THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Eggplant, Poblano Peppers, Tomatoes, Carrots, Assorted Zucchini, Patty Pan & Crookneck Squash, Assorted Cucumbers, Piel de Sapo Melons, Assorted Mini Cabbage, Fresh Red Onions, Celery, Red Russian Kale, Kolibri Little Gem Lettuce, Red Butter Lettuce, Assorted Radicchio, Pink Ladyslipper Radishes, Mustard Mix
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
Dragon Tongue Green Beans | No Limit - Take what you’ll eat or preserve this week!
Albion Strawberries | 2 pints per share
Cherry Tomatoes | No Limit - Take what you’ll eat or preserve this week!
Frying Peppers:
Shishitos | No Limit - Take what you’ll eat or preserve this week!
Padróns | No Limit - Take what you’ll eat or preserve this week! There are lots of red Padróns on the plants right now, which would make a delicious and spicy hot sauce in combination with red Shishitos and Jalapeños!
Jalapeños | 10 peppers per share
Herbs & Edible Flowers: Husk Cherries, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Lemon Basil, Purple Basil, Dill, Tulsi, Parsley, Cilantro, Chamomile, Calendula, Borage, Nasturtium, Pansies/Viola, Stridolo, Lemon Bergamot Bee Balm, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Culinary Sage, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, Pineapple Sage, Sorrel, Assorted Mints
Flowers! Too many to list! Feel free to pick the sunflowers along the edge of the parking area in addition to everything in the garden.
Arabella and Eric harvesting Pink Ladyslipper Radishes this morning.
HARVEST NOTES
Piel de Sapo Melons: This beloved Spanish melon is named “toad skin” for its charming green and yellow mottling. We trialed it last year and fell in love with it’s sweet, aromatic white flesh. Depending on the level of ripeness, they can vary in texture from delightfully crisp to meltingly soft and smooth. We like them both ways! For a softer, sweeter melon look for a yellower skin and no stem; a greener melon with a tiny bit of the stem remaining will be crunchier and keep longer before it needs to be eaten.
A note on Sweet Peppers: The sweet peppers are still ripening up slowly at the moment, so we are taking a break from distributing them this week. We hope to have them back next week and for production to build from there!
PICKLE SCHOOL!
This Tuesday, September 9th, 3:30pm - 6 pm
Drop in anytime—making pickles will only take about 30 minutes.
$10 includes jars, brine, recipe card & aromatics.
Join Charlotte, from Charlotte's Web Farm to learn about and make the famous Zuni Cafe Pickles.
This tasty recipe is made with an apple cider vinegar and raw sugar brine along with aromatics of your choosing: mustard seeds, fresh turmeric, allspice, hot chiles and more.
Charlotte will bring the brine ready to go. You will choose the vegetables you want to include along with traditional cucumber chips, learn how to cut them in fun shapes for the jar, add your aromatics and top with brine. Just refrigerate for a day or two to enhance flavor and enjoy. Keep the brine and continue adding veg for more pickles!
Each participant will get a pint jar, recipe card, and hands-on instruction from Charlotte—a self proclaimed food preservation obsessive. (She's also Arabella's Mom!)
thai roast chicken thighs with coconut rice
By Diana Yen
Arabella told us about this recipe a month ago, and since then, it, and the Vietnamese cabbage salad (from Week 4’s newsletter), have been on constant rotation among the crew. This is a dish that feels fancy but is easy to make, and makes the most of both our mini cabbages and the abundance of herbs in the garden right now.
Chicken thighs marinated in coconut milk, lime juice, and fish sauce give this one-skillet meal plenty of umami. Lining the skillet with cabbage wedges allows them to catch every drop of the rich juices as they become melt-in-your-mouth tender. While the chicken roasts, there is plenty of time to make fragrant rice with the leftover coconut milk and slices of ginger."
Ingredients
Zest and juice of 1 lime
1 1" piece ginger, peeled, finely grated, plus 3 peeled slices
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
⅓ cup coconut palm sugar or (packed) light brown sugar
¼ cup fish sauce
1 13.5-oz. can unsweetened coconut milk, divided
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, plus more
2 lb. skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (4–6)
½ medium head of green cabbage, stem trimmed, sliced into 1"-thick wedges
½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or ¼ tsp. Morton kosher salt, plus more
1 cup white jasmine rice, rinsed until water runs clear
Cilantro leaves with tender stems and lime wedges (for serving)
directions
Whisk lime zest and juice, grated ginger, garlic, coconut palm sugar, fish sauce, ½ cup coconut milk, 2 Tbsp. oil, 2 tsp. pepper in a large bowl to combine. Set ¼ cup marinade aside for serving. Place chicken in remaining marinade and toss to coat. Cover and chill at least 1 hour and up to 12 hours.
Preheat oven to 400°. Generously brush cabbage wedges on both sides with oil; season with salt and pepper. Arrange, a cut side down, in a medium cast-iron skillet. Remove chicken from marinade and set, skin side up, on top of cabbage; season with salt and pepper. Roast 35 minutes. Increase oven temperature to 450° and continue to roast, rotating pan halfway through, until chicken thighs are browned and crispy, 5–7 minutes more.
Meanwhile, bring rice, ginger slices, remaining 1 cup coconut milk, remaining ½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or ¼ tsp. Morton kosher salt, and 1 cup water to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until liquid is absorbed, 15–20 minutes. Remove pan from heat. Fish out and discard ginger slices. Re-cover pan and let rice sit until ready to serve.
Arrange chicken on a platter; drizzle with reserved marinade and top with cilantro leaves. Serve with coconut rice and lime wedges for squeezing over.
FARMER’S LOG
ALWAYS LEARNING
This week on the farm saw a couple of significant horticultural events: We cut off water to our big storage onion crop — some of which you’ll be eating fresh this week.
Cutting off water is the final horticultural decision we make in the growing year before the onions cure in the ground for a couple weeks and then come into the greenhouse to fully cure.
Our farmer hearts were proud this morning pulling up big, bulbous, fresh Monastrell Red Onions for you.
The pride is because growing big, bulbous, grocery-store-sized onions was a long journey for us at West County Community Farm.
In the very beginning of our growing careers at Green Valley we grew onions using drip tape irrigation. Those harvests were so-so. Small potatoes, small onions. I blamed it on the drip tape not soaking enough of the soil profile in Green Valley’s greedy clayey soils.
Onions are thirstier than this 12 foot tall Hopi blue corn.
So I switched to overhead (sprinkler) style irrigation and harvests improved. Sections of big beautiful onions, but also lots of small, piddly onions.
Last year, 2024, I threw caution to the wind and, acting on the feedback I was getting from our 8 years of harvests (but still not consulting the internet), I watered the onions super heavily all year long.
Success! The onions were uniformly big, even giant, throughout varieties and throughout the beds. Grocery store style. I thought I had cracked the code and it was the overhead (sprinkler) irrigation. But overhead has it’s drawbacks for onions. It can cause more disease by wetting the leaves, and it is less efficient with water and grows more weeds in the pathways.
Driving through the Central Valley this spring I saw fields upon fields of grocery store style onions grown with drip-tape. How!?
Finally, I deep dived into the literature — like a stubborn driver finally asking for directions. My other excuse, which we’ve written before, is that we are generalists — growing so many things makes it easy to skip some chapters.
It turns out, onions are (technically) the thirstiest crop on the farm. They just love water and we had been under watering all those years.
It’s not intuitive. The foliage of a mature onion plant is minuscule compared to pretty much everything else we grow. Tiny compared to the towering corn plants, the exploding cherry tomatoes, an ocean of potato greenery.
But there it was on the page. Onions, standing at maybe two feet tall, in certain soils and certain climates, want around 3 inches of water a week at peak bulb growing time. That’s insane. For reference our 14 foot tall corn plants want about about 2.5 inches.
So this year we followed the manual. We scheduled it out on a spreadsheet and did it by the books. We did the calculations and let the drip tape run long. The soil profile stayed super wet and charged with water. (Luckily we are blessed with abundant water here on the Laguna.)
And lo-and-behold those swamp plants loved it.
We have giant onions, folks.
Sometimes it’s good to read the manual.
See you in the fields,
David
CSA BASICS
Slow on Cooper Road! Out of respect for our neighbors and the many kids and animals that live on Cooper Rd., please drive slow (20 mph)!
What time is harvest pick-up?:
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.
2025 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 14th through Tuesday, December 9th this year.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
