Summer Essentials: Berries Call for Shortcakes!

It's high season in Oregon for berries, folks, and while I don't have an argument with pies, crisps or cobblers—drop one off any time, really!—in my family's opinion there's no higher or better use for fresh berries than finishing a summer's feast with fresh berry shortcakes.

Simple, lightly sweet shortcakes.

The buttery, lightly sweet shortcakes, which can also do double duty as breakfast scones, come together quickly in a food processor. Shower them with a scattering of lightly sugared berries and a plop of whipped cream (or ice cream, depending on your druthers) to make these ephemeral seasonal delights shine.

Berry season calls for shortcakes.

Whether you've got raspberries, loganberries, blackberries, tayberries, strawberries, boysenberries, blueberries or—I know I'm forgetting some—a mixture of two or more, save a couple of pints out of your next flat of berries to make this startlingly simple and stunningly delicious classic.

Berry Shortcake

For the shortcakes:

2 1/2 c. flour

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

8 Tbsp. (1 stick) frozen butter or margarine, cut up

1/4 c. sugar

2/3 c. whole milk

For the berries:

2 pints berries

1/4 c. sugar (adjust according to sweetness of berries)

Whipped cream or ice cream

Preheat oven to 425°.

Put flour, balking powder, salt and sugar in bowl of food processor. Pulse four or five times to combine. Add butter or margarine and pulse several times until the mixture resembles cornmeal. With processor running, add milk in a stream. Keep processor running until the dough comes together in a soft mass.

Remove dough from processor, place on floured surface and form into a soft ball shape. Divide dough ball in half and gently pat out each half with your hands into six-inch disks (they will be about 1/2"-5/8" thick). With a butcher knife, slice each disk into six triangle-shaped wedges. On a sheet pan lined with parchment paper, place wedges slightly apart for crispier sides, touching for soft sides. I usually separate them by 1/8" and they puff up into wedges that break apart easily. Bake about 12 minutes or until tops are medium brown. Remove to racks to cool.

While the shortcakes are baking, put the berries into a large mixing bowl and add sugar. Using a spatula, gently fold the sugar into the berries. Allow to macerate for at least an hour (you can also place berries in the refrigerator until assembling). Using one wedge per serving, slice wedges in half lengthwise and place on individual serving plates or bowls. Scatter berries over the top and drizzle with juice that collects in the bottom of bowl. Top with whipped cream or ice cream as desired.

Farm Bulletin: It's Chester Time!

Everyone in the Willamette Valley who loves blackberries knows that if there's an Ayers Creek Farm label on the little green hallocks in the store display, they are in for some of the best-eating and cooking berries of the summer. These Chester blackberries are the hallmark of this organic farm's summer season, and it's best to get in while the getting's good, because the season isn't long and the demand is high. The following is the story of this iconic blackberry written by farmer and contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm.

* * *

But first an important announcement from Anthony:

We start harvesting the Chester Blackberries this week. On Wednesday, they will be available at Rubinette Produce, Barbur World Foods and both Food Front Co-op stores. They will also have the Imperial Epineuse prunes. The first week of August should see our berries in most New Seasons stores.

We will have an open day at the farm next weekend, the 28th and 29th of July, from 3-5 pm. We will be selling whole flats at that time. You can reserve flats by e-mailing the farm with the number of flats you want and what day you will pick them up. These are picked especially for you, assuring the freshest possible berries, so please warn us in advance if your plans change. We will have some other odds and ends available as well.

On Sunday, the 29th, we will give a tour of the fields starting at 2 pm. The address is 15219 SW Spring Hill Road in Gaston, about a 45 minute drive from Portland.

* * *

The Chester Story

In the Spring of 1968, Robert Skirvin, a student of the small fruit breeder, John Hull (left), emasculated blossoms on the blackberry selection SIUS 47, carefully removing all of the stamens to avoid self pollination.  The SIUS prefix indicated the plant is a product of the breeding program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Each breeding program has a specific prefix that helps keep track of a variety's ancestry. Later he dusted pollen from the blackberry variety 'Thornfree' onto the receptive stigmas. 'Thornfree' is a USDA selection of the legendary English blackberry 'Merton Thornless.' Unlike many early thornless varieties which were chimeric and unstable, the absence of thorns in 'Merton' was a stable trait and useful for breeding purposes.

After the fruits ripened, the seeds were extracted and planted. Out of the many dozens of 1968 seedlings, three were noteworthy for their flavor, yield and thornless canes. Two would be released as named varieties, and a third wound up as the maternal parent of a named variety. Skirvin completed his masters and then moved on to Purdue where he studied geraniums and earned his PhD.

In 1973, the Southern Illinois Fruit Station was closed. Hull had the most promising plants moved to other experiment stations. The blackberries were sent to Professor Zych who ran the small fruits program at University of Illinois, Urbana. Zych died shortly afterwards. Fortunately, Skirvin (right) joined the small fruits program at Urbana and discovered that the blackberries he had bred many years earlier were still growing and producing fruit. He decided SIUS 68-6-17 was worth releasing as a named variety.  As John Hull already has his name affixed to one of the 1968 progeny, 'Hull Thornless,' they decided to honor Professor Zych who acted as guardian of the berry. We were spared a berry named 'Zych Thornless' because the breeders had the good sense to use his first name, Chester. SIUS 68-6-17 was formally released in 1985 as 'Chester Thornless', and earned the honorific of "Outstanding Fruit Cultivar" in 2001.

Another selection from the 1968 breeding work of Hull and Skirvin was SIUS 68-2-5.  That plant was pollinated with a blackberry from Arkansas, AK 545, and one of the resulting seedlings was released as 'Triple Crown' in 1996. Its flavor bears the distinct signature of berries from the Arkansas program.

Southern Illinois Fruit Station operated from 1959-1973. During that short time, four named blackberry varieties were released from its breeding program, in addition to several other small fruits. "Black Satin," "Dirksen Thornless," "Hull Thornless" and "Chester Thornless" remain highly regarded blackberry varieties. The great Senator Everett Dirksen (left), the master of eloquent barbs, had picked berries as youth. Dirksen was a champion of the center, and it thrived under his patronage. When you hear people decry "pork barrel spending" and "earmarks," savor a fresh "Chester" and maybe that will soften any rising indignation.  

Over the years, we have told the "Chester" story many times, each time from a different angle. Plant breeding is a craft unto its own, and we greatly admire people who explore the range of qualities available in a crop. The best breeders have this innate sense of how to guide and nudge the plant's unseen genetic qualities. Like other artists, they need patient patrons, as well as inspiration.

Get Anthony and Carol's recipe for Blackberry Slump.

Farm Bulletin: Grace, Gentleness and Chesters

First, a calendar note: Contributor Anthony Boutard announces that the Ayers Creek Farm harvest shed will be open the last Saturday and Sunday of July, with hours from 3 to 5 pm, at 15219 SW Spring Hill Road in Gaston. Chester blackberries, half flats ($20) or full flats ($38) must be reserved. Please e-mail with your request. Check for more details on what will be available at the end of this post. With that taken care of, Anthony updates us on another recent development in their lives on the land.

This will be a challenging fruit season for us. As some of you have heard, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in February. It is a terminal cancer of the bone marrow. I have been in treatment since, which will extend my "use by" date a matter of years. I have been approved for an autologous stem cell transplant. The transplant will be from my own tissue which reduces the complications associated with transplants. If all goes well, they will harvest those cells in a few days, depending on how fast the drugs stimulate their production. On the 3rd of August I will become a ward of the succinctly named OSHU Center for Hematological Malignancies for about three weeks. After release, it will take about 100 days to rebuild the rudiments of my immune system and I will be one of those fragile medical parolees walking around with a surgical mask and a diminished coif. The transplant protocol erases your entire immune history, from departing the birth canal, nursing, childhood vaccinations, to last year's flu shot. The first 30 days are the most hazardous. It is a challenge many of you on this list have already handled.

Given the aggressive treatment over the last few months, I am in good shape both emotionally and physically. One advantage of a strong academic background in biology and statistics/probabilities, I understand what is happening, how the doctors are managing the condition, and the framework of predictions. As a recent review article in Science pointed out, about 65% of cancers are the result of a chance mutation that has nothing to do with lifestyle or genetics, nor how much kale, quinoa and blueberries you consume, or meritorious your emotional disposition. A minority of cancers are a product of lifestyle, despite what some pious scolds and weird food marketers would have us believe. Multiple myeloma is one of those chance mutations.

I have managed to put in a day's work on the farm most days, and my gallows humor is in fine form. Staff have really extended themselves to make sure everything is moving smoothly and there are no loose ends, and the farm has never looked better. Linda Colwell and Sylvia Black have shouldered through, helping everything run better in a myriad of ways. Carol has taken over the very demanding delivery route and schedule. If you make it out to the farm next weekend, take a walk around. Down in the wetland, we have a tundra swan who lost its ability to fly but is content, along with a host of other birds including marsh wrens in the tule clumps, with bittern, coots, ducks, green and blue herons plying the channels carved out by beaver and nutria. It is a beautiful place to linger, and I often do. We will have our next open days in September when the Astianas and grapes are ripe.

The paradox of being diagnosed with a treatable but incurable cancer is that you have no choice but to root for it. After all, it would be a crying shame to go through several challenging months of treatment only to be run down by a distracted driver. I also hate all of the war metaphors that attend the diagnosis. From my perspective, it is a condition that is best addressed with grace and gentleness, and enjoyment of every moment of love and peace that comes my way.  

I hesitated to put this out to the public, but thought of rehashing it over and over again is not that appealing. This will be the last direct mention of the matter and I will return to pondering Pliny, Gerarde, the flavor variables of tomatoes, the virtues of late season chicories, Ave Bruma melons, and introducing our new bean—the peculiar Otello's Pebbles. Oh yes, and the return of all the other favorite beans.

* * *

Chester blackberry deliveries have begun, and by the end of the week they will be available at New Seasons, Food Front and Rubinette Produce. Our preserves are available at the Gaston Market, People's Food Co-op, Providore, and will soon be returning to both Food Front stores. Rubinette Produce, part of the Providore complex, carries our popcorn, cornmeal, barley and parched green wheat, and later on will have the full range of our legumes. 

For the open day, we will have parched green wheat, migration barley (milled and whole grain), Amish Butter and Roy's Calais Flint cornmeal, Amish Butter popcorn and preserves. We will also have some Imperial Epineuse prunes. A reminder that Chester blackberries (half flats, $20) or full flats ($38) must be reserved. Please e-mail us with your request.

Blackberry Eating

A neighbor up the street is a poet, so naturally you'd expect him to have a poetry box on a post outside his home. And he does. I noticed the other day that he'd posted a new poem in the box, and it's perfect for the season.

Blackberry Eating
By Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths and squinched,
many-lettered, on-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

Farm Bulletin: Not Dead Yet (i.e. Berries, Farm Day & More)

This morning I was thrilled to check my e-mail and find a message from Anthony Boutard with news  of the latest goings-on at Ayers Creek Farm. As mentioned below, pencil in July 30-31 on your calendar and make plans to head out to the farm to purchase the goods direct from the farmers themselves.

Yesterday our local funeral home offered us, for "Absolutely Free!," a copy of their Final Wishes Organizer®. There was also an offer of a prepaid funeral plan, though, for our tastes, R.I.P. stands for Rot In Place, or just leave us out for the vultures, bot flies and carrion beetles. A return to nature. But it got us to thinking that we have been so wrapped up in the business of farming, we had failed to provide any updates.

Linda Colwell's Amish Butter cornmeal crostata with Imperial Epineuse plums.

Some of you may have observed that New Seasons has been carrying our 3.14 cherries and Imperial Epineuse prunes for the last two weeks, and yesterday the stores put out the first of our Chester blackberries. All bear our black and yellow label. The first harvest is always a mite short, but Tuesday and Wednesday the next lot of berries will arrive in those stores. With two new stores, it will be a challenge to meet their needs. At the end of next week, Food Front and Rubinette may be ordering berries from us as well. As the season progresses, the other fruit that we offered at the farmers' market will be available to these stores. (If you want a flat of the early berries, talk to the produce staff of the store.)

Chesters on the canes.

We are always amused by the abject distain Chesters receive in the press. For example, in 2007 the New York Times described them as "mediocre." A couple of years ago, the state's incredible shrinking tabloid of record, otherwise known as The Oregonian, described them as in "the marionberry family, chesters come with small seeds and a bitter taste." Last week, their Food Day article extolling the season's berries completely ignored the Chester, which we guess must be judged as progress. No big deal, weather permitting, we expect to sell between 60,000 and 80,000 hallocks generously filled with Chesters over the next five weeks without the help of the Oregon's tabloid press. Still, it leaves us scratching our heads. For some crazy reason, in 2001 this berry, so reviled in the press, earned "Outstanding Fruit Cultivar Award" by the American Society for Horticultural Science; maybe because it really is so delicious. That's our theory backed by some empirical evidence.

Parched green wheat (i.e. the grain formerly known as frikeh).

We are planning to resume our open farm days the last weekend of July [tentatively 7/30-31], as soon as we wrap up the many loose ends dangling about the place. We need to finish threshing out the favas and barley, and get the chicories planted. We are finishing up the cleaning of the parched green wheat as well. As soon as we have the details nailed down, we will send another update. We know there is some impatience out there, but if we get everything done well here, there will be an abundance available for everyone once we are ready to resume the farm days.

We don't have any social media presence, at least that we know of, nor even a website, but a search for the #ayerscreekfarm hashtag at Instagram offers visual proof that we have been busy in the past two months. And having an Italian-German colleague, Myrtha Zierock, our Resident Fellow, has left us well fed and happy as well.

Photo of plum crostata by Linda Colwell.

Farm Bulletin: A Scolding Regarding Chester Blackberries

Sully the Chester blackberry's reputation and you should expect a thorough tongue-lashing from contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm. In for a trip to the woodshed in this essay are no less than the Oregonian and two professors in the Horticulture Department at OSU.

Opening the A&E section of the Oregonian on Friday was a less than pleasant experience. This once distinguished daily broadsheet has devolved into a flimsy, irregular tabloid. But, for crying out loud, you would think they could get the facts straight on blackberries, a fruit for which the backyard of Oregon is known. Under the title "State's lesser berries win time to shine," the entry for "chesterberry" states:

"Developed in 2007, the chesterberry is a close cousin to the blackberry, but the fruit is roughly three times as large. In the marionberry family, chesters come with small seeds and a bitter taste."

Chesters in the field at Ayers Creek Farm.

The name of the berry is "Chester Thornless Blackberry" not chesterberry, though we use the less formal Chester. It is capitalized because it is named after a person. Chester came out of the breeding program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1968, not 2007 as asserted by the author. Sakes alive, we have been selling them at Hillsdale since the market opened in 2002. It is a blackberry, pure and simple, not a cousin. The Chester, a thornless, semi-erect plant is from a very different breeding line than the Marion, a thorny trailing type plant. There is no familiar similarity between the two and their different ancestries are reflected in the flavor of the berries. Finally, what is this nonsense about the fruit being bitter?

For some strange reason, the primary blackberry researchers at Oregon State University hold the Chester in very low regard, and this shapes the opinions of people who have not actually tasted the berry. I have had numerous discussions with Chad Finn and Bernadine Strik about Chesters, pointing out that it is a magnificent fruit for the smaller, organic grower and perfect for out-of-hand eating, but they are unshakable in their distain for the fruit. Fair enough, we harbor a similar distain for the Marion, which is great for industrial, machine harvest farms but not a fruit where the farmer plans to park the ATV and eat berries for a while and think of shoes and ships and sealing wax. I guess that is why we don't grow it. This year, we have planted more blackberry rows, Chesters, of course.

Several years ago Kathleen Bauer posted a good essay [by Monsieur Boutard - KAB] on her blog about the Chester blackberry, nicely illustrated, for those who want the full and interesting history of the berry.

Farm Bulletin, Pt. 2: The Taxonomy of the Chester

I love contributor Anthony Boutard's writing. Informative on an academic level, yet also engaging and full of humor, he brings the bugs, crops and creatures of his Ayers Creek Farm to life for those of us not so familiar with what's going on outside the city limits.

The first fruit to ripen are called the "King Berries" in the trade. Oddly patriarchal. After all, in languages where gender is indicated, fruit is feminine and they should be "Queen Berries." Regardless, these are the best berries for making preserves and any dish that needs the fruit to "set up."

The Chester Story

In the Spring of 1968, Robert Skirvin, a student of the small fruit breeder, John Hull (left), emasculated blossoms on the blackberry selection SIUS 47, carefully removing all of the stamens to avoid self pollination.  The SIUS prefix indicated the plant is a product of the breeding program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (top photo). Each breeding program has a specific prefix that helps keep track of a variety's ancestry. Later he dusted pollen from the blackberry variety 'Thornfree' onto the receptive stigmas. 'Thornfree' is a USDA selection of the legendary English blackberry 'Merton Thornless.' Unlike many early thornless varieties which were chimeric and unstable, the absence of thorns in 'Merton' was a stable trait and useful for breeding purposes.

After the fruits ripened, the seeds were extracted and planted. Out of the many dozens of 1968 seedlings, three were noteworthy for their flavor, yield and thornless canes. Two would be released as named varieties, and a third wound up as the maternal parent of a named variety. Skirvin completed his masters and then moved on to Purdue where he studied geraniums and earned his PhD.

In 1973, the Southern Illinois Fruit Station was closed. Hull had the most promising plants moved to other experiment stations. The blackberries were sent to Professor Zych who ran the small fruits program at University of Illinois, Urbana. Zych died shortly afterwards. Fortunately, Skirvin (right) joined the small fruits program at Urbana and discovered that the blackberries he had bred many years earlier were still growing and producing fruit. He decided SIUS 68-6-17 was worth releasing as a named variety.  As John Hull already has his name affixed to one of the 1968 progeny, 'Hull Thornless,' they decided to honor Professor Zych who acted as guardian of the berry. We were spared a berry named 'Zych Thornless' because the breeders had the good sense to use his first name, Chester. SIUS 68-6-17 was formally released in 1985 as 'Chester Thornless', and earned the honorific of "Outstanding Fruit Cultivar" in 2001.

Another selection from the 1968 breeding work of Hull and Skirvin was SIUS 68-2-5.  That plant was pollinated with a blackberry from Arkansas, AK 545, and one of the resulting seedlings was released as 'Triple Crown' in 1996. Its flavor bears the distinct signature of berries from the Arkansas program.

Southern Illinois Fruit Station operated from 1959-1973. During that short time, four named blackberry varieties were released from its breeding program, in addition to several other small fruits. "Black Satin," "Dirksen Thornless," "Hull Thornless" and "Chester Thornless" remain highly regarded blackberry varieties. The great Senator Everett Dirksen (left), the master of eloquent barbs, had picked berries as youth. Dirksen was a champion of the center, and it thrived under his patronage. When you hear people decry "pork barrel spending" and "earmarks," savor a fresh "Chester" and maybe that will soften any rising indignation.  

Over the years, we have told the "Chester" story many times, each time from a different angle. Plant breeding is a craft unto its own, and we greatly admire people who explore the range of qualities available in a crop. The best breeders have this innate sense of how to guide and nudge the plant's unseen genetic qualities. Like other artists, they need patient patrons, as well as inspiration.

Farm Bulletin: PIty The Farmer's Wardrobe

Farmers have been looked on by city dwellers as simple folk who work the land. Contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm explains that we may be judging those particular books by their covers and not what lies between their pages. You can review the quality of their texts, as well as buying some of their berries, at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market every Sunday from 10 am till 2 pm.

As blackberry growers, we have to let our sartorial standards ease a bit at berry harvest. Berries have a way jumping onto clothing. One day Carol went to pick up the mail at the post office. An older woman approached her, pressed a quarter in her hand and said, quietly, "I hope this helps." We had just finished the harvest of 15,000 pounds of berries, and Carol was covered with berry juice. Anthony mulled over the situation and quipped that two bits seemed a bit stingy given the dire straights of her wardrobe. Can't even buy a Peppermint Patty with that.

He had his experience this week. After delivering fruit to the soda master at Hot Lips Pizza, he dropped into a store to pick up a couple of books. Innocent stuff, a book on grains and a lovely used edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales, as selected by Wallace Stegner. The clerk eyed him suspiciously and asked for picture ID. Unusual for such a small purchase. Later, he discovered the front of his trousers were stained with blackberry juice from lifting the crates out of the van. Probably also explained why the panhandlers clustered by the entrance had left him alone both entering and leaving. When he picked up milk at New Seasons, the clerk smiled and asked if he was a berry grower.

Speaking of Hot Lips, they now have on tap our loganberries. It is a stunning soda. Loganberries were once the most popular berry in the country, and they deserve a revival. The sodas are brewed by Greene Lawson, and he does a masterful job with our fruit. (The lad brews a good home beer, too.) The loganberries we delivered were the first to ripen, and Greene deftly preserved their spritely nature. It was a small run, so be sure to try it before the barrels run dry, especially if you love the loganberry as much as we do.

The early fruits on caneberries have higher pectin and acid levels. Our preserves are always from the first run of fruit, and that is why we don't need to add pectin. Interestingly, some people regard preserve making as a good use of "B-grade" or inferior fruit. We fail to understand why anyone would invest the time and money to make preserves and then use inferior fruit. Older fruit has lower pectin levels, so you have to add it. That added pectin dulls the already attenuated acidity of the fruit. What makes fruit interesting are the complex acids that stimulate the palate. You can add sugar, a dull lot in our estimation, but you can never reclaim those lost organic acids.

Later fruit has its own charm, but it is different. This is especially true in September when the shorter ripening days slow down the field. The Chester has such a long season that even in a good year only half of the fruit will ripen.