THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
In a nutshell: The dagger of frost marks the end of summer’s fruits and the beginning of Fall’s bounty.
Mustard Mix, Spinach, Newham Little Gem Lettuces, Dazzling Blue Dino Kale, Hakurei Salad Turnips, Romanesco, Green Bok Choi, Murdoc Cabbage, Sweet Peppers, Poblano Peppers, Romance Carrots, Jester Winter Squash, Cabernet Onions, Bodega Red Potatoes, Green Tomatoes
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Frost has arrived!
With the arrival of the cold, all our nightshades and beans have been killed. Feel free to glean any remaining fruit on the cherry tomatoes and peppers before we rip the plants out next week!
Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkins: Free for all! Help yourself to any of our remaining pumpkins — but please remember that they are do not make delicious eating as they were bred for looks rather than flavor. Use your weekly Winter Squash for pies and things!
Albion Strawberries: 1 pint per share
Herbs: Only the hardiest of the herbs remain in small quantities: Parsley, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Oregano, Thyme, French Sorrel.
Flowers: The flowers have also been kissed by frost, so expect only a smattering of the hardiest blooms. Time to get creative in the vase!
HARVEST NOTES
Bodega Red Potatoes: These distinctively round, red-skinned tomatoes are a true local heirloom, grown in our region since the 1840’s. This is the first year that we’ve been able to track down seed potatoes to grow them, and we’re grateful to the folks at Slow Food Sonoma County North for their work in making them available! Bodega Reds have a rich, creamy and nutty potato flavor, and a texture that’s neither too starchy nor waxy. They’re quite versatile, so use them in any of your favorite dishes: baked, boiled, fried, or mashed.
Green Tomatoes: As a last hurrah for our beloved tomatoes this week we’ll be distributing unripe green ones, perfect for fried green tomatoes, or for adding to stews, like this luscious pork & green tomato stew.
Jester Winter Squash: A cross between a Delicata and an Acorn Squash. A good Jester can be among the sweetest of squashes. David’s favorite.
Romanesco: This vivid green, spired cauliflower is an Italian heirloom. Enjoy it any way you would cauliflower, and be sure to admire its fractal beauty and slightly nutty flavor before you devour it!
The larder is filling with Fall’s bounty.
Miso-Glazed Turnips Recipe
BY CLAIRE SAFFITZ
This simple recipe turns this week’s Hakurei Turnips into a delicacy!
Ingredients
(Makes 4 Servings)
1 pound small turnips, trimmed, scrubbed, cut into 1” wedges
2 tablespoons white miso
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon sugar
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Preparation
Combine turnips, miso, butter, and sugar in a medium skillet, then add water just to cover vegetables. Season with salt and pepper.
Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook turnips, turning occasionally, until they are tender and liquid is evaporated, 15–20 minutes.
Once all the liquid has cooked off, keep cooking turnips, tossing occasionally, until they are golden brown and caramelized and the sauce thickens and glazes the vegetables, about 5 minutes longer.
Add lemon juice and a splash of water to pan and swirl to coat turnips. Season with salt and pepper.
FARMERS LOG
THE SEASON OF DEATH
Rise and fall. Light and shadow. Summer and winter. Life and death.
Halloween is an extremely important time of year on the farm. It is the season of death.
The roots of our Halloween holiday lie in the ancient Gaelic Samhain festival. The Samhain festival marked an important transition: The end of the harvest season (it means "summer’s end”) and the beginning of the darkest half of the year. The Gaelic were a pastoral people and the Samhain marked the time when the shepherds brought their livestock, fattened on summer mountain pastures, back 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 become thinner around the Samhain and supernatural spirits and the spirits of ancestors were thought to walk amongst the living. The spirits were to be appeased or tricked. Tables were set for friendlies at the Samhain dinner. People wore costumes to disguise themselves from the evil spirits and placed candles inside of carved turnips (in lieu of pumpkins) to frighten them off.
You can feel the Samhain in every nook and cranny on the farm these days — especially after the dagger of this morning’s hard frost. How different the farm looks now from spring’s jubilant green promise and 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 shriveled, mildewed, and desiccated in the rows, awaiting the final, furious whir of the flail mower.
This week, with our major harvests nearly complete, we did the portal tending farm work of the Samhain. On Tuesday, Tristan mowed and spaded under large sections of Centerfield, transitioning our Winter Squash plants into the underworld, where they are now being devoured by worms and bugs. On Wednesday, there lay a bleak, deep brown maw of bare soil.
A great, pregnant silence. An open portal.
On Thursday morning, Tristan performed the Last Rites on the squash field. First, he spread steaming black compost. Then he broadcast the cover crop by driving the cone spreader back and forth, processionally, rhythmically, tossing clover, peas, vetch, and grass seeds — like little prayers — onto the black veil. Finally, he harrowed the seeds under — the little old tiller we use to “kiss” the seed into the ground whirring like a little demon — and closed the portal.
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 are only thinly separated. They knew that the rotting, decaying, destructive forces are also the generative building blocks, the gateways from which life bursts forth anew in the spring and that the portals, the transitions, need to be faced and tended.
This Halloween, while you’re out there gleaning summer’s last fruits, we invite you to take-in the ghoulish site of the dying cherry tomatoes, sagging limply, skeletal, and vacant; and the blocks of bare ground on the farm — portals now pregnant with cover crop seed.
Because this death is the doorway. And on the other side are verdant spring meadows, strawberry scented breezes, plump sugar snap peas, and bouquet after bouquet of spring flowers.
Happy Halloween!
David & Kayta
