THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
In a nutshell: Sweetened by frost and rain
Mustard Mix, Little Gem Lettuces, Giorgione Radicchio, Rainbow Chard, Green Magic Broccoli, Romanesco, Cauliflower, Purple Cabbage, Green Bok Choi, Hakurei Salad Turnips, Romance Carrots, Delicata Winter Squash, Elsye Onions, Desiree Potatoes
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Albion Strawberries: Gleanings
Herbs: Italian Parsley, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Oregano, Lemon Verbena, Thyme, French Sorrel.
A winter blanket of cover crop sprouts in Centerfield. Thanks to Tristan and our amazing team for hustling to get this cover crop in early!
HARVEST NOTES
Giorgione Radicchio: This Castelfranco-type chicory is new to us this year, and we are loving its fancy, frilled leaf-edges, delicate speckling and slightly frost-sweetened flavor. Delicious and beautiful added to a lettuce salad or on its own paired with a sharp, rich dressing.
Desiree Potatoes: The Desiree potato is a red skinned, yellow fleshed variety bred in the 1960’s in the Netherlands. It is versatile and great for roasting, mashing, and salads. Fun fact: Desiree potatoes grown in Bhutan are highly sought after and fetch a high price in India.
Integro Purple Cabbage: Deliciously crisp and intensely colored, we love Integro cabbage for the vibrancy it brings to the table. We usually find ourselves making simple cabbage salad (think lemon, garlic, carrots and toasted sunflower seeds), but it would be great for any of your favorite dishes, including as a Thanksgiving side.
Thanksgiving Preview
To help you plan for the big day, here is a snapshot of the share we are planning for Harvest Week 22, the week of Thanksgiving:
Leeks, Onions, Garlic, Celery Root, Yukon Gold Potatoes, Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin or Sunshine Kabocha, Dino Kale, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, Carrots, Assorted Lettuces, Radicchio, Watermelon Radish, Butternut Squash, and Broccoli.
Brussels Sprouts fattening up in Farfield for the big day.
WINTER SISTER FARM CSA SIGN-UPS NOW OPEN!
Winter Sister Farm’s 2024 Winter CSA program is now open for registration! Winter Sister Farm, right next door to us, was started by our dear friends Anna and Sarah Dozor. Their CSA has a late-start option for WCCF members, running from December 30 through May 15th. Their CSA is a 24 weeks of the highest quality specialty winter veggies, flowers, herbs, and more — all picked up free-choice market style, on their beautiful farm here on Cooper Rd! Sign-up today!
FARMER’S LOG
AN ODE TO THE STRAWBERRIES
Of all the crops that we grow here on the farm, perhaps no other brings as much joy as the the strawberries.
We sometimes wonder if they are also the most productive crop on the farm: From early May through at least October they shower us — sometimes deluge us — with a nearly constant supply of sweet gifts. They are everbearing joy-bringers, if you will.
This week, Kayta and I had strawberries on the brain as we made a plan to replace our two older strawberry patches — which farmer’s must do every 1 to 3 years to rotate away from fungal diseases — with a new even larger planting. You will see that process in progress over the next few weeks.
It will be very hard to say goodbye to those plants — they’ve been such amazing friends. And both strawberry patches have inspiring life stories. They each had a tough go of it early on, each in their own way, and rallied to become overachieving providers.
Our first strawberry patch was planted after the great storm of October 2021 when it rained 11 inches in two days and flooded the Laguna. The plants were planted into very soggy soil and shortly thereafter were beset by a huge natural population of “cutworms” — the larva of the large yellow underwing moth Noctua pronuba — who fed so voraciously on the vulnerable spring shoots of that we did not know if they would survive. Then came some phytopthora, a fungus whose name means “plant destroyer” in Greek, a nearly unavoidable strawberry foe. Then came some symphylans. And then came some hungry deer, which prompted us to begin fencing our strawbs! But whether undercut at the root, snipped at the stem, or chomped by browsing ungulates, that first strawberry patch just kept growing, flowering, and — thank the Farm Gods — fruiting. Typically, the 2nd year of an everbearing strawberry is an incredibly fruitful year and indeed, this year that patch was a marvel.
Unconfirmed, but Alice’s first bite of solid food may have been an Albion strawberry.
Our newer strawberry patch this year (the one near the peppers) had an even harder winter — being planted into one of the wettest rain years in recorded history. Their roots, along with the garlic, had to try to establish themselves in constantly saturated soil. We estimate about 40% of the plants in the new patch never reached their full potential, stunted by phytopthora which thrives in wet ground. Nevertheless, this patch combined with their all-star older sisters for a grand-slam strawberry year.
The sheer resiliency and vigor of our strawberry plants (and the amount of joy-berries they produce) is no accident. These are Albion strawberries and it is in their genes.
The Albion strawberry is, in this farmer’s opinion, one of the greatest plant breeding achievements in human history. Introduced in 2004, the Albion strawberry is the current crowning achievement UC Davis’s strawberry breeding program. In a state that produces 90% of the nation’s strawberries and 2 billion in annual strawberry revenue, the UC Davis strawberry breeding program has been around for 100 years and is serious business. The Albion strawberry is the result of a century of the careful crossing of various strawberry strains to produce a plant with a combination of vigor, disease resistance, productivity, and taste. They keep trying to out-do themselves and improve the Albion but they can’t.
And what all that seriousness has amounted to for us is, well… joy.
So as the days get colder and our strawberry season winds down and 1 pint goes to gleanings, take a moment to stand in one of the old strawberry patches with a crisp Fall berry in your mouth and to give thanks to the wondrous plants that have given us so much this year…
Thank the sun, thank the soil, thank the plants — and thank the UC horticulturalists!
See you in the strawberry fields,
David & Kayta
