RiverHouse Farm CSA and Calliope’s Table CSA are now one!

It’s official! RiverHouse Farm CSA and Calliope’s Table CSA are now one! As I mentioned before, I have been doing more and more farming with my good friend Nikki Hill at RiverHouse Farm. Living on the land there together in Sellwood has given us plenty of opportunities to learn what’s important to us, and how we approach urban farming and growing food. We finally decided it made too much sense to work together on our CSA’s, which will free up time for both of us to pursue some individual pursuits related to farming.

For me, that’s cooking and feeding people. Calliope’s Table started life as a Personal Chef service, and my search for good ingredients led me to farming. Those few short years ago it felt like no one understood what I was talking about when I said that we all need to be growing more of our own food, supporting local urban farmers, and using unused and underutilized land to do so. Now, this idea has really spread wings. So many people get it now and are putting energy into embracing these things.

So I come full circle. I find myself understanding and totally agreeing with what Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton say in “A Nation of Farmers”, and that is that possibly the most important tools in feeding ourselves could be a kitchen knife and a cooking pan. As a culture we are losing our ability to cook food “from scratch”, work with raw ingredients, and understand how to intuitively make scrumptious meals with whatever is on hand that day. Your farmers eat this way as a lifestyle and it is one of the reasons we are farmers is that the food doesn’t get any better than this.

Since those Personal Chef days, I have taken a greater interest in canning and preserving since I know how to get the good stuff now. I no longer buy anything that is not in season, preferring what I’ve preserved from last season when things were at their peak. Other strategies play into this like growing greens all year round and planting enough root crops to be able to harvest all the way through winter until the new crop of spring vegetables emerge.

We are planning a new outdoor kitchen at RiverHouse Farm for this season, and plan to continue with great enthusiasm the tradition long held here of gathering people together for food and music next to Crystal Springs Creek which runs through the land.

CSA information will now be available at the RiverHouse Farm blog (http://riverhousecsa.wordpress.com/), and as the season progresses cooking and preserving info at Calliope’s Table (http://www.calliopes-table.com/). There is other exciting news about what is going on at RiverHouse Farm including our new association with GeerCrest Farm (http://www.geercrestfarm.com/) in Silverton. You can read all the latest at: http://riverhousecsa.wordpress.com/news/.

Thank you for your continued support. We couldn’t do what we do without you!

Peace,

Calliope

New website changes and 2010 CSA info

Hello subscribers, land-lenders, helpers and friends of the farm!

I hope you’ve all been staying warm during the very cold weather. The 2009 CSA season for Calliope’s Table ended just before Thanksgiving, and the very wintery weather seems to have provided a closure to the season with beds being covered and tucked away for winter. It’s also given me an opportunity to get to work on plans for 2010, and you can now see those changes on the website.

Here are some of the changes for you:

The 2010 CSA season is now underway and you can find subscription info and all the details on the CSA page. The CSA distribution will be moving to the RiverHouse farm in Sellwood where I’m now in residence, and there will also be some new options for picking up your produce. Among them are a delivery option that will get your CSA share to your doorstep and also a Sunday pickup at the Hawthorne Urban Farmers Market.

There is also a new 2010 CSA Info Sheet that has all the details of the 2010 season including an updated crop list. Among the new things that will be in your CSA share this year are herb and vegetable starts and cut flowers.

I’m keeping the CSA the small, intimate size it was in 2009 which is going to give me time to do some other food and farming things I want to do like more cooking and canning the harvest, feeding some folks that need a good meal, helping to get some new folks started growing some of their own food, and raising a few chickens. I talk more about this on a new Foodshed page. There’s a new video there that talks about Neighborhood Foodsheds too.

I’m going to be doing more farming this coming season with my friends Marie of Sellwood Garden Club and Nikki from RiverHouse CSA which will help all of us accomplish more and give us more time for the other things we want to do. We’re quite a combination of experience, philosphies, and temperaments, and we love working together.  Among the projects we’re already working on together is doing a remediation and creating a garden space at Radius Studio in Portland’s industrial eastside. We’ll keep you updated on our progress. We’re also working on building some raised bed gardens for folks while we have a bit of spare time this winter, offering 100% sliding scale to accommodate those that really need some help getting some food growing. You can read more about how we’re planning to do that on a new Garden Box page.

I’ve also learned a lot this past season about growing food in other folks’ yards, and so I’ve added a new Yardsharing  page to talk about those things and find a few more folks that want to have us grow some food in their yards.

We’re planning a gathering here at the RiverHouse sometime in late January when everyone gets back from the holidays so we can hang out and eat some food in this wonderful space. I would love for you all to visit and see what amazing things have been done here and are planned for the future. I’ll keep you posted on that.

I thank each of you for the part you played in one of the best years I’ve had in this life. I feel it’s just the beginning of a fabulous life as a farmer. I also wish you the best of the holiday season. See you soon!

Peace and peas,
Calliope

Harvest Moon 2009

Peace and blessings at the Harvest Moon which occurred last nite.

I have been taking a break from as much technology as I can since you last heard from me. Farming activities have evolved from keeping crops alive during the record number of 100 degree days we’ve had this year, to the planting of this year’s winter crops, to the continuing staple foods harvest which will be the focus this week due to the window of sunny weather we’ll have. If you’d like to help harvest staple crops, get in touch with me or Farmer K of Sunroot Gardens.  Everyone that helps in the harvest gets some of the crop.

While I’ve been away I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and a lot of thinking about what has worked well this season and what I’d like to do differently. There are a few changes happening that you should know about.

One of the most important changes is a new addition to the CSA. Many of you have met Annette who lives at the garden where the CSA distribution is held. Annette is back from her summer job and has agreed to help me run the CSA. Much of what you see manifest in that lovely garden space is due to Annette’s energy and contributions, and I have really enjoyed working with her. Her absence this summer was very noticeable. Thanks Annette! It’s good to have you back!

Having help with the CSA is going to allow me to work on some other projects that are important to me such as cooking and feeding some people, preserving more of the harvest, developing some more variety in what’s growing such as staple food crops and medicinals, and organizing some skill shares to pass along things that are working for us.

I’ve also been spending time with Nikki of RiverHouse CSA in Sellwood and we’ve decided to do some farming together as well. The gardens there are truly magical with Crystal Springs creek running through the land. The first time I visited I knew I wanted to help preserve and add my energy to this wild space in the city. It’s also a likely place for skill shares and cooking and eating, so I’ll keep you posted.

I’m very happy to be continuing my work with Sunroot Gardens as well. Collaborating on growing more crops in bigger spaces where the work is shared has been a very successful part of the season and the huge amount of winter crops now growing shows that. Sunroot is also where I find the most innovative approaches to growing enough food to matter, and what’s turned out to be a very important part of the farming, getting the food to people that are going to eat it.

One aspect of this that I believe is unique to Sunroot is the Friday “helper” pick and distribution. If you are someone that contributes to Calliope’s Table in a non-monetary way (land-lender, garden helper, bike mechanic, healer, etc.), you can join us on Fridays 4pm to dusk for fresh produce, impromptu socializing, and usually some farm cooking. It’s at the Firepit garden in the Hawthorne district, another wild space in the city you should see if you haven’t. Get in touch for directions, etc.

Just a reminder, the 2009 Spring/Summer CSA runs until Thanksgiving week in November, with weekly distributions on Wednesdays from 4-7pm. If you can’t make it by 7pm, or at all, get in touch and we can arrange something.

After Thanksgiving week the CSA will be converting to a monthly subscription that will offer produce year round. More details soon.

Enjoy the beautiful autumn weather!

Peace and peas,

Calliope