Edible Portland Blog

"Your Backyard Farmer will do for a client’s palate what a personal shopper will do for their wardrobe — target their tastes and then expand their options."

Robyn Streeter and Donna Smith work to transform this homeowner’s backyard into a productive urban farm. Photo by Bianca Benson

URBAN AGRARIANS
Is That a Farm in Your Backyard?
By Ashley Griffin & Lola Milholland
For Spring 2008

Two women are changing the way we think about our backyards. Across the city, plots that were once littered in beat-up sports equipment and overgrown flowerbeds are providing enough vegetables for whole families. Long forgotten patches of grass now shelter new potatoes and spring onions.

A movement toward urban self-sufficiency is sprouting in backyards across Portland, Milwaukie, and Lake Oswego thanks to the stealthy work of Donna Smith and Robyn Streeter.

In 2006, the duo began a small business called Your Backyard Farmer. Every week from March through November, the two visit 25 homes, transforming little plots of urban land into productive miniature farms. They build raised beds, truck in soil, and plant vegetables, fruits, and herbs; Smith and Streeter tend and trim, fertilize and harvest. At the end of each weekly visit, the women place a basket of freshly picked, organically grown produce at the backdoor.

Your Backyard Farmer is the first business of its kind — a weekly delivery of farm labor to private homes. If Smith and Streeter’s vision prevails, their influence will change the urban landscape, bringing backyard farms to every community and homegrown food to all citizens.

1. Volunteers Plant Home Gardens Throughout City

Courtesy of Growing Gardens

GROWING GARDENS digs at the root of hunger in Portland by building raised-bed vegetable gardens in backyards. This fascinating 14-minute video takes us into the backyards where Growing Gardens has made a huge difference in families' lives: Digging at the Root of Hunger.

2. Bicycle-Powered CSAs Based in Our Backyards

Courtesy of Sunroot Gardens

Kollibri Sonnenblume, who runs SUNROOT GARDENS CSA, is profiled in this Willamette Week story, The Bike Farmer (2/20/08), and this story from THE BEE, Urban farmer rides bike, not tractor (2/29/08). In 2008, Kollibri will be partnering with another backyard CSA farmer, Melanie Plies of BACKYARD BOUNTY.

3. Change at the City and County Levels

The Street Roots cover story, "Growth Opportunity," discusses upcoming changes we can expect in accessibility to community gardens across the city — especially for Portland's low-income residents: Street Roots special edition on FOOD AND POVERTY (11/16/07).

Specifically, the article reports that the Food Policy Council will be putting forth recommendations that would significantly change the PORTLAND COMMUNITY GARDENS program by increasing funding, staffing, number of gardens and outreach programs.

In the meantime, Multnomah County has adopted a new urban agriculture project called COUNTY DIGS, which makes surplus and tax-foreclosed land available to local governments and non-profits for urban agriculture purposes, such as community gardens. The first plot to be farmed is in East County on a road that divides the Centennial and Rockwood neighborhoods.

If you're interested in getting involved in shaping local food policy, consider attending Portland Multnomah Food Policy Council meetings. Held on the second Wednesday of every month from 4–6 p.m., the meetings are open to the public. Find out more here.

The Kitchen Conference brings together the smartest minds in marketing to help companies reach new customers, build strong brands and strengthen customer loyalty. Companies encouraged to attend are those that use ingredients with integrity, honor their employees’ contributions, respect customer intelligence, nurture the earth, and contribute to their communities.

The mission? To produce the most effective, thought-provoking marketing conference ever offered to help the natural and organic business sector thrive.

April 23–24, 2008
The Governor Hotel
Portland, OR
Register Now!

Speakers include representatives from Annie's Homegrown, Burts Bee's, YOLO Colorhouse, KEEN Footwear, The Hartman Group and Sokol Blosser Winery. Go here for the full agenda.

"One of my favorite ways to draw out the natural vibrancy of great ingredients is Hollandaise sauce, a creamy emulsion of butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice."

Toast restaurant's Benedict Oh, a breakfast specialty. Photo by Leah Harb

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT HOLLANDAISE
By Donald Kotler
For Spring 2008

Growing up in Suffolk County, Long Island, I spent weekends with my grandparents. They had a big old house, and most importantly, a quarter of an acre that my Grandpa Clarence tended. He worked in his garden whenever he had a spare second: in the morning before heading off to work at our family-owned paint and hardware store, and in the evening when he returned home. Our family ate from that garden and our pantry every day, all year.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love to eat cooked green vegetables from our garden with a little butter, salt, and lemon. I’ve since discovered that one of my favorite ways to draw out the natural vibrancy of great ingredients is Hollandaise sauce, a creamy emulsion of butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

Hollandaise is one of the five “mother” sauces of classic French cooking. When done well, it enhances all the flavors on the plate. Balance and subtlety are key — no element should overwhelm the others. Hollandaise is perfectly suited to warm dishes that take butter, lemon, and salt with grace, such as cooked green vegetables, steak, flaky fish, and eggs.

Variations on Eggs Benedict have become some of my favorite spring breakfasts. In April and May, when sunlight begins to linger in the sky, chickens become their most naturally productive. Hollandaise brings forth the wholesomeness and great flavor of naturally raised eggs.

I first attempted to make Hollandaise while at college. As I whisked the melted butter into the egg yolks, something went wrong. It “broke,” separating into solid egg curds and oily liquid. I have since learned, with practice and patience, that Hollandaise is technique driven. With a basic understanding of why it works and practice under your belt, you’re set.

Presented by the Oregon Food Bank

Ken Meter: The Future of Food in Oregon
7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 24
First Congregational Church
1126 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR

Imagine a food and agricultural economy in Oregon that is strong, thriving and sustainable. Imagine Oregon producing enough food to feed its population.

Ken Meter, farm and food system analyst from Minnesota and president of the Crossroads Resource Center, helps communities and states achieve goals such as these. Meter studies existing food systems and creates reports using hard economic data to demonstrate the importance of developing local, sustainable food systems.

Meter moves people from being passive recipients of the food system to active participants working toward positive change.

The Oregon Food Bank will accept food and cash donations at the door.

Not only did Channing Frye create a foundation that inspires youth to adopt a healthy and active lifestyle, but Edible Portland recently discovered that Channing also loves fly-fishing, supporting Oregon growers, and sushi.

Learn more about Channing at his website, channingfrye.com. See him play in one of the five remaining games of the season: Trail Blazers schedule.

Channing Frye with Lily and Milton. Photo by Leah Harb

TRAIL BLAZER CHANNING FRYE
By Louis Sanden
For Spring 2008

At home games, in front of 20,000 roaring fans, 24-year-old Channing Frye comes off the Blazers’ bench and drops in mid-range jumpers like a fisherman gently tossing his line. When he first reached Portland, he told reporters, “I bring everything…a little personality, a little leadership, a little shooting, a little defense. I’m a buffet of goodness.”

Today, our Buffet of Goodness invites me into his condo on the top floor of a soaring apartment building. Two bulldogs nip at my feet. “Milton! Lily!” I hear from a room away.

Frye appears and shakes my hand. At six-foot-eleven, he looks surprisingly normal-sized, and I feel like a tiny preschooler. He warns me that his fridge is almost empty.

Frye:
I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that I remember what was in my refrigerator. The bad news is that my friends came up from Arizona three days ago and ate all my food. I had bought $500 worth of groceries and they destroyed it.

FLAKY WHITE FISH
Trust me, on Friday there was everything in here — so much good stuff. I had free-range chicken and salmon. Now what do we have? Here’s some wild-caught sole. I usually go for salmon because it’s versatile, but taste-wise I like flaky white fish.

At the beginning of the year, I was on this diet where I didn’t eat red meat or chicken for about three or four months, just strictly fish. I lost 25 pounds. When the season came on I started eating chicken, because I would have to eat half the ocean to compete with the calories I burn. My girlfriend is from Oregon, so she said, “Why don’t you eat free-range chicken and stuff that’s naturally grown and from Oregon?”

KOMBUCHA
My girlfriend and I eat the same stuff pretty much, but she tried to get me to drink Kombucha. She loves it, but I’m like, “Uggghhh.” I drink only water and 100 percent juice. No sodas or Gatorades. Oh, and she’s got me drinking Odwalla Superfood, too. I don’t know if that counts as juice.

Zoë Bradbury left her urban job in Portland to start farming on the south coast of Oregon. She's blogging here about her experiences. Below is her fourth entry in Diary of a Young Farmer.

GRAFTING

Grafting is the process of joining one thing to another, of taking two things that do not share a natural relationship or affinity for each other — and making them one.

In one barn, my sister Abby is grafting a hundred apple trees and as many plums and pears for the new orchard we’re planting along the creek. In the other barn where a ewe has given birth to a stillborn, a neighbor is trying to graft on an orphan lamb to make use of the ewe’s full udder. Both of them need knives to do it.

Matching apple scion to rootstock, my sister makes a careful cut to each, aligns cambium with cambium, and wraps the graft with an elastic band, urging the two halves of the new tree to fuse. Apples don’t come true from seed, so grafting is the only way to produce a proven variety.

Step One: Choose a well adapted rootstock. Step Two: Choose fruitwood varieties for pie, cider, storage and fresh eating apples. In western Oregon, look for scab-resistant varieties. Step Three: In the winter, take green cuttings of the fruitwood and order your rootstock from a nursery or dig it up. Step Four: Marry them together. Step Five: Wait five years, then feast.

Our neighbor, Wendy, takes the stillborn lamb behind the barn and skins it. She returns with the fresh hide and uses a scrap of bailing twine to tie it onto the back of the orphan lamb like a cloak. The stillborn was black. The orphan is white. The ewe doesn’t distinguish because she has evolved to recognize her young primarily by scent, not by sight.

She will reject the lamb if it doesn’t smell like her own — head-butt it, refuse to let it nurse — but wearing the stillborn’s skin, this orphan lamb has a chance. To help convince the ewe, Wendy ties her up in a pen and guides the lamb to the udder.

On the workbench, our entire orchard is laid out with names like Cox’s Orange Pippin, Northern Spy, Stayman Winesap, Goldrush, King. It seems barely possible that this collection of little dormant sticks welded together with rubber bands could be something more than campfire kindling, but it is. Even more unlikely is that in that millimeter of space between scionwood and rootstock, new cells will grow and multiply and bridge the gap. They will, and each tree in our orchard will have a scar — a bulge low to the ground — to prove it.

The next day, I look in on Wendy’s ewe. She is untied, eating alfalfa pellets in the pen. The lamb is uncloaked, white again — and nursing on a full, warm teat.

- Zoë Bradbury

Some gardeners will remember
from their own earliest recollections that no one sees the garden
as vividly, or cares about it as passionately,
as the child who grows up in it.
- Carol Williams, Bringing a Garden to Life

SEEDS OF SCIENCE
Saturday, April 19 – Sunday, April 20
9:30am–5:30pm

OMSI's back courtyard
1945 SE Water, Portland, OR
Free with paid museum admission

Children and Gardens: both require a whole lot of time and love to grow to full glory. Wonderfully, the more they interact, the better both will become.

This weekend, OMSI offers the opportunity for you to learn with your kids about the great, dirty, and rewarding world of gardening and sustainable food at Seeds of Science, a two-day community event.

What will you learn?
• Preserving the pollinator population — Xerces Society
• Creating home herb gardens — Portland Nursery
• Guide to backyard farming — Your Backyard Garden
• Composting — Metro
• Container gardening — Growing Gardens

Also:
• Plastics in the Food Chain: When We Become Our Waste — An art exhibit
• Farmer’s Market — OMSI vendors provide info on local farming

Give your kids a leg up while learning some valuable lessons yourself. And then everything can grow together: you, your kids, your compost bin, and your vegetable patch.

Portland's Urban Growth Boundary has slowed the development of surrounding farmland, but it has not stopped it. What must we do to protect this essential resource?

No Slow Food Without Farmland!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
5:30–7:00 p.m.

Ecotrust, 721 NW 9th Ave, 2nd floor
Portland, OR 97209
$10–$15
rsvp@slowfoodportland.com

This event explores the critical link between the outstanding foods we buy at our local farmers’ markets and the ongoing challenges of land-use planning in the metro area.

Jim Johnson, Land Use Specialist at Oregon Department of Agriculture, and Mary Kyle McCurdy from 1000 Friends of Oregon will lead a discussion of these issues and explore some new and innovative techniques to help us better protect our fertile local farmland. Both Jim and Mary Kyle have been working to protect Oregon’s farmland for decades.

Land-use planning in Oregon has done a good job of slowing development on farmland but none of this valuable land is actually permanently protected.

We are fortunate in the Willamette Valley to have some of the best farmland in the world. If we want to keep eating local what must we do to protect this essential resource?

Presented by Slow Food Portland.

Frank Morton selects seeds for his company, Wild Garden Seed, based in Philomath, Oregon. Photo by Karen Morton

PLANT A SEED, WATCH IT GROW
With Frank Morton
By Kathleen Bauer
For Spring 2008

In early December 2007, the Marys River overran its banks and flooded the fields of Gathering Together Farm, where Frank Morton grows his seed crop. But as he walked through the areas where his plants had been under two or three feet of water, he saw it as an opportunity to discover which of his lettuce and chard varieties best tolerate flooded conditions.

Plus, he said, “If it goes under water for a month, all the grass and cover crop drown. When the water recedes, the lettuce jumps up and starts to grow, weed free!”

This self-described “obsessive-compulsive seed-head” and plant breeder started thinking about propagating his own seeds when he noticed a single red oakleaf lettuce among thousands of green oakleaf “Salad Bowl” lettuces in his field. He realized that a green lettuce and a red romaine heirloom had crossed to make an individual red “Salad Bowl” lettuce.

Frank kept the seed, and from that single lettuce cross came a range of biodiversity: red oakleaf, green “oakleaf romaine,” and everything in between. This led to both the realization that over time, farmers have become fully separated from their seed sources, and the epiphany that farmers could reverse that trend.

“It was like, ‘Wow, if I keep doing this, in 20 years I could have a seed company selling seed that had been developed on my own farm,’” he recalled.

Things progressed to the next level when John Navazio, a nationally known plant breeder and friend, said, “Frank, those seeds you have are going to be really valuable in about ten years.” Morton laughed, and Navazio said, “No, I’m serious.” Navazio then demonstrated how to do scientific field trials to find the plants with the best genetics. What followed was a three-year trial to determine which of 40 varieties of heirloom lettuce had the most resistance to sclerotinia and downy mildew, common diseases that can ruin as much as 50 percent of a farmer’s crop.

As a young boy, Morton was fascinated by the chemistry of toxins, though it wasn’t until college that he connected this early passion to farming. In 1977 as part of an environmental study group from Lewis & Clark College, he visited a farm in Oregon’s Coast Range. “This farmer and some of his friends were the ones who had brought suit against the Forest Service over spraying dioxin-tainted 2,4,5-T as part of forest practices,” he said. “They had taken the Forest Service to court and shut down the spraying in the Pacific Northwest.”

He was so impressed with “the farmers’ knowledge, independence, courage, innovation, and grasp of things that the population at large did not know,” that he decided to become a farmer.

Small, independent producers are the heart and soul of Oregon’s world-class wine industry. The Portland Indie Wine Festival is your opportunity to meet the next generation of winemakers emerging from cellars all across the state. This relatively unknown brigade of craft wineries (those who produce less than 2,000 cases each year) represents a diversity of styles and a bent toward sustainable agriculture and production.

What happens at the Wine Festival? At the Grand Tasting on May 3 and 4, you can meet the winemakers and hear their stories first hand, sample great food from top Oregon chefs, and buy wines on site to take home and enjoy with friends.

2008 PORTLAND INDIE WINE FESTIVAL

Grand Tasting
Saturday, May 3 and Sunday, May 4
3–6 p.m. each day
NW 16th Ave. between Flanders & Everett, Portland

New this year! Two seminars including:
Terroir 101: Can you Taste Place in Chocolate, Coffee and Wine?
Saturday, May 3
10 a.m.–12 p.m.
Hotel Vintage Plaza, 422 SW Broadway, Portland

Buy tickets
This event will sell out!

Zoë Bradbury left her urban job in Portland to start farming on the south coast of Oregon. She's blogging here about her experiences. Below is her fifth entry in Diary of a Young Farmer.

APRIL'S CASH CRISIS

What I’ve learned in April is that the mythic “cash flow crisis” that farmers face in springtime is no myth.

The generic plot goes something like this: farmers spend lots of money in the spring, then make it back in the summer and fall.

Springtime = money out. Harvest time = money in.

Unfortunately, there’s a months-long vacuum between “money out” and “money in,” seeing as most crops take at least eight weeks to reach maturity. My carrots promise that they are 57 days to maturity, my tomatoes 80 days, and my asparagus, well, we’re talking two years till they’re ready.

Amidst all of this waiting for veggies to grow on, size up, and get ripe, money has been hemorrhaging out of my pockets to pay for one-time startup expenses, like my greenhouse and irrigation system, and for annual operating expenses, like seeds and soil amendments. I cracked open my little piggy bank of savings last December, and now it’s all gone.

There’s no farm income on the horizon for at least another month (grow little lettuce, grow!), which means that I am officially experiencing a bona fide cash flow crisis. It sounds so grown up…

I knew it was coming as I watched my checking account balance shrink every month, forcing me to get cleverer at juggling expenses and take full advantage of suppliers’ billing terms. It’s finally come down to the point that I’m joining ranks with all the other farmers who go into debt each spring in order to afford the cost of growing food.

I began shopping around for money a few weeks ago. It was in the midst of entertaining options like borrowing against my house or hunting down a 0% credit card offer that I decided to pay a visit to the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) to see what their farm loan program could do for me.

Jim, my regional FSA agent, asked me all about my farm over the phone. How many acres, and is it leased ground, and what am I growing, and how long have I been at it? After I finished up with the details, Jim hesitated. They’d like to be able to give me a low-interest loan, he explained, but there were a few problems.

First off, if I wanted to spend the money on something permanent – like a buried irrigation main – well, they couldn’t give me the loan because my farm is technically on leased land.

The next bad news: the loan amount they could offer me, explained Jim, would be determined according to my projected income, which they calculate by multiplying my predicted crop yields by the state commodity prices for each crop.

In Good Taste celebrates its 10th Anniversary this Saturday, April 26. Shopping in the Pearl tomorrow? Stop by In Good Taste between 10am and 5pm for all sorts of activities in celebration of this local cooking school and retail store. At noon is a demo on Indian delights, a primer on salts follows at 1pm, and from 2-4pm, a chocolate tasting with Elizabeth Montes of Sahagun Chocolates. (That's a photo of Sahagun's Single Luscious Caramel above.) Yum!

In Good Taste's Open House
Celebrating their 10th Anniversary
Saturday, April 26
10–5 p.m.
231 NW 11th Ave at the corner of Everett, Portland

ASPARAGUS AU GRATIN

By Scott Weaver, Executive Chef, Elephants Delicatessen

Makes 4 servings

1 lb asparagus
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 Tbsp minced shallots
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup creme fraiche*
1/4 cup gruyere cheese
1 tsp fresh tarragon

1. Preheat the broiler and position an oven rack 8 inches from the heat.

2. Prepare asparagus by holding asparagus spear in your hand and breaking off the bottom where it snaps; this is the tough part of the stem. Discard.

3. Melt butter in a large sauté pan. Add minced shallots and cook over moderately high heat until softened, about 1 minute. Add prepared asparagus, season with salt and pepper, and cook briefly over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until crisp-tender.

4. Transfer asparagus to a medium gratin dish and arrange with asparagus heads pointing in once direction.

5. Combine crème fraiche and grated gruyere cheese. Spread evenly over asparagus. When ready to serve, broil until golden and bubbling, shifting the dish for even browning, about 1-3 minutes. Sprinkle with tarragon and serve.

* You can substitute mascarpone for the crème fraiche, which will give the dish an earthy flavor.