THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Arugula, Mustard Mix, Assorted Lettuces, Dino Kale, Bel Fiore & Sugarloaf Chicories, Celery, Green Magic Broccoli, Fennel, Fresh Onions, Purple Daikon, Multicolored Carrots, Persian & Lemon Cucumbers, Summer Squash & Zucchini, Garlic.
Fall crops in our field across the creek. Read this week’s Farmer’s Log below as we take stock of the planting season so far.
U-PICK
Please remember to check the u-pick board for updated weekly limits before going out to pick
Strawberries are still off | Read the Farmer’s Log below for why!
Pickling Cucumbers | 2 gallon season limit (see Week 6’s Newsletter for harvest and pickling tips)
🌟Cherry Tomatoes (See below for notes)
Amethyst Green Beans
Shishito & Padron Frying Peppers (See Week 4’s Newsletter for harvest and cooking tips)
Jalapeño Peppers
Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Tarragon, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, Culinary Sage, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Cilantro, Tulsi, Various Mints, Catnip, Chamomile, Purple Basil, Genovese Basil, Thai Basil
Flowers!
HARVEST NOTES
Sugarloaf Chicories: Chicories (which include Frisee, Radicchio, Dandelions and Escarole) are closely related to lettuces, but heartier and with a bitter edge. People are sometimes intimidated by their bitterness — but fear not, properly prepared, chicories contain a world of deliciousness. Chicories pair best with assertive dressings, and particularly tangy and umami flavors. Sugarloaf are among the least bitter of the chicories. They are delicious included in a leafy salad, and incredible chopped and tossed with olive oil, garlic and salt, and put under a broiler until caramelized. With a little added lemon and parmesan, caramelized chicories make a perfect pairing with beans, polenta, or other hearty dishes.
Cherry Tomatoes!
The first tomatoes in our u-pick cherry tomato patch, slowed by the recent cold, are finally starting to ripen! This week’s trickle will become a deluge of sunny sweetness in just a couple of weeks.
Here is a brief introduction to the six varieties of cherry tomato we planted for you this year.
Note: the first ripe tomatoes will be found very very low on the plants, near the ground, and they will ripen higher and higher up as the season progresses.
From L to R, top row: Copper Beauty, Pink Princess, Sunpeach. Bottom row: Supersweet 100, Sungold, Indigo Cherry Drops
Copper Beauty: One of our favorites, these are a gorgeous, oblong variety, a little larger than most cherry tomatoes and perfect for slicing into a fancy tomato salad. Mellow, very low acid, sugar sweet. Ripe when auburn red, with copper gold streaks. These are the latest, they are just beginning ripen, but should soon be abundant.
Pink Princess: Developed by an oxen-driving, seed-saving wizard in Massachusetts, this gem is such a favorite of ours that when the seed was temporarily unavailable a couple years ago, we saved our own! Mellow and sweet, with a hint of grapefruit, these cherry tomatoes are on the smaller size and ripen to a beautiful matte pink.
Sunpeach: This immaculate beauty is one we’re trialing this year. They are ripe when pink. Let us know how you like them!
Supersweet 100: A classic red cherry tomato for a shock of red sweet tang. Ripest when deep scarlet red. The secret to Supersweets is to leave them out on the counter for a day or two after you pick them — they sweeten up off the vine.
Sungold: The sun... captured. An unbeatable classic. Ripe when deep orange. Candy sweet, super productive. Is it even summer until you have a handful of Sungolds?
Indigo Cherry Drops: These striking purple orbs are chock-full of healthy anthocyanins (anti-oxidants) and a deliciousness They are ripe when the green side darkens to red -- keep a close eye out when picking as even the unripe tomatoes of this variety are purple!
CELERY and FENNEL with WALNUTS and BLUE CHEESE
Recipe by Alison Roman
Grace has been recommending this delicious salad to us all season, and now, with celery and fennel in the share this week, is the perfect time to try it! Grace says that she loves making a variation of the recipe using white wine vinegar in the dressing instead of lemon juice, and leaving out the walnuts. Play around with it!
Serves 4 to 6
1⁄2 cup toasted walnuts, coarsely chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 celery stalks, with leaves, thinly sliced on the bias
1 large fennel bulb, trimmed and thinly sliced lengthwise
1⁄2 small shallot, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more as needed
1⁄4 cup olive oil, plus more as needed and for drizzling
1 1⁄2 ounces firm blue cheese, such as Bayley Hazen or Valdeon, or a mild Stilton, thinly sliced or crumbled
Toss the walnuts with a bit of olive oil so they are nicely coated, then season with salt and pepper and set aside.
Toss the celery stalks (reserve the leaves for garnish), fennel, shallot, and lemon juice in a large bowl; season with salt and pepper. Drizzle with the olive oil and season with enough lemon juice to make it very tangy.
Transfer to a large serving platter or large shallow bowl and top with the walnuts, cheese, celery leaves, and another drizzle of olive oil and plenty of pepper.
PICKLE PARTY!
This week we harvested an abundance of carrots and purple daikon! Consider taking advantage of this vibrant duo by making this super simple quick pickle recipe. Daikon can be treated just like carrots to make pickled carrot and daikon sticks, or, if you'd prefer, julienne or grate them both (and skip the blanching step) to create a simple variation on Vietnamese do chua that can be used as topping on bahn mi or a multitude of other dishes.
Makes 10 to 12 servings
1 pound carrots, cut into 3 1/2- by 1/3-inch sticks
1 1/4 cups water
1 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed
1 1/2 tablespoons dill seeds
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
Step 1
Blanch carrots in a 4-quart non-reactive saucepan of boiling salted water for 1 minute, then drain in a colander and rinse under cold water to stop cooking. Transfer carrots to a heatproof bowl.
Step 2
Bring remaining ingredients to a boil in a saucepan, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Pour pickling liquid over carrots and cool, uncovered. Chill carrots, covered, at least 1 day for flavors to develop.
Carrots keep, chilled in an airtight container, 1 month.
FARMER’S LOG
UP ON THAT HILL
Late July is a complex time of year on the farm. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, collide, intermix and interweave in the harvest share and in the fabric of the fields. Winter sown garlic is tossed in with Spring sown onions and simmered with the first cherry tomatoes of summer, while the bass note of Fall can be heard swelling in the greenhouse and from our fields across the creek.
It is perhaps the most important and informative time of year for us farmers to gaze out over the entire complex tapestry to learn and observe.
This year, our first here, is especially fascinating for us, it being the first time we have planted, well, anything here.
So, with a few week’s of harvest behind us, let’s walk up that hill together to take stock of how things are faring.
In the harvest share and on our tables right now is a lot of Winter and Spring and early Summer sunlight — crops that were sown and planted in those early months (garlic, carrots, celery, the first cucumbers, kale, onions, etc). Overall, we are grateful and encouraged by how these, are first pieces of feedback, performed in this new (to us) soil, weather, and ecological system. Most crops seemed more “relaxed” here than in the tougher soils of Green Valley. Our first ever garlic crop was easeful. Our first carrots grew straight and deep into the loam. Our first heading brassica crop, broccoli — a crop that will show it’s discontent — expressed happiness in well formed orbs. Celery too, a task master, found it suitable enough here to erect stately green columns. Our lessons from these months, so far, seems to be around pest protection: We need to invest in special Protect-Net netting to protect our chard, and certain brassicas and lettuce from the voracious civilizations of flea beetles and cucumber beetles here. We need to better fence out the robust deer population here that visit our lettuce and have ransacked our strawberries the last couple weeks.
Summer… Ahh, summer. We’ve only just started reading our first chapter on Summer here. But the plot has us hooked. Namely, there is an antagonist here that was only a side character in our Green Valley summer’s. Fog. Sweet, soothing fog; farmer’s relief; life giving draught of the redwoods; sculptor of fine broccoli; but not so liked by tomatoes and eggplant. If you’ve been feeling like the poblanos, eggplant, and tomatoes are running a little bit late, we have fog to thank. Analogies aside, the last 2 or 3 weeks have been quite cool here, and most nights have been dripping with fog. While this is a normal and seasonal weather pattern that will shift, like all weather patterns, we do feel like it will be a regular character in this place, unlike in the sun drenched oven of Green Valley. The tomatoes will come; the melons will come; sweet corn and eggplant should come; in the meantime we’ll be eating sweet summer broccoli while raptly reading what role this new noir character, Mr. Foggy Cold Wind, has in our Summer tale.
Winter squash field and popcorn looming on the horizon
Fall. At this point, Fall is just foreshadowing. Most of our main harbingers of Fall (potatoes, storage onions, dried corn, winter squash) are all located in our fields across the creek, so you cannot see them, but they are looming large. Check out the snapshot above. Things are going well. Our winter squash and dried corn both pulled through an extended bout of transplant shock (cause unknown) but recently found their feet and we couldn’t be prouder. Our storage onions and potatoes, conversely, knew nothing but perfect health until Mr. Foggy Cold Wind, gave them the plant versions of a cold (they should be OK). We were encouraged last week when we dug those new potatoes — a shower of multitudinous tubers. But the text stops there. The tale of this Fall is not yet written. We await the next episode.
And then Winter. Well, next winter is but a sketch, in our minds, of where next year’s strawberries and garlic will go.
As we stand on this hill, and pull back from the complexities of the farm right now, we feel humbled. The word "humble" comes from the same root of the word "humus”. To be humbled means to be close to the Earth; to be close to her seasons, her weather, her moods. To be humbled means to not always get what you want. We want the strawberries to still be raging and for the heirloom tomatoes to be ripening now. We’ve been humbled.
For most of us in Sonoma County, living in this time and this way, we rarely, if ever are humbled when it comes to food. The experience of being humbled by cold or fog, or by deer, is not available to us in the aisles of Whole Foods. But it is an essential human experience.
It makes us grateful for what we have. And it can bring people together.
That’s why we love this CSA model. It allows a group of people to be humbled together. To be close to one piece of land and its moods together. This also allows us to celebrate together, to celebrate the abundances together because we are having the same experience of lack, and then of gain. And so we celebrate what we have together.
Thank you for joining us on this hill!
See you in the fields,
David and Kayta
