7/15/2022 - Week 6 - Spacewalks

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Purple Bok Choi, Dino Kale, Celery, Cabernet and Cipollini Spring Onions, Multicolored Beets, Purple Daikon, Romance Carrots, Kohlrabi, Olympian Cucumbers, Summer Squash and Zucchini, Arugula, Mustard Mix, Newham Little Gems, Muir Summercrisp Lettuce

U-PICK

Check the u-pick board for updated weekly limits before going out to pick

• 🌟Pickling Cucumbers (See below for instructions)

• 🌟English Shelling Peas (See Harvest Notes below)

• Albion Strawberries (The strawberries are taking a bit of a break as they put on vegetative growth and make more flowers for future berries)

• Frying Peppers (See Week 4’s Newsletter for harvest and cooking tips)

• Jalapeño Peppers

• Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Italian Parsley, Tarragon, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, Culinary Sage, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Cilantro, Tulsi, Various Mints, Catnip, Chamomile, Purple Basil, Genovese Basil, Thai Basil

• Flowers!

HARVEST NOTES

Shelling Peas: Fresh English Shelling Peas are not your grandma’s frozen peas — they are a fresh, summer, candy-sweet treat. To pick properly, only pick plump ones rather than thin ones — the thin ones are still filling out and will be ready next week. Eat them right out of the pod as a snack, or lightly cooked. Open them by snapping the little “hat” formerly connected to the vine and pulling down the spine of the pea, opening the pod like a zipper. Check out this amazing Springtime Spaghetti Carbonara recipe from the New York Times. We also recommend incorporating them into salads featuring the beautiful dill that we have in the garden at the moment!

Purple Daikon: Purple daikon are sweet and mild, with a touch of spicy mustard flavor. Try slicing them raw to dress up your salad or crudités platter, or adding them to kimchi. For extra magic, toss them with a little acidic salad dressing or lemon juice and watch their color change to hot pink.

PICKLING CUCUMBERS

Each year, we plant a large patch of pickling cucumbers so members can have the joyful experience of making fresh pickles at home! The season limit this year is 2 gallons per share. (A “season limit” means the total amount you are able to harvest over the course of the season in contrast to a “weekly limit”. You are responsible for keeping track of how much you’ve picked. You’re welcome to pick incrementally, or all at once.) The pickling cucumbers should be available from now until mid-August.

See below for instructions on how to pick them and a tried-and-true crunchy pickle recipe from CSA member Kate Seely.

HOW TO PICK PICKLING CUCUMBERS

• Bring a bucket or bag from home to take your cucumbers home in.

• When you get to the farm, check the u-pick board for the current season limit. Grab a five gallon bucket from under the u-pick board. We’ve marked the limit on the inside of the bucket with tape.

• Comb through the plants doing your best not to step on cucumber vines or the adjacent beds. The ideal sized pickling cucumber is around 4 inches long and 1 inch thick. Please don't pick too many that are smaller than this. If you see a monster cucumber (7 inches long and 3 inches wise) please pick it anyway and leave it in the pathway. This will help the plant produce many more nice small ones.

• Pick however many you want up to the Season Limit. Please note that this is a season limit rather than weekly limit.

• Transfer your cucumbers to your container and return the farm bucket to the barn for other members to use!

MAKING PICKLES

The following recipe is from CSA member Kate Seely. It is a tried and true pickling method that can be used not just on cucumbers. Pickled Daikon, anyone? Thanks, Kate, for sharing your wisdom!

Kate’s recipe includes instructions for water-bath canning to preserve the pickles for up to a year, but if you’re short on time or know that you’ll eat them sooner, you can always pop your pickles in the fridge rather than canning, where they’ll keep for a month or two.

******

For crunchy pickles, Kate has found that the trick is to pickle them as fresh as you can — i.e. as soon after picking as possible. (Some people swear by putting grape leaves or citric acid in with the pickles to make them crispy, but Kate hasn’t found that to work.) If you can’t get to pickling right away, try getting them into the ice water / salt bring as soon as possible. Another helpful trick for crunchier pickles is to pick your cucumbers in the morning rather than the heat of the day.

BRINE INGREDIENTS

• 1:1 ratio water : organic distilled white vinegar

• 1/3 cup pickling salt for every 8 cups liquid

• **If you like it a little less vinegary, go 2/3 water : 1/3 vinegar instead of 1:1. Also, you really can use this brine to vinegar pickle any vegetable.

PICKLE INGREDIENTS

• Fresh WCCFarm pickling cucumbers!

• WCCFarm Garlic!

• Fresh spicy peppers (a jalapeño works, or any spicy pepper) or red pepper chili flakes

• Yellow mustard seed

• Fresh dill (if you don't have fresh, dried is fine). Try using the dill flowers in the garden.

• Peppercorns

EQUIPMENT

• Canning Pot

• Pint Jars (or Quart if you want to go big!)

• New lids for sealing

• Tongs and/or can removers

STEP-BY-STEP

CAUTION: Canning can be dangerous. If it is is not done properly, bacteria that can make you very sick, or even kill you, can develop in the jars. If you have never canned before, make sure you do your homework and feel confident in your ability to can safely before starting.

Step 1 - Soak Cucumbers: Cut your cukes, removing ends and sizing the slices to the size of the jars you will use, and set in water, salt and ice. Use about three TBSP of salt for 5 pounds of cukes. Let sit anywhere between 4 and 24 hours.

Step 2 - Make Brine: Begin this step when you're ready to pickle. Put the brine measurements into a separate pot and bring to a boil. 1:1 water to white vinegar, and 1/3 cup salt for every 8 cups of liquid. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer.

Step 3 - Sterilize Jars: Fill canning pot with water, bring to a boil. To sterilize, wash jars with soap and water, then place in boiling water for 10 minutes. Remove and set aside. Be mindful not to touch the insides of the jars with your hands as that will de-sterilize them. Sterilize lids in a smaller pot as well.

Step 4 - Fill Jars: Drain the cucumbers you have soaking in the ice / salt mixture. Trim them to the length of the jar as needed.. Jars should have 1/4 inch of space between liquid and jar top. Pack cucumbers, dill (1-2 sprigs), and garlic (one clove for a pint jar). Really, PACK them in there.

Add spices: Pour 1 tsp yellow mustard seed, 3/4 tsp (or more or less depending on the spice you want, I like them spicy!), 6 peppercorns on top of cucumbers.

Step 5 - Pour Brine: Pour your brine over pickles, covering them, but leaving 1/4 inch until top of jar. Remove lid from small pot with tongs, being mindful not to touch lids. Screw on cap so that it is not tight, so that air can escape from jars as you water process them.

Step 6 - Sealing Jars: Place jars in canning pot and water process for 15 minutes. (If you do not have a canning pot with a metal insert to hold cans, make sure to put a buffer between your glass jars and the bottom of the metal pot, like an old dish towel. Your jars will break if they touch the hot metal. Heck, they might break anyways if you're reusing jars. That's just the way it goes.

Step 7 - Remove Jars: Remove jars and let cool. As they cool the lids should seal tightly. Once cooled and sealed, tighten the jar lids down. Any jars that did not seal properly should be kept in the fridge and eaten first. Store your sealed pickles in a cool dark place and enjoy for many months!

FARMER’S LOG

A SPECIAL TIME IN THE GARDEN

It’s a special time in the garden right now.

If the first month and a half of the flower garden were the lift off phase — the launch pad, the rockets pushing, then gaining speed, hurtling towards space — then we have now cleared the stratosphere.

It is quiet now. We are surrounded by a galaxy of glittering stars. Many flower beds are going supernova… the full mass of their energy erupting in a blinding display of blooms before the end; This week it’s the cosmos, marigolds, nigella, agrostemma, angels wings, and bishop’s children dahlias…

From left to right… Top row: Rocket snapdragons, nigella, black hollyhock | Middle row: Rudbeckia, strawberry lemonade sunflower, scabiosa and monarda | Bottom row: Centaurea, chocolate Queen Anne’s lace, bishop’s children dahlias.

And new many new star clusters are flickering into existence this week. The scabiosa, monarda, and rudbeckia in the three perennial beds near the oaks are coming into their own; the Queen Anne’s lace west of the sunflowers is unfurling in chocolatey luminance; the tightly woven centaurea baskets are popping, one by one, into spokes of radiant white; the godetia, also west of the sunflowers, is newly defining the word “magenta”.

Bees and pollen seekers of all types fly around like space craft all day — and land on soft little moons to sleep each night. The nigella, in particular, is the bazaar of choice this week. Just close your eyes in the warm morning sun, and listen to their hum.

We hope you enjoy your spacewalks. Just don’t forget a handful of dill when you return to your ship.

See you in the fields,

David and Kayta

7/8/2022 - Week 5 - Veggie Choreography

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Cipollini Onions, Sunrise Carrots, Easter Egg Radishes, Garlic, Fennel, Olympian Cucumbers, Summer Squash & Zucchini, Dino Kale, Supernova Lettuce Mix, Mei Qing Bok Choi, Kohlrabi, Scallions, Arugula, and Mustard Mix

We hope you feel like this froggy in the garden this week. (Photo by CSA member Kim LaVere)

U-PICK

• Albion Strawberries

• Jalapeño Peppers

• Frying Peppers: Shishitos and Padróns (see last week’s Newsletter for harvest and cooking tips

• Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Italian Parsley, Tarragon, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, Culinary Sage, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Cilantro, Tulsi, Various Mints, Catnip, Chamomile, Purple Basil, Genovese Basil, Thai Basil

• Flowers!

HARVEST NOTES

Frying Peppers: Every year we grow two different varieties of these beloved peppers. Both are incredibly delicious fried in hot olive oil until browned, sometimes with a dash of lemon or smoked paprika, and always with a liberal sprinkle of salt. Because of their differing thicknesses, we recommend frying them separately so as to get each variety perfectly done. A plate of just-off-the-stove frying peppers is an irresistible appetizer or snack.

• Shishitos: these Japanese frying peppers are long and wrinkled with delicate, thin walls. Best picked between 3-4” long, they are almost never spicy, and will eventually ripen to a sweet red. Also incredible as tempura.

• Padróns: The famous Spanish heirloom, named after their town of origin. Padróns are served sautéed in olive oil with a little sea salt, and eaten as tapas in Spain. Ideally harvest when they are 1" to 1 1/2" long. About 1 out of 10 fruits will be hot. All the fruits become hot if allowed to grow 2-3" long.

Scallions: We’ll have another appearance of our beautiful Guardsman Scallions in the share this week. If you’re looking for some inspiration, and have time for a project, try these deliciously layered and flaky Chinese Scallion Pancakes!

Scallion Pancakes recipe

By Sue Li, FROM BON APPETIT

Ingredients

Makes 8 Servings

PANCAKES

• 2½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for surface

• Kosher salt

• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

• ⅓ cup chicken fat, warmed, or vegetable oil

• 2 bunches scallions, thinly sliced (about 2 cups) — (or 1 bunch of our giant scallions)

• 8 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided, plus more for brushing

SAUCE

• 3 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 1 teaspoon chili oil

• ½ teaspoon sugar

• ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Preparation

PANCAKES

Step 1

Whisk 2½ cups flour and 1 tsp. salt in a large bowl. Mix in sesame oil and 1 cup boiling water with a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms.

Step 2

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding flour as needed to prevent sticking, until dough is smooth, about 5 minutes. Cover; let rest at room temperature 1 hour.

Step 3

Divide dough into 8 pieces. Working with one at a time, roll out on a lightly floured work surface as thin as possible (each should be approximately 10" in diameter). Brush about 2 tsp. chicken fat on dough and top with about ¼ cup scallions; season with salt. Roll dough away from you (like a jelly roll) into a thin cylinder, then, starting at 1 end, wind roll onto itself to create a coil (like a cinnamon roll). Cover and repeat with remaining dough. Let rest at room temperature 15 minutes.

Step 4

Working with 1 coil at a time, roll out on a lightly floured surface to a 5" round (keep other coils covered). Repeat with remaining dough and stack as you go, separating with parchment or lightly greased foil brushed with vegetable oil.

Step 5

Heat 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil in a medium skillet over medium-low. Working with one at a time, cook pancake, turning frequently to prevent scallions from burning, until golden brown and crisp on both sides and cooked through, 8–10 minutes. Transfer pancakes to a wire rack and let rest about 5 minutes before cutting into wedges.

SAUCE

Step 6

Whisk vinegar, soy sauce, chili oil, sugar, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl until sugar is dissolved. Serve alongside pancakes for dipping.

Agrostemma, Chamomile and Cosmos in the garden.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

People sometimes asks what happens to leftover WCCFarm food at the end of pick-ups. We’re so happy that for the last few years it has gone to Food For Thought via a relationship setup and facilitated by CSA member Helen Myers. Food For Thought is a non-profit food bank that provides meals to people with serious illness in Sonoma County.

Thank you Helen, Kim and Laura, and everyone at Food For Thought!

FARMER’S LOG

VEGGIE CHOREOGRAPHY

We had a great, productive week out here in the fields! A big chunk of time was aimed at trellising our “how-did-you-get-so-big!?” tomato plants. We weeded our storage onion pathways and hand weeded our second succession of carrots. We set up an irrigation block for our 3rd and final fall storage carrot (and beet) beds across the creek. And on Thursday we transplanted our 3rd and final Fall cabbage patch and seeded our 5th of 13 arugula and mustard greens beds.

Sometimes people are curious, "How do you know what to plant and when?"

Crop planning, as we call it, looks different on every farm, here’s a little rundown of how it works at WCCF…

Working Backwards

Every Winter, since 2016, Kayta and I hone examples of the harvest shares we want to have for people in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. That goes something like…

“Well, we gotta have alliums every week. What’s life without alliums?”
“And snack crops! The kiddos gotta have snacks!”
“Lettuce and carrots = always.”
“And fancy salad greens too”
“Yeah, and some sort of hearty green for braising and sides.”
“And novelties to keep it fun: Corn, scapes, fennel, kohlrabi…”
“What flowers are possible in early June?”
“What are the most epic 9 Winter Squash varieties to dole out in the Fall?” Etc, etc….

From these envisioned harvests, we work backwards. Using harvest and planting logs (and memories) from seasons past regarding yields and how much people took, and taking into account each crop’s “days to maturity", heat and frost sensitivities, yield expectations, things like that, we can deduce a pretty good idea of how many seeds to sow in the greenhouse and fields and when.

A Dance of Time Scales

When things are sown so we have it when we want it depends on each individual crops days to maturity. For example, we like to have nice arugula and mustard greens every week from June-December. Arugula and mustards are a super fast maturing (~25 days from germination to harvest) so we sow 150 ft bed feet of arugula every other week from May 8th until September 25th. Carrots, on the other hand, take 75-90 days to mature. They also have a much larger harvest window (meaning we can harvest off the same planting for over a month). So for carrots we sow 3 larger blocks, the first on April 24th, and the last in mid-July, and that will give us fresh bunched and loose carrots all the way until mid-December. On the long end of the spectrum are crops like Hopi Blue Corn, Pumpkins and Winter Squash. These crops we plant once, as they take all season to mature, and we enjoy them in the Fall.

And so it goes that each Spring we embark with a neat greenhouse sowing and field planting schedule — a musical score to a carefully choreographed dance with the time-scales of plants. These schedules become the drum-beat of our weeks and eventually become the harvest shares you see each week!

Farfield (aka Food Field) across the creek with this year’s potato crop, storage onions, and dried corn and winter squash (not pictured).

Rubber Hits the Road

On our farm, greenhouse sowings begin in early February with slow maturing flowers, alliums, nightshades, and apiaceae and they continue with the last lettuce sowing in October; field seedings begin with the first Carrot sowing, April 24th and the last arugula and mustards sowing late September.

Harvest is when the real work of crop planning— namely the note taking and record keeping — begins. What actually happened? How many bed-feet of cabbage were transplanted? How much cabbage did we harvest and how much did people take home? Was it enough? Was it too much? How much too much? How did that variety hold up to the heat of July? Some things we don’t need to take notes on, like Sarah’s Choice cantaloupe being the best melon of all time. We remember that one.

Record keeping, planting, harvest and CSA pickup logs are the name of the game for us. Every Thursday Kayta and I take a walk through the fields looking to see what we can offer in the harvest that week. Kayta looks at how much people took home of various crops in the previous week (and previous years) to estimate how many bins to harvest. We also look at crops we’ve just finished harvesting from. Every year, for example, it seems we are uber rich in lettuce right around the summer solstice because of how quickly it grows. So we will adjust our future plantings down a notch around then and increase back to normal as the light fades.

Indeed, the most sacred objects on the farm are the famous scrumpled “Harvest Log” composition notebook and a dirty old binder that lives in the truck labeled “Planting Log”. These are outward symbols of our slowly amassing memory of successes and failures that will help us, each winter, to create a planting plan ever more refined and custom tailored to this soil and this micro-climate and this CSA.

Painting with Seeds

But the “art” and the heart of crop planning for us is in taking all of this business and planting for harvests that harmonize with the seasons, surprise, delight, and help CSA members fall in love with food and flowers every week.

If everything goes to plan this year, for example, you should experience a seasonal arc of alliums. The fresh garlic, scallions, and cipollini onions of Spring will soon give way to the full sized, rich Cabernet Red, Walla Walla Sweet, and Torpedo bulbs of Summer which will in turn give way to the solid, crispy-paper-cured orbs of late Summer and Fall. In this way we hope our allium crop plan, and our whole crop plan, is a love song to seasons and the soil.

They say, "If you want to make God laugh, make a plan." But, with some elbow grease and a little bit of luck, I think we are we're well on our way to pulling off our 400 row, 60 column “2022 Crop Plan.xlsx”!

Thanks to a little help from our friends...

See you in the fields,

David and Kayta

7/2/2022 - Week 4 - Ode to the Onion

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Cipollini Onions, Sunrise Carrots, Easter Egg Radishes, Garlic, Fennel, Olympian Cucumbers, Green Zucchini and Yellow Crookneck Squash, Collards, Cegolaine Little Gems, Green Butter Lettuce, Salanova Mini Lettuces, Arugula, and Mustard Mix

U-PICK

• Albion Strawberries

• Sugar Snap Peas

• Jalapeño Peppers

• Frying Peppers: Shishitos and Padrons

• Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Italian Parsley, Tarragon, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, Culinary Sage, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Cilantro, Tulsi, Various Mints, Catnip, Chamomile, Purple Basil, Genovese Basil, Thai Basil

• Flowers!

David surveying the potatoes in the far field on a foggy morning.

HARVEST NOTES

Frying Peppers are here! Every year we grow two different varieties of these beloved peppers. Both are incredibly delicious fried in hot olive oil until browned, sometimes with a dash of lemon or smoked paprika, and always with a liberal sprinkle of salt. Because of their differing thicknesses, we recommend frying them separately so as to get each variety perfectly done. A plate of just-off-the-stove frying peppers is an irresistible appetizer or snack.

• Shishitos: these Japanese frying peppers are long and wrinkled with delicate, thin walls. Best picked between 3-4” long, they are almost never spicy, and will eventually ripen to a sweet red. Also incredible as tempura.

• Padróns: The famous Spanish heirloom, named after their town of origin. Padróns are served sautéed in olive oil with a little sea salt, and eaten as tapas in Spain. Ideally harvest when they are 1" to 1 1/2" long. About 1 out of 10 fruits will be hot. All the fruits become hot if allowed to grow 2-3" long.

Herb Inspiration: This is probably the last week to pick from our abundant cilantro succession before it begins sending up its white flowers (and later coriander seeds!). To take advantage of it before it goes, we highly recommend making a green sauce that’s a play on chimichurri or pesto. While you can use any combinations of herbs from the garden, we’ve been enjoying equal parts parsley and cilantro, with a little bit of mint, chopped or blended with raw garlic, lemon and lemon zest, olive oil and salt. Use as a zingy topping on any hearty food — roasted cipollini onions or grilled summer squash for instance. Will keep one week in the fridge, so if you make a big batch it’s best to freeze some for later use.

Fresh Cipollini Onions: “Round roses of water.” Fresh, turgid, a summer treat. The innocent, uncured form of the onion.

From left to right: Shishitos, Jalapeños, and Padrons.

FARMER’S LOG

ODE TO THE ONION

It was a busy week on the farm as we started to turn our attention to maintenance after Spring’s big planting push. In between harvests, we planted the last of the years melons (watermelons and Sarah’s Choice Cantaloupe); the 2nd to last cucumber succession; and our Fall leeks! We trellised lots of tomatoes and finally got around to hilling our potatoes, and we had some amazing help cultivating some overgrown areas of the farm.

Today was a fun harvest. Lots of new things to share with you all.

It is always a happy day the day we harvest the first fresh onions of the year, their bellies “grown round with dew”. So this week, in honor of this week’s Cipollinis, we'll leave you with the one-and-only, Pablo…

Schizanthus, also known as Poor Man’s Orchid, or Angel’s Wings.

Ode to the Onion
by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta

FARM ORIENTATION TOURS

If you are a new or returning member who hasn’t had an orientation tour yet, please check in with one of the farmers when you come to a pickup.

FARM BASICS

Times & Dates: Our 2022 CSA harvest season will run from June 11th - December 6th.

• Saturday harvest pick-ups run from 9:00am - 2:00pm

• Tuesday harvest pick-up run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Members and their guests may visit the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to enjoy the farm and u-pick.

Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472. It is the long gravel driveway to the left. Kiddos crossing. Please drive slowly.

Parking: Please find a parking spot under the solar panels to your left, or along the straw bales further down.

Where is the food! The pick-up barn is to your right with the beautiful mural on it.

What should I bring to the farm?:

• Extra plastic produce bags (if you have them) to cut down on plastic waste

• A pint basket or other pint measure and a basket for u-pick crops

• A vase or water bottle to keep your flowers and herbs happy on the drive home!

• Clippers to cut flowers and herbs

• Water / sun hat / picnic supplies if you plan to stay awhile!