Dear members,
Welcome to the first newsletter of your 2024 harvest season!
After another long, wet winter we are so excited to welcome you back to the verdant and floriferous garden and fields, where everything is now jumping up in the summer sunlight.
We have a diverse and exciting harvest season in the works and we can’t wait to start sharing it with you.
This newsletter, which will appear in your inbox every Friday night, will contain a snapshot of the coming week's harvest and u-pick options, as well as recipes, tips, and stories from the farm — all meant to inspire you and help you make the most out of your membership over the next 6-months.
Week 1’s newsletter is always jam packed with important details for new and returning members. Read on below!
Sunrise on our first harvest morning of the year.
FARM ORIENTATION TOURS FOR NEW MEMBERS
All new adult members are required to attend an orientation their first time picking up their harvest share. We’ll go over farm safety and etiquette, give you your farm tote bags, show you the ropes in the flower and herb garden, and share the secret to finding the sweetest strawberries.
If you are new to the farm, please join us promptly for one of the orientation tours below:
WEEK 1:
Saturday, June 15: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, June 18: 1 pm. 3 pm, 5:30 pm
WEEK 2:
Saturday, June 22: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, June 25: 1 pm. 3 pm, 5:30 pm
WEEK 3:
Saturday, June 29: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, July 2: 1 pm. 3 pm, 5:30 pm
You can come get oriented and pick up your first share on either day (Saturday or Tuesday), whichever day and time works best for your schedule. Tours last for about 30 minutes. We ask that all adult members of your share who will be regularly enjoying the farm attend an orientation. If you are sharing a share by alternating weeks with another household, one household should attend an orientation Week 1 and the other an orientation on Week 2.
If you can’t attend a tour time above, please reach out to us to schedule a time that works for you. 2023 CSA members do not need to attend an orientation tour.
THE BASICS
What time is harvest pick-up?:
Saturday harvest pick-ups run from 9:00 am - 2:00 pm
Tuesday harvest pick-ups will run from 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Oriented members can come to the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to u-pick and enjoy the farm.
2024 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 15th through Tuesday, December 10th this year.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
Where should I park?: Follow our sign on Cooper Rd. down a short gravel driveway. Please find a parking spot under the solar panels to your left, or on either side of the road in front of the greenhouse.
Where is the food? The produce pick-up barn is just to the right of the solar panels and above our big greenhouse. You can’t miss it!
What should I bring?:
Former members, please bring your WCCF tote bag! (New members will be given a new one.)
Pint baskets or small containers for strawberries and herbs (if you have some, we will provide a few pint baskets to be used as measures)
A vase, bucket, or water bottle to keep your flowers and herbs happy
Clippers or secateurs to cut flowers (if you have some)
Water / sun hat / picnic supplies if you plan to stay awhile!
Newsletters & email communication: All our important CSA communications are through this email address, which is sometimes spam blocked. Please make sure this email address is in your address book so you get important CSA communications. All newsletters and important updates are also posted on the Newsletters page of our website weekly.
THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Fresh Lorz Softneck Garlic, Hopi Blue Cornmeal, Arugula, Mustard Mix, Flowering Purple Bok Choi or Komatsuna, Dino Kale from New Family Farm, Green Zucchini and Yellow Crookneck Squash, Green Little Gem Lettuce, Panisse Oakleaf Lettuce, Scallions, Baby Fennel, Nantes Carrots from Full Belly Farm
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
Albion Strawberries: 5 pints per share this week
Herbs: Tulsi, Chamomile, Parsley, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Culinary Sage, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso (Perilla), Catnip, Pineapple, Sorrel, Assorted Mints
Flowers! Too many to list…
Flower Ambassador Cassidy Blackwell’s wrote a haiku to go with her strawberry and purple hue themed creation from the garden this morning. “Berry fields ablaze / Beaneath a Gemini sun / The season blossoms”
HARVEST NOTES
In this section of the newsletter we offer history, recipes & tips on crops in the share are particularly noteworthy or exciting this week.
Fresh Lorz Softneck Garlic: A glorious heirloom variety that was brought to Washington State's Columbia River Basin in the early 1900s by the Lorz family when they emigrated from Italy. This purple-tinged softneck garlic has a robust, spicy flavor that lingers in dishes. These bulbs were just unearthed last week so you will notice green stalks, silky soft inner papers and turgid, crips cloves. We’ve been saving the seed for this variety for the past six years. It had a hard winter here this year (garlic doesn’t love wet winters) but we’re grateful for what we got.
Hopi Blue Corn: This beautiful corn originates from the Hopi people of the Four Corners region. This a fresh corn flour, harvested last fall and ground this week. It has a freshness and flavor that only fresh ground corn can have. Eat soon or store frozen to keep the fats fresh. See below for our go-to Hopi Blue Corn pancake recipe, or use it as a beautiful and purple polenta or in your favorite cornbread recipe!
Parsley: We have some of the most gorgeous parsley we’ve ever grown in the garden right now! To make the most of it, we’ve been with making a green sauce that’s a play on a lemony, mixed-herb pesto (parsley and any other herbs you like (lemon balm, mint, etc.), olive oil, garlic and lemon). It can effortlessly elevate so many meals — think chicken or egg salad, or a simple bowl of lentils.
Dino Kale from New Family Farm and Carrots from Full Belly Farm: We had such a wet spring we had trouble getting into our fields early enough this year so we turned to two regional ag legends to round out the share this week.
PASTRIES & WINE & BAGEL VENDORS!
We are so delighted to be hosting goods from two incredible local bakers and one local winemaker in the barn this season! (All vendors accept payment through Venmo.)
Zweibel’s will be back with their delicious bagels and pastries for purchase at the Tuesday pickups, starting this week.
Starting next week (Saturday the 22nd) Sonoma Mountain Breads will be offering their artisanal croissants for purchase at the Saturday pickups.
Left to right: Sonoma Mountain Breads Danish, Martha Stoumen Wines Post Flirtation Red, and Sesame Bagels from Zweibel’s!
We’re excited to welcome Martha Stoumen Wines to the CSA pick-up barn! Martha Stoumen and Tim Lyons, her assistant winemaker, are both WCCF members and will be sharing their wines all season long. See the wine barrel “shop” for weekly options to purchase wines to go — or to enjoy at the farm! There is a small collection of shared glasses available to use. Please wash these glasses on site and return after use.
Since her start in 2014, Martha Stoumen has been working with a small handful of dedicated farmers that focus on organic and dry-farming (non-irrigated) practices. All of Martha Stoumen’s wines are fermented with native yeast and bacteria, are vegan, and have no additions beyond minimal effective sulfites for some wines. Martha grew up in Sebastopol and winemaking takes place in the Barlow.
The first wine available is the Post Flirtation Red 2022 ($29/bottle), a blend of dry-farmed Zinfandel, Carignan, Pinot noir, and Petite Sirah. Learn more at www.marthastoumen.com
HOPI BLUE CORN PANCAKE RECIPE
These hearty, delicately-purple pancakes make a festive breakfast.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup blue cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 cup boiling water
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted (coconut oil would be a delicious, dairy-free substitute)
1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
DIRECTIONS
In a medium bowl, mix together the blue cornmeal, salt and sugar. Stir in the boiling water until all of the ingredients are wet. Cover, and let stand for a few minutes.
In a measuring cup, combine the milk, egg and melted butter. Stir the milk mixture into the cornmeal mixture. Combine the flour and baking powder; stir into the cornmeal mixture until just incorporated. If the batter is stiff, add a little more milk until it flows off the spoon thickly but smoothly.Heat a large cast iron skillet over medium heat, and grease it with a dab of oil or butter. Use about 2 tablespoons of batter for each pancake. Quickly sprinkle a few pine nuts (or other nuts if using) onto each cake. When the entire surface of the pancakes are covered with bubbles, flip them over, and cook the other side until golden.
Serve immediately with maple syrup, fruit preserves or strawberries!
FARMER’S LOG
Our favorite section of the newsletter is this here little section at the bottom called the Farmer’s Log.
In this section we try to open a window for you into the life of the farm and the food you take home. (Why do we plant this variety? What does our crew talk about harvesting for hours on end? Can a good potato harvest move your soul?)
By way of introduction for new members, we’ll continue the tradition of offering a compendium of past Farmer’s Logs at the bottom.
But first, how about a little musing on this morning’s harvest.
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SUMMER HANDS, SPRING LETTUCE
Our first harvest morning of the year (this morning!) is always a little surreal for us. There’s the whiplash as we go from a gritty, loud and dirty planting machine into a tidy community space harvesting and handling delicate Spring produce. It also makes us reflect…
In this wet flood plain, our first harvestable crops usually mature enough to open up the CSA around the first or second week of June. And while the crops of these first shares are indeed spring-like, fresh, and innocent — spring onions, green garlic, the most delicate salad greens of the year — we farmers are now like craggy potatoes. Toughened, tan, and bleary eyed from 6 weeks of intense planting.
By June 15th we have just finished the biggest planting push of the year. Acres and acres are planted and all our staple crops are in the ground. In the time it takes a Red Butter lettuce to go from seed to salad, the farm, and ourselves, have been transformed. Our irrigation shed — neat and organized on April 1st — now looks like a tornado hit it. We might feel a little bit like that on the inside.
But the fields… the fields!
The surreality is in the time-delay. When we knelt down this morning to harvest our first Oakleaf Lettuce, we were taken back to when we planted those first beds, bright eyed and bushy tailed — before the long hot planting days, before the irrigation blow-outs and broken equipment, before the troubleshooting and pivots, before the good laughs and great conversations and the coming together as a seasoned crew.
Our lovely core crew this year, from L to R: Tristan, Char, Henry, Aisling, Ava, Kayta, David, and Asa.
Harvesting this first humble springy harvest share makes us take stock of the magnitude of this year’s plant-out and the mountain of summer and fall bounty we’re about to reap.
All this is just to say that we are very excited to start sharing this harvest season with you. Believe our bleary eyes and tan-skin when we say it will be epic.
Epic-ness cannot be achieved without a gifted and tenacious team.
So please join us in raising a glass, or an Albion Strawberry, to our amazing crew this year — Aisling Okubo, Tristan Frakes, Asa Black, Ava Jablonski, Char Curtin, Henry Grady, Brent Walker, and Alberto and Anayeli Guzman.
And raise a glass to yourselves, dear members, for your support, you were with us the whole way.
Here is to 26 weeks of delicious abundance ahead.
Thank you all for being with us this season. It’s an honor to be farming for you.
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
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COMPENDIUM OF PAST NEWSLETTERS
For you farm and garden nerds out there, learn how we crop plan, read up on our all-star Strawberry variety, or deep dive into Kayta’s flower garden.
If you’re one of those people that gets hyped for pumpkin spice lattes, Halloween, and Fall vibes even in the late Spring, stoke that fire with an ode to the potato harvest and the winter squash.
We are so lucky to find ourselves farming in yet another wild place here on the Laguna. We can’t wait to share more of the antics of our non-human neighbors with you. For the naturalists out there, read here about a lesson the oak trees taught us, or hear tell of the screaming monkey owlets of Green Valley, Wesley the Weasel, or the fox that welcomed us there.
