6/21/19 - Week 1 - Welcome! Humility and Humus

How auspicious to be beginning our harvest season on the Summer Solstice! A little later than usual because of that mighty winter, wasn't it?

We hope you and your loved ones all stayed safe and relatively dry.

Your farmers had a wonderful winter resting, spending quality time with friends and family, and prepping and plotting this very harvest season.

Three big milestones occurred this winter 1.) Kayta transitioned out of her other full-time job and is now farming here full time! Huge is an understatement. 2.) Because of the amazing support from our community (you!) we're also able to run this year "full CSA", meaning we will not be going to farmers markets or selling wholesale. This was always our intent, we didn't think it would happen so fast. And last but not least... 3) Kayta and I got married in early March on the farm, surrounded by family and friends.

As for the farm and the land itself...

It had an eminently soggy winter. Much needed in the streams and lakes and aquifers and soils and life of this parched land... but also humbling for the farmers of Sonoma County. But that's one reason why we love what we do.

Here at Green Valley Community Farm the incessant saturation offered us a good learning experience in how the land, soil, and the plant communities here handle a dousing Sonoma County winter. There were those that loved the swimming pool! (Check out the Vietnamese coriander!) And there were those who toughed it out, like this year's garlic, who powered through what looked like a rice paddy much of the winter, to bulb up for what looks like a great crop. And there were those that succumbed: We lost a handful of the more dry land loving perennial herbs in the garden (thyme, tarragon, culinary sage) who are now re-established in wine barrels or moved to drier spots. After that cold storm in late May, we had to ditch our first plantings of broccoli and cabbage for lack of dry ground to plant them in, and watch as our first (of many) melon and cucumber crops and our single eggplant crop (almost) died in the field.

Humbling indeed.

For the harvest shares this summer, this will mean slightly later flowers and herbs, broccoli, cabbage, and cucumbers and a leaner eggplant year. Aye, it's the first time in our farm's young history (but surely not the last) that a weather event will leave a handprint on our harvest in the form of NOT having something.

But it is here that we think the true heart and power of this CSA model, for both farmer and member, is revealed.

The Gnome Home and Fairy Bower in the garden this evening. It's going to be a good garden year!

The word "humble" comes from the same root of the word "humus". To be humbled means to be close to the Earth. For most of us in Sonoma County, living in this time and this way, we rarely, if ever are humbled when it comes to food. The experience of being humbled by a storm is not available to us in the aisles of Whole Foods. But it is an essential human experience. It can teach us so many things. It can make us so grateful for what we have. And perhaps chief among these things: It can bring us together.

The CSA model allows a group of people to be humbled together. To be close to one piece of land, its moods, its storms... together. This also allows us to celebrate together, to celebrate the abundances as a community. While other Sonoma County farmers were toughing out a financially scary spring relatively alone, without the support of the people that eat their food because they had none to sell, we had your support. Your support to wait, to not push the soil, to build ghome homes in the garden, to hold on and wait out the rain.

Thank you for joining us for this harvest season! We're honored to be farming for you!

See you in the fields,

David and Kayta

12/1/18 - Week 26 - Farewell to the 2018 Harvest Season!

It was a bittersweet harvest morning for us today -- the last Friday morning harvest of our 2018 CSA season.

It has been such a wonderful year of growth, joy, and community... and the highlight for us has being getting to know each of you, your wonderful children, and seeing you interact with the farm each week. We cherished the presence you all brought to the farm this season and we will miss seeing you each week!

We encourage you all to visit the farm at least once this winter -- to say hi, to pick some herbs or late strawberries. And, if you have a moment, to stand still for a moment in the fields.

There, you will find silence... broken only by the screech of a hawk or the soft chattering of a quail. A coolness will emanate up from damp soil, chilling your knees. Before you will lay the farm, the soft curves of the fields and hills draped under a blanket of green, asleep. But tread softly and listen closely...

Within that slumber next season churns: The cover crop stretches its living roots deep into the soil below where subterranean creatures break down this year's crop residue, like so many memories, into the raw materials that will make up next year's bounty... next year's story. Listen closely and you can hear the land dreaming.

For now, it is time for your farmers to rest, to reflect, and to do a little dreaming ourselves. Thank you all so much for the memories this year, and here's to many more to come.

See you in the fields,

11/23/18 - Week 25 - Notes on the Year Past

This year, our second year farming this farm, brought with it new observations, new challenges, new joys, new ideas, and new wisdom about farming in this beautiful valley.

With the first hard frosts last week, the first good storms pattering on our rooftops now, and the bulk of the year's harvest safely stored away, we take a breath and reflect on this past season and look ahead to the future.

Week 24’s share

On horticulture:

One of the most unexpected pieces of advice we received before our first year, in the Winter of 2016-2017, was that horticulturally the first year would be the easiest. (An unintuitive idea, given the newness of everything in the first year.)

But it did turn out to be true. For us, it was true partly because of the simple ecological relationship between garden pests and food.

Last year we brought what few garden pests there were here a banquet. They feasted, made families, and to this year's banquet they brought their kids, their grandkids, their great-great-great grandkids, their nieces and nephews, their cousins, their second cousins, their third cousins once removed... You get the idea. We're thinking of renaming the farm to Slug City.

We experienced far more crop loss and disease to pest pressure this year than last year, which was hard on morale, but it will hone our discipline as farmers as we utilize diversity, rotation, diversity, and healthy ecology to check pest populations.

We've come away from this year with further refinement to our crop planning dates and quantities: How many bed feed of carrots should be plant? When should we plant leeks? The answers to these questions are becoming more and more honed having witnessed another season.

On systems and infrastructure:

This June we had the rude awakening to the fact that the system that supplies our storage tanks with water is not up to speed, so we'll remedy that this winter as well as experiment with planting more blocks of drip, as opposed to overhead, to keep weeds down.

We need to be better about weeds next year so we'll focus on staying disciplined on weeding, play more with stale bedding and tarping, and we'll finally get that electric cultivation tractor into the fields.

We're also planning on investing in a walk-in cooler over the winter to make harvest handling and storage easier on our bodies.

On people and community:

By far the heart of the farm for us is the social fabric surrounding it, and this year it grew and took on a life of its own. The farm's natural gifts as a place of meeting, grounding, and connecting were able to reach more people and more connections abounded.

We were thrilled to see members getting to know each other and children connecting on the farm. We were thrilled with the farm's growing collaboration the Weaving Earth Wild Tenders camp. More volunteers came out for harvests and Weeding Wednesday than we ever expected.

It was so inspiring to have other farmers (hey, Anna and Kate!) in the mix, leaving their indelible mark in the garden and fields and barn, and defining what is possible.

Small organic farming can be dubious enterprise, but the community growing around this farm is becoming a font of inspiration, potential, and hope for a very bright future. Thanks for being part of it!

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta