though we were all a touch more bundled up than of late. Great weather to be harvesting strawberries and sensitive crops. We’re back to full on sunshine now, and that feels good too! Summer….gotta love it! May it stick around for a long time…..
What do you think of this spider! Farmer Kiegan discovered it in his irrigation travels this morning. It’s an Argiope aurantia…..Argiope is Latin for “with bright face” (Cameron 2005); aurantia, in Latin, is an adjective meaning “orange-colored.” It is common in gardens, orchards, forest edges, old fields, and farms.
A large, vertical, orb-shaped web is usually built amid tangled grasses, weeds, briars, and other vegetation, from near ground level to about three feet above it. The web is usually decorated with a bold, zigzag band of silk called a stabilimentum. The spider occupies the center of the web, hanging head down. The web is usually eaten and rebuilt every day, with the exceptions of the periods around molting and egg-laying. The spider will rapidly shake and vibrate in its web as a defensive strategy to scare predators off. The shaking blurs the spider and makes it appear bigger than it really is. Those are blackberry leaves in the background, so you can get an idea of it’s size. The morning dew looks like little jewels all around the web.
Anyone see the Perseid meteor shower this weekend? This past weekend was supposed to be the peak viewing time, although hampered a bit with the waning moon still so bright. You still might be able to see a few “shooting stars”, as it’s supposed to be visible through August 24th. Find a dark spot, in the early morning hours just before dawn and or just after sunset, before the moon rises, and get comfy….look into the Northeast sky. Maybe you’ll get lucky! The Perseid meteor shower is really the debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle which passes us by every 133 years….
SOLAR ECLIPSE:
Where will you be for the Solar Eclipse? I will be viewing it from a friends property just outside of Corvallis, so hopefully I’ll have something to share for the next blog…..I have never been in a Total Solar Eclipse before, and probably won’t ever again in my lifetime, so I’m going for it. Most of the farmers will be here watching it from the fields…I’ll be sure to share our experiences with you next week!
FEATURE FARMER PROFILE:
This week we’d like to feature Farmer Kyle Ryan. Kyle has been working on Winter Green Farm on and off since 2011. He was born in New Jersey, brought up in Boston, with a little time spent in London when he was around 8 years old. He studied Environmental Science in college, but became dissatisfied with book learning and wanted to get out and do something.
He came to Oregon to study at Aprovecho Sustainability Education Center for several years, and that’s where he got inspired to get involved in agriculture. He worked first on Slo Farm, helping with fruit production/harvest. He came to Winter Green Farm in 2011, and has taken on many tasks here from harvest & production, to irrigation and this year, helping with the CSA. Working on Winter Green inspired him to finish his degree and he attained his degree in Land Use Sustainability from Goddard College, working mainly from home, and visiting their Seattle and Vermont campuses when required.
I asked Kyle what he enjoyed most about working on the farm and he said he really enjoyed working with a team of motivated people, seeing the season through from beginning to end. He said it felt like an amnesiac experience in a way….since there is always so much to do, you’re forced to be present in the moment, and then the plants you put in the ground so long ago in the Spring, seem to very suddenly be bursting with fruit! It amazes him!
The crew sort of thinks of Kyle as the on farm Google. He seems to know a little or a lot about so many subjects and loves to share what he knows. He reads, and listens to podcasts, and retains the information so well, he can tell you in depth about what he’s learned. He has self proclaimed himself to have “vocal voracity” and says he is the most outwardly, comfortably noisy person on the crew!
This July, Kyle married his long term partner Molly Bullock, who is the Farm to School Coordinator at the Bethel Farm at Kayapulya High School. She brings school children to the area farms on field trips to see where and how their food is grown. The students typically harvest food to make a salad at the farm so the children get the experience start to finish, harvesting and preparing their own meal. It’s a fantastic program, and they were just awarded a $100,00 grant from the USDA to keep the program going!
Kyle will be leaving us the end of the month to pursue a different path. He will be taking a position with Cascade Middle School as an Education Assistant working with the Special Education program. It will be our loss, their gain, as Kyle will surely be an asset to the program and to all of the children there. Those kids are in for a treat, as I’m sure Kyle will entertain them with random facts, total enthusiasm, and perhaps a new way of looking at their world. Thanks for sharing the season with us again this year Kyle, and maybe we’ll see you next summer!
We hope you all have a wonderful week ahead, and eat your veggies!
Linda and all of the Winter Green Farmers