7/20/17 - Week 6 - What is CSA?

THIS WEEK'S HARVEST: Rosaine Red & Green Little Gem Lettuces, Arugula, Mustard Salad Greens Mix, Rainbow Chard, Olympic Red Kale, Dino Kale, Mixed Summer Squash (Italian Zucchini, Crookneck and Patty Pan), Striped Armenian Cucumbers, Chioggia/Red Ace/and Golden Beets, Heirloom and New Girl Tomatoes, Hakurei Turnips, Cauliflower, Murdoch Cabbage, Bok Choi, Scallions, Romance/Purple Haze/Yellow Star Carrots, Nadia Italian Eggplant

U-PICK in the GARDEN: Herbs: Basil, Cilantro, Savory, Onion Chives, Parsley, Sage, Oregano, Dill, Thymes, Mints, Sorrel, Chamomile, Lemon Verbena, Lemon Balm, Lemon Gras, Anise Hyssop Cut flowers: *Dahlias, Celosia, Craspedia, Cosmos, Nasturtium, Bachelor's Buttons, Zinnias, Calendula, Snapdragons, Red Spike Amaranth, Sunflowers, Love-in-a-Mist Frying peppers: Shishitos, Black Hungarian, Padrones, Jalapeños

PRESERVES: Pickling Cucumbers

Husk Cherries aka Ground Cherries aka Cape Gooseberries: These are a delightful sweet little nightshade berries wrapped inside a cool little "wrapper". Kids love them. Just peel the papery wrapper off and eat! Husk Cherries are ripe when the wrapper is golden. (Green = unripe). Look low down under the canopy of leaves for the ripe ones.

U-PICK on the FARM: 

Cherry tomatoes:  Sungolds, Black Cherry, and Super Sweet 100's in three Rows marked with the blue flags in the main fields.

Wild Blackberries: We can't take any credit for growing them but they sure make a delicious u-pick delight. There are some pretty epic wild blackberry patches on the farm this year. Two being along the fence on the far side of our main fields. They will be marked with pink flags. If you need help locating them, or other patches, just ask. Cobblers await.

FARMERS LOG:

What the heck is this Community Supported Agriculture anyway? Where did it come from? I have a lot of time to think in the fields. This week got me thinking about the history and origins of the CSA model, and I wanted to relay some of that history to you, as I understand it, in the hopes that it gives you a little context for the special errand you're making next time you're traveling down Green Valley Rd.

After World War II, agriculture in Japan, Europe and the U.S. began to change drastically. The mechanization and industrialization of the war effort turned inward into industry and food production. Farms got bigger and more mechanized, family farms got swallowed up, importing exporting and shipping expanded, supermarkets were spawned, even rural communities began to lose the neighborly connection to their food and food producing lands.

As a reaction to this, people in Japan and Europe formed groups that rallied around a single farm or producer in order to sidestep the conventional market. (Legend has it that one of the first formal such arrangements was a group of Japanese women organizing with a local dairy farmer to get fresh milk... hey, Bramble Tail!). 

In Europe, these arrangements interwove with and were influenced by the work of Rudolph Steiner (Austrian philosopher who also inspired Waldorf Education and Biodynamic Agriculture). Steiner posited that maybe... just maybe... how we grow our food and tend the earth is such an important undertaking that we should not subject farms and their produce to the cut-throat transactional market but rather care for them and tend to them as communities so that they sustain us. Lots of people agreed.

Biodynamic CSA's thrived in Europe and jumped the Atlantic in the 1980's. Some of the earliest CSA communities followed Steiner's economic prescriptions and left the farmers to farm while other members took care of the bookkeeping, did outreach, helped with strategic planning, etc. I worked on such a farm in Patagonia, Argentina and remember tending a meeting of all the members led by the farmer. He asked for a slight raise in his salary the following season so that he could visit his new niece in Oregon the following winter. They agreed.

CSA's practicing this Old School type of arrangement are rare, for better or worse, and most CSA's nowadays are owned and operated exclusively by the farmers. But the CSA DNA remains,

To bring it home: Your share payments helped pay for the seeds you are eating the fruits and roots of now. They also helped pay for Kayta's and my rent, our lights, the computer I'm typing this on. Your hands harvested a good bit of the food in your body and may plant the garlic you eat next season. Your feedback will help determine what plants go in the ground next year.

There is something magical about food and land and people coming together around one place. It. Just. Makes. Sense.

Thanks for being an integral part of this budding farm community. We're happy we're a part of it.

See you in the fields.

David

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