As you know for the last few months we’ve been working on finalizing the design of the New Seasons Market that we’re opening on Hawthorne, between 40th and 41st. We’re very grateful for the warm welcome we’ve received and we’re really looking forward to being an active and contributing member of the neighborhood.
While everyone seems to be excited about our overall plans, we heard lots of questions and concerns about our proposal for how to get cars and trucks in and out of our parking lot. As you may remember, the plan calls for a ramp to the second floor parking lot to be located on one side of the building and the receiving door for freight (and the associated parking area for smaller delivery trucks) to be located on the other side of the building.
The plan that we brought to the neighborhood meeting this summer showed the ramp entrance on 41st and the receiving door on 40th. We designed the store like that because we felt it best met the needs of all of the stakeholders, including our customers, neighbors, staff, suppliers, drivers on Hawthorne and the side streets, pedestrians and bicyclists. During numerous meetings, neighbors, adjacent business owners, city staff and the Bicycle Transportation Alliance shared their various perspectives about how this issue could be resolved. After listening to everyone’s point of view, only one thing was clear: We needed more help to figure out how to proceed.
As a result, we hired Kittleson and Associates, a transportation planning consulting company to perform a traffic study and to make a recommendation about which design would best meet the needs of the stakeholders. Kittleson is an independent third party, with no stake in the outcome of our project. We didn’t ask them to come to any specific conclusion and they get paid the same fee regardless of which scenario they recommended. We will admit that we were hopeful that the Kittleson report would suggest having the delivery area on 40th because it would make operating the store much more efficient.
However, their study clearly indicates that the best option is to flip the building design from our current proposal and to put the parking ramp on 40th and the receiving area on 41st. According to Kittleson, this will create a safer environment for vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians and neighbors on the side streets and contribute to a better flow of traffic on Hawthorne as a whole and in and out of our parking lot. You can read the entire Kittleson report here and here.
On Wednesday October 21, we met with representatives from the Portland Bureau of Transportation to share the results from the Kittleson report. Everyone at the meeting agreed that following the recommendations of the independent third party was the best way to go.
This means that we’re going to design and build a store that has the parking ramp on SE 40th and the delivery area on SE 41st. We’re thankful for all of the input that we received from the neighbors, the city and the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. It was very helpful to us in making this decision.
We realize that some people may be disappointed with this outcome. We apologize for that and assure you that we’ll continue to work with you to be a good neighbor. Please feel free to get back to us if you have any questions or comments.
This past Saturday was our 8th annual Local Producer appreciation dinner and I have to say that it was the best one yet. The food was off-the-charts delicious with a menu that featured locally grown and produced foods and flavors that were definitely at their seasonal peak—I think it’s safe to say that we all put on a couple of pounds by the time the night was over!
But the dinner isn’t just about the food. It’s our opportunity to acknowledge our local farmers, fishers, ranchers and producers—AKA, our agricultural rockstars! This year, it felt more vital and poignant than ever to highlight the important work our local producers do to help sustain and enhance our regional food economy as their work ensures the long-term health of our regional food supply.
It’s not news to anyone that we are experiencing tough economic times and as a result of this recession our farmland and farmers are in peril. In January of this year, the price of milk collapsed by a staggering 30% and the price of milk has fallen by 50% YTD. Many dairy ranchers are finding themselves in a position where they can no longer afford to keep their herd and consequently, dairy farmers are getting out of farming altogether. If this trend continues, we could potentially lose up to one-third of our family dairy farms.
Our partners at The Organically Grown Company told us that local farmers are really feeling the pinch of this economy. Josh Hinerfeld told me that Oregon farmers have experienced significant commodity deflation with apples being the most notable—down nearly 40%! Pears were down 10% and this summer, our local berry farmers (including all strawberry varieties) experienced a 13% decrease.
On the surface, this may sound like a good thing for eaters. But for our farmers it’s not. It doesn’t cost our farmers any less to grow and harvest the food. In fact, the cost of fuel, feed and fertilizer has risen upwards of 25% and labor costs remain high. So you can imagine how difficult it is for them to stay in business, let alone make a profit when their costs have gone up so dramatically and the market won’t bear price increases.
Couple this with the fact that the average age of farmers in Oregon is pushing 58 years old and you can see that we have a problem with the preservation of our farmland. My question is what plan do we have in place to preserve our farmland for the next generation (and the ones that follow)?
We need to ensure that our agricultural lands stay in agricultural production because once our farmland becomes a strip-mall or a new housing development, there’s no going back and our region’s food security is further threatened. We know that flying and trucking our food from further away is not sustainable. And as eaters, we can all vote with our dollars to support our local farmers, fishers and ranchers—now more than ever, they need us and we need them!
I’ve just returned from a great trip that I want to share with you all. Thanks to Trout Unlimited, I was part of an exchange between New Seasons Market and wild salmon fishermen from Bristol Bay, Alaska. The fishermen from West Coast Wild Salmon, out of Dillingham, Alaska, spent a weekend in Portland talking to our customers and handing out samples of delicious wild salmon. In turn, I got to spend a week on a fishing boat with those same fishermen learning not only how to catch the wild salmon on a commercial boat, but also what it’s like to live and work in Alaska, what matters to the people there and why it’s so important to protect the resources that our largest state holds.
Bristol Bay has the largest salmon run in the entire world, with the sockeye season lasting about four weeks during the summer. 40% of the world’s wild salmon come straight out of Bristol Bay, supplying all corners of the globe with this nutrient-rich, renewable food source—that’s about 70 million salmon each year.
In Bristol Bay, salmon is life. 75% of the jobs locally are related to the fishing industry, so it’s critical to the livelihood of the community. To many of the natives and locals, salmon is a subsistence harvest, and they depend on their annual haul of fish to feed their families. Life’s unpredictable for these hard-working fishermen. Until the season ends, they don’t know how much money their catch will bring in, or whether it will be enough to pay the costs of their business. They work about five days at a time and get around four hours of sleep each night. It’s a pace that was challenging for this city boy to keep up with, and I have a great deal of respect for the people who do this work long-term.
There are basically two methods used for catching the wild sockeye. “Volume fishing” uses large nets, spread out under the water until they’re getting full, and then hauled up with the fish ensnared in them. “Quality fishing,” the type West Coast Wild Salmon does, uses smaller nets, pulled up more frequently and handled with more care. They also tend to make it to market faster. As a result, quality fished salmon cost a little more, but they’re the freshest you can find. I like to tell our customers when the fish in our stores was caught, not just when it arrived in the store; in this case, the sockeye salmon we get from West Coast Wild Salmon arrive in our stores within two days of being in Bristol Bay’s chilly waters.
The weather up there was unseasonably warm during my visit—pushing 80 degrees every day—which had a visible impact on the fishery. Salmon like cold water (that’s why they hang out off the coast of Alaska), and the water temperature at fishing depth was higher than they prefer. So the salmon were swimming low, and the catch was noticeably smaller. Close to shore, set-netters were catching less as well. But I also learned that on just one day—July 6th—fishermen pulled 22.5 million pounds of salmon out of Bristol Bay. What a difference a few degrees can make!
There’s definitely a place for both volume and quality fishing. Between 12 and 17 million salmon spawn upstream into the rivers that feed Bristol Bay, and without the fishing industry the millions of additional salmon spawning would overwhelm the rivers, depleting the nutrients and causing damage to the watershed that would take decades to repair. The best thing you can do to help preserve the salmon run in Bristol Bay is to eat the wild salmon that’s caught there. That, and support the efforts to protect the environment surrounding the bay.
It’s difficult to imagine how the country’s largest open pit mine wouldn’t have a devastating effect on the ecosystem here, but that’s what the folks who have proposed the Pebble Mine seem to believe. The mine, to be located on a lake near to Bristol Bay, would require huge amounts of fresh water to extract the copper and gold from the ore. That fresh water would have to come from the local rivers, and even small amounts of toxic contamination from the mine’s operations could devastate the salmon population—not to mention the area’s drinking water supply. The toxic byproducts would be contained in two permanent lakes near the mine. I’m no mining engineer, and I don’t think anyone can know what the real impact of the mine would be. All I know is that it’s tough to imagine that digging a giant hole in the tundra would have no effect on the environment, the animals or the people in the area. This is one of the few relatively unspoiled areas left on Earth where humans are living with the land, instead of just on it, and it would be heartbreaking to see that destroyed.
Learn more about the efforts to protect Bristol Bay here, or feel free to contact me to learn about how you can get involved.
A few days ago we received information that one of our customers had contracted an E. coli infection in 2008, sometime between August and October. It was determined that the infection had come from eating organic, baby bulk spinach that had been grown on a farm that had E. coli contamination. Our customer had purchased the baby spinach at our Arbor Lodge store in North Portland. Late Wednesday (June 11th) was the first time we heard anything about it at all. We’re very sorry that spinach that was for sale at one of our stores made someone sick.
We don’t know the name and we’ve had no direct contact with the person who became ill. We spent a good part of the last few days trying to gather more information. I immediately called the epidemiologists for Multnomah County and for the state of Oregon. We’ve been told by the state epidemiologist that the contamination was limited to one farm and that the individual who got the infection from baby spinach purchased at our store did not become seriously ill. For that we are very grateful.
Since this incident took place more than eight months ago, there’s no imminent danger and there’s no recall, so there’s no reason for anyone to throw away their spinach or to stop eating spinach. We no longer are selling any products from the farm where the spinach was grown.
There are three points regarding food safety I need to share with you.
First, we promise transparency about what occurs at New Seasons Market. If there’s a problem, we’re going to let you know as much about it as we possibly can, as soon as we possibly can. That’s why I’m making this post today.
Second, since we opened the doors of our first store in 2000, we’ve had over 36 million customer visits and this incident is the very first time we’ve been told by any health agency that a customer became ill from eating something they purchased at one of our stores.
Third, I think what surprised me the most about this incident was the fact that, even though multiple agencies had investigated the situation and even though they had issued an internal report in January, no one ever let us know that there had been a problem. In the last few days, I’ve had some great conversations with the food safety folks at both the county and state levels. These are clearly smart, hard working people who are committed to doing everything they can to make sure that our food supply is as safe as possible.
I told the state epidemiologist that in instances like this I thought it was critically important to develop a communication plan that would ensure that retailers, restaurants and others would be immediately informed so they would be able to better protect our customers regarding food safety issues. He agreed whole-heartedly. I volunteered to contact Dr. Bruce Goldberg, the director of the Oregon Department of Human Services to share my concerns about this gap in the system. I’ve asked Dr. Goldberg to put together a group of stakeholders to immediately develop a protocol for addressing food safety problems in the future. I’ve suggested that the group include participants from the state and county health departments, the grocery and restaurant industry, food distributors, food manufacturers, farmers and other food producers and the general public. I’ve suggested that the meetings of this group be well publicized and that the media be invited.
Finally, I do want to assure you that we take food safety really seriously. The safety of our customers and our staff is, by far, our number one priority. We’re very supportive of the existing Oregon Department of Agriculture inspection program. We also voluntarily contract with an independent third party inspection company to do unannounced food safety inspections in our stores 36 times a year. We voluntarily require all staff working in our kitchens, delis, meat departments, seafood departments, produce departments, bakeries and food demonstration departments to pass a food safety course and obtain an Oregon food handlers card before they start work at New Seasons Market. Over one thousand of our staff members, more than half of the total number of people who work here, have completed that training. Additionally, over two hundred of our managers have received ServSafe certification, which means they’ve completed a comprehensive training program on food safety. A manager at each of our stores performs a food safety audit every day.
I wish that I could promise everyone that none of the food we sell would ever have any safety risk. Unfortunately, I can’t make that guarantee and of course, in all honesty, neither can any other grocery store, restaurant or food producer. This incident clearly reinforces the idea that we need new food safety and public health policies for the 21st century. We’re going to continue to be an active participant in the design and implementation of these much-needed programs.
Summer in Oregon is my favorite season...but not for the reasons that you may think. I'm one of those Portlanders who adores the rain, so it's not that I'm a sun-starved, can't-stand-another-drop-of-rain person. The reason I love summer in Oregon can be summed up in two words: Hood strawberries. This is the strawberry that all other strawberries aspire to be. Their flavor is so intensely sweet and luscious it might cause you to wonder why have you wasted your tastebuds on those rubbery, bland, pseudo-strawberries from elsewhere. There’s just nothing like the flavor of our local Hood strawberries. So you can imagine my delight when I received this update from Chris Harris, our local produce buyer:
"The warm weather has brought on the local berries sooner than expected. And this year, we could have more local organic strawberries than we have ever seen before. We have four growers lined up to supply us:
Unger Farms in Cornelius, Oregon, will be delivering the classic Hood variety of strawberries to stores daily starting this Saturday.
Bella Organic Farm on Sauvie Island, Oregon, has 6 to 8 acres devoted to organic strawberries with Hoods, as well as three ever-bearing varieties: Tillamook, Seacrest, and Aroma. Attached are pictures from my visit to Bella Organics yesterday.
This weekend, we will also see some organic berries from Zorn Farm in St. Paul, Oregon, who has about 2.5 acres of the Totem variety (very similar to Hoods but not quite as perishable)
And next week we will see some organic berries from Ken Efimoff in Woodburn, Oregon, who has about 1.5 acres of Hoods. With all these local growers…we should be able to get fresh organic berries delivered to our stores six days a week.
The Hood season will only go for three to four weeks, so enjoy them while they last”
Sounds like we will have a bumper crop of local berries, so if you want to extend the Hood season you can buy a flat (or two) and freeze some or make a batch of strawberry refrigerator jam. Here’s one of my favorite recipes—it’s fast and doesn’t require a degree in chemistry to make:
Ingredients: 2 Pints Hood Strawberries 1 ½ c. Cane Sugar (I use Woodstock Farms Organic Cane Sugar) 1 T Lemon Juice, freshly squeezed
Preparation: Rinse, hull and slice berries and combine with sugar and lemon juice. Allow to macerate overnight, stirring occasionally, until all the sugar is melted. Next day, bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove berries to a bowl with a slotted spoon and cook until the consistency of syrup or for you chemistry wonks: 220 degrees on a candy thermometer. Replace the berries in the syrup and cook 3 minutes longer. Pour into clean containers (glass or plastic) and cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally. When cool, cover and refrigerate. This recipe yields 3 cups and the jam will last a few weeks. You can also freeze it to extend the shelf life.
Maybe you have a great strawberry recipe or story you’d like to share?
By Krista Anderson New Seasons Market Company Chef
As Head Chef for New Seasons Market, I’m always looking for ways to bridge the gap between the people who grow our food and the people who eat it. Connecting one-on-one with the farmers and ranchers themselves is the best way to make that happen, and there’s no better opportunity to do that than at the Farmer Chef Connection conference. Imagine dozens of local food producers coming together for an all-day networking opportunity with regional food buyers, sharing food, swapping ideas and making offers, building relationships that will benefit both parties and ultimately, the consumer.
The Farmer Chef Connection conference is the innovation of the Portland Chapter of Chefs Collaborative. I was part of the original Portland CC Steering Committee, which we formed in 2000, sitting around a table at Greg Higgins’s restaurant. The first conference was held in 2001 at WillaKenzie Winery in the Willamette Valley. Each year since, attendance has grown, and the conference has benefitted greatly from the administrative support and partnership of the local non-profit, Ecotrust.
This year—the ninth!—the conference was hosted by the Portland Chapter of Chefs Collaborative, and held at Clackamas Community College, with about 220 farmers, ranchers, pickle makers, cheese makers, educators, lawyers, nutritionists, chefs, and students in attendance. Our own Jon Beeaker, Store Chef at the Raleigh Hills New Seasons Market, was the host of the event, multi-tasking between introductions on stage and preparing lunch in our makeshift kitchen. Our keynote speaker was Brent Foster, an environmental attorney for the Oregon Department of Justice. He spoke at length about the implications of the installation of liquefied natural gas pipelines which would cross the state of Oregon from east to west, and the legal battles farmers and ranchers may face as those pipelines are installed. Brent showed photos of the damage the digging does to precious farmland and waterways, and cautioned against importing yet another fossil fuel from overseas. This is a hot topic, and there are very strong opinions on all sides of the issue. It’s worth learning more about, and you can read details of the proposals along with some of the different perspectives here, here and here.
The second speaker was Sheila Martin, Director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University. Her presentation emphasized the importance of maintaining strong relationships between the rural growers of our food and the urban consumers. Keeping our connections strong is vital to preserving our food networks for generations to come.
We had our choice of workshops to attend throughout the day:
In “Innovative Ideas for Marketing Local Products in an Economic Downturn,” we heard how Sun Gold Farm is exponentially growing its business and securing its future through the sale Community Supported Agriculture shares. We heard from David Barber of Three Square Grill and Picklopolis about the importance of making personal contact with local buyers to introduce new products, and Piper Davis from Grand Central Baking shared some of their strategies for cutting costs while maintaining quality. The question of whether farms need to maintain a website came up, and the value of having one was discussed. Simply offering contact information and a few photos can go a long way towards putting a face on the farmer.
In “Meat Inspection Logistics,” the discussion focused on the option of creating a state inspection program in Oregon. The idea is to speed the flow of meat from farm to plate, but there are still lots of hurdles to overcome.
“Buying and Selling Direct” covered the dos and don’ts of interacting with food suppliers and buyers.
“The Future of Food: Supporting the Next Generation of Farmers and Chefs” is at the root of establishing a sustainable food system.
One of the highlights of this event has always been the potluck lunch. Farmers and producers attending the event are paired up with registered chefs, playing perfectly into the “connection” theme. It’s been my responsibility to connect the donated food with the volunteer chefs, and to develop a menu based on these pairings. Each year, the lunch gets even better, and this year was no exception: Rich Indian Spiced Lamb, Kale and Garbanzo Bean Stew was the result of partnering Upper Dry Creek Ranch, Truitt Brothers and Organically Grown Company with New Seasons Market chefs; Sweet Briar Farms whipped up some Pulled Pork and Coleslaw; Prairie Creek Farms teamed with the Institute for Culinary Awakening to create a colorful Good Earth Medley of vegetables; and Sweet Oregon Mint provided mint tea as well as the mint we used in our New Seasons Market Mint Chocolate Brownies. This is just a tiny sampling of the bounty of dishes that were available, all made possible through donated food and time from the participants.
It was amazing to hear about some of the innovations that the people involved in our local food economy are implementing. One group is establishing a Community Supported Kitchen, similar to a CSA share, but with prepared foods, all in the style of Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions. To wrap up the day, everyone was invited to visit the Tasting Pavilion, where locally grown foods, both fresh and preserved, were available for sampling. At the same time, a documentary called Ingredients was screened. Check out a clip from it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF05b7MbR7s
What I took away is an affirmation of how vital these relationships are. We know that the farmer is invested in the success of our business, as we are in his. When I see these connections being made, I know that the ranchers, farmers, chefs and artisans aren’t just buying and selling. They’re cinching up the ties that bind our regional food economy together, and they’re ensuring that the rich agricultural land that surrounds this urban area will be here for future generations to farm. By educating ourselves and our community about the issues surrounding sustainability in our local food system, the culinary community can be a catalyst for positive change. With this knowledge, we can help to create markets for good food and ultimately help preserve local farming, ranching and fishing communities.
Our food system can only become stronger through the sharing of ideas, and we’d love to hear yours. Let us know your thoughts on how we can establish a sustainable food system that will ensure plenty of agricultural land and fresh food for generations to come.
By Brian Rohter, CEO, and Lisa Sedlar, President
