Are you a new member who hasn’t attended an orientation yet? Orientation dates and times can be found below the Harvest Notes.
THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Fresh Lorz Softneck Garlic, Spinach, Mustard Mix, Arugula, Heart of Gold Swiss Chard, Komatsuna, Green Zucchini and Yellow Crookneck Squash, Green Little Gem Lettuce, Red Butter Lettuce, Baby Fennel, Hakurei Salad Turnips, Kohlrabi, Scallions
U-PICK
Check the u-pick board in the barn for weekly u-pick limits.
Albion Strawberries: 1 pint per share | The strawberries are in a slow production moment but we expect them to ramp back up in a few weeks. Until then, please savor the first berries of the season and make sure to respect the u-pick limits so that all members get some.
Sugar Snap Peas: 1 pint per share |
Herbs & Edible Flowers: Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Lemon Basil, Purple Basil, Dill, Tulsi, Parsley, Cilantro, Chamomile, Calendula, Borage, Nasturtium, Pansies/Viola, Stridolo, Lemon Bergamot Bee Balm, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Culinary Sage, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Vietnamese Coriander, Shiso/Perilla, Catnip, Pineapple Sage, Sorrel, Assorted Mints
Flowers! Many perennial flowers and the first of the year’s annuals!
Nothin’ like 7:30 am in the garden.
HARVEST NOTES
Sugar Snap Peas: These delicious peas can be eaten whole, pod and all — just make sure to snap the top and pull the little string from each side to get the tenderest bite. While edible at any size, the ones that have filled out to a half inch in thickness are significantly sweeter.
Herb Inspiration: This is one of the best moments of the season for fresh herbs on the farm — this week we opened up new plantings of Dill and a bevy of Basils (Italian, Purple, Lemon & Thai), and the Cilantro and Parsley continue to be at their best. To take advantage of their bounty this week, try chopping them and adding to your salads, or making an herby green sauce that’s a play on chimichurri, chermoula, 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, blended with raw garlic, lemon and lemon zest, olive oil and salt. Use as a zingy topping on any hearty food — grilled summer squash or the kohlrabi fritters from the recipe below!
Hakurei Salad Turnips: Not your Grandmother’s turnips, these sweet, crunchy snacks are mild and best eaten fresh, on top a rice bowl, sliced on a salad or popped straight in the mouth. They are also delicious sauteed or braised, as are their greens!
A snapshot of some of the annual herbs available this week in the North Garden. Top row: dill, parsley and cilantro. Bottom row: All the basils! Tulsi, Italian, Thai, Purple & Lemon.
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 2:
Saturday, June 21: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, June 24: 1 pm. 3 pm, 5:30 pm
WEEK 3:
Saturday, June 28: 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm
Tuesday, July 1: 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 about 30 minutes. All adult members of your share who will be regularly enjoying the farm should 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.
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
U-pick hours: Oriented members can come to the farm any time, 7 days a week, sunrise to sunset, to u-pick and enjoy the farm.
2025 CSA program dates: Our harvest season will run from Saturday, June 14th through Tuesday, December 9th this year.
Where is the farm? The member parking lot is located at 1720 Cooper Rd., Sebastopol, CA 95472.
Slow on Cooper Rd. Out of respect for our neighbors and the many kids and animals that live on Cooper Rd., please drive slow (20 mph)!
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, or below, 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 sent 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, like this one, are also posted on the Newsletters page of our website weekly.
Have you been thinking about taking your Spanish to the next level? California Bilingüe, owned by CSA member Carlos Mayerstein, specializes in one-on-one Spanish tutoring for all levels. In 2022, the farm received a generous scholarship to help us improve our Spanish proficiency to help us connect more with the skilled Spanish speaking agricultural community in Sonoma County. The program has been joyous, fun, and transformational for his Spanish and opened doors personally and professionally. We can’t recommend California Bilingüe highly enough! ¡Aprenda más aquí!
Zucchini Kohlrabi Carrot Fritters with Herb Yogurt Sauce
From The Foodie Dietitian
Arabella recommended these versatile and delicious fritters to us in the field as we were harvesting Kohlrabi and we can’t wait to try them. She says they work beautifully with any number of vegetable substitutions. This week we’ll likely make them with zucchini, scallions, kohlrabi and salad turnips, and lots of herbs from the garden.
Ingredients
For the Fritters:
1 medium-large zucchini, grated
1 spring onion, minced
3 small carrots, peeled and grated
2 small kohlrabi, leaves removed, peeled and grated
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 egg
1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
3 tbsp olive oil
For the Yogurt Sauce:
1 cup low-fat Greek yogurt
1/2 tbsp lemon zest
1/2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp avocado oil
1/8 tsp salt
Directions
For the Fritters:
Combine zucchini, carrots, kohlrabi, and spring onion in a cheese cloth and wring out any excess water. (Or, if you don’t have cheese cloth, add veggies to a strainer, sprinkle with salt and let sit for 10 minutes and then wring out excess liquid with hands.) Transfer to a medium mixing bowl.
Add egg, flour, garlic powder, salt and pepper and mix to coat evenly.
Add olive oil to cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Once oil is hot enough, drop 1/4 cup of fritter batter into the pan and flatten out with a spatula. Depending on the size of your skillet, cook a few fritters at a time, leaving space in-between. Cook for a 3-5 minutes on each side, or until golden-brown and crispy.
Transfer cooked fritters to a paper towel to absorb some oil. Serve with yogurt sauce.
For the Yogurt Sauce:
Mix yogurt, lemon zest, parsley, avocado oil, and salt until combined. Serve alongside fritters.
FARMER’S LOG
SMIRKING AT PIGWEED
As we’ve written about in this log before, on the farm, time is like an echo.
Moments, days, tasks, seasons… they return cyclically, as if from a long distance, the long distance of a year.
Paying attention to the echoes breeds experience. And if you mess something up one year, you’ll get another chance next year when you hear the echoes coming back around.
Kayta and I were laughing this evening because last year’s Newsletter for CSA week 2 was a poem. You know when we post a poem in the Farmer’s Log it’s usually because that week was particularly crazy. Poem weeks are when we are too busy farming to write about farming.
This week was going to be a poem week… but here we are.
On the farm this week, we entered the tail end of our “establishment season”. (Establishment season being the two month period, wrapping up soon, where we establish pretty much all of our important crops and fields.)
This time includes, crucially, the initial one or two cultivation (weeding) passes on all our big field crops. The key thing about the weed killing part of establishment season, experience tells us, is that you only get a two or three day window where the weeds are small and easy to kill easily on acres and acres of ground. If you miss that moment in a field, which we are very experienced with, you’re in a world of hurt. Killing weeds gets exponentially harder as they gain strength and root mass.
We’re happy to report, dear members, that we are in better shape than we’ve ever been in at this time of the year weeds wise.
Mostly pigweed free carrots, spinach, celery root and leeks.
This is thanks to several factors: Eric, his wise disdain for weeds, and his hard work in the winter prepping our machinery for this moment; our fancy new Argus finger weeder (an ingenious contraption steered behind a tractor that kills weeds both in between and within plant rows); and, perhaps, most importantly, experience: We know what missing those moments looks like.
So this week saw us pushing ourselves hard, driving up and down our rows of corn, potatoes, winter squash, celery root, leeks, and carrots. We wanted to chill and catch our breath after opening week — but that’s what the weeds wanted too.
This week’s push was a gift to our future selves, free (or, at least slightly more free) of the told-you-so smirk of pigweeds casting their millions of seeds in your field as they scratch up your arms in September.
This week we were listening to the echoes of season’s past and smirking at the pigweed ourselves.
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
