We officially got our first light frost on the farm a couple nights ago. This season has been truly unforgiving with it's temperature swing, but it's also very typical of our location. The local food scene is growing here in Central Oregon, but there's a reason veggies are traditionally grown in the Valley. It isn't easy to run a diversified farm when frost could come at any day of the year. Luckily here in Terrebonne, it's usually a bit warmer than Bend, but still, it got down to 38 and some of our squash leaves and outdoor bean plants felt it. The plants are fine, but their fruit will be set back a bit. Most crops didn't even notice, but this in addition to the late spring frost that killed our outdoor beans and many winter squash are making it look like a scant year for green beans and butternuts. Thankfully our Delicata Squash and Spaghetti Squash didn't mind the chill as much, and boy do we have so many other crops to see us through. Also most of our sensitive crops are grown in unheated tunnels which is just enough to get them through brief cold spells.
This week WE HAVE CORN. It comes late in central Oregon due to those late spring frosts, but we've finally made it. We also don't grow a lot of it, because it takes up an enormous amount of space and doesn't produce very much, which doesn't work very well on our scale. But we know people love it (we do too) so we grow a little. We like to grow bicolor super-sweet varieties, and we taste tested it for quality last night... we're pretty sure you'll love it!
I'm calling this Latin American Fusion week because with all these good peppers, cilantro, tomatoes, and corn we have I'm thinking some fresh salsa might be in order! We've also got a lot of our great standbys available.
Eat well,
Ashley and Caleb
