It was like a tingling between my shoulder blades that I couldn't quite reach. The niggling thought in my brain had been amorphous at first, as elusive as a phantom, but it had the unmistakable flavor profile of the homemade gochujang from my friend Denise's family.

It was even a little scary, a crossing of lines if you will, kind of like the kimchi risotto that I made during the pandemic, trying to use what was in our pantry so we didn't have to make a trip to the store. But with this there wasn't that excuse, since I had everything on hand that I would need. Plus, really, the likelihood of an inedible culinary disaster was remote—my family will pretty much eat anything, exclaiming "tasty!" as they chow down.

So, to cut to the chase, an attempt at making gochujang mac'n'cheese had been on my mind for awhile. Sure, I've made various iterations of the classic cheesy noodle casserole from versions laced with salmon, Dungeness crab, pimento cheese, even one with a Tex-Mex twist. But a Korean-inflected version somehow seemed like a bridge too far—call me a drama queen, but it gave me the willies.

Maybe it was the idea of combining cheese with the chiles, fish sauce, sesame oil and miso in the gochujang. But we'd been making kimchi quesadillas—with cheese and the pickled, chile-laced cabbage—for lunch since I'd been making my own kimchi. What was there to be nervous about?

When I ran across a mention of a panko, gochugaru and sesame oil topping that would give the top a nice crunch, suddenly the clouds cleared, the sun came out and all seemed right with the world. I'd still caution the curious to be aware that this is not your mother's mac'n'cheese or anything that Annie or Mr. Newman would put in a box, but it's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Gochujang Macaroni and Cheese

For the topping:
3 Tbsp. Panko
1 Tbsp. gochugaru
2 Tbsp. toasted sesame seeds
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1/2 tsp. salt

For the casserole:
1 lb. dried pasta (we like penne or rigatoni)
4 Tbsp. butter
4 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. garlic, minced
2 c. milk
8 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, grated
8 oz. cream cheese
3 Tbsp. gochujang
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

While water is heating, combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.

Over medium heat, melt butter in medium-sized saucepan. Remove from burner and add flour, stirring to combine. Place saucepan back on burner and cook on low heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add garlic and stir briefly. Add milk gradually, stirring until it begins to thicken, then add cheese in handfuls, stirring after each addition until melted. Add cream cheese and stir until sauce is thick and creamy, then stir in gochujang. Add salt and pepper to taste. (The sauce should be slightly saltier than you'd normally make it, since when combined with the pasta it will tend to make it taste less salty.)

Add pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente. Drain and put back in pasta pot, add cheese sauce and stir gently to combine. Transfer to baking dish, sprinkling the topping mixture evenly over it. Bake in 350 degree oven 30 minutes.

The following popped into my e-mail in-box and, with his usual tell-it-like-it-is directness, Bruce Bauer—longtime readers know him as my (much) younger brother—made the big announcement:

"This is a tough email to start so I’m jumping in the deep end and letting you know that after an incredibly rewarding, at times frustrating, yet so f*cking fulfilling 25 year run here at the wine shack I’m going to be selling VINO and retiring (apparently I’m older than I think I am 😬). I've gotta admit I'm feeling a bit out of my element with the impending change, but also excited in so many ways. Now I hear y’all going, “But what about us?,” and I just want you to know I’ve found a great buyer, someone I’ve known for years in the business, who couldn’t be more perfect to take over and take VINO to the next level."

Why am I posting about my brother's wine shop on this blog that's about local food, you might ask?

Well, without his inspiration I might well have never started Good Stuff NW, much less become a writer. You see, I was a freelance advertising art director at the time, helping clients with their branding and marketing and just dipping my toe into this new medium called the World Wide Web. It was 2006 and my baby brother was on a whirlwind tour of France and Spain, writing about all the amazing food and drink he was stumbling across via a platform called Blogger. Needless to say, his always-engaging writing was a draw, of course, but so was the idea of this easy-to-use new medium. (You can read more about my writing journey here.)

But back to Vino.

He'd always been a crazy smart kid who had an uncanny knack for relating to all kinds of people—I've consistently said he got all the "nice" genes in the family—so when he started a career as a lumber broker I thought, "Good for him, he'll make lots of money and be secure," while the big sister part of me was thinking, "He's so much more talented and creative…I hope he's happy."

Fortunately that only lasted a few years, whereupon he co-founded Shakers Café in the the early 90s in the nascent, not-yet-named Pearl District in Northwest Portland. Smashingly successful with lines out the door for breakfast and lunch—its tagline "If Your Mother Could Cook" perfectly summed up its take on homemade classics—he also began broadly exploring what would become his passion for lesser-known European, American and, particularly, Northwest wines.

He eventually sold the café, launching his first wine shop on Southeast Hawthorne called Portland Wine Merchants, which was followed not much later with the opening of County Cork, an Irish-themed pub on Hawthorne—coincidentally (and somewhat spookily) also the site of our paternal grandfather's moving business back in the 1930s—which eventually relocated to Northeast Fremont.

Bruce sold the Hawthorne wine shop to his business partner and opened Vino in the Sellwood neighborhood, which just before the turn of the millenium was a quiet street populated by antique stores and not much street traffic. He quickly drew in a crowd of regulars, fans from his Hawthorne shop as well as appreciative neighborhood folk drawn to his affordable selection, extensive knowledge and lack of pretense on the subject, who were very excited to have a place to gather on Fridays for wine tastings.

The move to its current location on Northeast 28th wasn't without some fraught moments—moving to a promising new neighborhood but leaving the community that had built up around the shop was not easy—but it proved to be both timely and prescient. The street soon exploded with notable small restaurants, bars, a food cart pod and many small businesses, with Vino benefitting from the increased street traffic as well as the new outdoor courtyard for tastings.

As Bruce wrote in wrapping up his e-mail, "It’s been amazing and I can’t say strongly enough how much better my life has been because of you guys and what you helped VINO become. Thank you for coming along for the ride!"

Photo of yours truly at a Vino wine tasting many moons ago courtesy Laurie Harquail.

If you have a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscription to a local farm, you're probably getting weekly updates from your farmer about what crops will be available and what the season might look like going forward. A CSA is a great way for us city folk to have a connection to the land outside the paved boundaries of our lives, support a local small farm and to get a sense of the season from ground level. The bulletin below is from my CSA farmer, Aaron Nichols of Stoneboat Farm in Hillsboro, and this week he gave an excellent insight into this very unusual end-of-summer weather.

I hope you've all been enjoying the last weeks—they sure feel like fall out here.  I don't remember the weather changing so seriously this early in August before, certainly not with enough rain that we don't have to irrigate for a week. It looks like we'll see it heat up (though not too much) over the next few weeks and our summer crops will certainly appreciate it.  

This last week we were able to take advantage of the rain to get our biggest fall and winter salad plantings in—they take up a good amount of the space we'll be growing in over the winter and it's nice to see them all planted! We have a van-full left to plant next week but those will probably be in by the end of the month—having the longer-growing salad in by the end of August is a goal most years but not one we normally meet! We also planted our last round of kales, broccoli, and cabbage.

The greenhouse is looking pretty empty of growing things now, though it's currently drying down the shallots—they're nearly done which is good because a whole lot of onions need to get in soon! We managed to get some potatoes in the ground while the soil was mostly dry mid-week, and before it started to rain again today. The rain is pretty nice for the newly seeded and newly planted crops we have out there—they all look good. It's also got us a new flush of weeds!

The cool weather and the rain did cause a few problems, most notably for the corn. Our careful corn planning is now way out of whack with the last corn looking healthy, but still far from being ready, and the current corn is falling over from the wet soils and winds over the weekend making for worse pollination and fewer ears. It will be back but isn't loving the mid-60 degree days!  Our tomatoes weathered the storm better than the corn but did have pretty slow production as did most of their relatives—eggplants, peppers, etc.—but they'll all be happy next week with the warmer weather.

The fall things look good though: broccoli as early as next CSA and cabbages will probably be in at just about the same time; kale and cauliflower are not far behind that. We have carrots now and likely next week. Before October I think we'll have some leeks in the CSA and we'll certainly have more kinds of winter squash sneaking in there. Next week's CSA should feature some fun potatoes—all purples and fingerlings.

Many local CSA farms have winter season subscriptions, and Stoneboat Farm will be posting its subscription for winter shares in the next couple of weeks. You can also read more about Aaron and his work with his North Plains community to preserve farmland from development.

I know, I know, calling a particular drink "the best cocktail" is hyperbole on the scale of saying one religion is the true path and everyone else is going to H-E-double toothpicks. And there are going to be comments like, "Whaddaya mean..." and "You're fulla..." But, doggone it, it's my favorite and I'm not afraid to say it.

Now, I've had lots of other great cocktails. After all, there is such a thing as due diligence in these matters and I'm all about fair play. Martinis, Manhattans, mojitos, lemon drops, G&Ts, sidecars, toddies...I could go on. But the Negroni is the one I always come back to as my touchstone, especially as made by my favorite bartender.

And it's not for everyone. You have to have a taste for the bitter (Campari) along with the sweet (vermouth). And the perfect accompaniment is a twist of lemon, though many practitioners are trying to substitute orange peel—in my opinion giving the drink a cloying oiliness rather than the zing that lemon rind contributes.

So if you're ready to try one, here's the recipe that we've adopted as our own.

Our House Negroni

A good friend of mine described the Negroni as "the perfectly balanced cocktail when made correctly." I've got to agree. The richness of the gin, the bitter-sweetness of the Campari, the balancing acidity of the vermouth. Measure it out if you have to, free pour if you're confident enough, just make it. This is a great old-school drink that originated in the 1930's, and is making a comeback today. Big ups for this very refreshing adult beverage.

1 part Gin
1 part Campari
1/2 part Sweet Vermouth
1/2 part Dry Vermouth

Fill your cocktail shaker halfway with ice, dump in the booze, shake then strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a twist of lemon.

A note on the gin: I love Beefeater and Taqueray, but with this drink I actually prefer the less assertive flavor of a Gordon's Dry Gin or a similar mid-range gin. Also, if you look in a vintage bar guide, it will invariably say one part sweet vermouth with no dry vermouth. But I was shown this half-and-half method by the bartender at Bix Restaurant in San Francisco many years ago—a great "must stop" bar for you martini fans—and this rounds out the flavors perfectly. Cheers!

It's high summer. Temperatures are soaring and no one wants to heat up the house cooking dinner. You could whizz up a blender of chilled soup—check out my favorites by clicking here—or do what we do: Set up an outdoor kitchen! All it takes is a camp stove and a camp table and you're good to go.

We've set up ours on the patio just outside the kitchen door, the better to access that all-important fridge, plus water and utensils. Our trusty two-burner Coleman will boil a pot of water for pasta on one burner while cooking up the almost-instant sauce (below) on the second burner without having to break a sweat.

Whether you can stroll out to your garden bed and pluck your cherry tomatoes right off the vine or pull out a pint of little red orbs from your farmers' market stash, all you'll need is garlic, a tin of anchovies and olive oil to complete the dish. It's so simple you could whip it up while your guests sip gazpacho from tiny glass cups, but whether you choose to do that or just toss it in a bowl and put it in front of your family with a salad, I guarantee it'll be a dish you'll be pulling out again and again in tomato season.

Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic and Anchovy Sauce

1 lb. pasta
3 Tbsp. olive oil
10 cloves garlic, peeled and very roughly chopped
1 tin anchovies in olive oil
One pint of cherry tomatoes
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
Salt to taste
1/4 c. Italian parsley, chopped
Grated parmesan, or a 50/50 blend of pecorino and parmesan, for serving

Boil a large pot of water for pasta.

Just before the water comes to a boil, start the sauce by heating the olive oil in a deep frying pan over medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add the chopped garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the anchovies and their oil and mash until the anchovies dissolve, then add the whole cherry tomatoes and red pepper flakes.

Add the pasta to the (now) boiling water and cook until al dente. Continue cooking the sauce until the tomatoes burst and give up their juices, then reduce the heat to low until the pasta is done. Drain pasta in a colander and place in a heated serving bowl. Pour the sauce over the pasta and sprinkle with some of the parmesan.

"Kai means group or association, Ikoi is someplace where people can feel comfortable and get together, like a shelter. I think this is a perfect name for it because it is a place where people can really be themselves and feel comfortable and absorb all of the good vibes that everybody around them is giving them." - Reverend Eisei Ikenaga*

For 45 years, Ikoi no Kai has been cooking and serving culturally appropriate meals to Portland's second and third-generation Japanese Americans from the basement of a Southeast Portland church, and providing a safe, welcoming space for the community to gather, laugh and share news over familiar, comforting food.

Thanks to the work of a small army of volunteer chefs, cooks and servers, Ikoi no Kai provides hearty mid-day meals four days a week, and once a month delivers fresh-cooked meals to homebound seniors. Most of the ingredients for those meals have come from donations from local farms and businesses like Troutdale's Mora Mora Farm and Fujii Farms, Kasama Farm in Hood River, and Umi Organic and Jorinji Miso in Portland.

This summer, some of the eggplant in the Eggplant with Pork and Miso Sauce or the vegetables in the Chilled Udon with Tempura Vegetables served to customers might come from the onsite heritage vegetable garden stocked with culturally significant vegetables like mizuna, adzuki, ginger, komatsuna, shiso, eggplant and cucumbers. Begun by Program Director Jeannine Shinoda, it originally functioned as a display garden and educational tool. Now in its third growing season, it has become a kitchen garden for the lunch program, with seed and seedlings provided by East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District, donations from local farms, and an irrigation system provided by Mora Mora Farm.

Shinoda has also greatly expanded Ikoi no Kai's social media presence—you can follow them on Instagram and Facebook—and has begun working with local businesses like Jorinji Miso to hold pop-ups showcasing its products in the lunch program and teaching classes on making miso and koji at home. She is also currently working with the Japanese American Museum of Oregon on an exhibit showcasing the 45-year history of the program that will debut this fall.

If you want to see this unique program in action, visitors are welcome to attend the community lunches—one fan called it "the best unknown restaurant in town." You can check out the menu here and make a reservation by e-mail or call 503-238-0775. You can also catch the Food That Connects interviews Shinoda recorded with members of Portland's Japanese American community (scroll down to "Food That Connects" section).

* From "Ikoi no Kai: Food That Connects," a Metro Community Placemaking grant to record oral histories of members of Portland's Japanese community.

Top photo from the Ikoi no Kai Facebook page. Others are from a visit to the program.

I must have been around four years old. My family lived in a fifties-style ranch on a one block-long street of similar houses in Tigard, an early patch of development in what would become the suburban sprawl that quickly surrounded Portland in the 1960s and 70s.

At the back of the house, the edge of our neatly mowed, unfenced green lawn bordered on a field of wildflowers where I'd wander, picking bouquets to bring to my mother. It would eventually become a parking lot for a giant strip mall, but to my four-year-old self it was a vast prairie, a place for catching and studying the birds and bugs that lived there or spending what seemed like hours laying there and looking up at the clouds passing overhead.

Across the street in front of our house was another row of houses identical to ours, beyond which stretched another field, this one planted with row upon row of corn. All the kids on our street would play hide-and-seek in that field, losing each other in the sameness of the shadowy stalks that stretched into the sky, their tassels glowing in the evening light. During the late summer I'd often wander off into the field on my own and pick an ear or two, peeling back the green husk and nibbling the sweet raw corn that always tasted better than anything boiled and buttered, and only emerge when I heard my mother calling from the front porch to come in for dinner.

So when it's corn season and there's no field across the street to wander off into, I'll bring home an armload from the farmers' market, husk a few ears, scrape off the kernels and cook up a batch of corn stock from the cobs to make a corn risotto that brings back, if only for a few moments, that sweet memory from my childhood.

Sweet Corn Risotto

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. butter or margarine
1/2 yellow onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 c. arborio rice
2 c. corn kernels
5 c. corn stock
1/2 c. parmesan
Salt and pepper, to taste

To make corn stock, cut kernels off of five corn cobs. Put kernels in a bowl and set aside. Place cobs in large saucepan and cover with 5 cups water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove cobs and strain stock through wire mesh sieve to remove any debris.

Melt butter and oil in 2 1/2-3 qt. heavy-bottomed sauce pan. Add onion and garlic and sauté over medium heat till translucent. Add rice and stir for about 30 seconds till grains are hot and coated with butter mixture. Add corn and combine. Stirring frequently, add stock one ladle-full at a time, allowing rice to absorb it before adding more. When rice is tender but still slightly al dente, stir in cheese. Add salt and pepper, adjusting to taste.

My neighbors Bill and Jen have been a driving force behind many of my culinary explorations, with their extensive garden and Bill's consuming interest in fermentation. Jen, too, comes from a long line of picklers and preservers—check out her great-grandmother's refrigerator pickles recipe—and Bill turned me on to homemade shrubs like his cantaloupe and mint shrub.

Last year he gave me a bushel of purple shiso to play with, which led me to Andrea Nguyen's inspiring website, Viet World Kitchen, about all things Vietnamese—her Vietnamese Food Any Day cookbook has changed my cooking on a basic level—and her recipe for Vietnamese Shiso (Tia To) Shrub. I made several batches and we enjoyed them all summer long.

This year, just as the early July heat wave was hitting the Northwest with a vengeance, our Stoneboat Farm CSA was offering fennel as part of the share. Fennel's long wavy fronds are normally a source of annoyance since they've gone straight to the compost bin, but this time I asked my friend Melinda if there was a use for them. "Fennel fronds?!?" she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up at the thought. "Candied fennel! Syrup! Pesto!"

Okay, then—I now feel badly about dumping them all these years. But no more!

The pesto was made and enjoyed with a salmon fillet we grilled a couple of days later, and I made a syrup from the leftover stalks. It was good, but wasn't thrilling…until my son mentioned he'd made a soda with some of the syrup and had added a splash of tarragon vinegar to make it sing. And did it ever!

Don't get me wrong, I'm still in love with Andrea's shiso drinking vinegar, but this one may be the hit of this summer's beverage bar.

Fennel-Tarragon Drinking Vinegar

4 c. fennel fronds, sliced in 3" lengths
6 c. water
6 c. sugar
2 c. tarragon vinegar (see below)

In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine water, sugar and fennel fronds. Bring to a boil and turn off heat. Cover pan and allow to steep for 2-3 hours until syrup cools. Add vinegar and stir. Bottle and store in refrigerator (makes about two quarts); will keep for several weeks.

To make a beverage, fill an 8 oz. drinking glass with ice. Add 1 oz. drinking vinegar. Fill with club soda. Stir, adding more syrup or soda to taste. Garnish with lemon, mint, etc., if desired.

Tarragon Vinegar

Fresh tarragon
White wine vinegar

Fill a couple of pint jars with tarragon sprigs—feel free to pack them in, but not too tightly; you need room for the vinegar, after all! Fill with vinegar to within 1/2" of rim. Place tight-fitting lid on the jar and store in a cool, dark place (like a basement) for 2 weeks. Using a fine mesh strainer, strain out the sprigs. Bottle (I save my empty vinegar bottles for just this purpose) and store in refrigerator.

If you've been seeing ads from your grocery store or fishmonger offering whole fish for a fraction of the regular retail price but you're not sure how you'd use it, I'm reposting this handy guide.

There is nothing better, or better for you, than fresh-caught, wild, local fish. Fish are packed with Omega-3 fatty acids, high in protein and low in saturated fat, and the American Heart Association advises eating fish twice a week. Trouble is, the usual price per pound for fresh fillets in the butcher case puts it out of reach for most budgets. Plus many commercially available ocean species can be high in mercury, and farm-raised fish are usually fed high doses of antibiotics—think of them as factory farms for finned creatures—due to the crowded pens they're raised in. And don't get me started on the effects of these farms on our waterways.

But those of us on the West Coast are fortunate to have access to some of the most delicious wild fish on the planet in our populations of native wild albacore and salmon. This year the fleet of primarily family-owned boats have been pulling in a supply of albacore from the fishery that stretches from Northern California up into British Columbia. Certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, these albacore are young—just three to five years old, low in mercury and weighing in at 12 to 25 pounds—and individually caught with a hook-and-line system. (Want more info? Read my post, Albacore A to Z, for details.)

Wild salmon, particularly from Alaskan waters, are in plentiful supply right now, too, with stores advertising tempting steaks, fillets and roasts. But if you want to get a real deal, look for special sales events featuring whole fish.

"Whole fish?" you say. "I don't even know where to start with a whole fish!"

Well, let's talk about where you buy it. Make sure the fishmonger is reputable—recent studies have found that almost 20% of fish sold to consumers are mislabeled, and fish ordered at restaurants are more likely to be incorrectly labeled than fish bought at markets or grocery stores. I recently bought two whole albacore and two whole Coho salmon at New Seasons Market, a regional chain that buys its whole fish from local boats and has several one or two-day sales events per season. Find more places to buy local seafood with the Oregon Seafood Locator Map and Listings.

When you buy whole fish, you'll need to specify how you want it packaged. The fish are already cleaned, and most stores will butcher your fish at no charge, whether you want steaks or roasts or whole fillets. I always ask for the trimmings to be included, since the head, fins and bones make amazing stock for soups, chowders, risottos and paella, among many other uses. (Here's my technique for using those trimmings.)

And don't believe those online charts meant for chefs that say the yield from a whole albacore, gutted and without the head, is 50 percent of the weight. From the 17-pound fish (head off) that I bought from the store, my yield was more than 80 percent after removing the loins, roasting the carcass (350° for 30 min.), picking off the meat (nearly 2 lbs.) and then making stock from the bones (2 1/2 qts.). The total weight of bones, fins and detritus that went into the compost bin was only two or three pounds. (Kind of tells you about the food waste that happens in restaurants, though, doesn't it?)

If you're not going to throw the fish on the grill right away—always a good idea, and just one good-sized fillet will feed four to six—you'll need to think about how you want to store it. With a vacuum sealer it's a done deal, since properly packaged fish will keep for as long as a year. The idea is to keep air away from the meat to prevent freezer burn, so if you don't have a vacuum sealer, what do you do?

I quizzed the fellow at the fish counter when I bought my salmon, and he said that his dad, an avid fisherman, would put a single fillet in a zip-lock bag and submerge it in a sink full of water, holding the closure just above the water line. The water pressure pushes the air out, making an airtight seal around the fish. Not having a sealing machine myself, a little smoothing of the wrinkles in the bag while it was submerged did almost as good a job as the machine. (I found that a two-gallon zip-lock bag will hold a good-sized fillet quite nicely.)

A note: it's good to go over your fish ahead of freezing to check for pinbones or other bones that the butchers may have missed. First, it makes it easier to just throw it on the grill without worrying about biting down on a bone while you're eating and, second, it keeps those pokey bones from puncturing the bag and letting air in. Just hold the fillet and feel for any bones by running your fingers down the flesh, then use a pair of (clean) needle nose pliers to pull out the bones.

All this is to say that you can have more fresh, local, sustainable fish in your diet without paying dearly for the privilege.

Check out this recipe for to-die-for nicoise salad or this one for gochujang-roasted albacore. These salmon cakes will have your family swooning, or try this easy roasted salmon piccata. And you can't go wrong with a classic miso-glazed grilled salmon fillet.

In what was being termed one of the biggest threats to Oregon's land use system in 50 years, the City of North Plains, just outside of Hillsboro, attempted to double the size of the city by proposing the biggest-ever Urban Growth Boundary expansion by percentage basis and the largest by acres in the metro counties.

"A single increase of this magnitude to a city’s boundaries is unprecedented in Oregon, and most of the expansion would be for industrial and commercial use, with only about 167 acres set aside for housing," according to a 1000 Friends of Oregon article on the battle between residents, developers, city bureaucrats and state regulators.

Local residents and farmers opposed to the land grab banded together under the banner Friends of North Plains Smart Growth, which quickly organized a coalition against the city's ballot measure on the expansion, explaining to voters what the city was attempting and notifying residents of upcoming public hearings.

Led in large part by farmer Aaron Nichols, whose 15-acre Stoneboat Farm was just one farm removed from the city's proposed boundary expansion, the opposition effort became what he called his "second job" for a year, learning the labyrinthine intricacies of Oregon's land use system, first notifying the 500 families served by the farm's Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscriptions and then contacting local media and conservation organizations.

Citing an almost complete lack of public engagement, Nichols testified that "of the 26 meetings North Plains pointed to as public evidence, only three of these were public hearings that both followed proper noticing requirements and had an opportunity for the public to engage." His testimony charged that the plan itself was "poorly supported" and that much of the basic evidence was exaggerated or was simply missing, pointing out that even Dr. Brenda Bateman, the director of the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) stated that the city's plan relied on "incorrect facts."

Just-released figures from the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture show that the number of farms in Oregon decreased by six percent since 2017, and the acreage those farms occupied was down four percent in the same period. 1000 Friends of Oregon detailed that only about 16 percent of Oregon (excluding federal lands) consists of high-value soils, with only about four percent of those rated as prime farmland, and that efforts like those of the city of North Plains endanger those remaining valuable soils.

Putting those figures into perspective, 1000 Friends said that "while cities normally need to prioritize expanding onto non-resource lands or lands with lower-quality soils when proposing a UGB expansion, North Plains is surrounded almost exclusively by high-value farmland and prime soils. This means that any expansion would almost certainly pave over some of the best soils in the state and raises the ethical bar for proving that the expansion is what’s best for the greater community."

Expansion advocates tried to propose a separate bill (HB 4026) that was characterized as "intentionally designed to circumvent and suppress democratic participation by blocking future ballot referendums." Nichols said the efffort was a warning to those who might face challenges to their own local urban growth boundaries: "What [HB 4026] does, in fact the only thing [it] does, is have the legislature insert itself into a local issue to put a roadblock in the way of a community group. This bill forces our group to sue the state and, though as we and the city know full well the law will be quickly overturned, the city hopes that we will either be unable to raise the money for the lawsuit or it will exhaust our resources and harm our campaign. It is obvious that…placing a hurdle in the road for one side in one election, is not the place of the Oregon Legislature nor worth the time used on this bill."

On May 22nd of this year, the voters of North Plains rejected the city's ballot measure by a margin of 70 percent.

The city's response to the vote indicated the battle is not over: "The recent dialog on Measure 34-327 has highlighted a shared commitment among North Plains residents to prioritize our community’s livability and managed growth responsibilities,” said Mayor Teri Lenahan. “We are very early in assessing next steps for a future UGB expansion area." A hearing to discuss next steps is scheduled for Monday, July 15.