Happy Halloween!

Its a spooky time of year, with the days getting shorter, crazy kids dressed as wedges of cheese, and these scary pumpkins greeting the neighbors!

Pumpkins

The weather in Oregon has been beautiful, with blue skies and sunshine all this week. But a week before this it was miserably cold and rainy, giving us a taste of the coming fall season.

But in autumnal Oregon you can't let the rain get you down or stop you from having fun. So a little while back we put on some warm clothes and boots and headed out to the pumpkin patch with the Koulibali family. The theme of the day was supposed to be pumpkins, but it was really more about mud. A muddy maize maze, a muddy parking lot, muddy pumpkins, and muddy kids. A muddy good time all around really.

This crew seemed to have a good time though, so we'll have to invite them back to help out with the next big mud event of the season--Christmas tree shopping!

Duck

A picture tells a story more than many words could, but falls far short of being able to express smells and tastes.  I cooked up the duck breasts medium rare (as per instructions online and in the Joy of Cooking)  The leg and back meet was browned with some bacon, the pan then deglazed with stock to prepare the beans, and then some greens from the farm were steamed on top.  This was so good, so tender, so tasty!

Tomatoes

Unfortunately tomato season is just about run out, as the cold and rain has moved into the region for who knows how long. This is our last glorious batch, featuring a mix from our and Gus's garden.

A few of the most choice were eaten fresh with a touch of salt and pepper; the rest that were a little too young or a few days too old were mixed with vinegar, garlic, and apples before being reduced to a flavorful tomato relish.

Potatoes

It's spud collection season. We planted red, purple, and gold potato, with solid results. 9+ pounds from the 2 foot by 2 foot raised bed! The original drops were planted down at soil level, then enclosed with the raised box, 6 inches high. Through the season we added layers of straw, compost, and dirt, eventually raising the soil about 10" above were the original spuds went in. Everything we harvested was in this loose new soil that we had built.

In comparison, the leftovers that we just buried in the dirt and left unattended for the season had really miminal production.

Fresh Chickens!!!

After much anticipation, Chicken Day finally arrived recently. Gina had raised 30 Buff Orpingtons, with the "little ones" going into her egg flock, and the "big birds" scheduled for the freezer. They had hatched back on Memorial Day, so at this point they were all grown up, had had a wonderful summer, and were looking to checkout before the rainy season came to town.

So one sunny day we met up with them, 4 hens, a rooster, and 2 male ducks (she had wanted to buy 2 pairs of ducks, but instead got 3 boys and just 1 girl, which wasn't a healthy ratio). Tim, Adrienne, Seth, and one traffic cone turned out to help.

For those that expected this to be a dramatic/traumatic/vegetarian experience, it wasn't. None of us minded doing the dirty work, because the chickens didn't even seem to mind. Upside down in the cone, they started out calm and progressed to sleepy. With a quick snip of kitchen shears across the vessels of the neck, they passed out and away without any flapping or complaining. And with their heads still on (and spine intact) there were no attempts to run around without a head. The only tough part was the plucking; our fault for not having boiling water to loosen the feathers.

Some of the pictures are here.

San Francisco

We Miller City Farmers have been spending a bit of time away from the farm lately, with the Hood to Coast Relay, and then an early September trip to California.

Rather last minute, we found a cheap flight to Oakland (did you know that Horizon serves free local microbrews on their flights?!?!) and spent a day and night in SF, a few days in Yosemite, then a last night in Sausalito. Beautiful weather the whole time, and being after Labor Day, the crowds had abated from Yosemite. Here are the pictures.

Hood To Coast

Another year later, and we're still not smart enough to stay home for the last weekend of August. Why do we keep signing up for a 197 mile relay that takes us 28 hours or so? At least we took the camera, and fortunately the camera couldn't capture the smell in our van, We also didn't remember to take pictures of our most miserable moments, which makes it look like it was fun. Here are the pix.

Cheap Beer Taste Off!

It had to be done, and we're the people low-class enough to do it.

The 2008 Cheap Beer Blind Taste Test went down a few days ago. We featured hipster fave PBR, east coast refresher National Bohemian, and with local Yakima Valley hops: Rainier. There was even a brownbag surprise beer, which turned out to be MGD in a bottle.

So which suds was the refreshingest? Which amber nectar the smoothest?

If you know that Natty Bo, PBR, and Rainier are all produced by the same company, you won't be surprised to know that they all tasted pretty similar. MGD was "fizzier," not exactly a compliment, but was deemed best for after sports and this new knowledge was used to make it the official beer of our Hood-to-Coast team. PBR had the most votes, and Rainier the least. But really they were all pretty similar, and price should be the deciding factor!

What's for Dessert?

Pie!!! (It says so, right there on the homemade crust!) Annie and Adam flew all the way out to Portland from the Big Apple just to help us pick Big Blackberries. That was so nice of them, so we made sure to bake 2 pies while they were here.

Of course we didn't grow the blackberries (see below). But we did pick them from around the garden; buckets and buckets of them in the rain.

Nerdy footnote: its considered poor form to grow some strains of blackberries, as Rubus armeniacus is a naturalized weed. If you use your google, you'll see that there are even companies that rent out goats to eat the invasive brambles.

Second footnote: Oregon is the largest commercial producer of blackberries in the whole wide world, producing about 42,000,000 pounds per year!

Final footnote: Marionberries are actually a cultivar of blackberries, named for Marion County, OR. It was crossed from the Chehalem and Olallie strains. And the Olallie is half youngberry and half loganberry. The loganberry in turn is the illegitimate offspring of a red raspberry and a blackberry, after those two were introduced by James Logan, and started dating down in a California garden around 1880. (Seriously, you can look all this stuff up online!)