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!

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

As Winter Deepens...

Good afternoon, friends and neighbors! 2018 has been a tough year for many of us, and included a tough month in the garden (thanks for sticking with us through August!), but has been overall a good year on Oliview Farm. The greens continue to produce, but more and more slowly as we move to the shortest day of the year. The chickens follow, producing, on average, one or two eggs/day these days (and that's with 35 hens!). With this slowdown in production, but with the anticipation of planning for 2019(!), we bring the 2018 season to a close. Our members are always welcome to come out to the garden any time to pick up a bunch of greens, some herbs (they are lovely in winter!), or just to say hello; it’s nice to remember the heat and production of summer when the winter is at its depth.

CSA organizations provide public good beyond healthy food, and our community is growing!

In anticipation of the 2019 season, to the left is the 2019 brochure. If you sign up before the end of the year, including at least the first month's payment, we are happy to share with you an additional half gallon of our 2017 olive oil (what you've received throughout this season). This offer also goes for new customers.

Thank you for this year’s support, and for the beautiful and varied gifts we receive from you, weekly: delicious food, new recipes, and coffee for the tired farmer in the morning! We hope that you have enjoyed the diversity and new pattern that locally-based eating brings to your table. As we plan for 2019, if there are vegetables or (annual) fruits you'd especially like us to try, please let us know! One of the things I'm hoping for in 2019 is jerusalem artichokes... and we’ve already received a strong vote for Charentais melons, again. We will do our best to meet both needs and desires: food is an exciting, though transient, beauty in our lives. We’re so pleased that you share that value with us!

Our 2019 season will begin in May of next year, and we're looking forward to spring goodies: we've figured out sugar snap peas (just like chicken: everything/everyone loves them, so they require extra protection!), and have some beautiful lettuce varieties to try. Also, with luck we'll have some kohlrabi and fennel again next year: they've done so well in the past!

Oliview Farm is shared with you via membership in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. The concept behind this is pure local good: you, as a member of the community, buy into the farm, essentially purchasing a "share" of the season's produce. Your share of what is produced here at Oliview depends on what the season does, but generally means 1.5 grocery bags of produce each week (for a full share). We do our best, and sometimes we have a ton of something (summer squash/zucchini comes to mind...!), and sometimes things don't do anything at all (apologies to our eggplant lovers: bugs in 2017 and bad compost in 2018 have done a number on those!). But, as a member, what we have is yours. 

This structure grows community, it grows our appreciation of what "local" means, and it helps the farmer to plan and (hopefully, at some point!) have a dependable income as a member of the community him/herself. As a still relatively new farm (since 2013!), we are working toward these goals, of course, but we can't do it without your support though the consumption of our beautiful, freshest-possible, diverse, and delicious produce!

We wish you the very best with the changing of the season, the year, and light as the season darkens.

With love,

Elizabeth and Pedro

Oliview and the Carr Fire: Update

The Carr Fire is in the headlines of every newspaper, radio station, and TV news broadcast right now. We've been watching it for nearly a week. It was initially a little 3,000-acre fire that we could see from the second floor of the house at night - that weird, super-bright, almost-neon-red color that fire turns in the dark. And then it blew up. Hearing about it taking out a town, no problem, overnight, was pretty scary, but watching it double over the last two nights and begin to encroach on the City of Redding has been horrifying.

Seeing the south flank of the Carr Fire slowly advance, toward Happy Valley, we decided to evacuate ourselves and our furry animals yesterday. Our wonderful friends at Red Gate Ranch generously took in Hansel and Gretel, our lovely little soay sheep. Our wonderful friend in Red Bluff took in us and our SIX cats and dog. Where would we be without friends?!

Pedro has soaked the orchard over the last several days with sprinklers, turning them off yesterday evening after the water district requested conservation to support fighting the coming fire. We opened our curtains so that law enforcement could see that we were gone, and are now simply hoping for the best. The chickens are still at Oliview, which breaks my heart, but it's incredibly difficult to evacuate chickens... especially as many as we have. 

We know that the fire has already taken at least 500 structures, many of them homes of our friends, colleagues, and neighbors. These disastrous events are such a challenge to empathize with from afar, but your texts, e-mails, and phone calls have heartened us for what is doubtless more challenges ahead.

This fire is making us think, yet again, that climate change is already being embodied in this "age of consequences". The legacy of all of our past actions, and continued profligate lifestyles, will continue to revise our expectations of how natural disasters behave, demolish our millennia of experience in seasonal impacts on food production, and wreck havoc on our mal-adapted civilization. We must change the way in which we're relating to the environment around us. Some of that adaptation must be uncomfortable: shorter showers, bringing your own bags, buying glass or metal in place of plastic, driving less. Not all of it has to be, but without using fewer resources, we simply cannot hope to be a positive force on the future of our world.

Thank you for your expressions of love. We will let you know the outcome as soon as we can.

- Elizabeth

Midsummer Upate

Here at Oliview Farm, we see the Summer Solstice as midsummer, rather than the beginning of summer. This is more accurate per the weather and the solar year, but also just feels right with what is growing at the different times of year. Likewise, we see the Equinoxes as the height of spring and fall, respectively. I will see about getting Pedro to write more about that, as it's very interesting and not something I'm not as knowledgeable about. 

In any case, it's midsummer here at Oliview Farm, and beautiful. We have dozens and dozens of zinnias in the garden this year, and were good at getting cosmos and Mexican torch sunflowers into the ground on time. Cucumbers and summer squash are already producing bushels of produce (just ask our CSA members), and the tomatoes have formed and should be getting red in the next week or two. 

The zucchini, cucumbers, and zinnias are superstars this year!

The garden is getting to the point where it's very, very large... and Pedro is having a hard time getting to all of the beds in time for turning and planting, before it's too hot and dry. We've had some awesome help this year in the form of some new neighbors, and really need to start thinking about formalizing help on a seasonal basis, on an annual cycle. 

We did have a new farmhand show up this year: Arthur just appeared on the farm a few weeks back, trotting out of the bramble behind Lux, our little boy (the other four cats are girls!). He's taken quite well to the farm: the chickens don't scare him, he's not afraid of sprinklers, he and Bucky are negotiating the porch, and he seems to be interested in ground squirrel patrol... that latter being an excellent quality in a cat out here at Oliview! We got him neutered right away, and I'm hoping that a lower testosterone level will help him in getting along with the ladies. HOWEVER, out existing cat herd is really not accepting him; if you have space for a loving, human-oriented cat partner in your life, please let us know!

Handsome Arthur! Dressed for a black-tie affair, and ready to snuggle whoever shows up next!

In other updates, we had a serious fire scare on June 24th, which has spurred us to move some lumber and trimmings piles away from the house. Sigh: opportunity out of crisis, like usual.

We hope that your summer is full of joyful discoveries and sights, and includes experiences that make you grow. Also, of course, we hope your summer is full of lots of veggies!

- Elizabeth 

A little peak at our bed of zinnias: their gorgeous colours pop like balls of bubble gum, and it is a pleasure to cut bouquets for our CSA - my favourite job! In the background, the covered bed hosts basil, and there are tomato beds further back. to the top right are a few compost bins.