Winter blues? Eat your veggies!

We are enjoying the beauty and nutritive values of our winter garden this year, perhaps more than in the past. I don’t know what it is (though I know who put it into my head… Ann!), but I just love winter veggies. Summer produce certainly has its place: the bodacious colors, forward flavors, and incredible bounty of the summer garden certainly can’t be matched in any other season. In winter, though, the produce seems especially tuned to what our bodies need: plentiful citrus keep us hydrated and filled with cold-busting vitamin C, kale keeps us going with its punch-packing vitamins and minerals, and the rutabagas are incredible this year: sweet, plentiful, and incredibly healthy.

This isn’t the rutabaga I used in the soup, today, but isn’t it amazing! This is by far the largest one we grew this year: it was easily more than three pounds and so beautiful and sweet. We were eating rutabaga slices for snacks for at least two weeks…!

We had a lovely winter lunch this afternoon with a friend. (We live about 30 minutes out of town and don’t get visitors all that often; we know that when friends visit us at our own home that there’s a good chance that they’re really good friends!) Having just gotten through the holidays and all of the heavy, rich, and calorie-dense foods, our guest wisely requested a carrot soup. I went combing through my cookbooks for some ideas, as I’d never made carrot soup. I found the inspiration I needed in Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy. In it, she presents produce within its proper botanical family, thereby suggesting that things related to each other taste good together. She has some great and innovative recipe ideas. I took her carrot soup recipe and spun it for our garden produce availability, and am happy to share my rendition for you here:

1. Chop 1 onion, 5-6 carrots, 2 medium-sized rutabagas, 1 inch of chopped ginger root (if you don’t have ginger root on hand, you can use 1 heaping teaspoon of dried ginger in step 3).

2. Warm about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a medium-sized pot.

3. Throw the chopped veggies into the pan, along with the dried/powdered ginger (if using) , 1 teaspoon of ground cumin, and about a tablespoon of salt.

4. Cook until soft, then add 4 cups of chicken broth.

5. Let the flavors meld for a few minutes, and then use your immersion blender to get things nice and smooth. After blending for 3 minutes or so, I added about 1/3 cup of cream. This made the soup so light and airy that it was light eating clouds!

6. While the veggies were cooking, I de-veined and chopped a bunch of kale, and sauteed it with olive oil, garlic, and salt. After it had wilted, I added a spritz of lemon juice. This not only adds flavor, but it also unlocks the iron present in leafy greens - good for winter health!

Serve the soup with some of the sauteed kale on top, and then add a sprinkle of dukkah, an Egyptian spice and nut mixture (a deeply personal condiment, soadjust to your taste; I added thyme and marjoram rather than mint, but I think it would be amazing in just about any incarnation!). Pedro always adds olive oil to his bowl, which is both healthy and delicious… and supremely local, of course!

With some fresh bread and good conversation, this meal truly hit the spot and was an amazing spirit-lifter for the post-holiday blues.

We wish you and yours a healthy, happy cold season, and many adventurous meals!

Love,

Elizabeth

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

Where are all the Farmers?

Agriculture, though still the precious kernel of The American Dream, is becoming a rarer and rarer profession. As a very small farm, we are always looking for the bright side: there are too many stories of small farms - or any size farms, really - selling out and moving on to something easier and more financially sustainable. We especially cherish narratives addressing the myriad other elements part of making local agriculture work, in the hopes that it makes what we do more relateable, more understandable, and more sympathetic to the average person. 

The Sacramento Bee put out a most excellent article a couple of days ago, called "Farm to Forklift: As Sacramento hungers for local food, growers are looking elsewhere".

We see Sacramento, the self-dubbed "Farm to Fork Capital" of the nation, as an idealized market wherein the growers have nearly-perfect conditions (land is less expensive than many other parts of California , soil is alluvial, and the large customer base is very, very close), with local policies aligned such that farming is encouraged in just about every zone, and farm-based marketing exists throughout the region, in urban and rural neighborhoods alike. If things aren't good for farmers in the Sacramento market, things just aren't good for small agriculture, period.

As you'll read in the above story, things aren't good for farmers in the Sacramento market.

While the market is expanding by leaps and bounds, development continues to eat up agricultural lands: not because it is mandated, but because agriculture is hard.

1. It's hard to get up early and fix two irrigation line leaks before ensuring that the plants have enough water and the trees don't have too much. Water is expensive, irrigation pipe is expensive. Plants take time to nurture and grow, and the ground they're in is an opportunity cost for something else: a different crop (almonds?), or a different economic use (such as home development!).
2. It's hard to see an entire crop die because of some bad compost, or because of bird predation. We - as many small farms do - try to work synergistically and sustainably with nature. This is better for us, and better for the community of all, but is riskier. This means that partnering with customers who need greater dependability - such as restaurants - may be too much of a challenge, even given the higher potential for regular income.
3. Finally, and this is hard to say for all farmers, but undoubtedly true: it's hard to see produce so hard-won from the elements go for the relatively low rate at which Americans are accustomed to paying. While it is part of the US market's relatively higher wages than the rest of the world, in real terms we pay much, much less for food as a percent of income than any other place on earth. Real food - good food - should be affordable for everyone, and should be sustainable for the provider: the farmer. The policies that subsidize mega-corporations' corn, soy, wheat, sugar-beets, and many, many other "commodities" do so at the peril of Americans' health, and the health of the industry supplying the real, good food that strengthens bodies and minds.

Economics suggests that we act as rational beings, and do what is in our own best interest at every point in our lives. We can all state, in no uncertain terms, that the "rational being" concept is most certainly not true. Despite the odds, there are still farmers. We are still farming. We have customers who believe in the value of local agriculture, and understand that the peppers just really didn't do well this year and still persist with us. Cars slow down on the road outside our property: while we don't know for certain, we like to think that they're enjoying the beauty that small agriculture provides. Our family and friends metaphorically and physically eat up the eggs we bring when the hens are laying exponentially, even at $6/dozen, similar to the higher-end eggs at the store. We have neighbors who will help us. To weed. To weed! We know exceptional people.

However, what I see the Sacramento Bee article saying, and what I am saying in this post, is that all that we're doing is not enough. It's not enough for us to speak politely to our friends and neighbors - a fraction of the region's population - about the great work we're doing. It's not enough that consumers eat healthy food, but of food from Chile and Mexico. It's not enough that the federal government talks a good game about small farms and small businesses... but does very little to support them. We all need to do better at putting our money where our mouth is (maybe literally!) and acting on our values. New models, new ideas, and new partnerships are essential if we are going to continue to be able to feed ourselves as a society, in a way that respects place and recognizes current challenges. This is a matter of national security, of community health, and of local economies. But it's also a matter of pride and history: small holdings - subsistence agriculture - is part of the original American Dream, after all. Our thread in this tapestry is integral.

Here's to local food. Eat and drink up, hopefully with friends, and share the love and joy of community!

- Elizabeth

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.