Weekly Update: July 19

Right after Jim and I bought the farm, we were approached by the Sauvie Island Center. They have brought over 20,000 kids to Sauvie Island over the last 15 years through school field trips and summer camps. When they approached us, two things really stood out; 1) They would facilitate and lead field trips with rich curriculum, working directly with teachers and schools, and 2) their mission to work with kids who might otherwise never get the opportunity to come to a farm.

Then Covid happened.

It has been inspiring to watch Aliesje and Joanne navigate these unique challenges. They continued to work with teachers and schools to create curriculum that could be done remotely. They’ve lead Friday work parties on the farm. And they’ve helped educate us in so many ways.

This week they got good news. They received some unexpected grant money and have added some camp scholarships. They also added a second week of summer camp. They now have two week-long sessions:

Aug 3 – 7 and Aug 10 – 14 on our farm.

All details can be found here. Partial and full scholarships are available. For more information contact joanne@sauvieislandcenter.org

Here are a few highlights and photos from the past week:

Wesley Lapointe took lots of beautiful photos of our first farm to plate dinner.

Yesterday we enjoyed another amazing gourmet picnic, and last Saturday night was our first official farm to plate dinner! We are planning to have at least a dinner or picnic each week for the rest of the summer. The next one is this Saturday, July 25 (however it’s almost sold out). To book a dinner, brunch or picnics, please follow this link. We noticed many folks coming to our events for birthday parties and anniversaries, so we decided to start offering gift certificates too.

The farm-to-plate crew.

Speaking of birthday parties . . . we’ve had a couple kid parties this week. Each party can choose something on the farm to do when they’re here, like a behind the scenes animal experience, hayride, or u-cut flowers.

And we hosted the Sauvie Island Farmer’s Market last Sunday. Wish we could have them every weekend. So many great vendors.

A HUGE THANKS to our volunteers, who have been helping us mark up the corn maze over the past couple of weeks. Designer/Maze artist and builder, Peter Rockwell, continues the tradition of creating the maze by starting with sketches on a sheet of graph paper. Each square on the graph then gets marked with stakes on the ground. Then he with volunteers, draws with lime on the ground and begins tilling under the corn where the walkways will go. Extra width was added to the walkways to allow safe distance for people to pass each other.

A good week, we were able to harvest lots of different vegetables.

Even with planting many months late, we were able to harvest some great looking (and smelling) garlic.

Even the artichokes we transplanted are doing well.

Pickle time!

Thanks to our neighbors at the Pumpkin Patch for making it possible for us to start selling pickling cukes this week. We planted our own cucumber fields too early, when the weather seemed warm enough, but the soil wasn’t. By the time we realized our cukes weren’t going to make it and we needed to replant, we were a month late. We planted 4 acres worth, that we are hoping to start harvesting in a week or two. Until then, we are so grateful for our Sauvie Island neighbors!

Good friend, Dave Yudkin, owner of Hotlips Pizza, has also been helping support the farm in so many ways. In addition to baking bread and focaccia, hummus and salsa, they are now baking Chocolate Chip cookies!!!! Dave has also lent us equipment, such as this grab and go fridge, and one of the Hotlips’ portable ovens which our farm to plate chefs have been using.

Some of Marion Acres chicken tractors.

The fresh and frozen chickens in our market come from Marion Acres. This week, my brother and I went to visit co-owner John Mathia who gave us a behind the scenes tour of some of their chicken tractors. We have been doing a little research to figure out if moving our chickens to chicken tractors would make sense. We got to visit both their layers and meat chicken tractors, and learned lots of great info.

Btw for folks in Portland who are raising chicks, and then learn they have a rooster, and then want to re-home their rooster on our farm, please understand we can’t take them. We have a hard time saying no (which is why we now have 3 pigs). But with roosters and chickens, it’s a balance of having the right ratio. Too many roosters can cause lots of problems and too much fighting. Thanks for understanding, and please don’t bring us your pigs or other farm animals either. We need to build more animal enclosures before we take on any more.

Speaking of building, we have decided to start building 2 additional greenhouses. Mainly so that Jose can keep up with the demand for his Spicy Salad Mix. Also so we can grow more kale for our chefs to make into kale chips. Yesterday I felt so proud when I met a customer who said she came to our market specifically to pick up multiple bags of our kale chips after trying some that her friend bought. Out of everything on the farm so far, I have noticed the most satisfying feeling is when someone says how much they like the taste of something we’ve grown.

Comet Neowise over Topaz Farm.

Thanks for your reading, have a great week!

Kat