THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Arugula, Assorted Little Gem Lettuces, Red Butter Lettuce, Sugarloaf Chicories, Bel Fiore Radicchio, Mei Qing Choi Bok Choi, Farao Cabbage, Fennel, Celery, Carrots, Pickling Cucumbers, Persian & Lemon Cucumbers, Costata Romanesco & Patty Pan Squash, Fresh Softneck Garlic
U-PICK
Albion Strawberries | 3 pints per share: ATTENTION! The areas near the entrances are pretty picked on, don’t forget to branch out to the back areas to find the jack-pots!
(Green) Sugar Snap Peas | Gleanings: When a crop is done with the bulk of its production, we open it up for gleanings, i.e. those who are interested can forage for the small amount that’s left.
🌟 Purple Sugar Snap Peas | 2 pints per share
🌟 Padrón Peppers | 1 pint per share
🌟 Shishito Peppers | 1 pint per share
🌟 Cherry Tomatoes | 1/2 pint per share
Herbs: Italian, Purple and Thai Basil, Dill, Tulsi, Chamomile, Parsley, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Culinary Sage, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso (Perilla), Catnip, Pineapple, Sorrel, Assorted Mints
Flowers!
Top row, left to right: Padrón Frying Peppers, Purple Sugar Snap Peas, and Shishito Frying Peppers.
This year’s cherry tomatoes, left to right: Purple Bumblebee, Sungold, Indigo Cherry Drop, and Pink Princess. Not pictured: Supersweet 100, which ripen to red.
HARVEST NOTES
Pickling Cucumbers: We are so enamored with the fresh-eating quality of this year’s pickling cucumbers that we’re continuing to offer them in the barn this week as a pre-harvested item, but there will also be the opportunity for some members to take home their 2 gallon season limit this week for those ready to pickle! Season limits are how much a share can take home over the course of the season. If you are alternating weeks, please coordinate with your share partners about how much each group is taking.
Shishito Frying Peppers: These Japanese frying peppers are long and wrinkled with delicate, thin walls. Best picked between 3-4” long, they are almost never spicy. They are incredibly delicious fried in hot olive oil until browned, sometimes with a dash of lemon or smoked paprika, and always with a liberal sprinkle of salt. A plate of just-off-the-stove frying peppers is an irresistible appetizer or snack. Shishitos also make incredible tempura.
Padrón Frying Peppers: The famous Spanish heirloom, named after their town of origin. Padróns are served sautéed in olive oil with a little sea salt, and eaten as tapas in Spain. Harvested between 1” and 1 1/2" long, about 1 out of 10 fruits will be hot, but as the peppers’ size increase, so do their spiciness. While Padróns and Shishitos are both excellent prepared in the same way — fried in a hot pan — we recommend cooking them separately to achieve the perfect level of caramelization on each type.
Cherry Tomatoes: We’re growing five delicious varieties this year. Check out the photo above to see how each of them looks when ripe, and the chalkboard map in the field for where to find each one. The earliest cherry tomatoes ripen at the very bottom of the plant (on what were its first branches). Look down low this week to find the ripe ones!
Celery: While it may look a lot like supermarket celery, we find the flavor of farm-fresh celery astonishing. It’s even converted many former celery-haters among us. To highlight its freshness and flavor, check out this Alison Roman recipe from a past newsletter for Celery and Fennel with Walnuts and Blue Cheese.
Flower Power HAPPY Hour!
Are you a new member looking for some tips and inspiration on flower picking and arranging?
Are you a seasoned flower-nerd and feel like sipping bubblies and arranging flowers with like-minded friends.
Join us in the garden this Tuesday, July 16th, for our 2nd annual Flower Power Happy Hour!
A detail from one of Cassidy’s recent arrangements from the garden, featuring Forget-Me-Nots, Amaranth, Shiso, Fennel seed heads and Queen Lime Zinnias.
Bring your clippers, your fave vase or flower vessel, a cup to drink bubblies out of, and let’s arrange flowers together. Non-alcoholic beverages and music by will be provided
July, 16th, 2024
5:30 - Garden tour with farmer Kayta for all the horticulture backstories
5:45 - Pro-tips on picking and arranging arranging flower with Cassidy Blackwell
6:00 - Inspirational prompts & arranging!
FLOWER HARVESTING BASICS
Here are some basic tips and tricks to help you make the most of this height-of-the-season abundance in the flower garden.
Pick when it’s cool. Picking in the cool morning or evening hours will keep your flowers from wilting right away. If you do pick during a hot moment, dunking your flower stems in boiling water when you get home can help revive them.
Strip the stems. Taking off any leaves that will fall below the surface of the water will keep it and the blooms fresh longer.
Clean your vase and refresh the water. Your flowers will appreciate being in as clean an environment as you can provide for them. This means keeping your vase scrubbed, and replacing (or at least topping off) the water as often as possible. You can also give the stems a fresh cut every few days to ensure they’re able to keep drinking.
Pick at the right stage: The vase-life of flowers is affected in part by how far along they are in the process of blooming. While we love the exuberance and ephemerality of a flower in full-blown glory, you’ll usually get a longer vase-life from one that’s just starting to open. For short-lived flowers like Cosmos, picking stems that include unopened buds will extend the life of your bouquet, as you watch them come into bloom in your vase, changing before your eyes.
VOLUNTEER WEDNESDAYS
Have a hankering to ground down, get some dirt on your hands and work with us farmers on a nice cool morning? Join us for the following volunteer days in July. Kids welcome!
July 24th, 7:00 am - 10:00 am
FARMER’S LOG
THE WORK Pt. 1
This is the time of year of tuckered out plant-farmers in the Northern hemisphere. We’ve been planting, battling weeds, and charging since the early spring, and winter rest is far off. In the hero’s journey of the farmer year, July - late August might feel like “the Abyss” before the climactic victory of Fall harvest season.
Aye, if you talk to a vegetable farmer this week you’re likely to find some soul searching happening in that tan cranium — soul searching about the work that they find themselves shoulder deep in.
In a more practical mode, they might list for you the systems and equipment that they’ll improve to take the edge off the work next August. If it’s been super hot and they’re loopy, they might wax poetically about the nature of the farm work itself as a discipline — its qualities, it’s quirks, it’s graces.
* * * * *
It’s interesting how we use the word “discipline” to describe certain lifelong pursuits and trades. Mastering a musical instrument is a discipline. Mastering a martial art is a discipline. We use that word colloquially for some things more than others, but walking the long path of any vocation — teaching, carpentry, law, farming— I think is a “discipline”.
Disciplines are called disciplines because they require us to consistently, persistently, show up to do things we don’t want to do. Practicing scales is not why someone takes up the piano, but it is necessary for someone who wants to make the piano really sing. There is no way around it. Turning off irrigation at 8:00 pm during a heat wave isn’t why I fell in love with farming, but I love harvesting a field of happy onions so much that I’ll do it for many weeks on end if I need to. I want to make the fields sing.
Disciplines requires discipline, but more importantly, they require love. We must love a craft enough to let ourselves succumb it — to let it shape our lives and our bodies and our minds with whatever quirky rules and requirements that come with it. Of course there are myriad outside factors that determine what disciplines we can or can’t pursue in our lives — it is said that Marianne Mozart was at least as talented than her younger brother Wolfgang. But in the imaginary land of Platonic ideals, with all things being equal, it could be said that we must love a craft enough to accept the tremendous discipline it forces upon us in order to go far. We must love it enough to let it change us.
In the Vedic traditions of yoga there is the concept of tapas, the purifying fire of work and discipline that burns away delusion and the kinks of self and ego. Gurdjieff called it the “Work”, capital “W”. True tapas, by definition, makes the student uncomfortable, but it is a purifying fire and on the other side is truth — even liberation.
Most of us, in our work, or in practicing some discipline, know this feeling regularly, I think, of pushing through pain, overcoming discomfort, entering “the zone” or “flow” and the calm and clarity afterwards. After last year’s epic multi-day potato harvest I remember coming home and sitting on the couch and feeling straightened out, clear, distilled.
* * * * *
One interesting thing about disciplines, tapas, or capital “W” Work, is that while the goal might be the same (flow, truth, clarity, self-knowledge) the paths there are infinite: At the piano, in an office, in the ashram, in the potato field. And every path is quirky. Each with its own flavor.
In many a heat wave-induced revery this week (can you tell?), I’ve had fun thinking, “What are the unique qualities of farming as a discipline? What are its quirks and its graces?”
Kayta and I have been kicking around some themes (it is elemental; it has a non-negotiable relationship with time; it is brutally honest — for example) which will get into the weeds on in a future The Work Pt. 2 newsletter!
If the summer keeps being this hot, you can bet it will be headier than this one!
See you in the fields,
David
CSA BASICS
Still need an orientation? Please contact us by email with a few days notice to set up a time for an orientation tour. We are available for tours during Tuesday CSA pickups from 1-6 pm and Saturday CSA pickups from 9 am - 2 pm.
No dogs: Unfortunately, dogs are not allowed on the farm.
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
Oriented members can come to the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to u-pick and enjoy the farm.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
Where is the food? The produce pick-up barn is just to the right of the solar panels and above our big greenhouse. You can’t miss it!
2024 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 15th through Tuesday, December 10th this year.
