9/9/2022 - Week 14 - Heat Wave Reflections

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Cegolaine Little Gems, Cherokee Summer Crisp Lettuce, Escarole, Dino Kale, Pink Ladyslipper Radish, Celery, Sweet Corn, Kohlrabi, Romance Carrots, Cabernet Red Onions, Heirloom Tomatoes, Sweet Peppers, Summer Squash & Zucchini, Sarah’s Choice Cantaloupe, Asterix Red Potatoes, Farao Cabbage

U-PICK

Please remember to check the u-pick board for updated weekly limits before going out to pick

• Albion Strawberries: 3 pints per share this week

• Cherry Tomatoes: See week 8’s newsletter for variety descriptions

• Frying Peppers: Shishitos & Padrons | See week 4’s newsletter for harvest and preparation tips

• Hot Peppers: Buena Mulata, Habanero, Ali Limo and Jalapeño Hot Peppers | Check u-pick board for limits

• Tomatillos: Check u-pick board for limits

• Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, 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

• Escarole: An Italian staple, this leafy chicory (related to radicchio and endive) is a hardy, sweet, and slightly bitter green that’ll add punctuation to any rich and fatty feast. It has a substantial, juicy texture and slight nutty flavor that make it great in salads, and it also stands up to braising or broiling. Our favorite way to prepare escarole is to cut at the base, toss the leaves in olive oil and to broil it in the oven until it is nice and melted and the tips are crispy. Toss with garlic, salt, and lemon juice and voila!

• Sweet Corn Caterpillars: You are likely to a European corn borer caterpillar in your ears of sweet corn this week. An unfortunate reality of organically grown corn, this little moth caterpillar, while a little gross, is harmless and loves sweet corn just like you. Don’t let it deter you from this scrumptious sweet corn! Just feed your caterpillar to the birds, clean off the eaten part, and enjoy your corn! “It’s CORN!”

• Damaged Strawbs and Upick crops: Extreme heat is hard on fruits (strawberries, peppers, cherry tomatoes) so you will likely find a lot of cooked fruits in the u-pick crops this week and next. You can do the plants a favor by just picking and dropping any melted feeling fruits while you are u-picking. Thank you!

preserving the harvest

Bulk Tomatoes are here! From now until the end of tomato season, bulk quantities of Speckled Roman Sauce Tomatoes and all Seconds (tomatoes that are blemished or quite ripe but still tasty) will be available! Bulk tomatoes will have a season limit, meaning the total tomatoes available per share over the course of the season. You’re welcome to take them all at once or a little bit here and there, whichever you like!

The easiest way to put up tomatoes is freezing. While you can freeze tomatoes without processing first, we particularly love halving them, drizzling with olive oil and roasting in a low-temp oven to concentrate the flavors. Or, if you have the time now and want to make a sauce that truly bottles the taste of summer, consider making fresh tomato sauce!

Fresh Tomato Sauce

For the simplest tomato sauce, we recommend sautéing onions and garlic in more olive oil than you might think you need. Then add tomatoes and salt to taste and cook down for 45 minutes to an hour until your sauce has reached the desired consistency and flavor. Depending on your preferred consistency, tomatoes can be peeled and de-seeded before cooking, or if you prefer a more rustic sauce, just chop and them throw them in the pot seeds and all. For more detailed instructions, and some good ideas for variations on tomato sauces, check out this Smitten Kitchen post on Fresh Tomato Sauce.

THANK YOU!

Thank you so much to everyone who helped bring in this year’s potato crop! We harvested over 10,000 lbs together — something we couldn’t have done so quickly without the 30 or 40 of you who lent a hand. A special shout-out to Jared Sutton who helped us load and unload thousands of lbs on Saturday. If you loved this harvest party or want to get in on the next one, keep an eye out in this newsletter for announcements about our Winter Squash Toss and Fall Carrot Harvest Party.

WINTER SISTER FARM CSA SIGN-UPS NOW OPEN!

The hottest tickets in town are now on sale — Winter Sister Farm’s 2023 Winter CSA program is now open for registration! Winter Sister Farm, right next door to us, was started by dear friends Anna and Sarah Dozor. Their CSA runs runs from December through May and includes 24 weeks of specialty winter veggies, flowers, herbs, and more — all picked up by CSA members, free-choice market style, on their beautiful farm here on Cooper Rd. Sign-up today!

FARMER’S LOG

REFLECTIONS ON THE HEAT WAVE

Sunrise on Tuesday, the hottest day in Bay Area known history.

• The plants on the farm seemed to have fared OK. The most damage occurred in fruits exposed to the sun with our tomatoes sustaining the most damage. We have so many tomatoes right now that we probably won’t notice it in the CSA, but it might mean we have a shorter no-limit tomato season as so many young fruits and flowers were literally cooked by the heat. (Supposedly fruits are usually 30 degrees warmer than ambient temps with the sun on them.) Many strawberries with sun-facing sides were also damaged. If you’re picking strawbs this week and see a melty strawberry, please pull them off the plants for us!

• We’re proud and grateful to our crew who toughed it out through the hot week. We weren’t outside in the sun after 11 am or so, but we did brave some hot greenhouses and Lauren ran pick-up in an ambient 112 degrees! This week, we did harvests in the cool mornings and then lots of inside work like cleaning onions. We basically delayed this week’s field transplantings and seedings until we have more Earthly temperatures next week.

• It is interesting how the body seems to not be able to tell much of a difference between 105 and 112. It’s almost as if 105 is the top of the thermometer!

• Potatoes! Last Friday, Saturday and Wednesday mornings we harvested our potatoes — all 10,000+ lbs of which are stored away in the cooler. We were happy (and somewhat relieved) to unearth a bumper potato crop. We were concerned that the gophers had been doing a lot of damage to the crop but, thank goodness, even the gophers here can’t eat that much. The sandy soil of the upper part of the Farfield is ideal for potatoes and the smooth skins of the potatoes show it.

We hope you all fared well in the heat. Here’s to a more mild last couple weeks of summer.

See you in the fields,
David

9/2/2022 - Week 13 - Potato Harvest Party Tomorrow Morning

POTATO HARVEST PARTY!

TOMORROW MORNING, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3RD, 8am - 11:30 am

Join us for our 5th annual CSA Potato Harvest Party this Saturday morning!

The potato harvest is a fun, awe inspiring harvest that is great for all ages and farm experience levels. The tractor drives down the beds, showering up multitudinous tubers from out of the soil (a site to behold once in your life). Then, we bag the taters and chat with our neighbors!

We’ll be in the Farfield, a short walk from the pick-up barn. Instructions on how to find us will be posted by the parking lot. Come just to see the action, or, if you plan to get in the mix, we recommend light gloves, a water bottle, and clothes you don’t mind getting dirty.

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Assorted Lettuces, Escarole, Red Russian Kale, Bok Choi, Celery, Fennel, Romance Carrots, Bridger Yellow Onions, Heirloom Tomatoes, Sweet Peppers, Poblano Peppers, Summer Squash & Zucchini, Purple Daikon, Harvest Moon Potatoes, Farao Cabbage

U-PICK

Please remember to check the u-pick board for updated weekly limits before going out to pick

• Albion Strawberries: 3 pints per share this week

• Cherry Tomatoes: 4 pints per share this week | See week 8’s newsletter for variety descriptions

• Frying Peppers: Shishitos & Padrons | See week 4’s newsletter for harvest and preparation tips

• Hot Peppers: Buena Mulata, Habanero, Ali Limo and Jalapeño Hot Peppers | Check u-pick board for limits

• Tomatillos: Check u-pick board for limits

• Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, 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

• Escarole: An Italian staple, this leafy chicory (related to radicchio and endive) is a hardy, sweet, and slightly bitter green that’ll add punctuation to any rich and fatty feast. It has a substantial, juicy texture and slight nutty flavor that make it great in salads, and it also stands up to braising or broiling. Our favorite way to prepare escarole is to cut at the base, toss the leaves in olive oil and to broil it in the oven until it is nice and melted and the tips are crispy. Toss with garlic, salt, and lemon juice and voila!

• Harvest Moon Potatoes: Let potato feasting begin! This is our all-time favorite potato. Numerous crew and CSA members agree — this is the best potato there is. The Burpee’s catalogue copy writer says it best: “Potatoes as objects of beauty? Let your eyes linger on ‘Harvest Moon’, with her velvety dark-purple skin and dense, sumptuous golden-yellow flesh. A seductively gorgeous purple potato princess, she’s as gorgeous to behold as she is tasty. Infused with creamy, nutty flavor, ‘Harvest Moon’ is a culinary triumph on her own, no butter or salt required.” Enjoy every which way: mashed, baked, boiled, fried—or adding color and flavor to a potato salad.

• Abundant Italian Basil, Dill & Cilantro: We are swimming in great basil right now! There is a beautiful patch of new Italian Basil ready for picking on the West side of the garden and with this summer heat the first succession is looking great too! Also check out the newest planting of dill and cilantro also on the West side of the garden (closest to the cherry tomatoes).

preserving the harvest

Bulk Tomatoes are here! From now until the end of tomato season, bulk quantities of Speckled Roman Sauce Tomatoes and all Seconds (tomatoes that are blemished or quite ripe but still tasty) will be available! Bulk tomatoes will have a season limit, meaning the total tomatoes available per share over the course of the season. You’re welcome to take them all at once or a little bit here and there, whichever you like!

The easiest way to put up tomatoes is freezing. While you can freeze tomatoes without processing first, we particularly love halving them, drizzling with olive oil and roasting in a low-temp oven to concentrate the flavors. Or, if you have the time now and want to make a sauce that truly bottles the taste of summer, consider making fresh tomato sauce!

Fresh Tomato Sauce

For the simplest tomato sauce, we recommend sautéing onions and garlic in more olive oil than you might think you need. Then add tomatoes and salt to taste and cook down for 45 minutes to an hour until your sauce has reached the desired consistency and flavor. Depending on your preferred consistency, tomatoes can be peeled and de-seeded before cooking, or if you prefer a more rustic sauce, just chop and them throw them in the pot seeds and all. For more detailed instructions, and some good ideas for variations on tomato sauces, check out this Smitten Kitchen post on Fresh Tomato Sauce.

WINTER SISTER FARM CSA SIGN-UPS NOW OPEN!

The hottest tickets in town are now on sale — Winter Sister Farm’s 2023 Winter CSA program is now open for registration! Winter Sister Farm, right next door to us, was started by our dear friends Anna and Sarah Dozor. Their CSA runs runs from December through May and includes 24 weeks of specialty winter veggies, flowers, herbs, and more — all picked up by CSA members, free-choice market style, on their beautiful farm here on Cooper Rd! Sign-up today!

FARMER’S LOG

5th ANNUAL POTATO HARVEST

Tomorrow morning, we'll come together as a community to perform a quintessential agricultural ritual: A potato harvest. As we kneel down, on the Earth, bagging the cool, bulbous tubers, we will join in concert thousands of people around the world performing the same act. We will also join untold millions of ancestors who, in the late summer and fall, knelt together and harvested potatoes. We will be joined, by a real, living, breathing chain of seed potatoes to hundreds of historic potato harvests in Europe and Asia and to the thousands of harvests in the Andes and Northeastern Bolivia — the birthplace of this amazing plant.

There is nothing quite like an abundant potato harvest and the feeling, afterwards, of storing them away — in a pit, a cooler, a cave; the potatoes themselves alive, breathing slowly, promising food, promising life, throughout the winter months.

Potatoes are the highest caloric food crop per-acre of any crop (over maize, wheat, and rice). And they are the only one of these “staff-of-life” crops that grows (the food part, at least) deep in the Earth — shrouded in the dark and in mystery until they harvested and lifted up into the light.

While we check the potatoes as they grow every so often, every potato harvest is a mystery until it happens: How will the crop turn out this year? Will it be an abundant?

Many have known the feeling of incredible abundance that potatoes can give and, sadly, many have known the opposite. In 1845, due to limited potato genetics in the region and the cold shoulders of powerful men, a million people starved in the poorer parts of Western Ireland and the Scottish highlands as a blighted potato crop rotted in the fields. Aye, the potato has been a powerful and painful bond between people and Mother Earth, in feast and in famine, for millennia.

The Nobel Prize winning Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, speaks to this history in his poem, At a Potato Digging.

I.

A mechanical digger wrecks the drill,
 Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould.
 Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill
 Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold.

 Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch
 A higgledy line from hedge to headland;
 Some pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch
 A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand

 Tall for a moment but soon stumble back
 To fish a new load from the crumbled surf.
 Heads bow, trucks bend, hands fumble towards the black
 Mother. Processional stooping through the turf

 Turns work to ritual. Centuries
 Of fear and homage to the famine god
 Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees,
 Make a seasonal altar of the sod.
 
 II.
 
 Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered
 Like inflated pebbles. Native
 to the blank hutch of clay
 where the halved seed shot and clotted
 these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem
 the petrified hearts of drills. Split
 by the spade, they show white as cream.

  Good smells exude from crumbled earth.
 The rough bark of humus erupts
 knots of potatoes (a clean birth)
 whose solid feel, whose wet inside
 promises taste of ground and root.
 To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed.
 
 III.
 
 Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on
 wild higgledy skeletons
 scoured the land in 'forty-five,'
 wolfed the blighted root and died.

 The new potato, sound as stone,
 putrified when it had lain
 three days in the long clay pit.
 Millions rotted along with it.

 Mouths tightened in, eyes died hard,
 faces chilled to a plucked bird.
 In a million wicker huts
 beaks of famine snipped at guts.

 A people hungering from birth,
 grubbing, like plants, in the earth,
 were grafted with a great sorrow.
 Hope rotted like a marrow.

Stinking potatoes fouled the land,
 pits turned pus in filthy mounds:
 and where potato diggers are
 you still smell the running sore.
 
 IV.
 
 Under a white flotilla of gulls
 The rhythm deadens, the workers stop.
 White bread and tea in bright canfuls
 Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop

 Down in the ditch and take their fill,
 Thankfully breaking timeless fasts;
 Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill
 Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.

******

At West County Community Farm this year, we are thankful. If this morning was any indicator, it looks like we’ve been blessed with a healthy, abundant potato crop. The potato field in purple and white flower in June and July was a vision to behold. They scented the foggy mornings. The shimmering green foliage reached above your waste and covered every inch of ground so it was hard to walk. All that energy, all that delight, all that sunlight, was sent down below to the tubers, which are waiting for us now. They’ve been coming out of the ground “sound as stone” and will nourish us all through this fall and winter.

And that is cause for celebration.

 Join us this tomorrow for Part Two of our 5th annual potato harvest as we "shower" up the living roots and scatter libations in remembrance and thanks.

See you in the fields,
David & Kayta

8/26/2022 - Week 12 - The Dog Days of Summer

POTATO HARVEST PARTY!

nEXT SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3RD, 9AM

Join us for first big harvest party on the new land and our first big harvest of 2022 — the potatoes! There’s nothing like watching a metric ton of potatoes bloop up out of the ground behind the wake of the tractor, getting dirty, and bagging them with friends. It’s an unforgettable experience, especially for the kiddos, and we hope you’ll join us! All abilities and interests welcome. Feel free to bring non-members. We recommend a sunhat, water bottle, and clothes you don’t mind getting dirty. We’ll have light refreshments, music from the boombox, and a mountain of taters.

THIS WEEK’S HARVEST

Baby Mustard Green and Arugula Salad Mix, Rosaine Little Gems, Head Lettuce, Rainbow Chard, Celery, Hakurei Salad Turnips, Romance Carrots, Lemon Cucumbers, Bridger Yellow Onions, Heirloom Tomatoes, Sweet Peppers, Poblano Peppers, Galia Melons, Summer Squash & Zucchini, Lorz Italian Softneck Garlic

U-PICK

Please remember to check the u-pick board for updated weekly limits before going out to pick

• Albion Strawberries: The triumphant return! | 2 pints per share this week

• Cherry Tomatoes: See week 8’s newsletter for variety descriptions

• Frying Peppers: Shishitos & Padrons | See week 4’s newsletter for harvest and preparation tips

• Buena Mulata, Habanero, and Jalapeño Hot Peppers

• Tomatillos: Located next to the frying peppers

• Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, 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

• European Corn Borers on Sweet Corn: Last week we forgot to mention that you will likely find a European Corn Borer Caterpillar in your corn! An unfortunate reality of organically grown corn, this little moth grub, while a little gross, is harmless. Don’t let it deter you from this scrumptious sweet corn! Just cut or wash out the eaten part, feed the little grub to the birds, and enjoy your corn!

• Galia Melons: Originally developed by growers in Israel, Galia melons were the first hybrid of intensely perfumed Middle Eastern melons. The Galia melon looks like a cantaloupe on the outside and a honeydew on the inside. Its light green, smooth-textured flesh, and honey sweet.

• Strawberries: They’re back. We watered the heck out of them to encourage more berries so they’re a little more watery this week, but it’s good to see them.

• Abundant Italian Basil, Dill & Cilantro: We are swimming in great basil right now! There is a beautiful patch of new Italian Basil ready for picking on the West side of the garden and with this summer heat the first succession is looking great too! Also check out the newest planting of dill and cilantro also on the West side of the garden (closest to the cherry tomatoes).

WINTER SISTER FARM CSA SIGN-UPS NOW OPEN!

The hottest tickets in town are now on sale — Winter Sister Farm’s 2023 Winter CSA program is now open for registration! Winter Sister Farm, right next door to us, was started by our dear friends Anna and Sarah Dozor. Their CSA runs runs from December through May and includes 24 weeks of specialty winter veggies, flowers, herbs, and more — all picked up by CSA members, free-choice market style, on their beautiful farm here on Cooper Rd! Sign-up today!

FARMER’S LOG

THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

The sun beats down, the hills are bleached gold, and the wind blows hot… the dog days of summer are here.

The term “dog days”, for the late summer, traces back to the ancient Mediterranean, where people connected the night sky return of the brightest star, Canis Majoris (aka Sirius, aka “Orion’s Dog”), to the sultry days of late July-August when, as Virgil said, “the Dog-star cleaves the thirsty ground.” These ancient people associated the dog days with fever, bad luck, and heat.

As Marin naturalist and tracker Richard Vacha brilliantly observes of our own Mediterranean climate in his book The Heart of Tracking, the dog days can be a raucous, frolicking time for wild canines as they feast on the fattened prey and tree fruit of summer and as canine pups leave the den and come into their own. (Perhaps this is the wild origin of the naming of the star?)

But, in Mediterranean climates like ours, the dog days are also a scarce time, a spent time. They are the beginning of a great dry down and the great dormant period of our year.

“For an animal,” Vacha writes, the late summer / early fall “can be as tough to endure as an East Coast winter. Food is scarce, water is scarce, and green vegetation is crowded into riparian corridors, drawing the animals that depend on these resources closer together. The animals who prey upon them have shifted correspondingly. Territorial patterns are all in great flux as the expansive cycle of the summer season slowly winds down.”

On the farm, this shift into the dog days — their abundance and scarcity — has been clear.

Our harvests are more and more heavy with fruit: Melons, tomatoes, cucumbers; we are enjoying our first poblanos and sweet peppers; the wild blackberries are laden. In the garden, our first rounds of flowers and herbs are following the wild grasses, tapping out and throwing seed. Even our Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins are calling it a year.

In our staple field crops, if July was an outward explosion of verdant green growth, the dog days are the beginning of a hunkering down, a drawing nigh, a focused inward stare toward the serious work of setting fruit, forming bulbs and tubers, and setting seed. Our Hopi Blue corn and Calico Popcorn are in silks, with ears swelling. The jubilant winter squash flowers have metamorphosized — green and gold orbs now swell in the shade of their sun battered leaves. The abundant potato foliage is no more as they’ve completed their growing cycle, the leaves have died back, and their secret orbs now lie curing in the black earth waiting for us to harvest them next Saturday!

And as the wildland plants dry out and are scorched to gold, her wild inhabitants turn more and more to the farm — an irrigated green oasis — for moisture and succulent meals. The wild turkeys and their fluffy younglings visit the fields every morning and evening, snipping off hydrating bits of lettuce and broccoli leaves. The deer annihilated a whole patch of Romaine meant for last week’s shares. Gophers take bites out of our drip irrigation lines nightly, seeking the cool water flowing within. 

But the sweet relief of the first Fall rains will come soon enough.

Until then, keep cool, move slow, and enjoy the fruitful abundance of the dog days of summer!

See you in the fields,
David & Kayta

“Fox in a Coyote Bush” illustration by Kayta from The Heart of Tracking by Richard Vacha from Mount Vision Press