7/13/17 - Week 5 - Blackberry Picking

THIS WEEK'S HARVEST: Mixed Summer Squash (Italian Zucchini, Crookneck and Patty Pan) Chioggia/Red Ace/and Golden Beets, Omero Purple Cabbage, Lemon Cucumbers, Heirloom and New Girl Tomatoes, Hakurei Turnips, Hearts-Aglow Lettuce Salad Mix, Spinach, Mustard Salad Greens Mix, Rainbow Chard, Olympic Red Kale, Dino Kale, Broccoli, Baby Bok Choi, Fresh Cabernet Red Onions, Romance/Purple Haze/Yellow Star Carrots

U-PICK in the GARDEN: Basil, Cilantro, Savory, Onion Chives, Parsley, Sage, Oregano, Dill, Thymes, Mints, Sorrel, Chamomile, Lemon Verbena, Lemon Balm, Anise Hyssop assorted cut flowers (Cosmos, Nasturtium, Bachelor's Buttons, Zinnias, Calendula, Snapdragons, Red Spike Amaranth, Sunflowers, Love-in-a-Mist)
U-PICK on the FARM: Cherry tomatoes:  Sungolds, Black Cherry, and Super Sweet 100's. Three Rows marked with the blue flags.

2017 CHERRY TOMATO PRIMER: We planted three varieties of cherry tomatoes this year. Delicious, but maybe a little confusing for u-pickers. We wanted to orient you to the patch so you make the most of it. Sungolds, a crowd pleaser and probably the sweetest, are ripe when deep orange. Super Sweet 100's look more like your classic cherry tomato, they are ripe when scarlet red. Black Cherries, just coming in, are larger, and are ripe when slightly soft to the touch. They are burnt red on the bottom with green blushed tops.

FARMERS LOG:

The briars here are loaded. Mostly geen one, some red, and few black ones. Looks like there will be some goooooood blackberry picking this year after those rains. 

The Himalayan Blackberry, you know if you live any semi rural patch of California, is a perennial "frienemy". Most of the time a formidable enemy. It tries to make up for the scratches, back aches, and lost territory in July and August. Thick pointy thorns, olympic level runners, mature canes as thick as a broom handle. Invasive. But oh-man the berries. Legend has it that have the mad-scientist-plant-breeder Luther Burbank to thank. To wet your appetite for some summer blackberry picking here on the farm or on the side of the road here's Seamus Heaney:

Blackberry Picking

For Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

-Seamus Heaney, 1966, The Death of a Naturalist

See you in the fields, 

D&K

7/6/17 - Week 4 - Equipment Purchase

THIS WEEK'S HARVEST: Mixed Summer Squash (Italian Zucchini, Crookneck and Patty Pan) Chioggia/Red Ace/and Golden Beets, Tendersweet Cabbage, Head Lettuces (Romaine, Green and Red Little Gems), Striped Armenian Cucumbers, Fennel, Kohlrabi, Heirloom and New Girl Tomatoes, Cipollini Onions, Hakurei Turnips, Spinach, Mustard Salad Greens, Olympic Red Kale, Dino Kale

U-PICK in the GARDEN: Sugar Snap Peas (still going!), Basil, Cilantro, Savory, Chives, Parsley, Sage, Oregano, Dill, Thymes, Mints, Sorrel, Chamomile, assorted cut flowers (Cosmos, Nasturtium, Bachelor's Buttons, Zinnias, Calendula, Snapdragons, Red Spike Amaranth, Sunflowers, Love-in-a-Mist)

U-PICK from the FARM: Cherry tomatoes (Sungolds on the right when approaching the rows are ripe when deep gold, SuperSweet 100's on the left are ripe when scarlet red)

FARMER’S LOG:
Of all the strokes of luck your farmers were graced with in the start-up phase of this farm, one firmly in the top five was a large equipment purchase that allowed Kayta and I to get ahold of most of the farm equipment we needed very affordably and in one-fell-swoop. 

A pair of local farmers, early torchbearers of the small farm and local food movement in Sonoma County, had decided to move on to different careers. Through the grapevine, we heard of their equipment sale: Three tractors, wash station equipment, horticultural equipment, hand tools, a farmer's market stand, hoes, seeding trays... their list read like our wish list.  

Furthermore, the farming methods of this duo and their scale were close to what we envisioned experimenting with here, so the tractors and implements in the lot included a key set of relatively rare small farm tools that, when used thoughtfully, can make for a potent soil stewardship and soil building situation. A flail mower... for pulverizing cover crops (aka green manures) into small pieces more readily digested by soil microbial life, feeding soil life and storing carbon in the form organic matter grown on site. Also included was a spader: An Italian tillage implement that digs and then "fluffs" soil rather than inverting it or pulverizing the little aggregations of minerals and organic matter in a clump of soil that are the homes and pathways for soil life. The lot even included an old broad fork, essential in the "bio-intensive" aka "no-till" style we practice in the garden.

Finally, the lot included a converted Allis Chalmers G cultivation (weeding) tractor -- converted from diesel to run electrically off of 4 deep cycle batteries. This tractor will help keep fields clean and free of weeds and weed seeds, you can hear the birds chirping while you're on it, it is light, and, considering how much of our power comes from Sonoma Clean Power (and hopefully someday on site solar) is a pretty cool piece of appropriate technology.

Your farmers are just beginning the process of learning the soils here, the literal lay of the land, how water flows and settles in the winter, and how equipment (or lack thereof) fits in to all of this. But because of that stroke of luck, experiments could begin in earnest starting Season 1. 

Thank you for supporting the journey and we'll see you in the fields,

David

6/28/17 - Week 3 - Wild Farm

THIS WEEK'S HARVEST: Fennel, Heirloom and New Girl Tomatoes, Cipollini Onions, Rover Red Radishes, Hakurei Turnips, Arugula, Mustard Salad Greens, Bok Choi, Spinach, Olympic Red Kale, Dino Kale, Mixed Summer Squash (Italian Zucchini, Crookneck and Patty Pan) Chioggia/Red Ace/and Golden Beets, Cabbage, Farao Cabbage

U-PICK in the GARDEN: Sugar Snap Peas (might be the last week), Basil, Cilantro, Savory, Chives, Parsley, Sage, Oregano, Thyme, Mints, Sorrel, Chamomile, and assorted flowers (Cosmos, Nasturtium, Bachelor's Buttons, Zinnias, Calendula and Snapdragons, Red Spike Amaranth, Sunflowers)

U-PICK from the FARM: Cherry tomatoes (Sungolds on the right facing east are ripe when deep gold, SuperSweet 100's on the left are ripe when scarlet red)

FARMER’S LOG:

One of the most special things about living and farming at Green Valley is that it still a very wild place. It is home to so many creatures.

It's no wonder: If you zoom out on a satellite map of the address here (13024 Green Valley Rd.), you'll see that this little valley is nestled at the base of forest that extends Northward, essentially unbroken, up through Alaska.

We come in contact with this wildness everyday on the farm. And it is perhaps most noticeable in the bird and mammal kingdoms at this time of year, during the spring / early summer surge of activity, new growth, courtship, competition, homemaking and baby-raising that corresponds with the return of the sun and the surge of plant life. At this time of year especially, our furred and feathered neighbors weave themselves into our lives, greeting us in the morning, and keeping us company throughout the day and on our ways home at night as they go about building their lives next to ours. And it is striking how similar theirs are to ours...

The bird world is especially rich out right now. Kayta's parents, avid birders, spotted 34 species during their two week visit from Missouri at the beginning of June. (And that's just the tip of the iceberg.) All the feathered ones seem to be making a go of it while the gettins good and doing all the things that go with that: Courting (those Turkey gobbles of April and May, echoing down the valley) and singing (wow, hear that Swainson's thrush), fighting (the "bird wars" begin in late May as the sky fills with inner/interspecies arial battles and battle cries as they all squat, steal and harass each others nests and territories), eating (where did all our lettuce seeds go?), building homes (check out the Violet-Green Swallow mud nest above our wash-station) and starting families...

In the owl box perched along the 13024 driveway, a barn owl family has taken up residence. Who knows when mom and dad moved in but about a month and a half ago tiny little raspy screeches could be heard coming from the box. Now, our way home at twilight every evening, we watch four barn owl teenagers exercise their flying permits. Compared to their silent, sleek, be-masked parents they are awkward flying monkeys. At first they would just pop their fuzzy heads out of the house, then pop back in. Lately, they have been taking flight, with a tellingly rapid RPM crash landing into the nearest tree, screeching at each other for awhile, and then flying back to the safety of the house. They screech all night.

Also like clockwork, at twilight, comes a Dark Sentinel. Our main fields are on her route. She has three spots -- that we know of: On a fence post overlooking the center meadow, on a large tree overlooking the main fields, and on the tall power pole overlooking the entire vineyard and farm. A shadow. The Great Horned Owl. Like the Lady of the Forest, she gives us shivers, reminding us of our mortality. But she reminds gophers of their mortality too, which is very necessary around here.

Yes, twilight is a special time. Quivers of quail come out from their thicket homes, paranoid and domestic, to forage. Mama and baby skunk visit the compost pile to see what's been left, and a gophers flit through the grass. 

The gopher (at its population low near the end of winter, being food for so many predators during that time) explodes in population at this time of year. Their subterranean networks of paths seem to multiply underfoot, their little portal holes pock the ground, and their boldness grows. One crashed against my leg as I was harvesting mustard mix on Tuesday. They may not visit the barn, but you can be sure that the gophers have been picking up their shares.

And then there is Mama Deer. You may have noticed the fortress of junk in between our greenhouses and the hog panels around Aubrie and Scott's garden. These are protection from Mama Deer. Mama Deer took up residence in a thicket near the greenhouses about a month ago and, pregnant and now presumably nursing, uses a genius and boldness I have never seen in a deer to infiltrate our fortresses and feast on the fare. Who can blame her, she's making a go of it just like the rest of us.

This list could go on: The juvenile Salmonids and the baby turtle in the culvert, Aubrie and Scott's carefully timed new calves, the broccoli-obsessed ninja Hare or the demon Racoon that visits our neighbors... no matter how much they demand from us or pillage our provisions, we can only but be grateful for their antics, their lessons, their company, and that they are here. This place is alive and wild. Let's make sure to keep it that way.

See you in the fields,
David