THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Green Butter Lettuce, Green Little Gem Lettuce, Dino Kale, Assorted Zucchini & Summer Squash, Assorted Slicing Cucumbers, Rainbow Carrots, Assorted Fresh Onions, Celery, Poblano Peppers, Bulk Tomatoes, Pink Crimson Sweet Watermelon, Sarah’s Choice Cantaloupe, Assorted Cabbage, Popcorn
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
Albion Strawberries: ✨3 pints per share✨
Cherry Tomatoes: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
Dragon Tongue Beans: No limit — take what you’ll eat! |
Frying Peppers:
Padrons: No limit — take what you’ll eat! Did you know that padrons make an incredible component of hot sauce, especially as they ripen to red and are reliably very hot.
Shishitos: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
Hot Peppers:
Jalapeños: 10 peppers per share
🌟 Thai Chilis: 3 peppers per share
Herbs & Edible Flowers: Husk Cherries, 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!
HARVEST NOTES
Pink Crimson Sweet Watermelon: Our small, slightly less sweet than usual watermelon we’re harvesting this year are a casualty of this foggy, cool, fungal summer we’ve had. Pray for more heat!
Riley, Shanga, Arabella and Melinda after harvesting all morning in the rain.
PRESERVING THE HARVEST: BULK TOMATOES!
From now until the end of tomato season, bulk quantities of tomatoes, including sauce varieties and seconds (tomatoes that are blemished or overripe but still tasty) will be available — in addition to the perfect ones!
There will be a 15 lb season limit on bulk tomatoes, meaning that each share will be able to take up to 15 pounds, out-of-bag, over the course of the season, in addition to whatever weekly tomatoes you’d like to put in your bag. Just like with the pickling cucumbers, the season limit applies to each share, meaning that members who are alternating weeks should coordinate as to how you want to divide your allotted 15 lb. You’re welcome to take them all at once or a little bit here and there, whichever you like! However, this year in particular, we recommend taking your allotted quantity as soon as you’re able. The tomatoes do not like this rainy summer weather we’ve been having, and it’s looking like it will probably be a short tomato season. As we approach the end of the season, the tomatoes available as bulk will include more seconds than early on.
PRESERVING YOUR TOMATOES
While canning and drying are also options, we’ve found that the easiest way to put up tomatoes is freezing. The quickest method is to simply pop them in the freezer without processing first, but we love halving them, drizzling with olive oil and roasting in a low-temp oven to concentrate the flavors. Or, if you have the time now and want to make a sauce that truly bottles the taste of summer, consider making fresh tomato sauce!
FRESH TOMATO SAUCE
For the simplest and most satisfying tomato sauce, we recommend sautéing onions and garlic in more olive oil than you might think you need. Then add tomatoes and salt to taste and cook down for 45 minutes to an hour until your sauce has reached the desired consistency and flavor. Depending on your preferred consistency, tomatoes can be peeled and de-seeded before cooking, or if you prefer a more rustic sauce, chop and them throw them in the pot seeds and all, or blend partially with an immersion blender. Heirlooms and cherry tomatoes will impart a notable sweetness to sauce, but will also require more cooking as they have a higher water concentration than sauce tomatoes.
For more detailed instructions, and some good ideas for variations on tomato sauces, check out this Smitten Kitchen post on Fresh Tomato Sauce.
WATERMELON GRANITA
This granita recipe makes for an easy, and delightfully fancy-feeling dessert. It’s perfect for using up any odd watermelon leftovers that you might find languishing in your fridge, and the addition of lime and a bit of sugar really make the flavor shine. If you haven’t had granita before, it’s a bit like handmade shaved ice. The delicate ice crystals feel like they’re sparkling as they melt on your tongue.
Recipe by Mark Bittman
Total Time: 2 hr 30 min | Servings: 6 to 8 servings
INGREDIENTS
1 pound watermelon
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
DIRECTIONS
Cut about 1 pound watermelon into small chunks (discarding the rind), and freeze them. When they’re frozen, put them in a blender with 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons lemon juice, and blend until the mixture liquefies. Pour the mixture into a shallow glass or ceramic pan, and freeze for about 2 hours, breaking up the ice crystals with a fork every 30 minutes or so. It should be slushy and crunchy.
FIELD NOTES COFFEE
We’re lucky and excited to welcome CSA member George Kuhn’s Field Notes Coffee to the pick-up barn. George will be tabling and offering samples of his delicious beans for a while. Field Notes Coffee, George says, “Sources the top 4-8% of coffee in the world through trusted, local, importers who share our spirit of adventure. Guided by a farm-to-cup philosophy, we roast our specialty-grade coffee to order, locking in freshness to celebrate each bean’s journey from remote origins to the hands of true coffee adventurers like you. We'll sell by the ounce so you have enough for a week or two. We encourage you to bring your favorite container for the beans to reduce waste, however, if you don't have one, we can provide packaging.”
BAKERY POP-UP THIS FRIDAY!
We’re delighted to be welcoming Monty’s Sweetheart Bakery to the Friday CSA pickup this week: Friday, September 4th.
Here’s a note from them: “Hi, I’m Montana! The proud owner and baker behind Montys Sweetheart Bakery, as well as a wife and mama to two adorable little taste-testers who inspire so much of what I create! I started my sourdough business that doesn’t just make loaves but everything from savory to sweet treats! I love getting creative and making things that my littles get excited about—and I think you will too! I’m so excited to bring Monty’s Sweetheart Bakery to this lovely farm and share some fun, delicious sourdough creations with you. Come try something new, and see what sweet (or savory!) surprise I’ve baked up!”
FARMER’S LOG
Farewell, Wendell
This week we mourn the loss of Wendell Berry — American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic and Kentucky based grass farmer — a guiding light of the modern agrarian movement. His essays started Kayta, myself, and countless farmer friends and peers on the agrarian path.
His influence on my life is hard to overstate.
I first read his words in a cabin on a small farm in Patagonia, Argentina in 2011 and was shook. I followed that thread to Caretaker Farm in Massachusetts, partly because they had a picture of him visiting the farm on their website. There I met Kayta. West County Community Farm is essentially our answer to his vision and his call: that farms and soil are a proving ground for our relationship to creation and our neighbors, human an non-human.
He was also hilarious. Kayta and I saw him speak with Gary Snyder at the SRJC in 2014 and he had the crowded hall in stitches. Here is a recording of an interview from that tour.
We’d like to honor Wendell on this warm, misty, September night by just leaving you with some of his words, because, as Barbara Kingsolver said of his passing, “All I can do with my grief tonight is go to my shelves and put my hands on his books. Our world will go on needing him, and the words will be here, even as his soul rests with the day blind stars.”
1985, VII.
The sky bright after summer-ending rain,
I sat against an oak half up the climb.
The sun was low; the woods was hushed in shadow;
Now the long shimmer of the crickets' song
Had stopped. I looked up to the westward ridge
And saw the ripe October light again,
Shining through leaves still green yet turning gold.
Those glowing leaves made of the light a place
That time and leaf would leave. The wind came cool,
And then I knew that I was present in
The long age of the passing world, in which
I once was not, now am, and will not be,
And in that time, beneath the changing tree,
I rested in a keeping not my own.
From A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997.
* * * * *
Enriching the Earth
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die; I have plowed the seeds
of winter grains and various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. Against the shadow
of veiled possibility my workdays stand
in a most asking light. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things.
And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
From Farming: A Hand Book (1970)
* * * * *
A Meeting
In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."
From A Part (1980)
* * * * *
”The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
From, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (1977)
* * * * *
See you in the fields, Wendell
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.
