Farm Bulletin: Inner Workings, Part One: Preserves

Farms are not made solely of soil and crops; many also produce what are known as "value-added" products like salsas, sauces, flours or packaged goods that give the farmer additional revenue streams in addition to fresh produce. Ayers Creek Farm dries its corn for popcorn as well as grinding it for polenta, extending the season (and income) beyond the harvest. Here, contributor Anthony Boutard describes how they produce their (insanely) delicious preserves, as well as announcing the end of their blackcap preserves, which Carol Boutard and I came very close to producing as part of a line of food-oriented sexual aids. (Yes, it's that good.) Also, at the end of this post note Anthony's announcement of farm store days coming up this weekend, December 1st and 2nd.

About ten years ago, we were approached by a specialty food company that wanted to carry our preserves. After a lot of flattery, they asked us what about our wholesale price, then they asked what our price would be if we upped our production. We carefully explained that with a small run of preserves, there is no point at which they are cheaper to produce. All of our costs are per the jar; there are no variable costs at this scale. We explained that we are farmers who happen to make a few preserves, and are content to keep it at a scale where we don’t have to cut corners. For example, we could make cheaper preserves by adding pectin which would double the number of jars per pound of fruit, using frozen lemon juice instead of hand squeezing the lemons on the day of production, or buying machine-harvested fruit. We will leave that sort of production to professional preserve-makers, happy to defend our amateur status.

A wide selection (see complete list below).

This year will mark the last of the blackcap preserves. The raspberries as a group are tough to grow on a commercial basis as they are prone to a bevy of root diseases. Blackcaps and purple raspberries generally fall apart after four or five years, other varieties hang on a bit longer. By comparison, our oldest Chesters were planted in 1993 and are still going strong. This autumn we plowed the blackcap plants under and prepared the land for other crops. It was our third planting and, with a measure of sadness, we have decided against planting more. With increasingly uncertain weather and high establishment costs, it is no longer a wise investment. We will have a few jars of crabapple jelly this week. It is a lovely, subtle jelly that was once the domain of patient, elderly sorts, and one of Anthony’s odd fixations.

Paul Fuller and Carol Boutard in production at Sweet Creek Foods.

In 2017, early stone fruit was shy due to rain and frost during bloom. Too few to even bother harvesting for preserves. A relatively dry and mild spring this year allowed us to bring back green gage, golden gage and tart cherry preserves. The lack of any temperature spikes in June and July along with cool nights assured high quality currants and berries. Winemakers will rattle off their favorite years when everything seems to fall into place. It is no different with other sorts of fruit, though without the attending cachet. Good thing, too. We would hate the thought of people asking if we had any of the ’15 raspberry with its refined floral notes and delicate tannic finish.

The Hungarian-type cherries (Balaton, Jubileum and Danube) are morello types, meaning they have a dark red juice rather than the clear juice of the Montmorency-type. Staff froze 210 pounds of the cherries in July. In the past, we have made preserves from a mixture of the Hungarian and Montmorency cherries, but this year we decided to try the single sort.

Anthony with his prized Montmorency cherries.

In early November, the two of us pitted them, netting 164 pounds for processing. We have a fine cherry pitter collection, including an expensive stainless machine designed to pit 10 at a time. At the moment, we favor a cheap plastic sort that sits well in the hand. We take a few pounds out the freezer at a time, let them soften for 20 minutes or so, and then remove the pits. The pitter lasts for about 70 pounds and then something breaks. Even with hand-pitting, a few pits manage to find their way into the processed fruit.

When we started cooking the cherries last week, we discovered the fruit wanted to float in the filler, so some jars had no fruit, just syrup, and others all fruit. Not good. Fortunately, Paul was quick on his feet and set up a hand-filling station. Linda Colwell, who had dropped by Sweet Creek simply to observe the process, was quickly handed a hairnet, gloves and apron, and pressed into service.

Jostaberries.

Cherries are low in pectin relative to other fruits, so the set is quite loose. We have never added commercial pectin because it dulls the fruit’s character, as does longer cooking to concentrate the fruit. As with our other fruits, in cooking we only go to 222°F (105°C). Better bright and active than dull and sedentary is our operating principle. We are very happy with the resulting flavor. An excellent sauce on ice cream.

The Hungarians were planted at the suggestion of Trillium Blackmer, who bought our Montmorency cherries at the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market.* One day Trillium wistfully noted that she really enjoyed Balaton cherries and she wished someone would grow them in Oregon. Her plea was compelling. At the time, nursery stock for the Hungarian-types was almost impossible to find. Balaton had been released only a few years earlier in 1998 and the cherries were unknown outside of Michigan. We tracked down a couple dozen at Cummins Nursery, a very small operation in Ithaca, New York. We ordered every tree available over the next couple of years. The Hungarian cherries are registered varieties and the royalties we paid on our trees went to fund fruit research in Hungary.

Read Part Two, Inner Workings: Horseradish.

*Ayers Creek Farm no longer attends the Hillsdale market.

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From Anthony: We are planning open days for the coming weekend, the 1st and 2nd of December. Our hours will be from 1 pm to 4 pm. As a reminder, we are strictly cash or check; we do not have the ability to process electronic payments. For those who find the journey out to the farm difficult or prefer the ease of electronic payments, World Foods' Barbur location and Rubinette Produce carry robust selections of our beans and grains. Pastaworks, which has carried our preserves since our first run in 2005, has a complete selection of our preserves at its City Market and Providore locations.

We will have a full selection of preserves, beans, and grains, as well as chickpeas, mustard and other odds and ends. We will have family-sized beets, horseradish, melons, tomatillos, spuds, big white onions and other stuff. Our selection now includes: Loganberry, Boysenberry, raspberry, golden gage, green gage, Italian prune, Veepie grape, blackcap, red currant, black currant, jostaberry, damson, tart cherry, quince jelly, crabapple jelly (available only at the farm).

Ayers Creek Farm can be found at 15219 SW Spring Hill Rd., Gaston, Oregon, 97119.

Farm Bulletin: Preserving the Best of Summer

Ayers Creek Farm returns to the Hillsdale Farmers' Market on Sunday (11/17) from 10 am to 2 pm for its winter run, and they are bringing along the first batch of their stunning preserves, including a couple of new contestants for the title of "Most Addictive Jams & Jellies."

Preserve production is when we reprise our summer, the good moments and the disappointments. All of the fruit we use, with the exception of lemons, comes from the farm. Many farmers contemplate preserve production as a way to capitalize on surpluses and low grade fruit, throw some sugar and pectin into a big pot and you have something to sell. Extension people call it "value-added." As we warn other farmers, the notion that making preserves as "value-added" is simply poppycock. We must purchase the jars, organic sugar, organic lemons and pay for the use of Sweet Creek Foods' kitchen and staff. We have added an investment and value is added only if and when you sell the preserves for a profit, so there is no sense poking some low grade fruit in glass.

Carol and Paul starting a batch.

We started making preserves from the opposite end of the harvest. The very first berries to ripen in the field are the highest quality fruit. They set up well without any added pectin and the flavor is brightest due to their higher acidity. For us, taking the better part of the day to deliver ten flats of berries is a waste of time and fuel. So early in the morning, we bring in a few flats each day and freeze the berries. We never crush them; they are packed into buckets whole when frozen. This gentle treatment preserves the aromatics and acidity of the fruit, as many of you know because you handle our berries the same way.

Small-batch cooking at its finest.

Our preserves are very farmer-ish, just one type of fruit and no secret ingredients or surprising combinations. The preserves are cooked in 2 1/2 gallon steam jacket pots, so the cooking surface is a gentle 270°F (132°C). We cook about a gallon at a time. Paul Fuller has three 275-gallon pots, but at that volume, you have to add pectin in order for the fruit to gel. Several years ago, Carol's brother, Bill, visited the farm and walked us through a series of very carefully documented variations. Tasting the various versions, it was clear to us that adding pectin robbed a vital part of the fruit's spirit, inconvenient and indisputable. Sweet Creek has just two of these small pots, but Paul has added two more so we can increase production next year. There is no other co-packer in Oregon that would put up with our fussy demands, so as long as Paul and Judy own Sweet Creek and welcome us back, we will make preserves.

The most important tool for us is Paul's Omega HH1501AJK digital thermometer. In cooking, the fruit goes through a series of temperature steps. The critical range is 220 to 222°F (104.4 to 105.5°C). The fruit sets up in that range—if you allow it to bounce up to 224°F (106.6°C), the fruit has an overcooked flavor and texture. One year, the cord to the thermometer frayed and we had to use a different one for the last run of the day. The calibration was off and the fruit overcooked slightly. We now have our own Omega, so if one goes we have a backup. It also allows us to conduct test runs at home.

My favorite, the blackcap.

As we noted earlier, we see the season reflected in the fruit. The heatwave that came through during our ramble in June destroyed much of the black currant, boysenberry and blackcap crop. We have some, though not enough for the stores. The early raspberry and loganberry crops preceded the heat wave, so they are in good supply. We have done an even better job with the tart cherry preserves, though they are inherently lower in pectin than other fruit and are on the runny side. We have yet to perfect pit removal, so there will be an occasional pit in the jars. This preserve is an even greater labor of love than the others and we should drop it but we like it too much. This year, we have added a small run of grape preserves from the Veepie grape. The goal is a grown-up grape flavor with skins in the mix. The golden gage and mirabelle are back as well.

Aphrodite holds a quince.

Speaking of labors of love, Aphrodite is often portrayed holding a quince. Our two small quince trees had such a heavy crop that the trees largely collapsed. We have a small run of quince jelly in memoriam for the efforts of those two unfortunate trees. They will recover eventually and we are planting more because we cannot imagine life without a bit of quince jelly. Eventually, we will add more jellies to the mix. We have several crab apples which should bear good crops in a year or two. The jellies will test Paul's patience even more, which should him some level of beatification among fruit lovers. Though we promise him that we will stop at 19 different preserves, a good prime number, so there are just two more types to go.

Photo of statue of Aphrodite from Wikipedia.

Food Farmer Earth: Co-packing Helps Farms Succeed

In this interview for Food Farmer Earth, I ask Paul Fuller of Sweet Creek Foods to explain what co-packing is and what it means for our local farmers.

When was the last time you saw a misshapen tomato or a scarred piece of fruit in the produce section at your local store? Even at the farmers' markets, most of the fruit is a pretty uniform size and shape, clean and unscarred. I know from personal experience that all of it doesn't come off the vine or the tree or out of the ground that way. 

So what happens to all the farm produce that doesn't fit store specifications, but is still perfectly ripe and totally delicious? All too often it was left to rot in the field, representing a loss to the farmer of the time, energy and resources it took to grow it.

That's why the Paul and his wife Judy decided to offer a service to local farms called co-packing. The farmer provides the fruit or produce when it's at the peak of its flavor and Sweet Creek provides them with a fully-licensed processing facility so the jam, salsa or pickles can be sold at stores or at the farmers' market. They even provide farmers with help developing a marketing plan to sell the products.

It's a win for the processor, who has an additional revenue stream and helps its farmers succeed and survive. It's a win for farmers who don't lose income from crops going to waste, as well as having value-added products they can sell when their fresh produce is out of season. And I'd argue it's a win for our tables as well.

Watch the first part of the interview, Packing Pickles. Get regular updates on this series about our local food scene by subscribing. This week's recipe: easy bread and butter pickles!

Food Farmer Earth: Packing Pickles

A behind-the-scenes look at an important part of a vital regional food system. My interview for Food Farmer Earth with Paul Fuller of Sweet Creek Foods.

Paul Fuller and his wife Judy have been building their food processing business—they refer to it as a “glassery” rather than a cannery—for 12 years. They started Sweet Creek Foods by processing pickles, then moved on to jams, tomatoes, salsa and tuna. But what they were really building, according to Paul, was an essential piece of a regional food system.

Fuller noticed that a huge amount of perfectly good, fresh produce from local farms was being tossed out because it had a small blemish or was not the right size. Knowing that wasted produce meant lost income for farmers, he sensed an opportunity to help the farmers as well as build a viable business for his family. With that goal in mind, he and Judy started producing fresh pack pickles, something they’d enjoyed doing for themselves for years.

It took a few batches to perfect their technique so that the pickles had the right amount of crispness, but they now produce 100% certified organic bread and butter pickles, garlic dills and chili dills. Using cider vinegar rather than the standard distilled vinegar, they fresh pack their pickles by brining them in cool salt water for 24 to 48 hours. The brined cucumbers are hand-packed in jars, pickling spices are added and then a hot vinegar brine is poured over them. This pickles them in the jar rather than using a fermentation process to do the pickling, which Fuller feels gives them a fresher flavor.

Read the rest of the story here. Watch part two of the interview, Co-Packing Helps Farms Succeed. Get regular updates on this series about our local food scene by subscribing. This week's recipe: easy bread and butter pickles!

Farm Bulletin: Jam Session

The first time I tasted the preserves from Ayers Creek Farm, it was a jam made from the blackcap, a tiny blackish-blue berry whose shape is similar to a raspberry but with a shallower cup and much tinier drupelets. Spread on warm buttered toast it was a revelation, and I've since gone on to sample many more of their amazing preserves, each one the distilled essence of the fruit. This week contributor Anthony Boutard describes the process used in making them, and you can get some for yourself two Sundays a month through the winter at the Ayers Creek stand at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market.

In mid-November, we made our third run down to Elmira, a small town 105 miles south of Gaston. The sky was clear and Orion's belt twinkled low and clear in the early morning sky. We left 20 minutes early, hoping to arrive before our customary 9:06 arrival time. Bogged down in Corvallis, we arrived at 9:09. Upon entering the sparkling processing room at Sweet Creek Foods, it is clear that Paul has everything set up for the day's processing run. The deseeder is in the middle of the room. Stainless steel vats were filled with fruit that had been macerating in sugar for 36 hours. On the table stood a hand-cranked juicer, a case of organic lemons, a knife and cutting board.

Sweet Creek Foods is a small processing and bottling company operated by Paul and Judy Fuller. The facility is certified organic and the Fullers pack tuna, pickles, salsas and jams under their own label. They are also a co-packer; they allow farmers to bring in fruits and vegetables they have grown for canning. Paul is a refrigeration and food processing engineer, and runs the facility. The machinery has been assembled from auctions and demolitions as the valley's smaller canneries closed their doors. It is a classic steam operated cannery, the most gentle way to process food. The machinery clanks, hisses and wheezes just like the 'African Queen'. At the center of the facility is a bottling machine Paul purchased new from Italy. There are some machines, he notes, that must be purchased new, and a bottler is one of those.

In the summer of 2005, after our second winter season at Hillsdale, we decided to produce preserves from the fruit grown at Ayers Creek, and contacted Paul and Judy whom we had met a couple of years earlier. From test runs, we knew we wanted a simple preserve made from fruit, sugar and lemon juice, without additional pectin. Adding commercial pectin dulls the acids in the fruit, and you lose its spritely quality. We also learned to cook up the fruit in small, two-gallon lots and use freshly squeezed instead of frozen lemon juice. We harvest the earliest fruit for the preserves; they have the highest concentration of pectins and acids. It works for us because there is not enough fruit in those early harvests to justify a delivery run. Mixing the fruit and sugar a day or more in advance is called "maceration" and helps free the pectins in the fruit. These complex molecules give fruit its body and, when brought to 222°F, cause the fruit to set. After explaining with due diligence that this is not the way processors make preserves, Paul set about make it work for us. 

Every single variety of fruit cooks differently. Of the fruit we process, the most difficult are the raspberries. Red raspberry should be simple, but it is a delicate fruit and quick to take umbrage at careless handling. This year's run went without a hitch and is the very best we have ever made. Blackcap and purple raspberry have hard, sharp seeds, so deseeding is essential. For some mysterious reason they also take about three times as long to cook as the other berries or the plums. We have learned to cook purples and blackcaps on separate days, and always in the morning when our humor is fresh. The raspberry, boysenberry and loganberry are the most fragrant fruit to cook. The currants are explosive in the pot and exact their share of blisters. The plums have a rolling, sensuous boil due to their heavy skins.

Working with Paul and his staff is one of the great pleasures of the year. The Fullers are in a tough, competitive business, yet they retain a playfulness and enthusiasm that makes a five-to-nine day fun. They source fruits and vegetables locally, and buy our blackberries for the preserves. The tuna is purchased from a fisherman that Paul has known for years. The wall of Judy's office is decorated with jars from the many farms they have worked with over the years. Our preserves are possible because of their vision and business acumen. The two of us have strong opinions about making preserves, yet at the end of the day full credit goes to Paul and Judy for opening such a fine little factory to so many farmers.

Farm Bulletin: How It's Done

This latest essay from contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm describes the relationships, informal and collegial, that exist between farmers, suppliers and, yes, even bureaucracies.

We buttoned up the Hot Lips harvest [Ayers Creek supplies berries for their sodas. - KAB] on Monday, and shifted our attention to packing blackberries for Sweet Creek Foods. Run by Paul and Judy Fuller, Sweet Creek is a small processing facility located in Elmira, west of Eugene. They source everything they can locally, and also allow farms such as ours to use the facility. Without Paul and Judy, we would not be able to produce our preserves. They also work work with a host of other farms in the valley. On Wednesday, when we went down to collect empty buckets and move some fruit into their freezer, Paul had just returned from the coast with a load of tuna.

The trip to Elmira takes us down 99W, and is a spectacular trip. On Wednesday, the last burning of the south valley grass seed field was taking place, for better or worse. From now on, only a small area of fescue production in the Santiam Hills will continue the annual rite.

Seed production is a vital part of the valley's agriculture, and many seed houses have offices in Brownsville. The list of seeds grown in the valley is more extensive than simply grasses. You may pass a quarter section planted to coriander, cabbage, beets or turnips. The passerby may wonder why a whole field of squash has been wastefully left unharvested when, in fact, it is being grown as a seed crop. In a seed production area, it is vitally important for producers, even as competitors, to know where everything is planted in order to avoid cross pollination. Similar crops, for example turnips, need to be isolated from one another by as much as two miles to keep the seed crop pure. For wind pollinated plants such as corn and beets, the isolation distance is greater.

To administer the seed production area, the extension office maintains a "pinning map" (right). The seed companies literally take a pin which has a small card with the seed type and variety being produced attached to it, and pokes it into the property where they will pant the crop. It is an honor system based on years of custom and collegiality.

Yesterday, we filled the van with the buckets of freshly harvested blackberries and called Paul to tell him the van was on the road. He leaves Elmira at the same time, and we transfer the fruit when we meet, usually around Monmouth if traffic is light. If all goes well, we will complete Sweet Creek's order next Friday. We will next see Paul and Judy when we process our preserves in late October. The fields will have greened up from the autumn rains and big leaf maples will glow among the dark firs.

Photo, top, by Jen McCabe for The Oregonian. Pinning map by Lindsey du Toit, Washington State University.