THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Assorted Lettuces, Flowering Purple Komatsuna, Red Beets, Assorted Zucchini & Summer Squash, Assorted Cucumbers, Carrots, Fresh Red Onions, Celery, Italian & Asian Eggplant, Bicolor Sweet Corn, Caraflex Cabbage
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!
Amethyst Beans: No limit
Frying Peppers:
Padrons: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
Shishitos: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
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 galore!
Eric fracturing in front of our insectary flower beds in the Kale.
HARVEST NOTES
Fresh Red Onions: These gorgeous red onions are coming to you straight from the field, fresh and uncured. You’ll notice that they’re particularly crisp and juicy and we recommend keeping them in the fridge to preserve their texture. As with many red onions, these are on the spicy side, and perfect used in any of your favorite dishes (or the celery salad recipe below!).
Bicolor Sweet Corn: We’ve been watching the corn silks in anticipation for weeks, and we’re so excited that the first of the sweet corn is ready! Grill it, roast it, boil it, or just take a bite raw! NOTE: Some ears may contain a caterpillar at the top — these are corn borers, and a totally normal (and unavoidable) part of organic sweet corn. Just toss the little guy outside and enjoy your corn!
CELERY SALAD WITH APPLE AND WALNUTS
Recipe adapted from Alison Roman
In honor of this weekend’s Gravenstein Apple Fair, here’s a refreshing side salad that features our minerally, sweet & salty celery, and the sweet-tart flavor of our hometown hero apples.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped (optional)
3 Gravenstein apples, unpeeled and thinly sliced
1 bunch of celery, leaves and stalks separated, thinly sliced
½ medium red onion, thinly sliced (if you’d like the onion to be milder, soak briefly in cold water, or use Torpedo onions from last week)
2 lemons, zested and juiced
Kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper
2 cups parsley, tender leaves and stems
Olive oil, for drizzling
PREPARATION
Toast walnuts, either in a 350° oven or toaster oven for 5–7 minutes, or a pan on the stove, stirring often.
Toss apple, celery, onion, lemon zest and juice in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper.
Taste and season with more lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add parsley and walnuts and drizzle with a healthy amount of olive oil, seasoning again with salt and pepper before serving.
TOMATOES COMING SOON!
A practical update on our main-season slicing tomato crop: Sonoma County is a land of microclimates. From the baking oven of Dry Creek Valley to the fog-soaked stretches of the Petaluma Gap. Here at West County Community Farm we tilt toward the cooler side of things, low and fog kissed. For that reason, our main season slicing tomato crop usually comes in later — around mid-August — than friends in warmer areas. The fruit set on our crop is looking good and should be blessing our tables soon.
FARMER’S LOG
On Limits and the Enjoyment of Life
As our harvests transition away from the delicate greens of early summer into the colors and flavors of summer, we are reminded of why we love eating seasonally from the farm.
Nothing dictates what is on our tables more than the tilt of the Earth. As you’ve seen, the shares of mid-June are very different from those of late July and early August. The spring, with its soft waxing light, grows tender, almost translucent, baby-soft greens. While the hard summer sun condenses itself into weighty, colorful, sweet fruits. Mentally compare a silky, soft, watery Spring strawberry to the sun-hardened, acid-sweet strawberries this week.
Another cool thing about eating from the farm is that we get to experience the full arc of plant growth — from fresh onions to cured onions; from baby Spring carrots to the deep orange Fall carrots kissed by frost. In supermarkets, most produce is harvested at one standard stage of a few standard varieties. Here, life is happening, and we pull it out of the field for you to taste.
But perhaps our favorite thing about this model is an unsung hero: Limits.
Supersweet 100 trusses, going from ripe to just flowers.
Yes, limits. Not having something. “Limit: 1 per share.”
“What!?”
We live in a time and a place where we can get just about any food, anytime, en masse, if you can afford it. Tomatoes in January. Melons in the February. Mangos in Sebastopol.
We have conquered seasons. We have conquered limits.
But have we also conquered one of life’s simplest pleasures? What is the fulfillment of desire without the longing that precedes it?
Last week we cherished the year’s first slicing tomato. That first slice of vine-ripened tomato on an open faced sandwich (with a little basil, olive oil, and salt) brought back a flood of memories from last summer, and summers before that, and we smiled at our loved ones at the table in our shared remembrance and shared enjoyment of this thing that we have now, but did not have for so long.
In most (or maybe all) rooted cultures there are festivals celebrating the return of foods. In Southern France there is the plum festival and the Spring festival marking the return of the egg. In Sebastopol, we have the Gravenstein Apple Fair this weekend.
Limits, scarcity, the lean times — they help us appreciate, like really appreciate, what we have, where we are, and who we are.
Life's fleeting nature is really it's spice — and so it goes for food.
In a few short weeks, we will be rich in slicing tomatoes. We will take for granted their spiced-earth smell and the way they tie so many meals together. We may even grow sick of tomatoes. But not this week. This week we are in waiting. This week we will rotate a teasing Sungold around between our thumb and index finger — impossibly orange, impossibly perfect — and it will shine back at us and remind us where we are, in place and in time. And it will remind us how impossibly lucky we are to wait for tomatoes.
See you in the fields,
David
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.
