Farm to Table

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Hood River Fruit Loop

The Hood River County Fruit Loop is 35 miles of orchards, forests, farmlands, and friendly communities, with a drive that includes gorgeous viewpoints and vistas. Along the Loop are 31 visitor-friendly businesses: farm stands, wineries, alpaca farms, a chestnut farm, lavender fields, and gift stores. Fresh fruit and produce are available throughout the summer and early fall. Join us for these fall events: September 19-20 Pear Celebration & October 24-25 Heirloom Apple Celebration.

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The Best Kind of Blues

FROM A WINDOWLESS OFFICE in Silicon Valley, Mindi Thornton considered life on a farm.

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The Hunt for Spring Mushrooms

It’s early spring and the old-growth forests of Oregon are ripe with prized wild mushrooms hiding in plain sight. A simple walk through an area dense with trees might be the home to hundreds of different varieties of fungi. From spring kings to morels to oysters, wild mushrooms thrive in the wet and warming weather of a changing season. 

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Oregon Garlic, With a Twist

IT’S THE DEAD OF WINTER, but the soil at Whistling Duck Farm is alive with tiny shoots that resemble the first hints of spring flowers. There are bulbs hiding under this patch of Southern Oregon ground, but they aren’t the kind that yield crocuses or daffodils. The 600-foot-long rows will produce another harbinger of spring: garlic.

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The Ripening Age

DAIRY FARMS ARE like clockwork. Day in and day out, rain or shine, holiday or Monday, there’s a herd of cows that must be milked every twelve hours.

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Princess Peach

If you want to pick a peck of peaches, Valley View Orchard is a sweet spot. The trees are expansive, planted in wide rows, with thick trunks and twisted branches. Then there’s the view from the orchard’s 100-plus-year-old farmhouse, where rows of peach trees slope down to a vineyard. Ashland is nestled below and conifer-studded hills are in the distance.

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La Terra Vita

Lucie Gouin examines seeds from a friend’s tomato plant that she says tasted particularly good. On a plate at her kitchen table and labeled “9/23/13,” the heirloom seeds are among hundreds meticulously plucked, dried and saved for possible cultivation for the farm’s community-supported agriculture members. These luscious, thin-skinned heirlooms at the farmers’ market come at a price–and not just to the consumer.   photo by Andrea Lonas They also sell at farmers’ markets, including the Saturday market near Portland State University. Poulos harvests vegetables Friday night. Gouin washes them into the wee hours, then he loads them and departs around 4:30 a.m. They joke that, by September, Poulos resembles a zombie. Heirloom tomato production begins the previous season, by picking and saving seeds from the best plants. “Harvesting and saving heirloom tomato seed is like collecting dying wishes,” quips Gouin. “It is practically an obligation and comes with the promise…

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Pork Recipes

Koho Bistro Eugene | kohobistro.net Chef Jeff Strom Braised Berkshire Pork Coppa with House Made Spiced Apple Butter Makes 8 servings | total cook time: 5 hours 1 large pork coppa (Ask your butcher for the large loin from a fresh pork neck, used mainly for the Italian cured specialty meat of the same name, roughly 3-4 pounds. Ask the butcher to truss the coppa for you as well. This keeps it in a nice cylindrical shape through brine and cooking process.) 1/2 gallon water 1/2 cup pink peppercorns 1/4 cup whole mace (or whole nutmeg) 1/2 cup fennel seed, toasted 6 cinnamon sticks, toasted 1/2 cup juniper berries, toasted and crushed 1 tablespoon vanilla paste (or vanilla extract) 1/4 cup dried lemon thyme 1/2 cup fresh ginger, peeled and crushed Zest strips from 2 oranges 1 cup kosher salt 2 cups dark brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon pink curing salt 1/2 gallon…

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Porklandia: Life on a heritage farm

Get a glimpse of life on a family farm, raising heritage breeds of pigs, through this engaging gallery of photographs.