6-8-10

GUTTER LETTUCE

TUG-O-WAR WITH A CONDUIT

DON'T SNIFF THE GLUE

LET'S STAY TOGETHER

THE JOLLY GREEN GIANT AIN'T
SO JOLLY ABOUT THE LOW FENCE

It's a funny thing about chickens. You build them a nice house. You put nice cozy boxes for them to lay their eggs in and keep them safe and protected. You feed them good grain. You make sure there are fences around the property so no predators go after them. You pet them and give them lovin'. And how do they repay you? They hide their eggs from you. Farmer Jen has 10 chickens, and each of them should lay at least an egg every day. But the past few days, in the chicken house boxes, there have only been 3-5 per day. We knew they had a secret stash going somewhere. Finding them is like having the Easter Egg Hunt we never had as children. Today, we were working on burying an electrical conduit inside piping laid out in a 200 foot long trench from a power box running to the greenhouse, in order to get electricity to the fan. While we were fighting with the wire and piping, the dogs were making a lotta racket. "What's going on?" we thought. Investigation led us to all lie stomach down under the wood pile shed, where we saw exactly 20 eggs. Oh you tricky chickens, we're on to you!

But before all this funny business, we had to harvest for the CSA boxes. Today being drop off day, we prepared 7 boxes for the members, but one box was a double, so it was almost like 8 boxes. Each box included: kale, red leaf romaine lettuce, collards, snow peas, sugar snap peas, salad mix, baby leeks, a bunch of cilantro, and a head of cabbage. Everyone harvested something different and then we all met up at the table where we rinsed the dirt off the veggies and put them in plastic bags. All the bags went into the box, and we placed the boxes in the shade to stay cool until the afternoon drop off time. Farmer Jen normally only works with Terin, but with four sets of hands, the job went really quickly. In the afternoon we worked on setting up some irrigation lines, cleaned out trays, and prepared a new bed where squash will get planted soon. It was another productive day on the farm.

One of the reasons Feel Good Farm appealed to us was its close proximity to Eugene. We've heard great things about this city, and when all the work was done, we drove the short 30 minute drive up highway 5 into town. We went to the Pizza Research Institute for dinner, a highly recommended restaurant by many. We ordered the Chef Special pie, which changes daily. It was a unique pizza experience to say the least. The pizza had 13 toppings on it: peaches, broccoli, green peppers, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, red onions, cauliflower, olives, sweet potatoes, ricotta cheese, and spinach. We got half "regular" and half "vegan" so one side had tomato sauce and cheese, while the other had a soy based cream sauce. The pizza crust was really good, and really thin, but the toppings were so wild and piled so high it was almost like a thin crust pie , deep dish style. It was really thin, but vertically you really had to open your mouth wide. It was well worth the work. After parties in our tummies, we went to Sam Bonds, a bar down the road that serves local Oregon beers in mason jars, and has free live Bluegrass music every Tuesday. It reminded us of The Baggot Inn near Washington Square Park in NY. It was a great evening in town.