Dear members,
Welcome to the first newsletter of your 2025 harvest season!
After another long, wet winter we are so excited to welcome you back to the garden and fields, where everything is now shooting up in the summer sunlight.
We have an exciting and bountiful harvest season in the works and we can’t wait to start sharing it with you.
This newsletter, which will appear in your inbox every Friday evening, will contain a snapshot of the coming week's harvest and u-pick options, as well as recipes, tips, and stories from the farm — all to inspire you and help you make the most out of your membership over the next 6-months.
Week 1’s newsletter is always jam packed with important details for new and returning members. Read on below!
FARM ORIENTATION TOURS FOR NEW MEMBERS
All new adult members are required to attend an orientation their first time picking up their harvest share. We’ll go over farm safety and etiquette, give you your farm tote bags, show you the ropes in the flower and herb garden, and share the secret to finding the sweetest strawberries.
If you are new to the farm, please join us promptly for one of the orientation tours below:
WEEK 1:
Saturday, June 14: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, June 17: 1 pm. 3 pm, 5:30 pm
WEEK 2:
Saturday, June 21: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, June 24: 1 pm. 3 pm, 5:30 pm
WEEK 3:
Saturday, June 28: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, July 1: 1 pm. 3 pm, 5:30 pm
You can come get oriented and pick up your first share on either day (Saturday or Tuesday), whichever day and time works best for your schedule. Tours last about 30 minutes. All adult members of your share who will be regularly enjoying the farm should attend an orientation.
If you are sharing a share by alternating weeks with another household, one household should attend an orientation Week 1 and the other an orientation on Week 2.
If you can’t attend a tour time above, please reach out to us to schedule a time that works for you.
THE BASICS
What time is harvest pick-up?:
Saturday harvest pick-ups run from 9:00 am - 2:00 pm
Tuesday harvest pick-ups will run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
U-pick hours: Oriented members can come to the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to u-pick and enjoy the farm.
2025 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 14th through Tuesday, December 9th this year.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
Slow on Cooper Rd. Out of respect for our neighbors and the many kids and animals that live on Cooper Rd., please drive slow (20 mph)!
Where should I park?: Follow our sign on Cooper Rd. down a short gravel driveway. Please find a parking spot under the solar panels to your left, or on either side of the road in front, or below, the greenhouse.
Where is the food? The produce pick-up barn is just to the right of the solar panels and above our big greenhouse. You can’t miss it!
What should I bring?:
Former members, please bring your WCCF tote bag! (New members will be given a new one.)
Pint baskets or small containers for strawberries and herbs (if you have some, we will provide a few pint baskets to be used as measures)
A vase, bucket, or water bottle to keep your flowers and herbs happy
Clippers or secateurs to cut flowers (if you have some)
Water / sun hat / picnic supplies if you plan to stay awhile!
Newsletters & email communication: All our important CSA communications are sent through this email address, which is sometimes spam blocked. Please make sure this email address is in your address book so you get important CSA communications. All newsletters and important updates, like this one, are also posted on the Newsletters page of our website weekly.
THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Fresh Lorz Softneck Garlic, Dutch Butter Flavored Popcorn, Spinach, Mustard Mix or Arugula, Purple Bok Choi, Dino Kale, Green Zucchini and Yellow Crookneck Squash, Green Little Gem Lettuce, Panisse Oakleaf Lettuce, Pink Ladyslipper Radishes, Hakurei Salad Turnips, Scallions, Carrots from Laguna Farm or Full Belly Farm
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
Albion Strawberries: 1 pint per share this week | The strawberries are in a slow production moment but we expect them to ramp back up in a few weeks. Until then, please savor the first berries of the season and make sure to respect the u-pick limits so that all members get some.
Herbs & Edible Flowers: Tulsi, Parsley, Cilantro, Chamomile, Calendula, Nasturtium, Pansies/Viola, Stridolo, Lemon Bergamot Bee Balm, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Culinary Sage, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, Pineapple Sage, Sorrel, Assorted Mints
Flowers! Many perennial flowers and the first of the year’s annuals!
HARVEST NOTES
In this section of the newsletter we offer history, recipes & tips on crops in the share are particularly noteworthy or exciting this week.
Fresh Lorz Softneck Garlic: An heirloom softneck variety that was brought to Washington State's Columbia River Basin in the early 1900s by the Lorz family when they emigrated from Italy. This purple-tinged softneck garlic has a robust, spicy flavor that lingers in dishes. These bulbs were just unearthed last week so you will notice green stalks, silky soft inner papers and turgid, crips cloves. We’ve been saving the seed for this variety for the past 7 years.
Pennsylvania Dutch Butter-Flavored Popcorn: Quite the name, huh? An excellent popper, it transforms from skinny yellow kernels to beautifully round, brilliantly white popcorn — and it really tastes like butter! Pro-tip: make sure that you store your popcorn in dry conditions, as moist popcorn won’t pop.
Making your popcorn: The trick to stovetop popcorn is to use a thick-bottomed pot like a dutch oven, which will distribute the heat evenly and prevent burning. Turn the stove on to medium high and pour in a generous amount of high-heat oil — enough to cover the kernels halfway up. Heat the oil a little bit before pouring in the kernels, then put a lid on and enjoy the fireworks! We like to shake the pot a bit to keep the kernels evenly hot so that each kernel will have time on the heat but not enough to burn. The popcorn is popping perfectly right now, but if you find that your first batch of popcorn isn’t popping well, try drying it out by putting it in a 200 degree oven for little while.
Carrots from Laguna Farm & Full Belly Farm: This week we’re bringing in carrots from 2 amazing farms to round out your share. Our proximity to the Laguna means that after a wet winter like this one, we get a late start on planting. We’re looking forward to having our own carrots in the share in a few weeks.
BAKED GOODS IN THE BARN!
We are so delighted to welcome back the two incredible local bakeries that we hosted last year!
On Saturdays, Sonoma Mountain Breads will be offering their artisanal croissants for purchase at the Saturday pickups.
Zweibel’s will be back with their delicious bagels and pastries for purchase at the Tuesday pickups.
Both bakeries accept payment through Venmo and Zweibel’s also accepts cash.
EASY CaeSAR DRESSING
From Smitten Kitchen
It’s salad season! We love mixing up a batch of this super simple Caesar dressing to make easy and delicious salads with on a moments notice. We’ve scaled the recipe up here to make a full pint of dressing — enough for several days of generous salads, but if you’d rather make a smaller amount, check out the recipe link above. As with all dressing recipes, using high quality ingredients — particularly olive oil and mayonnaise — will make a big difference.
1/2 cup mayonnaise
4 small garlic cloves, minced
4 teaspoons worcestershire sauce or 1 to 2 anchovies, minced
4 teaspoons smooth dijon mustard
1/4 cup lemon juice or champagne vinegar
1 cup olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Whisk all the ingredients in a small bowl and whisk until smooth, or measure directly into a pint jar and shake til smooth. Don’t skimp on the salt and pepper; they’re going to wake the whole thing up.
HOW TO STORE YOUR VEGETABLES
We’ve always get questions in the pickup barn about how to best store your produce, so we wanted to offer a few simple tips to help you get the most out of the fresh food we’re growing for you.
Keep them enclosed. Vegetables, like all plants, are mainly water, so the quickest way to lose them is to let them desiccate. We recommend keeping all of your produce (with a few exceptions, listed below) in plastic bags or airtight containers. Don’t rely on the crisper drawer in your fridge — it won’t do much to keep things turgid on its own.
Keep them cool. Put everything right in the fridge when you get it home. If you find that anything’s wilted on the way home, a brief soak in cold water will do wonders. This is particularly true for u-pick crops like green beans and snap peas that have been picked during the heat of the day.
Take off tops and store them separately. Vegetables will continue to transpire after they’ve been picked, so for crops like beets and carrots, it’s best to remove the tops so that the roots don’t wilt as the greens do.
Use the most delicate things first. As you’ve probably experienced, there’s a lot of variety in terms of how long different crops will store. Loose greens tend to have a shorter shelf like than whole heads, so plan on using up loose salad mixes and arugula early in the week, and counting on heads of lettuce for later on.
Treat your herbs like flowers: While they can also be bagged and put in the fridge, u-pick herbs like basil, dill, marjoram, etc. will be most vibrant and easiest to remember to use if you put them in a jar or vase on the kitchen counter. More delicate herbs like chives would prefer to be refrigerated in a bag.
The exceptions: tomatoes, winter squash and cured onions and garlic. Everything in this list would prefer to be kept unbagged on the counter. Tomatoes tend to change texture when refrigerated, and winter squash, cured onions and garlic have all gone through a curing process that enables them to last for a long time in normal household temperatures.
FARMER’S LOG
SUMMER HANDS, SPRING LETTUCE
Our first harvest morning of the year (this morning!) is always a little surreal for us. There is a quite a whiplash for us as we go from a gritty, loud and unkempt planting machine into a tidy community space harvesting and handling delicate Spring produce.
It also makes us reflect…
In this wet flood plain, our first harvestable crops usually mature in time to open the CSA around the first or second week of June. And while the crops of these first shares are indeed spring-like — fresh, and innocent spring onions, green garlic, the most delicate salad greens of the year — we farmers are now like craggy potatoes. Toughened, tan, and bleary eyed from 6 weeks of intense planting.
By the time this CSA opens we have days before finished planting 65% of the bed space we will plant for the entire year: The year’s potatoes, tomatoes, onions, winter squash, peppers, sweet and dry corn, 60% of our carrots, are all in the ground. Indeed, in the time it takes a Red Butter lettuce to go from seedling to salad, the farm, and ourselves, have been transformed. Our irrigation shed — neat and organized on April 1st — now looks like a tornado hit it. We might feel a little bit like that on the inside.
But the fields… the fields!
The surreality is in the time-delay. When we knelt down this morning to harvest our first Oakleaf Lettuce, we were taken back to when we planted those first beds, bright eyed and bushy tailed — before the intense planting push; before the troubleshooting and pivots; before the good laughs and great conversations and the coming together as a seasoned crew.
Harvesting this first humble springy harvest share makes us take stock of the magnitude of this year’s plant-out and the mountain of summer and fall bounty we’re about to reap.
All this is just to say that we are very excited to start sharing this harvest season with you. Believe our bleary eyes and tan-skin when we say it will be epic.
Epic-ness cannot be achieved without a gifted and tenacious team.
So please join us in raising a glass, or an Albion Strawberry, to our amazing crew this year.
Our lovely core crew this year, from L to R: Asa, Brent, Henry, Eric (with Onions), Arabella, Aisling, David and Kayta (and Riley! not pictured).
And raise a glass to yourselves, dear members, you were with us the whole way.
Here is to 26 weeks of delicious abundance ahead.
Thank you all for being with us this season. It’s an honor to be farming for you.
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
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COMPENDIUM OF PAST NEWSLETTERS
For you farm and garden nerds out there, learn how we crop plan, read up on our all-star Strawberry variety, or deep dive into Kayta’s flower garden.
If you’re one of those people that gets hyped for pumpkin spice lattes, Halloween, and Fall vibes even in the late Spring, stoke that fire with an ode to the potato harvest and the winter squash.
We are so lucky to find ourselves farming in yet another wild place here on the Laguna. We can’t wait to share more of the antics of our non-human neighbors with you. For the naturalists out there, read here about a lesson the oak trees taught us, or hear tell of the screaming monkey owlets of Green Valley, Wesley the Weasel, or the fox that welcomed us there.
