11/13/2020 - Week 23 - Frost & Rain

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Braising/Salad Mix (with Radicchio, and Mustard Greens), Little Gem Lettuces, Daikon Radishes, Murdoch & Farao Green Cabbage, Celery Root, Green Magic Broccoli, Baby Fennel, Brussels Sprouts, Harvest Moon Potatoes, Carrots, Cured Cabernet Onions, Marina di Chioggia Winter Squash, Jester Acorn Squash

Rain and Brussels sprouts: It was a good harvest!

U-PICK

With the killing frosts this week, our u-pick season is mostly at an end aside from the hardier herbs and flowers still left in the garden and an occasional strawberry or two, spared from the cold and wet. We will slowly be transitioning the garden and u-pick areas into their winter resting phase.

• Herbs: Italian Parsley, Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, French Sorrel, Lemon Balm

HARVEST NOTES

• Celery Root: Aka celeriac, aka turnip celery, is a variety of celery cultivated for its starchy bulbous stem. It is like a turnip that tastes like celery. Try adding it to a hardy winter stew. We’ve also heard legend that celery root fries (i.e. deep fried celery root sticks) are the best thing ever. Also try shaving or micro-planing raw onto a salad.

• Brussels Sprouts: We’ll be offering you these Fall treats as fresh as can be, still on the stalk!

• Marina di Chioggia Winter Squash: Marina di Chioggia (aka Sea Pumpkin or Suca Braca, "warty pumpkin") is an Italian heirloom from the seaside town of Chioggia and is the staple squash of Venice. This is a versatile pumpkin that can be utilized in any recipe where a traditional pumpkin is called for. It is an excellent desert pumpkin for pies, muffins and quick bread, makes an ideal filling for pasta such as ravioli and tortellini, and can also be used to make gnocchi. The pumpkin itself will keep for up to six months when stored in a cool, dry, and dark place. We love the diverse bounty that can be made from this pumpkin! When we have the time we love to make a big batch of gnocchi (check out this recipe ) for the freezer so that we have many incredibly fast and delicious meals to look forward to.

Harvesting this week’s “Sea Pumpkins” back in mid-September

LOCALLY GROWN FLOUR SHARES AVAILABLE!

Finally! Sonoma-grown and milled flour! And you can tell the difference.

Our friend Farmer Mai is offering a Grain Share and the Green Valley Marketplace is excited to be a pick-up site. Kayta and I have so enjoyed baking with Mai’s flour — it’s incredibly delicious. You can learn more about Mai, their wheat, and farming here. Mai’s wheats were selected from over a decade of trials for what thrives right here in our special coastal climate and they were grown using ecological practices. They’re then stone milled into a distinctive, flavorful flour incomparable to anything you’ve ever eaten.

Introducing the Grain Share

You’re invited to experience these unique flours through the inaugural Farmer Mai Grain Share. There are 20 spots available. Each share price is $150 and will take place December 2020 through May 2021 wherein members can:

• Receive 5 lbs of a single variety of freshly milled whole wheat flour once a month 

  • 5 lbs = 4 loaves of bread and a lot of pancakes, or a small mountain of cookies

  • Varieties may include: Chiddam Blanc de Mars, Wit Wolkoring, Sonora, Akmolinka

• Pick-up on the second Thursday of every month at

  • Right here at The Green Valley Marketplace… OR…

  • The Bagel Mill in downtown Petaluma

Sign-up by November 20

Please complete this registration form by Friday, Nov 20 at 8 PM. Shares will be filled in order of registration date. You will receive a confirmation email that will request payment by PayPal or Venmo. If payment ($150) is not received by Monday, November 23 at 8 PM your spot will be offered to a waitlisted applicant. Only one share per person/family.

CLAY FOLK POTTERY STUDIO MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE!

Our friends and CSA members Cory Brown and Kaelyn Ramsden have been hard at work these past couple years opening a pottery studio in downtown Occidental, Clay Folk Studio.

They have a few memberships available and classes coming soon. Check out their website to learn more about this special new community space!

LOGISTICS

• The last pick-up of our 2020 harvest season will be Tuesday, December, 8th.

  Saturday pick-up runs from 9:00am - 2:00pm

  Tuesday pick-up runs from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm

  The farm and u-picking are open 7-days a week, sunrise to sunset. Please close the farm gates behind you on off days.

FARMER’S LOG

Jack Frost & First Rain

Fall is finally here.

After a dusty, perpetually 90 degree October, we were visited this week, starting on Sunday, by Grandfather Frost. And now, as I write, the year’s 1st rain is coming down — 1.5 inches according to our porch gauge!

The wait is finally over.

The first hard frost and the first rain are the real markers of the winding down of our year on the farm. They bring with them multitudinous blessings and signals to the plants, the animals, and farmers.

The first hard frost decisively kills a number of our cold intolerant crops and flowers — like nightshades (bye bye shishito peppers), zinnias and dahlias, sunflowers, basils, etc. — this naturally clears any guilt we have surrounding removing things and putting the garden and u-pick zones to bed for the winter. Over the next few weeks expect to see these zones transition to sleep in mulch and cover crop.

Garlic Pop-A-Thon 2020!

The first rains bring with them countless blessings to the wild creatures and plants of our ecosystem and signal an awakening from dry-season’s dormancy. You could see the joy in the birds this morning, bathing in clean puddles, anticipating the re-greening of their meadows and understories. The bone dry soils surrounding our fields took a sigh of relief. For your farmers, the first big rain means our irrigation duties are now over for the year and that our cover cropping efforts, previously reliant on scant irrigation water, can shift into high gear. As in the wild pastures, so too will the spent summer zones of the farm, kissed by rain, begin to re-green.

On our non-harvest days this week, Kayta, Anna, Kate, and myself kept knocking off the Fall tasks: With the help of a sweet group of volunteers, we harvested and washed the last bed of Fall carrots. The kids got to see the Root Blaster 5000 in action! Then we transitioned to popping garlic cloves (i.e. separating out the nicest cloves of this year’s seed garlic bulbs for planting next week.)

Thursday marked the true beginning of next year’s harvest shares! We spent all day prepping next year’s garlic beds: amending, spading, mulching and wood chipping the pathways, which you can see at the top of field 5.

So it goes on the farm: The end of one cycle is the beginning of the next.

See you in the fields,
David for Kayta, Kate, & Anna

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11/6/2020 - Week 22 - Letters from Patagonia

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Spinach, Braising/Salad Mix (with Radicchio, and Mustard Greens), Assorted Head Lettuce, Collard Greens, Mixed Loose Beets, Watermelon Radishes, Purple Cabbage, Celery, Green Magic Broccoli, Leeks, Desiree Red Potatoes, Carrots, Cured Zoey Yellow Onions, Bonbon Buttercup and Delicata Winter Squash, Metechi Hardneck Garlic

The flower garden is winding down. Thank you for a magical year of flowers, Kayta!

U-PICK

• Albion Strawberries: Gleanings

• Herbs: Italian Parsley, Rosemary, Thyme, Tulsi Basil, Thai Basil, Oregano, Marjoram, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Lemon Balm

• Flowers Update: It is time for cover crop — and slowly but surely we will start taking out our beloved flowers and putting the garden to bed!

HARVEST NOTES

• Watermelon Radishes: This is a hardy, dense, and gorgeous winter radish with a vivid magenta inner core. We love it on top of a green salads, rice bowls or highlighted as a small salad of its own — try ginger, garlic and lime or lemon juice on julienned or sliced watermelon radishes as a bright side dish.

LOGISTICS

• The 2020 harvest season runs from Saturday, June 13th til Tuesday, December, 8th.

  Saturday pick-up runs from 9:00am - 2:00pm

  Tuesday pick-up runs from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm

  The farm and u-picking are open 7-days a week, sunrise to sunset. Please close the farm gates behind you on off days.

VOLUNTEERING

Thank you SO much, to everyone who came out to help harvest our Fall carrots. We simply could not have brought in that crop without your help. And it was a joy to spend time in the dirt with you all.

Join us for more fun in the dirt…

MORE CARROTS and GARLIC POPPING!
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11th: 9:00 am - 12:00 PM

CARROTS AND GARLIC PLANTING (PROBABLY!)
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18th: 9:00 am - 12:00 PM

FARMER’S LOG

LETTERS FROM PATAGONIA

The harvests keep on rolling! This week was all about carrots, carrots, carrots. With the help of a small classroom-sized flock of amazing kiddos, we harvested (and washed) all but one of our 6 beds of Bolero storage carrots — sweetened by frost and the loving hands of volunteers.

The Root Blaster 5000 was humming all Wednesday and Thursday morning washing them up, and now both of our coolers are stacked to the ceiling with ~4,000 lbs of orange crispness — we hope you like carrots! Fun fact: This carrot variety, Bolero, actually gets sweeter with frost and with storage.

We’ve got a lot going on this evening, so we’ll do a copy-and-paste of an old newsletter for your reading pleasure.

* * * * *

David here.

When I was 26, I took a trip to Patagonia, Argentina. Outwardly, I was traveling — backpacking in the Andes for the purposes of “adventure”. But inwardly I was searching for something I could not explain at the time: Rootedness. Meaningful work. Purpose.

I had never harvested a cabbage before in my life, but by luck I ended up on a tiny off-grid CSA farm on the Eastern slopes of the Andes and found what I was looking for. During that trip, I would write long, maté caffeinated letters to a friend from home. Down below is one from the end of my stay on the farm. It is angsty and verbose, but describes why and where I fell in love with harvesting cabbages.

* * * * *

June, 2011

“When the sun rises, I go to work.
When the sun goes down, I take my rest
I dig the well from which I drink,
I farm the soil that yields my food,
I share in creation. Kings can do no more.”
-Unknown Author, Ancient Chinese, 2,500 B.C.

Dear Theresa,

It is nearly winter here now. I can see my breath in the cabin. Things are quiet on the land. I am spending the days caring for the animals, trying to trap the wild hares eating our last crops, baking bread like an old Grandma, and doing other random projects to help Alex [the farmer] wrap up the season. A spokeswoman for the local Mapuche tribe just passed through and spent the night. A Gaucho folk guitarist the next. My friend Ponta, a Japanese orphan who has had the hardest life I have ever heard, just left for Peru. I will miss her. One of our dogs is very sick. Another is pregnant. The Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano is exploding 200 kilometers to the North. I can hear it in my cabin on still nights, like stampeding horses in the earth. Life and death are tangible forces out here.

It’s all quite primal and romantic, but I think it has done something deeper to me and made me realize some things. It might be hard to capture into words.

We have no electricity out here, no hot water, all the farming is done by hand. The only machines we have are a chainsaw, a weedwacker, and a dirt bike for town trips, “All you need!” says Alex. A sweet, spindly old horse named Petiso will pull a harrow for us in exchange for a bucket of oats and complete freedom to roam the valley with his feral friends the rest of the time. All the buildings and ovens here are cob and built by Alex and his brother. Three beloved dogs, Michay (wild like the native plant she is named after), her brother Pirata (a gentle pirate), and Tao (their mother), escort us everywhere. They sleep under my cabin at night and guard the garden from the feral horses. We harvest every Wednesday for the CSA members. Their children come and play with their food and chase the chickens. There is so much simplicity here; so much poetry..

You and I have always felt called by nature — to the tangy mountain air, to the oak meadows — these places have felt like home. But we inevitably find ourselves pulled back along auto-littered highways to the turmoil, cement, and grid of the city. There awaits the hidden pressure to specialize in one thing to pay for “necessities” that are piped to us. If we succeed, we make more and can spend more, so we travel back to visit the tangy mountain air, to run our eyes enviously over the ranging hills, only to come back. Did we share in creation?

On the road back to the farm. The Río Azul and the Andes in the background.

Working on this farm has put me in forceful contact with the sources of my life — death, water, soil, the plants, the animals — and a realization that these things are not commodities, they are not necessities. They are us. They are our brothers, our sisters, our teachers. Kin. To work with them is to work with creation.

The farmer, Alex, is a goofy guy but he very serious about one thing: The farm is an organism but he does not create it. He may have a vision for the farm, but after that he is a vessel, a butler, a steward: And this is how he should work the land, coaxing it, observing, responding, moving this there, maybe taking that away. And then, one day, as if by magic, the organism reveals itself to him as he sits back peeling an apple, watching in awe the creativity and richness of life weaving itself through the fields, writing it's stories in the rows, playing it's song in the seasons. The blossoms, bees, fruits, fungi, bacteria, the animals, the people, the stars, the moon and the movements and arcs of all their lives, and all their far flung interactions, alight the farm. This symphony is also a dissonant song of chaos, poop, death and decay. But Death, the richest of masses (Mozart's richest Mass is his Requiem Mass), is the bed upon which joy and new life burst forth again and again.

Working here I’ve realized some things about culture, and art. Agriculture, or tending the wild, or however a group of people survive in their land is the root of that people — it is their original art. Take the Mongols: The art they developed for surviving that steppe is inextricably woven into the fabric of their lives. It is their houses (the collapsable yurt), it is the fiber of their walls and the clothes they wear; the tools they handle everyday. It is the animals they interact with and talk to, what they talk about with each other, what they dream about. It is the substrate of their myths, their legends, their stories and their songs and it is the material that makes up their instruments. Our art of survival is the stage and the prop and script of our lives. Although it may seem to be the case, we are no different today. We have not emancipated ourselves from the land under our feet and how we choose to cultivate it. It makes up the fabric of our lives too.

Before coming here, the word "farm" sent a chill down my spine. Why? To me, it meant mono crops; acres upon acres of almond trees. Endless fields of corn. Temp wage labor. Agribusiness. It was artless, fragmented, socially and environmentally exploitative. What it took from from the soil it did not give back. Anonymous desire.

This agricultural system is in the fabric of our culture. And it is global. Many people don't know their place, or where they come from, or their place and what they do is unknown to them. As American and Chinese agribusiness have slowly begun mono-cropping swaths of Argentina and Chile, so has American culture taken root in many South American cities. I don't think it's a coincidence that people started wearing the same clothes in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Santiago, and started building similar houses, and started dreaming similar dreams, around same time that those countries adopted, or were forced to adopt, Western agribusiness, its methods, and its seeds. In a certain reverse way, the art of how a culture sustains itself is a mirror on that culture... I'm not saying the reflection I'm seeing is all bad, but is this how we want to live?

The raised bed garden of La Granja Valle Pintado. We had a dinosaur problem.

What I've seen here in the Painted Valley is beautiful art. It sustains many, and is sustained by the beings it sustains. The human culture around the farm hums with life. The farm has an identity, it is a home to so many. People seek refuge here almost daily. Economically and socially the farm works through mutualism. The association of families who support the farm are most concerned with the long term health of the farmland and the farmer — as they should be, it is their sustenance. And so the farm’s produce, its vegetables, are priced with that in mind. In this sense, they are priceless. The farm itself is an ecosystem. Nothing is wasted, waste becomes new life. The air and leaf litter and creatures of the surrounding wild permeate the farm — which is like a slightly more organized emanation of it.

One evening after work, I was putting away some tools, and Alex walked over, pumping his arms in the air and yelling, "I love life in the campo [field]! I love life in the campo!”

"Me too!" I laughed.

Alex got serious all of a sudden and stared inwardly out at the small winter field of rye spreading before us. He was silent for awhile. Finally, he said quietly to me, but also to himself, “It is the art of life and death, you know. Nothing more and nothing less."

* * * * *

See you in the campo,
David & Kayta

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10/30/20 - Week 21 - The Season of Death

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Mustard Greens, Fall Braising Mix (with Radicchio, Frisee, Arugula, Ethiopian Kale, Red Russian Kale, Shungiku, and Baby Chard), Red Butter and assorted Head Lettuces, Indigo Radicchio, Dandelion Greens, Dazzling Blue Dino Kale, Daikon Radish, Cabbage, Fennel, Cauliflower & Romanesco, Green Magic Broccoli, Shallots, Red Thumb Fingerling Potatoes, Rainbow Carrots, Cured Cabernet Onions, Sunshine Kabocha Winter Squash

U-PICK

• Albion Strawberries: Gleanings

• Cherry Tomatoes: Final gleanings | See below…

• Frying Peppers: Final gleanings | See below…

• Jalapeños: Final gleanings | See below…

• Yellow & Red Thai Hot Peppers: Final gleanings

• Herbs: Italian Parsley, Rosemary, Thyme, Tulsi Basil, Thai Basil, Oregano, Marjoram, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Lemon Balm

Some beautiful Green Magic Broccoli coming atchya Week 21!

HARVEST NOTES

• Sunshine Kabocha Winter Squash: Sunshine Kabocha is our farm crew’s unanimous all-time favorite squash. Excellent for eating straight roasted. Also excellent in pies, curries, etc. Super sweet, velvety smooth texture.

• Dandelion Greens: A bitter green, in the chicory family (radicchio, escarole, etc.), try chopping these up in a nice rich omelet with Moonfruit Mushrooms and the last frying peppers. Also delicious lightly sautéed with garlic, bacon and red wine vinegar. Deeply nutritious and cleansing.

• Shallots: We tried growing shallots for the first time this year, inspired by Anna’s Dad’s deep love of this delicacy allium. We’re not at quite the right latitude for this seed — but we did get a nice little fresh crop for you this week. To highlight them, try making a risotto, or slicing them thin, frying them, and then using as a topping for a rice bowl.

FINAL TOMATO AND PEPPER GLEANINGS

We’d like to invite any and all who wish to perform final gleanings on our Cherry Tomatoes, Shishito and Padrón frying peppers, Jalapeños and Thai Hot Peppers, as well as our main crop field tomatoes. Time permitting, we will begin ripping all of these plants out as soon as this coming Wednesday to make way for cover crop.

Our main crop tomatoes (of which there are still some yummy ones to be found) are the big patch of trellised tomatoes you having been passing, to your right, on your way to the cherry tomatoes. Ask one of us in the barn for directions if needed.

LOGISTICS

• The 2020 harvest season runs from Saturday, June 13th til Tuesday, December, 8th.

  Saturday pick-up runs from 9:00am - 2:00pm

  Tuesday pick-up runs from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm

  The farm and u-picking are open 7-days a week, sunrise to sunset. Please close the farm gates behind you on off days.

FALL CARROT HARVEST this WEDNESDAY | 9:00 am

Joins is this Wednesday morning to our great Fall carrot harvest! Wherein we kneel on the soft dirt and top carrots into bags for washing. There are a ton of them (literally). We can use all the help we can get!

These Bolero Carrots, sweetened by light frost, will get sweeter and sweeter in storage and nourish us all through the Fall and winter. Join us for this fun, kid friendly harvest!

FARMER’S LOG

THE SEASON OF DEATH

Rise and fall. Light and shadow. Summer and Winter. Life and death.

Halloween is an important time of year on the farm. It is the season of Death.

The Gaelic Samhain festival — the root of our Halloween — marked the end of the harvest season, "summer’s end”, the transition to the darkest half of the year, and the transhumance time when shepherds brought their livestock, fattened in the summer mountain pastures, down for the winter for shelter or for slaughter. There were feasts. People opened their burial mounds, portals to the Underworld, and lit cleansing bonfires. The borders between the worlds were thought to thin around the Samhain and supernatural spirits and the spirits of the dead walked amongst us. Spirits and fairies were to be appeased to survive the winter. Tables were set for deceased relatives at the Samhain dinner. People wore costumes to disguise themselves from evils spirits and carved turnips and placed candles in them (in lieu of pumpkins) to ward them off.

You can feel the Samhain in every nook and cranny on the farm these days. How different it looks from Spring’s jubilant green promise, from Summer’s colorful cacophony. The life cycles of the plants that showered us with riches all Summer are now at an end. Their bodies hang drawn, gaunt and ghostly on their trellises, or they lay shriveled, mildewed, and desiccated in the rows, awaiting the final stab of a killing frost or the furious whir of the flail mower.

The portal is open. Anna broadcasting cover crop in 2020’s potato field.

This week, with our major harvests nearly complete, we started the liminal work of the Samhain. On Wednesday, we mowed and spaded under large sections of fields 1 and 2, transitioning our potatoes, squash, and Spring vegetables into the Underworld, where they are now being devoured by worms and bugs. On Wednesday night, there lay a bleak, deep brown maw of bare soil.

A great, pregnant silence. An open portal.

The next morning at sun rise, the four of us broadcast the first cover crop seed of the year, walking back and forth over the field, processionally, rhythmically tossing bell beans, peas, vetch, and grass seed — little prayers — into the black veil.

The rising sun was welcomely warm and good earth smells lofted up from the ground as it warmed. Later that afternoon we harrowed the seeds under, our little old tiller we use to “kiss” the seed into the ground whirring like a little demon.

One can only marvel at the wisdom of ancient agrarian festivals, born from bone deep relationship to the cycles of nature: How directly Death was confronted and dealt with.

Those people knew.

They knew that from death comes life. They knew that death and life were only thinly separated. They knew that the rotting, decaying, destructive forces were the building blocks and the gateways from which life would spring forth anew in the Spring and that the portals, the transitions, needed to be tended to, cleansed, and faced.

This Halloween, while you’re out there gleaning the last summer fruits, we invite you to cherish the ghoulish site of the dying cherry tomatoes, sagging limply, skeletal, and vacant; and the blocks of bare ground — portals, now pregnant with cover crop seed.

This death is the doorway. And on the other side are verdant Spring meadows, flower scented breezes, plump sugar snap peas, and bouquet after bouquet of Spring flowers.

See you in the fields,
David for Kayta, Anna, and Kate

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