Potato Harvest: Saturday, October 12th: 9:30am - 12:00pm
The corn harvests were so much fun! Next up potatoes! We hope you can make it to lend a hand or just take in the scene and hang out. It’s a big, unforgettable experience, especially for kids, pulling a ton of potatoes out of the earth together. All abilities and interest (and snacks!) welcome. We recommend light gloves and a sunhat.
THIS WEEK'S HARVEST
Desiree Red Potatoes, Green Tomatoes, Cauliflower, Broccoli Spigariello, Cabbage, Sweet Peppers, Mixed Loose Beets, Rainbow Chard, Cucumbers (likely the last), Watermelon Radishes, Summer Squash and Zucchini, Rainbow Carrots, Bel Fiore Radicchio, Cherokee Summercrisp Head Lettuce, Italian Softneck Garlic, Cured Cabernet Onions
U-PICK
Classic Green Beans: NO LIMIT
Cherry Tomatoes
Herbs: Italian Basil, Tulsi Basil, Thai Basil, Purple Basil, Italian Parsley, Rosemary, Lemon balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Cilantro, French Sorrel, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Oregano, Thyme, Chamomile, Mints, Anise Hyssop, Culinary Lavender, Lemongrass
Flowers! There some really nice new Zinnia and Cosmo beds to the left of the cherry tomatoes
Frying Peppers: Just gleanings.
Jalapeños: Just gleanings. Winding down. Located below the frying peppers
Strawberries
HARVEST NOTES
Bel Fiore Radicchio: This beautiful chicory is delicious eaten both raw and cooked. For a raw salad think pears and pecans with a honey-lemon dressing, or, for a more savory twist, a mustardy dressing topped with this week’s watermelon radishes and shaved parmesan. Alternately, try quartering the radicchio, tossing it with oil and garlic and braising or broiling until slightly crisped and melting.
Broccoli Spigariello: A broccoli grown for its leaves rather than its flower. Can be used like a delicate Dino kale. Popular in southern Italy.
PRESERVING THE HARVEST
Bulk Pink Lady Slipper Radishes: We’ll have loads of these perfect beauties on the back table for all your pickling dreams. Their radiant pink color will make a gorgeous pickle to enjoy throughout the year. Try this elegant pickling recipe from Bon Appetite. It’s particularly good at showcasing the variety of vibrant colors coming out of the farm right now (think a rainbow of beets, carrots, turnips and radishes).
Bulk White Satin Carrots: Don’t underestimate the White Satin Carrot. We feel it is consistently our best tasting, sweetest carrot. It also happens to be extraordinarily vigorous. We’ll be putting out bulk White Satins on the back table for pickling, juicing, etc. Out of bag. Don’t be shy, take 10 pounds! Check out this wonderful recipe for pickling carrots… or any vegetable!
Pickled Green Beans: This might be the last week good no limit green bean picking before the green beans say sayonara until next year! Check out this great dilly bean recipe.
CORN MAGIC!
A huge thank you to everyone who came out to harvest corn with us Tuesday and Wednesday! Your many hands made such light work and cherished memories! Now, the corn will cure in our greenhouse for a few weeks before finding its way into your harvest tote and your Saturday morning pancakes! Or tortillas…
The Magic of Corn in the Kitchen and Garden
Saturday, November 2nd: 10am - 12pm
Want to make tortillas and tamales from Green Valley corn? Learn to work with the magic of corn. CSA member, ecological educator, and deep student of corn, Lindsay Dailey will demonstrate how to grind corn for flour, discuss recipes, and explore the alchemy of nixtamalization which makes corn sticky in order to make masa for tortillas and tamales. While we work, Lindsay and the farmers will talk about the natural history and mythology of corn and discuss planting, growing, and saving seed from this amazing plant in the home garden! And then we'll eat some fresh made tortillas! Yum!
VOLUNTEER WEDNESDAYS, 8:00-10:00 AM
Interested in some farm therapy? Come out on Wednesday mornings to help us tend the garden and farm together. Come find us in the garden or out in the main fields on Wednesdays from 8:00am 'til 10:00 am. All abilities welcome, we’ll find something comfortable for you to do!
FARMER’S LOG
Turn! Turn! Turn!
The Byrds were right: To everything, there is a season.
It struck me today how the tasks of pulling off the farm year harmonize with the seasons in such a way that it always seems like there is just enough time to accomplish what needs to be accomplished by the skin on our chinny-chin-chins.
In the Spring, you aren’t harvesting yet so you have all the time in all the medium-length days to build up and plant out the farm; to build gnome homes and irrigation systems; to fix gates; to seed 40 trays a week in the greenhouse; to pot up tomatoes, to stake tomatoes, to trellis tomatoes; to mow cover crop and turn soil and shape beds and plant! plant! plant!
Then the harvest seasons starts and two, then three, then then four days of the week are consumed with reaping the fruit of Spring’s labor. You put down your hammer and take up your harvest knife and planting trowel. All other projects cease. Planting and harvesting are your life — and some weeding if you’re lucky. The days are at their longest — thankfully. If there is ever a time to be harvesting 1,000+ pounds of cucumbers, tomatoes and squash in the morning, prepping and planting out half mile in the afternoon, it is when there is 16 hours of daylight.
Before you know it, it’s late Summer. The tomatoes start peaking, the cucumbers already are, you’re still planting like crazy and then the melons come in — and just when you think you’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the day, you scroll down on your crop plan and you see that plantings are nearly done. No more compost spreading; no more bed shaping; greenhouse seedings shrink. And just as the summer crop avalanche really starts thundering you plant the last Fall brassicas in the field, the tractor sits quiet, and you can spend all day amongst the vines and in the cooler playing Tetris with boxes of Summer fruit.
Then comes the Autumnal Equinox.
The tomatoes are still pumping and the potatoes and squash start to die back; the corn fills out, crisps up, and starts to fall over. The big harvests are scheduled and space for storage cleared. Rain is coming you must establish garlic and strawberries for next year; mow and hold over spent beds; lime new fields; get ready for cover cropping — and just when you think you’ll break, that there isn’t enough time in the day, the days get shorter, and the heat ebbs, and the tomatoes slow down. A light frost rolls through the farm and the cucumbers leaves brown and curl. A hardworking mobs of smiling friends come to crush the corn harvests. You have a second to sit down and calculate your garlic seed and your cover crop. A breath of crisp autumn air goes down like a draught of ambrosia.
All this is why you won’t ever hear a farmer say, “Shucks! Summer is over.” We are greedy for the turnings. We love nothing more than a first harvest. But first tomato glory fades and our bodies tire under the weight of tomato crates and we crave cold hands and cozy coats — the crisp snap of the stem and the luminance of a plump radicchio glowing in morning sun. Lucky for us, when scolding kiddos for running through the corn becomes sad and hackneyed, Autumn comes, and we yell, “Come! Knock it down! Gather armfuls of grain!”
Change is a tonic — one of the great sustaining elixirs of farm life.
Soon, Winter will come. It’s so close now we can almost taste it. The rains will fall and we will turn in— to rest, healing, rejuvenation, and internality. We’ll clean up our accounting, do our taxes; we’ll look back on the year and create next year’s crop plan and next year’s budget. We’ll open CSA sign-ups. We’ll look at spreadsheets, sit, think, build and fix things, and sleep.
But ample sleep turns into insomnia; too much internality into angst. We will get pudgy, our harvest muscles will atrophy, and we will forget for what we are building a new cooler in the wet and the cold — and just when we think we’ll break, that there is too much time in the too short day, the sun will return and we will hear the Swainson’s Thrush calling us, beckoning us, “Come out! Build it up again! Plant again! Turn! Turn! Turn!”
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
