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.

In Season: Summer's Upon Us—Berries & Veg Aplenty

"Strawberries strawberries strawberries!" are the words spilling out of Josh Alsberg's mouth when I ask what's going to be appearing on his shelves at Rubinette Produce and on farmers' market tables. First are the June-bearing—"Hoods! Seascapes! Albions! Shuksans!" he chants—followed by the ever-bearing varieties with two harvests, one in early summer and one in the fall. To say this guy is excited this time of year is indeed an understatement; he virtually vibrates with anticipation of the fruit and vegetables that are about to cascade in from local farms.

Hood strawberries.

When I asked about the cherries I was seeing at local supermarkets, he scoffs and spits out "California" as if he just bit down on the pit in an unripe specimen. He emphasizes that unlike the last two years, the harvest this year is trending back in the normal direction because of the wet, cool spring we've had.

Cherries lookin' good!

Like a good farmer, Alsberg doesn't tempt fate, so he hedges his bet when saying that, assuming rain doesn't come at the wrong time and ruin the crop, it looks like the supply of cherries this year will be robust. Look for Northwest varieties from local farms to start appearing in the next couple of weeks and for them to be in good supply—Alsberg stops to knock on a wood crate—through August.

Blueberries and raspberries.

Cane berries—starting with raspberries, followed by marionberries, loganberries, tayberries (a blackberry-raspberry cross), boysenberries, silvanberries (or sylvan blackberry)—will start trickling in now but really get going at the end of June and early July. In mid-July look for gooseberries, jostaberries and currants, along with blackberries (thorned first, then thornless) going strong through August.

Peeeeeaches!

As cherries bow out, peaches—be still my heart!—will roll in sometime in mid to late July, with August being their time to shine. Also in August are the sun-loving melons, grapes, figs, plums and prunes that will keep picnickers and preserves busy. When I ask if that'll be all in the fruit category, Alsberg declares, "I'm never done talking about fruit!"

Tomatoes? Yes, please.

But when I force him to look at other seasonal crops, he somewhat reluctantly turns his attention to tomatoes, corn and cucumbers, with the first sweet red globes of the earliest-ripening varieties appearing at the end of June (thanks largely to hoop houses) with local sweet corn starting in July and cukes of the lemon and Persian persuasion getting started at the end of June.

Multicolored cauliflower.

Leafy greens that are so fresh they practically leap into your basket are happening now, with Little Gems at the top of my personal list, but look for spinach, pea tendrils, fava greens and fava beans now, with string and pole beans following close on their heels. Spring onions are plentiful now, too, with new crop potatoes trickling in and the denser brassicas—cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower—scheduled for the end of June through the summer.

Before you lock in any of those dates, though, be like a good farmer and accept that the weather is going to do what it wants to do. So hope for the best and maybe knock on some nearby wood.

Farm Bulletin: A Question of Strawberries

Decisions, decisions. That's what it's all about, even on a farm. Contributor Anthony Boutard discusses his process when it comes to choosing what works for Ayers Creek Farm. As well as what doesn't.

A couple weeks ago in the Hillsdale Farmers' Market newsletter, assistant manager Sarah West noted that one of the most frequently requested foods at the information stall are organic strawberries. It interested us because we have often toyed with the idea of growing strawberries, and the lack of this crop illustrates some of the challenges farmers face when deciding what crops to grow.

As organic growers, our stall should put to rest the claim that certain crops can't be grown organically. That is a prevarication, not a fact. Dependency upon synthetic crop inputs is relatively recent, and there is no crop that we can think of can't be produced without them. In fact, strawberries have naturalized on our farm and we find the occasional plant with the most sublime fruit you could ever dream of.  The lack of organic strawberries has nothing to do with organic farming, instead it is largely due to the historical structure of agriculture in Oregon. 

In 1965, there were roughly 14,000 acres of strawberries harvested in the state. Most of the crop was sent to processors for making jam and pie filling. By 1990, the acreage had dropped by half, and in 1999 it halved again to about 3,500 acres. Currently, the harvested acreage is fluctuating between 1,700 and 2,000 acres. These data show the change that has happened in the industry. Most of the strawberry producers gained their experience in the processor market and, as it collapsed, shifted to fresh market as the processors left the state or started using imported fruit. Historically, many of those growers had roadside stands and, as the shift occurred, they used that experience to move into fresh market. Most of the strawberry acreage shifted over to a more lucrative form of farming, nursery production.

There was no tradition of organic strawberry production in Oregon, so it is hardly surprising that as the industry shrank all of the remaining strawberry growers used synthetic inputs. At this point, growing fresh market strawberries is an "old sector" and there is no economic incentive for a young farm to make the substantial investment to grow the crop. Berry prices across the board are too cheap for a farmer considering a new planting. Beets and lettuce are a better investment for people entering the business: small package of seed, lots sweat equity with a low risk of failure due to weather. With fruit, a few hours or days of ill-timed rain and the farmer has to contend with the disappointment of losing a substantial chunk of income, as well as upset customers. So the cohort  most likely to bring an expertise in organic farming, young farmers, have little reason to consider fruit because the older cohort, and that includes us at Ayers Creek, have made our investment and suppress fruit prices.

There is an additional twist that is integral to our character as organic growers, and the reason why we answer "no" whenever we consider strawberries. Over the past half century, strawberry varieties have been selected and reselected in breeding programs that use synthetic fertilizers, aggressive soil sterilization, fungicides and insecticides. At the present, there are no varieties that have gone through a selection process for robust performance on organic farms. So we would be starting with debilitated plants that are essentially chemically dependent. In fact, all of the commercially available strawberry plants are grown in chemically fumigated soils and that sets up additional restrictions under the rules of organic agriculture. That is an additional barrier that can change, but as long as the price of strawberries remains so low there is no economic incentive for a shift toward organic breeding programs. 

Those naturalized strawberries we encounter from time to time gave us an idea about seven years ago. We dug up several hundred and planted them in a managed field. Our goal was to find a population with good natural resistance to disease and replicate the interesting diversity of flavors we found in those volunteers. Similar to what Frank and Karen Morton do with their lettuces. The wildlings, as we called them, were really good and we discovered we were really bad at growing strawberries. The farm has to be a good match with the farmers' personality, and we grow other crops with greater pleasure and success.

Smaller photos of strawberry plants from OregonStrawberries.org.

Strawberry Fields Forever?

The information for this post came from articles by Lynne Terry in The Oregonian.

This weekend may be a test for area farmers who sell strawberries. That's because the berries from one area farm, Jaquith Strawberry Farm, were found to contain the bacteria E. coli 0157:H7, which has so far sickened 13 people and killed one.

All of the strawberries from the farm have been pulled off the market and farmers who purchased berries for resale to shore up their supplies have been notified. State health officials are asking anyone who thinks they may have purchased tainted berries to throw them out. That's because the bacteria, which at this point is thought to have come from the feces of deer, can live for some time in uncooked jam or even if frozen.

Unfortunately some area farmers' market vendors (link here) also resold the berries as their own, which is illegal, though some markets allow vendors to sell as much as 25 percent from another grower. Rebecca Landis, president of the Oregon Farmers' Markets Association, said, "The trend is toward saying no to resale." While tragic, this incident may prompt markets to forbid the practice altogether.

See the complete list of locations and vendors online, or download the list in pdf format.

Best and Highest Use

When it comes to the seasonal foods of the Northwest, contributor Jim Dixon of RealGoodFood likes to keep it simple—the fewer adornments, the better to let their pure flavors come through.

Locally grown strawberries are beginning to show up in the markets, although in short supply because the spring monsoons have affected the harvest. My approach is to eat them while I can, then wait until next year. I like them almost any way except cooked (an abomination in my opinion) or combined with rhubarb (best by itself). But this approach is particularly delicious.

Strawberries with Creme Fraiche and Balsamico

Make some creme fraiche by mixing a couple of tablespoons of Nancy’s yogurt (some people use buttermilk, but Nancy’s has the live bacteria cultures necessary) with a half pint of heavy cream. Cover and leave in a warm place for at least 24 hours, then chill.

Spoon some creme fraiche into a small bowl, add a little sugar to taste (I like to use the bigger crystals, but plain sugar, maple syrup, or honey will all suffice), and drizzle with Profumi Estensi aceto balsamico (you need a true balsamic vinegar, viscous, sweet and acidic, for this; don’t use the industrial stuff, cheap red wine vinegar with caramilized sugar added sold as balsamic vinegar in the supermarket).

Rinse your berries, dip into the creme fraiche, and eat. Repeat.