POTATO HARVEST PARTY!
SATURDAY, SePTEMBER 26th, 9:00 am - 11:30 am
Join us for our 9th annual potato harvest party! There’s nothing like watching potatoes shower up out of the ground in the wake of the tractor and then bagging them, fresh from the soil, with friends. It’s an unforgettable experience and a blast for kids. All ages and abilities welcome. Come prepared to get dirty!
THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Mustard Mix, Pink Volcana Little Gem Lettuce, Assorted Head Lettuce, Rainbow Chard, Bunched Chioggia Beets, Assorted Zucchini & Summer Squash, Carrots, Fresh Yellow Onions, Huckleberry Gold Potatoes, Sweet Peppers, Poblano Peppers, Bulk Tomatoes, Farao Cabbage
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
Albion Strawberries: ✨2 pints per share✨
Cherry Tomatoes: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
Dragon Tongue Beans: Gleanings | Gleanings are available when the plants’ main production is done, but there’s still a bit to be had if you’re willing to search (especially at the back)!
Frying Peppers:
Padrons: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
Shishitos: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
Hot Peppers:
Jalapeños: No limit — take what you’ll eat!
Thai Chilis: 10 peppers per share
Habaneros: 3 peppers per share | Look for the orange peppers hiding low down under the plant. Habaneros make an incredible fresh salsa chopped with lime and salt!
Ot Hiem: 10 peppers per share | Ot Hiem are Vietnamese peppers whose name means Danger Chili. We got our seeds from True Love Seeds, and they’re ripening to both red and yellow. Brightly fragrant and spicy, they’re delicious in chili pastes, jams, or eaten fresh chopped into citrusy fish sauce!
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!
Lost in the marigolds.
HARVEST NOTES
Bunched Chioggia Beets: Also known as Candystripe Beets, these gorgeous pink beets have a bullseye inside and can be eaten raw to highlight their beauty and mild flavor. When cooked, the colors meld and soften into a delicate pink that is enlivened by the presence of acid like vinegar or lemon juice. While often overlooked, beet greens are delicious too — just like Swiss chard but with a thinner stem.
Huckleberry Gold Potatoes: These beauties are purple on the outside and gold on the inside, with a creamy, buttery texture. A Harvest Moon replacement for the potato aficionados.
SHAKSHUKA
Recipe adapted from The Mediterranean Dish
In this staple North African and Middle Eastern dish, eggs are poached in a richly spiced tomato and pepper sauce. Eaten with pita or crusty bread, it makes a hearty breakfast or satisfying dinner. Thanks to Matt for reminding us of this perfect dish for the current abundance of peppers and tomatoes!
INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large yellow onion chopped
3 sweet peppers chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
pinch red pepper flakes optional
kosher salt
black pepper
6 medium tomatoes (about 6 cups chopped tomatoes)
1/2 cup tomato sauce (or blended tomatoes)
6 large eggs
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
DIRECTIONS
Sauté the aromatics. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Once the oil begins to shimmer, add the onions, peppers, garlic, spices, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables have softened, about 5 minutes.
Finish the sauce. Add the tomatoes and tomato sauce. Cover and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Uncover and cook a bit longer to allow the mixture to reduce and thicken. Taste and adjust the seasoning to your liking.
Add the eggs. Using a wooden spoon, make 6 indentations, or "wells," in the tomato mixture. Make sure the indentations are spaced out. Gently crack an egg into each indentation.
Finish the eggs. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover the skillet, and cook on low until the egg whites are set.
Garnish and serve. Uncover and add the fresh parsley and mint. You can add more black pepper or crushed red pepper flakes, if you like. Serve with warm pita, challah, or crusty bread of your choice. Also delicious with feta!
WHERE DOES THE EXTRA FOOD GO?
Our members sometimes wonder, where does extra produce from WCCF go?
For produce that’s still yummy but not reserved for a CSA pick-up, we’re so lucky to have a long-standing relationship with Food for Thought Food Bank. Since 1988, Food for Thought has provided life-sustaining groceries, meals, and loving support for people living with serious medical conditions in Sonoma County — all free of charge. A volunteer from Food for Thought pulls up to the back of our cooler every Thursday and takes any food that we harvested and wasn’t taken, for this worthy cause. Thank you Food for Thought!
FARMER’S LOG
Equinox Musings
An oldie-but-goodie Farmer’s Log that sums up what this time of year feels like to us farmers…
This coming Tuesday, at 5:05 PM PDT, the Earth will wobble its midline straight in line with our sun — the Autumnal Equinox. At that moment, if you listen closely, you might hear a big “yipeee!” from thousands of Northern hemisphere farmers.
It’s not that we begrudge the summer. We just love the changes.
It struck me today how the tasks of a growing season harmonize — with each other and with the seasons themselves — so that somehow there's always just enough time to do what needs doing, by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins.
The Byrds were right: To everything, there is a season.
In the spring, we aren’t harvesting yet, so we have all the lengthening-day to prep the canvas; to tune-up the equipment, build irrigation systems; to seed 200 trays a week in the greenhouse; to pot up, stake, and trellis tomatoes; to mow cover crop, turn soil, and plant, plant, plant!
Then harvest seasons comes and two, three, then four days a week are consumed by harvest. We put down the shovel and the hammer and take up the harvest knife. Projects cease. Planting and harvest become our lives (and maybe some weeding if we’re lucky). The days are at their longest. If there is ever a time to harvest hundreds of pounds of cucumbers, tomatoes and squash in the morning and then seed a mile of carrots in the afternoon, it’s summer.
Before we know it, it’s late-summer. The tomatoes start exploding, the cucumbers already are, we’re still planting like crazy and then the melons come in — and just when we think we’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the long hot days, we scroll through our crop plan and see that the plantings are nearly done. No more bed shaping. Greenhouse seedings slow down. We plant the last Fall brassicas and the tractor sits quiet for a minute and we can spend all day amongst the vines and in the cooler playing Tetris with boxes of summer fruit.
Then comes the Autumn Equinox.
A happy Garter snake one foot up in the peppers this morning
The tomatoes are still pumping and the onions and potatoes are calling to be harvested; the winter squash and corn are crisping up. Fall harvests are here. Space needs to be cleared, fields mowed and turned into cover crop, new strawberry beds prepped and planted — and just when we think we’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the shortening days, the heat starts to ebb and the tomatoes show signs of slowing down. Soon, a light frost will roll through the farm and nip the summer fruits. Smiling friends will come to help with the potato harvest. The chill morning air goes down like a draught of ambrosia. We plant the last lettuce bed of the season and have a moment to sit and seed cover crop.
All this is why you’ll rarely hear a farmer say, “Shucks! Summer is over.”
We are greedy for the turnings.
We love nothing more than a first harvest. But the glory of the first tomato fades under the weight of hundreds of tomato crates and then we crave cold hands and cozy coats and the crisp stem snap of winter radicchio.
Change is our tonic — and one of the great sustaining elixirs of farm life.
Soon, winter will arrive. The rains will come and we will turn in — to rest, rejuvenation, and internality. We’ll clean up the farm, look back on the year, plan, sit, think, fix things, and sleep.
But ample sleep turns into insomnia; too much internality into angst. Our harvest muscles will atrophy and we will get pudgy. We will forget why we are out puttering in the wet and the cold.
And just when we think we’ll break, that there is too much open-endedness in the too-short days, the sun will start creeping back and we will hear the Red-winged Blackbirds calling us out to the fields, beckoning us, “Build it up again! Plant again! Turn! Turn! Turn!”
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.
