Ten Reasons I Eat Local

1. The food is amazing. Have you ever eaten one of the summer’s first blackberries right off the vine. It is nothing like one that arrives in a little plastic box from Chili. In every instance where I’ve chosen local food over food shipped a distance I find the quality is better, usually much better. There is even a study that proves Oregon Strawberries are better. Here’s a link http://www.oregon-strawberries.org/

2. You get to meet farmers. I like Willamette Valley farmers and look for any excuse to meet them. People who make their living growing flavorful, nutritious food are almost always interesting, intelligent, exceptional people. They risk everything to do it too. Variations in the weather, the soil and the market can easily wipe them out and yet they work endless hours to fill our plates with wonderful stuff.

3. You get to check out farms. Touring a farm will teach you that some of the world’s most innovative people who are leading the way on renewable energy, water conservation and land preservation are farmers.

4. You get to pay a farmer directly. It makes me feel good to know who is getting my food dollar. In 1950 farmers got 40 cents of every dollar that was spent on food, now they get around 20. If we want people to keep growing great things for us we’ve got to change to make sure they can make a living at it.

5. It’s good for the local economy. One study from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture concluded that if an additional 10 percent of 28 common fruits and vegetables were grown and sold in Iowa, it would result in $54.3 million in sales for Iowa farmers (based on wholesale prices).

6. It’s good for the environment. The Leopold Center also determined that a common dinner of roast, potatoes, carrots, and green beans could travel a collective distance of 5,375 miles through conventional channels before reaching the dinner table. I have all of those things in my freezer and cupboards right now and none of them traveled more than 20 miles.

7. The food is more nutritious, really it is. Again from the Strawberry Commission website. A study conducted by Dr. Mary Ann Lila of University of Illinois, suggested that the climate of the Northwest creates berries that are higher in health benefits because the plants are exposed to more stressful weather conditions and as a result produce protective phytochemicals that are beneficial to humans and help the plant ward off disease. Here’s the scoop on some of our other berries http://www.oregon-berries.com/common/docs/BERRY101.pdf.

8. It connects me to where I live, the seasons, the weather, the soil, the water. When the summer is cool I wait longer for blueberries and am crazy for them by the time they arrive, when it’s too cool in the spring for bees to come out at the right time I pay more for the few peaches that arrive, when it’s a perfect season for cherries I rejoice in the abundance.

9. The coolest people are into eating local. I don’t mind putting myself in the same club as Barbara Kingsolver, Lin Rosetto Casper and famous chef Alice Waters.

10. There are so many choices of local food in the Willamette Valley, even in winter. Here is a list of currently available local foods from Ten Rivers Food Web in Corvallis.

Fresh: kale, leeks, beets, fennel, carrots, turnips, spinach, celeriac, parsnips, broccoli, parsnips, kohlrabi, rutabaga, cauliflower, mushrooms, red and green cabbages, Brussels sprouts, Chinese cabbages, mustard greens, hardy lettuces, Swiss chard, apple cider, corn salad, collards, endive, arugula, Boc choi, cilantro, kiwi. Storage foods: garlic, onions, shallots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, dried beans, dried corn, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, amaranth, quinoa, honey, wheat, rye, oats, spelt, barley, kamut, wild rice, yakon, apples, flax. Dairy: milk, cream, butter, yogurt, ice cream, buttermilk, sour cream, cow cheeses, goat cheeses, cottage cheese. Eggs. Meats: beef, goat, pork, lamb, rabbit, buffalo, chicken; Fish, seafood. Dried/Frozen/Canned: (virtually anything!) jams, jellies, juices, all fruits, all vegetables, mushrooms, pickles, meats, fish, seafood.

Midway Farms - Winter Oasis

Thanks to Midway Farms, my favorite winter farm stand, I just had the best lunch. It was sautéed kale and onions with two poached eggs on top. Fresh, organically grown, kale is one of the best things and the pastured eggs from Midway Farms are just too tasty to mess with so I poach them for the purest flavor.

Midway Farms is my favorite year-round farm stand. I found them while on a search for pasture raised eggs. They have so much more than amazing eggs, they are one of the few farm stands open all winter selling fresh local produce.

Yes, Cynthia, owner of Midway Farms, has figured out winter vegetable farming in Oregon. Not with a big giant green house full of out of season tomatoes but with real outdoor beds growing the many things that grow here during our generally mild winters. Midway farms has an abundance in the summer but it’s in the winter, when the farmers markets are closed and the grocery store has nothing but produce that has traveled thousands of miles or sat for months in cold storage, that Midway Farms feels like an oasis. When I arrived in their farm stand in the end of February last year I stood in front of the cooler in awe. There were fresh greens of all sorts and root vegetables everywhere, there was a cooler of the eggs I’d come for but the vegetables so amazed me that I left only when I’d spent all the cash I had and a half hour talking to Cynthia. We talked about the farm, about children learning where food really comes from, about the value of local produce to the community and about how we can help small farmers make it.

Midway Farms sits midway between Corvallis and Albany on HWY 20, hence the name. It’s the kind of farm your great grandparents might have grown up on had they lived the self sufficient farm lifestyle of the early 1900s. It’s got all the vegetables you can imagine, it’s got blueberries and fruit trees all around, it’s got flowers everywhere, it’s got at least 100 chickens, it’s got a cow for milk, it’s got geese and if you want to teach a group of school children where food comes from, call Cynthia, she’ll happily show them.

Cynthia told me a story during my first visit about taking her children out to eat, a rare occurrence for small farmers. When her daughter got her meal with chicken she asked Maggie, “Whose chicken was this?” Maggie was initially confused and told her it was her chicken but her daughter insisted she wanted to know whose chicken it had been. You see her daughter was so used to knowing where her food comes from that the concept of a chicken whose owner you hadn’t known was new to her. This made me think about my freezer and how now, after spending a year buying much of my food direct from farms, I know whose chicken I have, and whose berries and whose beef.

When you visit Midway Farms you come away with so much more than great food, you come away knowing that you have had a part in building a more sustainable future for all of us. That and the best eggs you will ever eat.

Midway has a website at www.midwayfarmsoregon.com

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Relish/Pastured-Eggs-Vitamin-D-Content.aspx?blogid=1508

Christmas Cherry Chutney

The land I live on had an acre of old cherry trees when I bought it 22 years ago. Now after clearing for a garden and a driveway, I have about a dozen tress left. This last summer they had cherries by the bushel. I invited friends and family to pick all they wanted, they did, and still an embarrassing amount was wasted. I’ve always thought that Royal Anne cherries were just good fresh. I tried canning them years ago and didn’t really like the result. This year Robert and Dee, who raise 60 kinds of apples, told me about cherry chutney. I looked up some recipes, made a couple of alterations to the one I had the ingredients for, and the result blew me away.

When you see fresh Royal Anne cherries at the fruit stand or the grocery store you can be fairly certain they’re local. These delicate things bruise when touched and brown where bruised. Most of the trees that grow these were planted, like my nearly 50 year old trees, when fruit wasn’t chosen for its shipping qualities but for its flavor. You can get them fresh during the summer but if you want to save a bundle keep your eyes open for what looks like old orchards. South and west of Salem I noticed a number of small orchards that, like mine, aren’t commercially harvested. If you happen upon one of these next summer, stop and ask at the nearest home and you may end up picking a bunch for very little. In the meantime, canned, frozen and dried cherries can be had from numerous local processors. Check the list after the recipe.

Jeannie’s Christmas Cherry Chutney

5 cups frozen, fresh or canned sweet cherries. If making this with tart cherries add ½ cup of sugar. If using canned cherries leave out some of the sugar.
1 cup chopped dried tart cherries.
1 cup walnuts
1 cup sugar
¾ cup vinegar, I use white but you can probably use others.
2 tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger.
½ teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ginger, cayenne pepper and salt.
¼ teaspoon of ground cloves.

Bring it all to a boil and then cook over medium heat for 30 minutes.

I serve this with crackers and cream cheese. I’m sure it would be great over baked brie or with pork, turkey, duck or chicken.

Cherries and Walnuts Locally Grown

Cherry Country has dried tart cherries – check the link on the right.
Willamette Valley Fruit has frozen tart cherries and Roth’s, EZ Orchards and Aspinwalls carry them.
Oregon Fruit has canned Royal Anne cherries and Roth’s has them.
Bauman Farms has frozen cherries as well.
Truitt Brothers also cans sweet cherries.
Walnuts – check the previous post. EZ orchards, Asplinwall’s and New Seasons in Portland all have local walnuts.

Walnuts worth the Cracking

I love walnuts. They’re healthy, they’re just right on oatmeal and I eat them several days a week. Like most foods, the price of walnuts has been increasing lately. But when I recently paid $8.99 a lb for bulk walnuts, that turned out to be stale, in the “natural foods” section of a local grocery story I realized it was past time to look for local walnuts.

I know there aren’t many walnut farms around the valley but I had a memory of a small handmade cardboard sign advertising walnuts on Silverton Rd east of Salem last year. The Saturday after the stale walnut purchase I set out to find it and thought I’d stop at EZ Orchards on the way to do some Christmas shopping (check the link in the farm stands section.) After loading up my cart with Oregon Wheat Growers soft white wheat pancake mix and berry syrups from around the valley for the out of town relatives I happened upon a bin of walnuts in their shells for ONE DOLLAR A POUND. I bought a few pounds. I’d read that the actual nut makes up about 48% of the weight of walnuts in the shell so I figured this was about $2.10 for each shelled pound. I would have bought more but I was worried that they were such a good deal something must have been wrong with them or that shelling walnuts was such a pain no one in their right mind would buy them in the shell.

I broke out these walnuts one morning when I was cooking that awesome Christine and Rob’s oatmeal from Aspinwall’s. I cracked one open, it broke apart with ease, and I popped a half in my mouth. It was entirely different from any walnuts I’ve ever eaten. It was crisper, light and kind of delicate. Most importantly, it was sweet.

I took the other half to my boyfriend and said “here taste this.”

“What’s on it?”

“Nothing, I just took it out of the shell.”

A quizzical look came over his face.

He thought that walnut must have been sugar coated.

Not long after this we set out to find the farm with the sign I’d remembered to see if we could buy more walnuts direct. East of Salem on Silverton Rd not far beyond EZ Orchards there it was, a small piece of cardboard with “walnuts” and an arrow indicating a left turn. We missed the turn and had to pull over and turn around. A ways down that road there was another sign, another arrow and down that road another sign pointing us down a gravel road. Finally there was a house, with a sign in front of an open garage. In the garage were a couple of those large square wooden farm bins. One had walnuts and one had hazelnuts. The walnuts were $1.50 a pound, still a great deal and since I’m buying more direct at least I know a farmer is getting the profit. I bought $11 dollars worth since that’s the cash I had. We stopped at EZ Orchards on the way home and found the walnuts there were now $1.99. It turns out those fabulous first walnuts I had were last years. Apparently it can takes years for walnuts to get stale if they’re left in the shell.

The more I eat these walnuts and learn about growing them the greater appreciation I have for the farmers who grow them. They’re so good I’ll be stocking up soon so that I’m never stuck with stale, expensive, grocery store walnuts again. I’m also looking at walnut trees, they take lots of room and often don’t produce a crop for the first 10 years. Imagine the commitment of a farmer who plants a few acres of these and then makes nothing from them for 10 long years of watering, weeding and pruning. I reflect on it and think “I should have paid him extra.”

For those to the North here is the walnut page from tri-county farms.

http://www.tricountyfarm.org/oregon_walnuts.asp

and their list of farms

http://www.tricountyfarm.org/crop_availability.asp

Welcome

Welcome to Eating Local in the Willamette Valley. It’s about my passion, food grown in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley. I’ve lived in rural Marion County Oregon for 22 years. I love the amazing bounty of local foods here. I’m not a purist about eating local, I just try to build my diet around as much local food as I can and visit the farms to buy it direct whenever that makes sense. While the farms I go to tend to be close to my home, near Independence, I scan the papers and the internet and make special trips for things like u-pick peaches, walnuts or pastured chicken. There is so much to find when you spend just a little time looking.

I’ve filled this blog with the resources to help you find great food here as well. Along the right hand side you’ll find web resources for local food. Most of these links are lists of farms that sell direct or search engines meant to help you find farms near you. If the listing has an address and specifies when the farm, or stand, is open to the public, then it’s pretty safe to just head out there. But, if you want to be sure that you can get what you are looking for, call first. Some of the farms have websites, and I’ll keep adding links to those. But most farmers are too occupied with growing food to maintain much of a web presence, hence the usefulness of lists like these.

My favorite farm stand section is currently focused on those open in the winter, but I’ll add the spring and summer ones as the seasons change. Some farm stands sell only produce from their farm, and sometimes a few nearby farms; others sell a mix of their own produce and products from around the world. If you see bananas, you can assume they buy from a traditional distributor in addition to moving their own goods. So ask where the item you want is from. Most farm stands are proud of their fruit and vegetables and will happily tell you about their origins.

I also include local processors here in creators of great local food. Oregon’s bounty is often canned, frozen or turned into jam. It’s still local, and buying it supports jobs both on the farm and in the processors. I love to buy fruit and vegetables fresh in their season, but I’d rather eat a canned bean that traveled around the valley a bit than one whose origin is a mystery. We also have an abundance of small specialty processors here from Cherry Country to Wandering Aengus Cider to Christine and Rob’s whose oatmeal really is different from anyone else’s.

I hope you enjoy my stories about finding local food and the farms it comes from. Please feel free to add your own stories of Willamette Valley food and farms.