Pens to Pasture ~ Slow Hand Farm

When friends and family began raving about and forwarding to me the weekly CSA newsletters and farm updates sent from their farmers, I paid attention. I also laughed (and even teared up) at these genuine writings intimately describing all it takes to grow our food. It didn't take long to realize that these stories must be shared with a wider audience. So...welcome to Pens to Pasture: Fodder from the Field where each week we feature one farm and the stories they share with their customers through CSA newsletters, blog stories and e-mail updates. We celebrate the agricultural life, the hard work of farmers and the grace and openness with which they share it all through writing. Dig in, enjoy and be sure to share the writings of your farmers by sending an e-mail here.

Slow Hand Farm ~ Portland, OR 

Josh & Kji

Community Supported Agriculture on a Small Scale

www.slowhandfarm.com

I'm so honored to share the words (and vegetable pictures) of Slow Hand Farm, mostly because Josh taught me almost everything I know about growing vegetables when I was an apprentice at Sauvie Island Organics in Portland, Oregon. Beyond the actual growing of vegetables, Josh keenly demonstrated the importance of crop planning, record keeping and a good Excel spreadsheet - three cheers and eternal gratitude for that! I also remember many conversations with Josh, around the long lunch table, that ended up in that farm's CSA newsletter. (More on that to come!)

Stats from the SHF website. Wow.

In 2009 Josh broke ground on his own venture, Slow Hand Farm, to focus on hand-scale production; small and affordable CSA shares and special varieties. Slow Hand Farm is very special, in large part because Josh can tell you almost anything you want to know about each variety and each individual produce item harvested from the .2 acres of land they cultivate. This (very) small farm is also special because it offers single-person sized shares filled with the farmers' favorite varieties in spring, summer, fall and winter subscriptions. It's the ultimate make-your-own-perfect-CSA-share. 

Slow Hand Farm communicates with members through a weekly blog post, and their attention to detail shows. You are welcome and encouraged to read much, much more about Small Hand Farm at the blog or Facebook page. Extra savory are all the lovely pictures of the share and the farm - you'll be amazed at the magic they cultivate in a tiny space! Below are two recent CSA posts hinting at the beginning of winter...

P.S. Josh is a jack-of-all-trades, engineer extraordinaire and farming genius. If you like to geek out on small scale farming practices (like, the important details) or farm images, check out his other site.

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Monday, November 14, 2011
Soup Share

It occurs to me that there are some nice opportunities for soup in the share today, especially if you have some good dry beans to toss in, and maybe a bit of stale bread.  You might want to look for a recipe for ribollita, one of my favorite fall meals.

Today's share has a bit of kale, chard, carrot, celery and garlic in it.  This is not at all what I planned for last fall when I was looking at what would go in the share today, but it's still a nice mix and it reflects everything that has happened in the season up to this point and my best judgement this morning about what I need to keep around for shares in the following weeks, and what would be best this week in the shares.  At this point in the year most everything we have for the shares for the next two months or so is more or less ready.  It's not just a matter of harvesting what is "ripe," it also has to do with guessing what will hold in the ground longer, what won't get eaten by voles or deer, what will survive impending frosts, and what would be a nice combination, giving a bit of variety from week to week

The chard and celery won't hold on much longer due to their sensitivity to freezing so I wanted to give those two out today.  The kale is from a bed that hasn't been cleaned up in a while, and it seemed like some more greens would be nice in the share.  The carrots have finally started to get a little size and the voles are starting to move in so I'm trying to thin them out, give a little more space and assess the damage. I don't plan for garlic in the fall shares, but this is leftover from what we saved for seed and I figured it should get eaten.

Next week is Thanksgiving so we'll take a week off from harvesting.  I'm taking some of this afternoon, and likely many to come, starting to look at the plan for next season.

Posted by Slow Hand Farm at 3:04 PM 

Thursday, November 17, 2011
Thanksgiving Holiday

Today's share is basically the same as Mondays so no new photo or talk of the vegetables.  Next week is Thanksgiving and we're taking the entire week off from harvests.  It's also supposed to be cold, like freezing cold, this weekend.  I've been anticipating that, which is why the chard and celery was in the share this week.  Those two crops will likely freeze out this weekend.  Even so, we covered the celery with row cover, and lots of the rest of the crops as well.  I'm hoping that the cover will stay on (it has a nasty tendency to blow off).  I'm also hoping that the newfound protection the voles are feeling under that nice white blanket won't encourage them too much and that they'll leave a bit for us when we get back to harvesting.  They've already taken out a number of the celeriac, root parsley, and radicchio.  Our trapping campaign is woefully inadequate right now, we'll have to get on that.  In the meantime, hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving, we'll be back in action on November 28.
Posted by Slow Hand Farm at 2:34 PM