Golden Days

Like every year, it seems to have gotten hot way too soon. (Unlike every year, we’ve broken heat records already, but that’s for another post!) A lovely consequence of the early heat, though, is early salads!

Burpees Golden Beets thriving in our 24” hand-dug beds - root veggies thrive in this tilth!

We have gorgeous gorgeous golden beets this year. I love beets: a sweet vegetable? Sign me up! We’ve been growing various varieties of golden beets for the last few years, and are really pleased with their combination of sweetness, tenderness, and no staining! Yay for my hands! And clothes!

The beets we’re growing this year are the Burpee’s Golden Beet, from the amazing Seed Savers Exchange: they are so sweet and low in tannins that we eat them raw! Yes, raw beets: something my grandmother would not have ever dreamed of serving!

Burpee’s Golden Beets: aren’t they gorgeous? Along with Rainbow Chard, the garden is full of delights!

I had a few of these in my fridge the other day, along with a few carrots, ginger nubs, and some Serrano chiles… and a new salad was born!

Know that I’m a very loose cook: some substitutions here, a pinch of this there, and I have a masterpiece… but one I might not be able to recreate at any point in the future! I wrote this down, though, because it was so good and I wanted to share it.

I hope you are able to come by and pick up some Burbee’s Golden Beets, and enjoy this piquant salad, full of the promise of summer!

Oliview Farm’s Golden Summer Days Salad

Ingredients (serves 3-4):

• 2 medium-sized carrots

• 4 medium-sized beets

• 4 T. lime juice (from about 1 lime)

• 1 T. dried onion (I like the deep savoriness that dried onion gives, but feel free to use fresh!)

• 1/2 t. salt

• 1/2 of a Serrano chile, chopped fine

• 1.5 inches of ginger root, chopped fine (you could probably use dried/powdered ginger, here - I’d say maybe 1-2 t.)

• 4 T. mayonnaise (extra points for making your own with Oliview olive oil!)

Instructions:

1. Into a measuring cup, pour the lime juice and add the dried onion. Let this sit to slightly rehydrate the onion.

2. Coarsely grate the carrots and beets and mix into a bowl that will hold them both.

3. Chop the Serrano chile and ginger root finely (I use a mini cuisinart). Mix these into the lime juice mixture, and also add the salt and mayonnaise. Whisk this together until it is completely mixed and nicely emulsified, and then pour it over the carrot-beet mixture. Mix well and enjoy with some of the beet greens - delicious!

Oliview Farm’s Golden Days Salad: I’ve been enjoying this with some slices of apple and havarti to provide the boost I need midday - both from an energy standpoint and psychologically!

Welcome, new visions!

Winter is a great time for contemplation. 

Pedro was sitting in his favorite chair this morning, watching the birds in front for what must have been about an hour! Western blue birds, female blackbirds, flickers, robins, and towhees – they love the cool, moist weather we have right now as much as we do (though we certainly enjoy it in different ways!).

This is usually our time for seed ordering, but we ordered early after seeing the shortages over the last year as a result of pandemic panic. We are just about done… despite the large stack of gorgeous seed catalogues on our table! And it is rainy, so no farm work, aside from making sure the animals are fed and housed. Holidays are over and cleaned up, the fridge is stocked…

And so we are freed to dream.

Calendulas are some of the hardest-working flowers in our garden: they germinate in spring, bloom all summer, and thrive through the winter, too! We use them in salads all year long, and dry their petals for tea. Calendulas also provide excellent forage for pollinators in times there’s almost nothing else!

I was lucky enough to be part of an online workshop earlier this month focused on the work of community organizers, and imagining what we want for our future. So much of what we think about (and organize around!) is what we don’t want: we march against police violence, complain about corporate takeover of our lives, ignore indigenous values and foodways, and neglect the climate catastrophe. Spending energy on these is like coddling a porcupine! It is bad for us, bad for the problems, and bad for our community. Consciousness of these issues is important, but as we spend our precious winter hours of deep thinking, how much better to envision what we do want for our future?! 

In this workshop we were asked to create a list of actions and values that are the root of why we do the work of community organizing. We then turned those words into positive statements of what we are working towards. We got into small groups and read through those phrases: thoughts of intergenerational partnership, better listening, an equitable and inclusive economy, Native American Indian values that grow to include all of us who live in this place. Wow! I am energized just recalling these visions! 

My work in this workshop was focused on my community at large, but I always have Oliview at my heart. The reason Pedro and I got into this gig called “farming” is because of the center it provides to all of our lives. Food is a connection to the earth, and done with reverence, it allows all of life to flourish. Food is a connection to our culture, the souls of our ancestors, and the flavors of diversity. It is a connection to humanity. Growing food locally and with patience and hard work also is an act of love and belief in our shared future. It is an act that helps in our resilience against the consequences of past actions. Growing food ties us to our place and each other in a way that nothing else can. 

This is us living our values and our faith that we not only can, but will do better. This is our winter meditation and contemplation. We, like the birds, are busy provisioning ourselves. We are doing that essential inner work that will fuel us through the challenges ahead: through the coming Central Valley summer and beyond.

Love to you and cheers to a new year. We hope you have time for contemplation, visioning your actions in support of the world you want to see in 2021 and beyond. 

Love,

Elizabeth 

The Mission olive trees are contemplating their next move right now, as well: it’s quiet time, but the buds are forming and the 2021 crop is already envisioned!

2020 CSA

Hello, friends!

What a year it’s been… and it’s just barely a quarter of the way through. Pedro and I started Oliview Farm, in part, to increase our resilience and connection to the earth, and to build community through food. Now more than ever it seems these values are essential to being human. As keystone species, we have a responsibility to the earth and each other. In good times we encourage and remind each other. In bad times we feed each other. 

For this reason we’re opening up our CSA again this year, but with a different approach: the CSA will be pick-up only, on the farm, and you’ll be asked to pay by the weekly pickup, or by the month if you can. The cost for us to produce the share – a grocery bag or two of produce, depending on the season – is about $20: for those who can pay it, we ask that you do so. Eggs and olive oil will be sold as separate additions. A worsening recession means greater struggle for many, however, and no one will be turned away who is in need of food. For those unable to pay, please come anyway. 

The economy of the seed is anomalous to the human economy, centered as it is around fear of scarcity. The seed is small, hard, dry. It looks like a piece of dirt, and easily is lost. It appears to have no value. When planted in fertile soil, however, and lovingly tended, it flourishes and produces hundreds – even thousands – of offspring to continue feeding those who collect and save, cultivate and share. The gift of the seed defies scarcity, and celebrates abundance. Human connection and affection is the same way: the love we give and the grace we share comes back to us a hundred-fold. 

This year especially, we want to foster the economy of the seed.

Join us in celebrating this economy of abundance: a local economy that reflects the gardener and the neighbor; barter and trade that reflect our shared values and our shared abundance; the security of knowing where your food came from, and understanding the pivotal role you – and that we all – play in the quality of our shared lives. 

Love and good health to you and your loved ones!

Elizabeth

2019 CSA: time to contemplate the future

It is with some sadness, but with hope in our hearts, that we share the suspension of the 2019 Oliview Farm CSA season. With minimal membership and a year full of changes and planning ahead, we felt that it would be a good year to put energy into preparation to become more sustainable in 2020 and beyond. For a long time we have struggled with membership: marketing is definitely a hurdle for us, and it's one we've not been able to surmount, as of yet. This seemed like a year we might turn inward to examine our next steps.

The changes we expect this year include significant work on fire-proofing, or at least decreasing the vegetative density on the farm, building up the kitchen and herb gardens (and protecting them from the chickens!), and taking more steps down the path of building the barn and commercial kitchen for increased production of olive oil and - potentially - class offerings, cooking demonstrations, and farm dinners. This last element, the barn, will take most of our attention and energy, not least in the form of working with the county to permit activities that don't fall under existing uses in code. They have been cooperative and encouraging so far, but it takes a LOT of time and energy.

We also hope to start developing connections with local food establishments which celebrate local food production. This could help us to even out our income and could increase the financial sustainability of Oliview Farm.

This is not goodbye, we hope: we are so incredibly grateful for our dedicated members - new and old! - and your interest in and enthusiasm for local food in general, and Oliview Farm in particular.

We will still have produce available, and certainly will have eggs (and, right now, baby chicks!). This will also be a year of experimentation, so if you’d like to see what’s growing out here, come on by! If you are interested in an heirloom chicken to grace your table, those will be available in August: we will sell you the live bird, and will provide the complimentary service of preparing that chicken for pickup from our freezer at your leisure.

Thank you for your trust in us; we want to be transparent in our actions and reasons, and respect your belief in us and the Farm mission. We love Oliview Farm and want it to flourish. Sometimes moving forward requires a small step back... or just a moment to stay still and think through what that next step looks like. We'll take that time this year and be ready to move forward with even more enthusiasm and energy in 2020!

We are still here, and still happy to see you, so please come by, check out the progress, oooh and aaah over the baby chicks, collect eggs with your kids, pet the cats, enjoy the birdsong, and drink a beer with us on the porch. There’s always lots to do, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

With great appreciation and many thanks,

Elizabeth and Pedro Betancourt