Come Join Us for the Spring Farm Tour & Potluck
Join us Saturday, May 21st to kick-off the season with a tour of the farm and a CSA Community Potluck. This event is from 11am to 2pm. Tours of the farm will happen at 11am & 1pm and we will share a potluck lunch at noon. Bring your family, friends, kids, neighbors, and anyone you think would enjoy a day on the farm, and don’t forget to bring a potluck dish to share. The farm fields are located at 13615 NW Howell Park Rd, just a mile past the Sauvie Island Bridge.
It’s Transplanting Season
Ever wonder just what it takes to get all those beautiful baby plants transplanted out into our fields? Here at SIO it’s a multi-step process from the time we seed trays in the greenhouse to the final step of actually setting their roots into freshly prepared beds of fertile soil. Below is short video of Field Manager Scott using a spader implement on our tractor doing a final pass to prepare the bed for transplanting. We choose to use the spader (versus a rotatiller or plow) for the final pass because it creates ideal bed conditions for planting.
At SIO we transplant many of our crops. Transplanting gives the plants a 4-8 week head start on the weeds, as well as ensuring on the healthiest plants make it out to our fields. We remove each tiny plant from its cell tray, and plant it into the soil. Onions, corn, and cut lettuce are the most time consuming of the transplanted crops. For these crops we discovered a hand pulled mechanical transplanter that significantly decreases the amount of time it takes to transplant these. The video below shows Peter using the Paper Pot transplanter with onion starts in a freshly prepped bed. To learn more about the farm come join us for a tour on Saturday, May 21st during the Season Kick-off Party.
Local Business Partners: Fork Revolution
Here at SIO we value our partnerships with local area businesses, and many of them even serve as CSA pick-up sites for the surrounding community. One such business that has been newly added as a pick-up location for 2011 is Fork Revolution in Rock Creek/Hillsboro. Fork Revolution, and its sister business Eat Oregon First were founded by Irene and Scott Laney. They believe that, “food that doesn’t travel hundreds of miles in semi-trucks just tastes better and preserves a multitude of resources at the same time. Local food supports our highly diverse local economy and thereby, enhances our immediate area and the world at large.” Here’s more from Irene herself…
The concept for Eat Oregon First and Fork Revolution initially began with the desire to provide high quality, local beef to the Portland restaurant market. That first project endeavored to address some of the issues threatening our national meat supply: genetic integrity, sustainability, farming support and transportation. We wanted to connect healthy farm practices and those interested in where their food actually comes from. Once it became evident that many individuals in Oregon share those same concerns regarding much of our food supply, Eat Oregon First began producing and distributing a wide variety of locally grown food and grains. Currently, we partner with a variety of farmers and suppliers, all of whom share our passion for high quality. Eat Oregon First currently markets a long list of items from beef, pork, poultry and seafood to flour, produce and dairy products to local chefs and specialty stores. Most recently, Fork Revolution, our home-buying, retail branch has opened a small space for those individuals interested in getting the same high quality, local food.
To find our more about what Irene and Scott Laney are doing at Fork Revolution visit their website at www.forkrevolution.com and get signed-up for the weekly product list.
Follow us on Facebook
Come visit Sauvie Island Organics on Facebook! Give us your “like,” and stay up-to-date with the most current happenings on the farm. This summer you will be the first to know what restaurants have fresh SIO produce on their menus, as well as links to even more recipe ideas for cooking up your CSA shares.