THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Mustard Mix, Green Little Gem Lettuces, Flashy Trout Back Lettuce, Curly Kale, Assorted Zucchini & Summer Squash, Lemon Cucumbers, Persian Cucumbers, Bulk Pickling Cucumbers, Carrots, Broccoli, Fresh Torpedo Onions, Celery, Fennel, New Purple Viking Potatoes
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
Albion Strawberries: ✨4 pints per share✨
🌟 Cherry Tomatoes: 1 pint per share | The earliest cherry tomatoes to ripen are on the very bottom of the plant! See the photo below for an introduction to the varieties we’re growing this year — and let us know which of the pink varieties you like better!
🌟 Amethyst Beans: No limit | These are purple green beans (purple on the outside and green on the inside). Eat them raw to highlight their color and sweet flavor, or cook as you would any other green beans and watch their color change to green!
Frying Peppers:
Padrons: 3 pints per share
Shishitos: 3 pints per share
Herbs & Edible Flowers: Lemon Bergamot, Dill, Cilantro, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Lemon Basil, Italian Basil, Tulsi, Parsley, Chamomile, Calendula, Nasturtium, Pansies/Viola, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, French & Culinary Lavender, Sorrel, & Assorted Mints
Flowers!
This year’s cherry tomato lineup! Top row, left to right: Supersweet 100, Sungold / Bottom row, left to right: Pinkie, Sunpeach, Black Cherry.
HARVEST NOTES
New Purple Viking Potatoes: These beautiful pink and purple swirled potatoes are fresh and uncured — with delicate skin and an extra crisp texture, they’re more of a fresh vegetable than the starchy, storage potatoes of winter. Use them like you would any potato, or, to highlight their fresh flavor, roast them in the oven with olive oil, salt and pepper (and Torpedo onions! So good in everything) or use them in an herby potato salad like the one below.
Baby Celery: Farm-fresh celery is world’s apart from the celery that comes from the store. Minerally, sweet and salty, we can’t get enough of it. To highlight this week’s pairing of celery and fennel, we’ll be making one of our longstanding favorite salads: Alison Roman’s Celery and Fennel with Walnuts and Blue Cheese. (You can find the recipe in this old newsletter.)
Fresh Torpedo Onions: A favorite in Italy and France, these beautiful, pink, elongated onions are mild, delicate, and delicious raw. We recommend incorporating them into fresh salads, pizza or sandwiches.
HERBY POTATO & GREEN BEAN SALAD WITH TOMATOES
From Daisy Beet
With this week’s arrival of new potatoes, (purple) green beans and cherry tomatoes we can’t help but think of French potato salads and salade niçoise — some of our favorite essence-of-summer dishes. This recipe brings all these ingredients together with a classic vinaigrette and herbs from the garden, but feel free to add in anchovies, tuna, or hard-boiled eggs to take it all the way to salade niçoise.
INGREDIENTS
3/4 pound green beans, trimmed
1 lb potatoes
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tbsp basil, chopped
2 scallions, white and light green parts thinly sliced or Torpedo Onions
1/4 c parsley, chopped
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp champagne vinegar
1/4 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper, to taste
Prairie Sun Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susans) in the foreground, with Celosia, Queen Mix Zinnias, and Valentine Sunflowers.
PREPARATION
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Prepare a bowl of ice water that will fit the green beans.
Drop the green beans into the boiling water to blanch for 30 seconds. Remove them and plunge them into the ice water to stop them cooking. Let cool, then drain and pat dry.
Add the potatoes to the same pot of boiling water. Cook for about 15 minutes, until soft and fork tender.
Drain and let cool. Once cool enough to touch, cut the potatoes in half.
In a small jar, combine extra virgin olive oil, champagne vinegar, Kosher salt, and dijon mustard. Close the jar and shake vigorously to emulsify the vinaigrette.
Combine the cooked green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and the fresh herbs in a mixing bowl. Add a generous pinch of salt and pepper.
Add the dressing and gently toss the salad together so everything is well coated.
Enjoy at room temperature or cold!
FARMER’S LOG
This week’s Farmer’s Log is by new crew member Shanga Juckas — a wonderful essay written in late June about strawberries, farming and her grandma. Thanks for sharing, Shanga!
STRAWBERRY MOON
BY SHANGA JUCKAS
I have been living from moment to moment to moment and the times of slowness that I once relished so deeply are few and far between. I do not mind. I feel like a ripe strawberry. My time of being a sitting seed is behind me. I am ready to burst and be devoured by the world.
After two years of living in Sonoma County and flirting with the idea of farming, I took a full-time job as a produce farmer on an Organic farm. The only other time I can remember feeling so full and complete and pulsing with so much aliveness is when I was teaching at Tree School. The link between the two? Being outside, being social, being in close-relation with simple beauties that seem to amplify the more they are engaged with. The sinewy bloody roots of the Beet Starts. The sleepy bees resting in golden Squash blossoms. Hawks, Kites, Herons, Red-winged Blackbirds: their songs, flight, and persistent presence all around.
Shanga this afternoon with the beloved Root Blaster 3000
At the end of every day, my hands feel stronger and my mind is at peace. The feeling of full-body exhaustion paired with a fresh stir fry of veggies I’ve just harvested is hard to beat. On Friday morning my co-workers and I were out harvesting Squash early enough that the nightly fog had not yet burned off. We all walked through the misty rows, swishing our noisy waterproof harvest pants. Morning birds were singing and the bees were just beginning to wake from their drunken naps in the blossoms. I was sad. The same kind of sadness that is felt when you meet someone who you love so much and you can hardly believe you’ve only just met. It’s strange to imagine you’ve lived your entire life without them. And it’s also scary because what if the love you suddenly feel is not forever? I mean, it’s not–nothing really is. I thought about the things people say like “farming destroys your body”, “farming is a young person’s game” and so on. And people say the same about dance. And people say the same about running. And people say the same about so many things. And yet, there are old farmers, old dancers, old runners. I dated someone last year who was a wildland firefighter. He was also an arborist, shepherd, and pretty much anything you needed him to be. We began seeing each other right before I left for the PCT. His attitude was unlike that of anyone I’ve ever met. While I had always heard this idea of attitude being everything, I never saw it quite like I did for him. When I left for the PCT I asked him for words of wisdom. He shrugged, smiled, and said “just keep walking”. Those words were with me for the entire trail. And they still are. I’ve never held such a subtle and powerful piece of wisdom. And so I will hold it as I walk into this new chapter of working in close relationship with the land and my own body.
When I began my time at this new job, my boss knew I had hiked the PCT last summer and he said “Farming is a bit like through-hiking”. We bonded over the John Muir Trail, which overlaps with the Sierra Nevada section of the PCT. He hiked the JMT several years back and I felt grateful to have a boss who could relate to this right of passage I had experienced. I agree with his assessment so far. Farming is like through-hiking, in a way. Incredibly physically demanding, requires mental fortitude above all else, high highs and low lows. But farming is distinctly not like through-hiking for one main reason. By definition through-hiking requires you to quickly pass through, always on to the next place. By definition farming requires an agreement to become incredibly intimate with one piece of land, sticking around and sending roots into the earth. It is exactly what I desired after so much movement over the past year and more.
I now spend my mornings pulling carrot roots from their homes in the soil. I spend the middle of the day standing on the back of a tractor as it maneuvers through newly planted beds of watermelon. I nap under grandmother oaks in the heat of the day. Each night I fill a glass with strawberry shrub that I’ve made from our farm’s prolific straw-covered beds.
My grandma was a farmer of sorts. More of a rancher, I suppose. Or a high-level wrangler. Regardless of her title, she spent her summer days in and around a barn. She had dirt under her nails and deep wrinkles on her hands. Her arms were strong and she was not afraid of working herself to the bone. She did. She worked until she died. As I kneel into the soil as a sort of harvest prayer every morning, I feel my grandma close to me. I hold my core strong, remembering the advice during training to keep body mechanics ever present in the dance of the farmer’s day. My grandma has been gone for over six years now. But suddenly, as my straight back stoops for a heavy bin of summer squash, I get to know another side of her. Through this work I find myself understanding her more and more. I admire her work ethic more than ever. I understand her draw to hard-working people. I feel her joy and her steadiness and her passion. Her closet full of beautiful clothes and eclectic jewelry waiting for her every day as she wore holes in the white sneakers she marched around in all day. There is something so very pleasurable about getting absolutely covered in soil, sun, and sweat and then washing it away to adorn my sore body in beautiful clothes.
As this current strawberry moon ripens into fullness, I feel the same of my own heart. Strawberries fill my fridge and freezer. Homemade strawberry popsicles, strawberry crumble, strawberry salad, strawberry shrub, and of course a bowl of the ripest most delicious strawberries I’ve ever tasted. Strawberry Jam that my mom has made sits on my table. The Label reads: Pam’s Jam 2026 Strawberry Ingredients: Strawberry, Love, Sugar, Pectin. I wish I could bring my grandma some strawberries. I wish I could cuddle up to her on the couch watching Antiques Roadshow and lick strawberry popsicles together. I would love to tell her how much more I am starting to understand.
CSA BASICS
Check out our Brief Membership Guide: A quick-reference on the essentials of being a member.
Harvest pick-up times:
Friday harvest pick-ups run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
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.
2026 CSA program dates: This year’s harvest season will run from Friday, June 12th through Tuesday, December 8th this year.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
Slow on Cooper Rd. Please drive slowly on Cooper Road — 20 mph. It's a neighborhood with lots of kids and animals who generously share the road with us.
