In This Edition
Split Farro Tabboulleh and Honey Wheat Buttermilk Bread
Customer Profile: Charles Finkel of The Pike Brewing Company
Celebrate Local Food!
New Granary Manager
Notes from a Farmer Mother Nature has sure given us a big hug this month of July, with much needed sunlight, very kind temperatures: 80’s, with just a brush of real heat for 3-4 days mid month, before really bearing down here at the end. What this means for us here at Bluebird is the grains have been celebrating! With June staying cool and allowing the young grain to groove along, and July’s kind sun and relatively mild temps, our grains grew beautifully each day and began filling out mid-month. Now, as we finish up irrigation for the season, our crop looks promising indeed.
It never ceases to amaze me how fast the cycle goes once things begin. To be sure, there was cause to fret this year earlier in the season, and plenty more ahead but the best news is we’ve got a healthy crop out there. All we need now (small detail) is for Mother Nature to continue her kindness on through harvest. If the weather continues as such with the sharp, bright sun of July then the even hotter days in August, we should have great curing on the grains as is classic to this region - the main reason such quality grains are grown on this side of the Cascades.
Summer is not all a fresh cup on the porch at daylight with all the birds rejoicing, nor G&T’s in the same spot after sundown. Our first field of emmer could come off the third week in August with the rest hopefully following by the end of the month. We’ve already changed all the fluids in the combine and will be doing some small repairs in hopes of tempering any thoughts of bad behavior once its short but critical window to shine comes. As well, we will be adding another 2300 bushels of storage in August and plowing down our cover-crops up in Mazama. This all while we fill out our bulk orders in the granary in preparation for: VACATION!
We’re headed back east to my homeland of New Hampshire and a visit to the old family farm there. We hope that you all are getting some river time in, some mountain time and those lucky enough, some ocean time in. Our daughters Mariah and Larkin have been heading to the river every chance they get! We extend great thanks to our new and excellent irrigator of Mazama Ed Alkire and his neighbor Dalton Du Lac – bless you boys! And we send our warmest thoughts and hugs to our long-time neighbor and friend Molly Maxted while she endures treatment that we know she will come through healthy in the end. Next month, we hope to be reporting good things about the beginning of harvest. Stay tuned and don’t forget your grains with those summer salads.
Cheers, Farmer Sam
Bluebird News
Celebrate Local Food!
Bluebird Grain Farms and Thundering Hooves Dinner at Ray’s Boathouse: On Thursday, September 2nd, 2010, 6:00-8:00 PM , Ray’s Boathouse dining room will celebrate local food with two feature farms—Bluebird Grain Farms and Thundering Hooves, a family-owned farm and meat business in the Walla Walla valley. A special menu honors the integrity and innovation of the farmers who grow food in a way that is sustainable and balanced. Visit www.rays.com/events for details.
New Granary Manager
Bluebird welcomes new granary manager Joey Beck to our staff.
Seattle Markets Bulk Delivery
The next bulk deliveries to the Ballard and U-District farmers markets will be September 4th & 5th. For bulk orders call us at 509.996.3526 / 1-888-232-0331 or visit our bulk order page.
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 August’s heat calls for cold summer salads and crusty loaves of bread. Bluebird’s recipe developer Becky Selengut created this Split Farro Tabboulleh to take advantage of some of the herbs and vegetables you’ll find in your garden. Kalamata olives and cayenne pepper add a zing to the taboulleh, while fresh lemon juice leaves a cool, clean taste that complements the nutty flavor of the split farro. With the cracked emmer-farro’s high protein content, this summer salad is a main dish in itself.
When Char Alkire substituted fresh Bluebird flours for standard grocery store flour in her favorite honey wheat bread recipe, her husband proclaimed “This tastes like candy!” (See July 2010 newsletter) Char still makes her trusted recipe as she has for the past thirty years, but now Bluebird’s fresh hard red wheat and hard white flours are staples on her ingredients list. Serve the bread with goat cheese (or just plain) alongside the Split Farro Taboulleh, then toast up the leftovers—if there are any—for breakfast. Bake your bread and prep your salad in the morning when the air is still cool, then you can play for the rest of the day knowing that dinner is ready whenever you return.
Profile: Charles Finkel of The Pike Brewing Company
Growing up in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma in the 1950s provided Charles Finkel with a mixed culinary education. The town boasted only one diner and the supermarket with its vast array of food choices hadn’t yet made its way into rural Oklahoma life. Menus in most homes were neither adventuresome nor cosmopolitan. People did, however, know the farmer who raised their beef, they saw the chickens that laid the eggs they ate for breakfast, and most of them grew their own vegetables in the backyard. In a sense, they subscribed to the local food movement before there was a local food movement.
Although his exposure to artisan and ethnic foods was somewhat limited, Charles had a natural proclivity toward food from early on. He remembers annual trips to New York and San Francisco to see relatives, when his parents would take him out for meals and expose him to food that you didn’t see in Broken Arrow. “Food was always important to me,” says Charles, “and when I was in a position to do so I decided to pursue a career that involved food.” He adds in an aside, “Food, as well as wine and beer. Because for me, good food cannot be separated from good wine and beer.”
After managing a liquor store in Oklahoma soon after statewide prohibition ended in 1959, Charles traveled around Europe and sampled gorgeous beers and wines, the likes of which were not available in the United States. Upon returning home, Charles set himself to the business of learning about great beers and wines and in this process he met Rose Ann, his future life and business partner. Together, the Finkels launched Bon Vin, America’s first boutique wine distributor.
The next decade was a whirlwind of entrepreneurship for Charles and Rose Ann, with the couple’s energy focused on providing artisan foods, wines, and beers to a market that was not accustomed to authentic food and drinks prepared deliberately, using fresh, natural ingredients. “I was—and still am—committed to Reinheitsgebot standards,” says Charles, “which come from the 16th Century Bavarian beer purity law decreeing that only water, malt, hops, and yeast could be used in the production of beer.” In 1978, there were only 40 breweries in the United States and only one of them made beer according to Reinheitsgebot; the rest followed the lead of the big breweries and used filler ingredients such as corn syrup and rice. “Your typical craft beer is not filler,” says Charles, “it’s all real ingredients. But the major breweries use about half real ingredients and half filler, and the repercussions are dramatic. Hops are a natural preservative, so when you lower the level of hops in a beer you have to add an artificial preservative. But this ruins the head on the beer, so you have to add something to bring back the head, which ruins the clarity.” According to Charles, most of the major brands of beer contain twenty or thirty ingredients, with one “lite” beer containing a whopping 39 ingredients.
Thirty years later, the big breweries are still using fillers and chemical additives, but smaller breweries dedicated to craft beers have sprung up all over the nation, about 1400 of them. “The beers coming out of these breweries is more expensive than mass-produced beer,” notes Charles, “but people are willing to pay more for a finer product. The real difference is in the taste, and it’s a very obvious difference.” “These big beer distributors don’t mention taste at all,” adds Charles, “because they’re marketing a lifestyle, not an agricultural product. They’re promoting good looks, sexual prowess, success, and adventure—they’re trying to show you what lifestyle benefits you will get from drinking their beer. There’s no mention of taste, and for good reason; the taste of these beers is vastly inferior.”
In 1989 the Finkels launched what is now the Pike Brewing Company and threw themselves into the art of brewing quality craft beers; shortly thereafter, their award-winning brews were making a splash on the national palate.
Over the years Charles and Rose Ann’s interest in authentic food and spirits has evolved to include the Slow Food movement and a personal commitment to sustainable food production. “We’re concerned with the welfare of the farmers and growers who produce the world’s food,” says Charles, “and we live a lifestyle of supporting quality small producers.” The Finkels are dedicated to helping consumers learn about the places their food is grown and they enthusiastically promote events that bring other people opportunities to learn about small producers. It was at such an event—a Seattle-area Slow Food gathering hosted by the Finkels—that the Finkels met Brooke Lucy and became acquainted with Bluebird Grain Farms. “We absolutely support farms like Bluebird,” notes Charles. “We buy into the same philosophy regarding food production. If you’re going to make food an important part of your lifestyle, you can’t separate the food itself from how it is produced.”
Although the Pike Brewing Company didn’t start out with a local, sustainable philosophy about food, in becoming Slow Food activists the Finkels realized that these values were paramount in their goals and aspirations. They have since inspired their chef and staff to join them in the effort to examine every aspect of their operations with these values in mind. “We want to understand our impact on the planet,” says Charles. “We ask ourselves how efficient we are from an energy point of view,” says Charles, “we look at our relationship with our employees and ask ourselves ‘is it a sustainable relationship?’” The Pike Brewing Company chef and kitchen staff carefully consider each ingredient prior to committing it to the menu. “We recently committed all the protein we serve to be produced locally, sustainably, and organically,” says Charles. “We’re all on board with this,” he adds, “and we believe the customer can see this and values it.” In addition to dedicating himself to quality foods and spirits, Charles Finkel is also a prolific artist, designer, and author. Visit his website to see for yourself.
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