JOIN US FOR OUR 7th ANNUAL
POTATO HARVEST PARTY!
NEXT Saturday, October 14th, 8:30 am - 11:30 am
Join us for our 7th annual potato harvest party! There’s nothing like watching potatoes shower up out of the ground behind the wake of the tractor and then getting dirty and bagging them with friends. It’s an unforgettable experience, especially for the kiddos.
All abilities and interests welcome. Feel free to bring non-members. We recommend a sunhat, water bottle, and clothes you don’t mind getting dirty. Some people prefer using gloves. We’ll have some light refreshments, music from the boombox, and agrarianly awesome time. (For new folks: This potato harvest is not required in any way for members to enjoy potatoes, we will be distributing the tuberous bounty all year whether or not you come to harvest!)
THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
In a nutshell: Pumpkins! Need we say more?
Fancy Fall Braising/Salad Mix, Assorted Lettuce, Rainbow Chard, Sugarloaf Chicories, Hakurei Salad Turnips, Celery, Purple Daikon, Bishop Cauliflower, Sweet Peppers, Romance Carrots, Delicata Winter Squash, Summer Squash & Zucchini, Elsye Yellow Onions, Harvest Moon Potatoes, Heirloom & Red Slicing Tomatoes.
U-PICK
🌟 Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkins: Season limit 1 per person | See below for more details on the pumpkin patch!
Albion Strawberries: 2 pints per share
Cherry Tomatoes: 4 pint per share
Shishito & Padrón Frying Peppers: Gleanings — meaning the plants have mostly stopped producing but you’re welcome to forage for a few
Jalapeños: 5 peppers per share | If you like your jalapeños hot, look for peppers with checking (little cracks) on them
Buena Mulata Peppers: 1 peppers per share | Usable at any color, but with more fruity flavor when ripe red or orange
Habanero Peppers: 2 pepper per share | Ripe when orange
Aji Limo Peppers: 2 pepper per share | Ripe when yellow. This citrusy Peruvian pepper is traditionally used in ceviche. Sometimes called Lemon Drop in the US.
Goldilocks Beans: 4 pints per share
Herbs: Italian Basil, Thai Basil, Tulsi Basil, Dill, Chamomile, Parsley, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Oregano, Marjoram, Culinary Sage, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso (Perilla), Culinary Lavender, French Sorrel, Borage, Violas, Thyme and Mints.
Flowers!
Better get your pumpkins before Alice takes them all!
HARVEST NOTES
Delicata Winter Squash: Debuting as the first of 9 Winter Squash varieties we will enjoy this year, Delicata are a perennial favorite. Versatile, and sweet, they even have edible skins. For the easiest preparation, cut in half, scoop out the seeds and roast, face down, until soft enough that you can easily stick a fork in. They are also delicious cut into rings or half circles, tossed with an oil of your choice (coconut is particularly scrumptious) and then roasted until caramelized. Enjoy!
Harvest Moon Potatoes: Numerous crew and CSA members agree, Harvest Moons might be the best potato there is. The Burpee’s catalogue says it well: “Potatoes as objects of beauty? Let your eyes linger on ‘Harvest Moon’, with her velvety dark-purple skin and dense, sumptuous golden-yellow flesh. A seductively gorgeous purple potato princess, she’s as gorgeous to behold as she is tasty. Infused with creamy, nutty flavor, ‘Harvest Moon’ is a culinary triumph on her own, no butter or salt required.” Enjoy every which way: mashed, baked, boiled, fried—or adding color and flavor to a potato salad.
Canning Tomatoes: Our tomatoes are winding down — this is the last week that canning tomatoes will be available in limited quantities.
PUMPKIN PATCH!
Spooky season is here and so is our 7th annual WCCF pumpkin patch! The pumpkins did really well this year so there is a pumpkin out there for every kid and adult participating in the CSA. Even if you are alternating weeks with another share, you can all take a pumpkin!
To find the pumpkin patch, just look below the oak trees. You can’t miss it!
Season limit on Jack-O-Lanterns: 1 per person
FARMERS LOG
SPRING AND SUMMER IN REVIEW
While our harvest season is far from over, this time of year — the time of bulk harvests and the end of planting — is a great time of year to look back on the year. How did our crops do and how did we farmers do? What did the Farm Gods deal us and how did we play our hand? Who won and who lost in our fields this year?
A big question, yes — and an evolving question still — but let’s look back on the last three quarters of this football game.
Winter and Spring
The winter and spring were defined by one of the wettest rain years in recent history. The 2022 - 2023 rain year simultaneously blessed the land and the farmers of this drought-stricken state and caused untold farmer headaches, outright destruction, and crop loss.
We were spared the outright destruction.
As far as the blessings go, just ask the frogs. The population of frogs on the farm this year has been astounding. There seems to be a Western Tree Frog in every harvest bin, under every seed tray, and hiding in every Sugarloaf Chicory we cut. And they are not alone — every plant from the oak trees to the year’s voracious weeds seem to have drunk from a deep well. There are wild grasses along the creek taller that my head. It is beautiful.
The wet winter also caused perhaps the biggest crop loss in our farm’s history — the garlic. I remember planting our garlic during the year’s first Fall rain storm and it… did… not… stop. The ground was so saturated for so long into the Spring that our little garlic plants were never able to develop robust roots. While not a complete loss, I estimate we got about 1/6th of volume of garlic we usually do, the majority of which we need to save for seed for next year.
Finally, the wet winter-spring delayed our season by about 2 weeks as it was so wet we couldn’t get the tractors into the fields!
Fall veg is stacking up nicely out in Farfield.
Summer
Almost like a spiritual extension of the wet winter, this summer was unusually cool, which caused numerous more subtle winners and losers in the fields.
First and foremost, the strawberries loved it. There is a reason why 2 billion dollars worth of strawberries are grown in the foggy summers of Salinas and Watsonville. This summer here often resembled those foggy coastal towns and the strawberries felt right at home. It brought us immense joy to see all the strawberry-smeared toddler faces as the plants pumped out hundreds of pints a week.
Also in the winner camp were all our summer greens, brassicas, and onions. Things like lettuce and celery usually struggle a bit in August and September as the dial on the thermometer creeps up, but they were happy as a clam all summer long. Our onion crop also had their hot-girl-summer and we are rich in softball sized onions to carry us through the end of the year.
The cooler summer shortened our tomato and pepper season a bit — those nightshades need heat to ripen fruit, so the fruiting season was delayed into a slightly shorter, more condensed avalanche. Last week and the week before it was the tomatoes. This week it’s the sweet peppers that are all coming on at once.
On the other hand, the cooler days preserved what fruits did ripen on the vine for longer, and caused less sunburn and loss, and may have contributed to a better, bulkier tomato year overall. These are the things we farmer ponder.
Aye, watching plants respond — in sometimes unexpected ways — to what nature throws at them is one of the coolest things about farming.
Fall
Now we head out to the last quarter of this football game. What hand will be dealt? Will the rains come hard and early, or will it be a dry and hot fall? No one but the Farm Gods know.
But our fall field of greens and fresh vegetables looks stacked out there in Farfield; our potatoes are coming in round and sound; Kayta and I had the best Delicata of our lives last night; and this crew is top-notch.
So I’d wager we’ll have a victoriously tasty Autumn.
See you in the fields,
David
