POTATO HARVEST PARTY!
THIS Saturday, October 12th, 9:00 am - 11:30 am
Join us for our 7th annual potato harvest party! There’s nothing like watching potatoes shower up out of the ground in the wake of the tractor and then getting dirty and bagging them with friends. It’s an unforgettable experience, especially for the kiddos.
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. Some people prefer using light gloves. We’ll have some light refreshments, music from the boombox, and an agrarianly awesome time. (For new members: This potato harvest is not required in any way for members to enjoy potatoes, we will be distributing the tuberous bounty all year whether or not you come to harvest!)
PUMPKIN PATCH OPEN!
Spooky season is here and our 8th annual pumpkin patch is open! The pumpkin patch is just to the left of the corn that you see directly in front of you when you drive in. This year we have medium and large pumpkins for carving, and some decorative Turk’s Turban pumpkins for those who just want them for decor.
🌟 SEASON LIMIT: 1/share, or 1/child for households with children. Note: we have enough pumpkins that households that are alternating weeks can each take a pumpkin.
Alice enjoying the Pumpkin patch last year.
THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Kimchi week continues!
Harvest Moon Potatoes, Bonbon Buttercup Winter Squash, Napa Cabbage, Scallions, Walla Walla Onions, Bolero Carrots, Sweet Peppers, Cauliflower, Hakurei Turnips, Kohlrabi, Rainbow Chard, Spinach, Assorted Lettuces, Mustard Mix, Arugula
U-PICK
Albion Strawberries | 3 pints per share
Padrón Peppers | Gleanings
Shishito Peppers | Gleanings
Cherry Tomatoes | Gleanings
Goldilocks Beans | 3 pints per share | Fancy golden beans — our last succession of “green beans”
Hot Peppers:
Jalapeños | Gleanings
Thai Chilis | Gleanings
Habanero | Gleanings
Herbs: Italian, Purple and Thai Basil, Dill, 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 & Husk Cherries!
Flowers!
HARVEST NOTES
Bonbon Buttercup Winter Squash: In your farmers’ opinion, the best squash ever bred. Ultra sweet and flaky, this squash is like a dessert all on its own. Bonbon is also the most delicate of the winter squash we grow, and has a tendency to sunburn in extreme heat of the kind we’ve been experiencing. Because of this, we recommend enjoying it soon, as it won’t have the long storage life of some winter squash varieties.
Harvest Moon Potatoes: Numerous crew and CSA members agree: Harvest Moons might be the best potato. The Burpee’s catalogue says it well: “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 to a potato salad.
PARKING LOT THEFT
Sadly, there have been a couple of thefts on the farm recently — one at night, and one in broad daylight from the parking lot. We will be working on putting up security cameras and we advise that you lock your cars in the parking lot and keep all valuables with you.
ROASTED SQUASH PRIMER
From The Kitchn
Farmer’s note: while this recipe was originally written for Kabocha, we recommend this roasting method for most of the Winter Squash we’ll be doling out this season.
Choose which shape you want your squash based on how you’re planning to eat it: roasted halves — the easiest preparation — can be cut into rough slices, scooped onto plates, or used as you would canned pumpkin in any baking recipe. Roasted wedges are an elegant side dish on their own, particularly if you dress them up with interesting spices and oils (one of our favorite combinations for Bonbon or Kabocha is roasted with coconut oil and curry powder) and roasted cubes are perfect for turning into a more elaborate salad, like Ina Garten’s Roasted Squash and Arugula Salad with Warm Cider Vinaigrette.
PREPARATION
Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven and heat the oven to 400°F.
Using a chef’s knife, carefully trim the stem and pointy ends off 1 medium kabocha (or other squash). Arrange the squash on a cut side and cut in half. Use a spoon to scrape out the seeds and pulp.
Option 1: Roast halves. Arrange the halves cut-side up on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle evenly with 1 tablespoon olive oil and use your fingertips or a pastry brush to coat the flesh. Season with 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Roast until the squash is browned on the edges and fork or knife tender, 25 to 27 minutes.
Option 2: Roast wedges. Cut into 1/2-inch-thick half moons. Place the pieces on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Toss to coat and arrange in a single layer. Roast until lightly browned on the bottom, about 15 minutes. Use a thin spatula to flip the squash. Roast until tender and caramelized, 10 to 12 minutes more.
Option 3: Roast cubes. Peel the tough outer skin, then cut the flesh into 1-inch cubes. Place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Toss to coat and arrange in a single layer. Roast until lightly browned on the bottom, about 15 minutes. Use a thin spatula to flip the squash. Roast until tender and caramelized, 10 to 12 minutes more.
Fall light is the best light. Discuss.
NEW WINE FROM MARTHA STOUMEN!
Now in the wine cooler: Martha Stoumen's 2021 Ricetti Vineyard Carignan — available to WCCF members for $35 per bottle (normally $44/bottle) to enjoy here at the farm or to-go.
Planted by the Ricetti family in the 1940s, these 75-year-old certified organic Carignan vines in Redwood Valley have weathered decades of challenges, proving once again how resilient farming can be. Carignan is known for its bright acidity, juicy red fruit, and subtle earthy spice and is a perfect wine to enjoy in the cooler days ahead.
WINTER SISTER FARM CSA
Going to miss us this winter? Well you’re in luck! Our dear friends next door at Winter Sister Farm have got you covered with the freshest veggies money can buy all winter and spring.
All memberships include diverse winter-hardy veggies such as broccoli, carrots, potatoes, onions, winter squash, lettuce, kale, chard, as well as access to a small u-pick garden with cold hardy herbs and spring flowers. Click here to get all the details on this wonderful CSA program and to reserve your spot today!
The aurora borealis above the gnome home. Photo by our neighbor Azul.
FARMER’S LOG
At a Potato Digging
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 ritual. We will also join untold millions of ancestors who, in the late summer or fall, knelt together and harvested potatoes. And will be connected, via a living, breathing chain of seed potatoes to hundreds of historic potato harvests in Europe and Asia and to thousands of harvests in the Andes and Northeastern Bolivia — the cultural birthplace of this amazing food crop.
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 have been the staff-of-life for many cultures throughout history.
When healthy, potatoes can produce the most calories per acre of any crop in the world (more than corn, wheat, and rice). And potatoes are the only one of these staff-of-life crops that grow (the food part, at least) in the Earth — shrouded in the dark and in mystery until they are 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 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. 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.
* * * * *
We include this poem, with its dark memory, not for its shock value, but for the bond it invokes. Our culture divorces us from feeling the primal bond we have to our staple food crops — and from the planet that cradles them. To be sure, this bond is still as strong as ever, but we rarely, if ever, feel it like Seamus Heaney asks us to. On the eve of the harvest of one of our staple crops, we think it is important to feel it. While this bond can be scary, it is also the source of our life and deserves our most profound gratitude.
At West County Community Farm this year, we are thankful. This year’s potato crop, though far from our healthiest, will be abundantly life giving. It will sate our bellies long into winter.
The potato field in purple and white flower in June and July was a vision to behold. 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 to unearth, and to be nourished.
Join us tomorrow for our 7th annual potato harvest as we "shower" up the living roots and scatter libations in remembrance and thanks.
See you in the fields,
David
CSA BASICS
Drive slow! Please drive slow on Cooper Rd. and in our driveway / parking lot area. Kids at play!
No dogs: Unfortunately, dogs are not allowed on the farm.
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.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
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!
2024 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 15th through Tuesday, December 10th this year.
