This bill signing represented a huge victory for family scale farmers in Oregon. The Farm Direct Bill, HB 2336, clarifies and codifies many definitions which relate to product sales that are made directly from farmer to consumer. In addition, the bill allows for some minimally-hazardous products to be processed in home kitchens and sold to consumers at farmers markets or directly from the farm.

HB 2336 was just one of three bills which were signed into law with the goal of helping family farmers and ranchers remain economically viable in Oregon. In addition to HB 2336, bills that made it to the Governor’s desk included the Honey Bill and a Poultry Processing Bill.

The Honey Bill directed the Oregon Department of Agriculture to establish rules for the honey sold in in state and the Poultry Processing Bill recognized the 1000 limit federal exemption and allows farmers to raise, slaughter and sell up to 1000 of their own birds.

The 2011 Legislative Session was a great one for Oregon’s family farmers and ranchers. Many of the issues that went before Oregon’s public officials came directly from the Agricultural Reclamation Act (ARA) – A roadmap for agricultural policy in Oregon. You can read more about the ARA here.

Friends of Family Farmers would like to thank everyone who called their public officials and asked for their support of these bills, and everyone who came to Salem to speak directly to their Legislators. Without your efforts, we would never have seen such progress for family scale agriculture this past Legislative Session.

CRUST

1. Measure butter & shortening onto a plate, put into freezer for about 20 minutes.

2. Measure flour, sugar, salt and baking powder into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse for a few seconds to mix.

3. Add the butter and shortening into the dry ingredients and pulse off and on for about 1 minute until the fat chunks are pea-sized in the flour. Do not over-process.

4. In a measuring cup, mix egg yolk and vinegar together, add ice cubes and water. Chill for 3 to 4 minutes.

5. Remove flour and shortening from processor, put into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle approximately 4 to 5 tablespoons of the egg-water-vinegar mixture, a little at a time, into in the flour, mixing gently with a fork, until clumps of sticky dough begin to form and hold together. The key to this: you do not want a wet dough, and you do not want to overmix.

6. Place this dough onto plastic wrap, press into a flat disk without kneading or overworking, and chill in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

7. Remove from refrigerator and roll out, lift into pie pan using a rolling pin, prick bottom with a fork and dress entire crust with egg white.

FILLING

Ingredients:

2 C Hubbard Squash puree (Sweet Leaf Farm)
2 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
2/3 C sugar
1/8 C bourbon (Wild Turkey)
1/2 tbsp molasses
3 eggs and 1 yolk, lightly beaten
2/3 C milk
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp + 2 pinches salt
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of powdered ginger
2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat over to 350 degrees. Halve the squash and scoop out the seeds and fibers, cut into quarters. Place the squash in a baking dish and cover with foil. Bake until tender when pricked with a fork, about 40 minutes. While still hot, scoop the squash away from the rind and into a food processor. Puree until smooth.

2. Transfer 2 cups of squash puree to a large bowl and stir in the butter so it melts. Whisk in the sugar, bourbon, molasses, eggs and egg yolk, milk, nutmeg, salt, cinnamon, ginger and vanilla until smooth.

3. Carefully pour the squash mixture into the unbaked crust. Sprinkle the edges of the crust with Sugar in the Raw. Bake the pie until the center is just set, 45 to 60 minutes.

4. Bake center leaf decoration separately and place on the pie when the pie is nearly done (so that it doesn’t sink into the filling).

5. Cool the pie on a rack. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Simon Sampson comes from a long line of fishermen; his father and grandfather before him fished, and most likely his great-grandfather and his great-great grandfather before him. He is of the Yakama, a Native American tribe known as “the people of the narrow river.” For thousands of years they hunted, gathered and fished all along the Columbia and Yakima rivers, and were best-known for trading one commodity in particular: salmon. Simon continues this tradition with his fish business, the Columbia River Fish Company, Treaty of 1855 (or CRFC), whose home base is on the Yakima Indian Reservation, in Toppenish, WA.

The Treaty of 1855 identified the fourteen confederated tribes and bands of the Yakama and condensed them into one nation. It was the treaty wherein the Yakama relinquished their land-1.5 million acres- to the United States government, the treaty that created the Yakima Indian Reservation. (“Yakima” was officially changed to “Yakama” in 1994 to reflect the native pronunciation, although the spelling of the county and reservation hasn’t changed). Celilo Falls, on the border between Oregon and Washington, was the oldest continuously-inhabited community on the North American continent until 1957, when the falls and the nearby settlements were submerged by the construction of the Dalles Dam. It was the fishing capital of Native American territory for 15,000 years until it was dammed – the Wall Street of the West, according to historians. Despite such setbacks the Yakama adapted to these boundaries and continued to fish, creating fishermen like Simon whose veins run with river water.

Simon established the CRCF in 1998, attending his first farmers market in Vancouver, WA.  For the next decade, he sold his fish to a restaurant owner in Seattle who ordered 1,900 pounds every week, and to a couple of wholesale food companies also in Seattle, at 500 to 600 pounds per week. Two years ago, he started taking his fish to local markets in Oregon. According to Simon, the best fishing spots along the Columbia River can now be found around The Dalles, Bonneville, and John Day. The fish are caught daily, at night when salmon are most active, using traditional Yakama practices that involve a wooden platform out on the water and a net that is forty feet in diameter. On an average night, he’ll bring in about fifteen or twenty fish, weighing in at two hundred or three hundred pounds. He is known, fittingly, as “the Salmon Man.” His voicemail message even says that he’s unavailable because he’s most likely out on the river.

CRFC’s set-up at Hollywood Farmers Market is direct, no-fuss, and savvy (much like the man himself): a folding table sits dead-center of the market’s west entrance, with only a checked plastic tablecloth, a hand-lettered sign proclaiming the wares, and of course, large filets of bright juicy salmon bobbing in ice-water-filled trays. Naturally, salmon is the lifeblood of CRFC: Chinook, Coho, Steelhead, Wall-Eyed. It accounts for the majority of what Simon catches and sells, although occasionally catfish or sturgeon will find their way to the table. When I asked Simon what made his fish stand out above other such vendors, his reply was quick and sincere: “Because it’s the freshest fish in town. The best-tasting, at the best price.” At five or six dollars a pound, caught only hours earlier, he may very well be right.

CRFC also has contracts with several restaurants around town, including Bread and Ink, Tabla, and Nostrana. It seems that you’ll be able to find Simon’s fish in more Portland restaurants in the coming months. In addition to Hollywood, you can also find Simon’s salmon at the PSU, Milwaukie and Gresham markets.

Also on Simon’s plate is community involvement. He’s the founder and chairperson of the Toppenish Community Safety Network, whose members include his wife Diane. The network’s objective is to make the town cleaner and safer for the community. The CSN collaborates with other local organizations to create better crime-free rental housing, combat underage drinking, limit graffiti, and to fight gang violence. “I think what a lot of this boils down to is if we can unite as a community-police, city officials, school officials,” Simon has said (Yakima Herald, July 2009).

Besides meeting new people, Simon’s favorite part of the fish biz is getting to include the entire family. He and his son and nephew fish from around eight in the evening until midnight the night before a market, and his children and grandchildren help him prepare the fish. This means they head, gut, and “chunk them out” (meaning to fillet the fish in pieces instead of halves). In this way the Yakama fishing tradition is perpetuated in what is more than a passion for the Salmon Man: it’s a way of life, with roots sunk deep in the past and unfurling into the future.

Miriam Garcia is a folklorist-foodie, freelance writer and guardian of a super-secret chicken soup recipe. You can contact her at Miriam_G@me.com

Halloween is what folklorists call a holiday of ‘misrule.’ These are holidays in which every-day social rules are inverted for a brief spell. On Halloween, for example, normally mild-mannered citizens roam the streets at night. They threaten respectable householders with mean tricks. They gorge on normally forbidden foods. And that’s just the kids.

As with most ‘Misrule’ holidays, (think, Mardi Gras, New Year’s Eve, the Super Bowl), Halloween is truly a folk holiday. It is not sanctioned by any religion, state or other institution, unless you count Hallmark. It exists and persists simply because we want it to. Sort of like the Farmers Market, if you think about it.

There are other, even older, connections between Halloween and the Farmers Market, and the farmlands that the market represents. At the very heart of the matter is the fact that Halloween is deeply rooted in the workings of the natural world. For the ancient Celts, October 31st was the most important day of the year. The holiday, which they called Samhain, was a major agricultural ‘marker,’ the date by which crops were to be harvested. And, as befits a time of dying light and dying vegetation, it was believed to be a night when the veil between our world and the underworld was lifted, so that the souls of the dead could cross over. Abundance and death together powered ancient Samhain, and the same two forces are still mixing it up in the farm fields and forests represented at the Market, and in our own Halloween activities and imagery.

For example, consider your Jack O’ Lantern.

First, there’s the procurement of the pumpkin. For many people, this involves a pilgrimage from an urban area to a farm or to the Farmers Market. This is a symbolic return to nature in order to gather an emblem of the harvest; ye olde pumpkin.

Next, there’s the transformation of the pumpkin from a natural object into a spirit object. Like putting on a costume, turning a pumpkin into something else altogether seems to set the misrule into motion. It’s a way to step out of ordinary time.

Finally, there’s the big night… as we take on new personas in our costumes, our flickering lanterns assume otherworldly personas, too. The veil between the worlds does indeed seem thin as our symbols of the harvest and abundance, of death and mystery, of rule and misrule, all collide and somehow all make sense.

At Samhain, the Celts lit bonfires, they feasted, they reveled, and they left gifts on their doorsteps to appease wandering spirits and tricksters. We may not live as close to nature as earlier generations, but at Halloween we feel the link to other times. We celebrate the turning of the season. We sense ancient truths burning in our Jack O’Lanterns’ eyes.